Polly (8 page)

A shelter in Victoria Park, possibly the one the girl's family had to sleep in over the summer. © Patricia Philpott, English Heritage/National Monument Record

Despite all that had happened she was determined to keep her family together and she kept in touch with the two girls, visiting regularly and promising that they would get back together again. She managed to get a job and then rent a couple of rooms and when the older girl was thirteen, her mum was able to get her out of the home. They both got jobs and eventually got the other daughter out when she was fourteen. While she had been in the home she had learned to speak ever so posh so that when she came out she used to get into all sorts of trouble because people thought she was putting it on and trying to show them up. In the end the older girl had to get a job in the same place as the younger one just so she could look after her and keep her out of trouble!

Anyway, that was it. Slowly they got back on their feet, managed to get a little house and build a home, the daughters got married and in the end the mum went to live with our ‘young woman'. That was her story, but she finished it by repeating where she had started; ‘Mum is welcome to get drunk any time she likes and she will always have a home with me!'

W
hen I was a girl my best friend was Jenny B. She was one of a large family, with one sister and goodness knows how many brothers – loads and loads of them. Us kids and the Bs were all the same sort of ages, and so we all played with each other. Although the rest of them just played, me and Jenny ‘clicked' and we became very close friends until the passage of time took us on different paths. I must say that Jenny was not at all good looking, in fact she looked a bit funny. But she had the most wonderful nature and she was the nicest person you could ever know.

The family were all clever enough and did well. I think Jenny was the brightest; she and I were the only ones from our school to get the scholarship and both of us could have gone to the grammar school, but neither of us was allowed to. I seem to remember that the second brother was a bit simple – not the full two bob – but he was a real hard worker. He would have a go at anything and really put his back into it. In fact, he always managed somehow or other and in time got married, had a family, and for as long as I heard about him was ever so happy. The youngest brother was Tommy, who was about the same age as our Bob. Mr B had been badly wounded in the war and, although he survived it somehow, he was never well and never worked again. In fact he only survived a couple of years and died soon after the war, from his wounds if the truth be told. I think it was because of this that the British Legion took an
interest in the family and they more or less took Tommy over. We only heard the occasional bit of news, but did hear that he had gone to university. I don't think we had any idea what that really meant, but it sounded good.

Another of my brother's friends was Ginger. He had a rough life, poor kid. His mother was suicidal and every so often she would have to be pulled out of the canal and taken back home. I suppose nowadays she would be given some help or something but there was nothing like that then. Anyway, as you can guess, Ginger had the biggest mop of ginger hair that you had ever seen. The other thing about Ginger, though, was that he was incredibly tall. He was only a kid like the rest of us, but he was already as big or bigger than most adults. The trouble was, he was as clumsy as any other kid, maybe worse because of his size. Mum used to fly into a real panic whenever he called round for the boys – ‘tell him to be careful,' ‘don't go there,' ‘hurry up and get him outside' – anything to get him out of the house. She was absolutely terrified that he would walk into one of the gas mantles. We had gas lights in those days and the mantles were extremely expensive and unbelievably fragile. You only had to touch them and they would disintegrate, and the sight of Ginger's enormous frame trying to fit into our house was more than Mum could stand. Maybe he had already broken one of the mantles but I don't remember it at all.

During the Second World War he was called up and went in the army. I am not sure whether it was in the desert or Normandy, but he was terribly wounded in some battle. He said himself he could feel that he was dying and slowly slipping away, when he heard this really brutal voice suddenly shout at him, ‘Right you ginger bastard, don't die on me now!' He said that he was so shocked he could feel himself struggle to get control again and open his eyes. When he did, he looked up and found himself looking straight at Tommy B. He had become a doctor and was in the Medical Corps. He was as surprised as anybody to find a ‘dying' friend from his childhood on the battlefield, but Ginger was convinced that Tommy had pulled him back from death and saved his life.

After the war Tommy returned to Stratford and worked at the London Hospital. He never married, but lived with the eldest of his brothers who was a writer and artist. Sadly he died quite young – he got appendicitis but being a doctor didn't take proper notice of it and by the time they operated it was too late. He was very well known and much loved around Stratford and the whole place came to a stop for his funeral.

Going back to Jenny, we were great friends all through school and even when we started work. Then she sort of disappeared in a bit of a scandal. There was a
lady up the road who was the local ‘unofficial' midwife. She was not trained at all, but had lots of experience and had delivered most of the babies in the street; certainly those of the poorer families who couldn't afford to go to the hospital. She knew what she was doing. Anyway, one day she was visiting the Bs and there were several people around when Jenny came in. Without thinking, she asked, ‘Oh, and when are you going to have the baby then?' Goodness knows what, but she instantly recognised from her body shape or something that Jenny was pregnant. The family had managed to cover it up until then and nobody in the street had suspected anything, but now the cat was out of the bag. There was a terrible stink and Mum went mad and said I was never to talk to Jenny again. It didn't matter because, as I said, Jenny more or less disappeared. It turned out that the father was a married man. Believe it or not, he was married to the local Stratford Beauty Queen but somehow he got caught up with Jenny for all her funny looks. He left his wife and set up home with Jenny and they did, like the fairy story, live happily ever after.

I know that because years after the war we were going out to a dinner and, as we were walking into the station dressed up to the nines, we came face to face with Jenny. I don't know who was most surprised but we had a rapid catch-up on twenty years or more. To be honest, I would have rather sat on the platform all night and carried on talking, but we had paid for the tickets and it was important to my husband Fred so we went to the dinner. She was a lovely girl.

W
hen I look back I can see that we had a pretty good life really. Dad was always in work and because of his work in the market we always had plenty of food. He used to drink a lot – somehow it seemed to be part of life in the market – and almost always came home drunk or, at least, ‘the worse for wear’, but family came first and he always gave Mum her money. He only ever came home stone cold sober once that I can remember and that was from the funeral of a friend who also worked in the market. He had only been a young man, younger than Dad, but one day he suddenly dropped dead at work. It affected all his mates, including Dad, pretty badly. On the day of the funeral Dad got dressed up in all his best clothes – and he could be an extremely smart man – went out and not much more than an hour later was back again without having had a single drink. He walked into the house, sober and absolutely immaculate. The dog took one look at him, growled and bit him. He had never seen ‘this man’ before and didn’t recognise him, so assumed he was an intruder!

I had no complaints though. Dad looked after his family and we always had a home there. There was a fellow round the corner who reckoned to look after his kids until they were ‘old enough’ and then they were turned out. ‘Old enough’ to him meant fifteen, and he was absolutely rigid about it with no exceptions. I suppose he had to be because there was never any spare room in
their house. They had a new baby every year without fail, the last one when his wife was fifty-seven! That must be a bit of a record in itself.

One day the mother came round to see Mum to ask whether she could give the latest leaver, a daughter, a home. She was ever so worried because this daughter was partially crippled and her mother couldn’t see how she could possibly manage. The daughter had fallen off a roundabout in the park when she was a child and had broken her leg. The medical services weren’t so good in those days and she had ended up with one leg shorter than the other. That still didn’t alter her father’s rules – she was fifteen and had to stand on her own (crippled) feet. Anyway there were six of us kids, as well as Mum and Dad, in our three-bedroom house so it was out of the question for her to come to us. In desperation she went to live with her boyfriend’s family and, sure enough, a few months later they had to get married.

Several years later when I was expecting my first boy, I was at the hospital maternity clinic waiting to be examined. Suddenly this voice boomed out from the nurse on duty, ‘Oh no, not you again, you have not paid for the last two yet!’ In those days you had to pay to go to hospital, and that included having babies, but I suppose this woman was just too poor. Of course, we all peered round the end of the waiting room to see what was going on and there was the crippled girl, a lot older by then of course. I do not know what she did in the end but she was never at the clinic again when I was there. I suppose she must have managed somehow.

She had quite a large family in the end, and they all made something of themselves. I cannot remember what they did, but they all got good jobs and made good money, which is pretty remarkable when you think what an unpromising start in life they all had. That said, the eldest child was a daughter, who made a speciality of going out with other women’s husbands! She was totally unashamed about it, and if any of the wives ever objected she told them in no uncertain terms that they ought to be grateful. Firstly, they knew where their husbands were and secondly she was clean and so they would not come to any harm! They could, she always maintained, do a lot worse on both counts.