大象传媒

The shelter beneath the Bus Station was divided into little rooms with stacks of sandbags making for walls. People slept both inside those sandbag rooms and in the corridors between. We were lucky enough to find a place in one of the rooms. We would leave for the shelter in the evening as the worst raids usually came after dark. I believe we took a flask and snacks but snacks and drinks were sold at a staff near the entrance. We left our rolled-up bedding in the shelter all the time and I recall nobody ever having theirs stolen. War gave people a feeling of solidarity. One did not steal from ones comrades. Before bedtime, we children played games, running around and visiting each other鈥檚 rooms. There were several Flemish children whom I had met at the Belgian school, whose families also came to the shelter. I knew some English children too, from the shelter and from the park playground and thought we could not speak to each other, we still got on somehow. I recall how sad I was to hear later that one of my friends had become paralysed for life when she was buried under the door at the entrance of the shelter which was blown in when a bomb fell outside. From the shelter too I still remember the Maltese family with a baby who slept near us. And at the time that lady belonging to 鈥渢he oldest profession in the world鈥� had a fight with one of her colleagues in middle of the room. She was known, apparently, as Skinny Lizzie.

Father had by now been given a job. So had Uncle Charles. They were, like everyone else, assigned war work, being past the age for call-up. Father was 49, Uncle Charles 47. They were supposed to replace glass blown out by the bombing in the West End and this meant putting in fresh glass almost everyday. Rather a waste of time, all times considered. Later Father was told he would have to go and work in a shipyard as panel beater and he wasn鈥檛 keen. Bonnie told him to plead bad eyesight. So he was sent for free spectacles to a hospital on the other side of the Thames. Mother and I went too though I was rather frightened of going anywhere except to the shelter by now. At the first sound of a siren, I would rush to the basement at breakneck speed, when in the house. It was only maybe a trivial incident, going to this hospital, but it left me with one indelible memory: we passed a house of which the whole front had been torn off and I will never forget seeing the grand piano, precariously balanced on the second floor of that house, one leg hanging over the edge. There was to me, something quite horrific about it.

Mother by now, was determined not to stay in London. But because of the war it was no longer permitted for people to move to another place without clearance. Mother was determined we should go to Blackpool where she had a friend, an English girl who used to come to Belgium for holidays. She had applied for us to go there but had been told it might not be easy as it was not a 鈥渞eception area鈥�. I know we had seen some ladies about it 鈥� civil servants probably. There were very nice and took a liking to me. I was a well-behaved little girl and must have looked very pretty in my best organdy dress which Mother had packed in the suitcase when we left home. The lady had said what a pity it was that mother wanted to take me to Blackpool as I would then learn to speak English with a Northern accent! Because of the delays it was some time before permission for us to heave came and maybe even then it would not have been granted yet had we not become homeless when a landmine, a large bomb, fell near our boarding house and demolished a whole block of houses.

It was the night when the first time my parents had been able to persuade Uncle Charles and Aunty Clothilde to spend the night in the air-raid shelter, as up till then they had refused to come with us. When we returned home in the morning the whole street was cordoned off. However, after my parents had provided the proof that we lived there; they were allowed through to rescue their belongings. We were luckier than other people in that the house we lived in was still standing. Well the front part and the stairs were still there. Mother and father were able to retrieve most of our belongings, including my doll.

Nobody had been killed in our house except the parrot. Bonnie had been dragged out of the basement by another lodger and into the coalbunker under the pavement before parts of the house fell on them. The cat escaped too. I 2was glad of this as it was still only a kitten and I was fond of it. Bonnie had got it when it was discovered there were mice in our room. One evening mother saw what she thought were little balls of pink wool lying on the rug. She bent to pick them up but they developed legs and ran away _ they were hairless baby mice. Then we had trouble with the adult mice which got so bold that they ran over the end of the bed and over father鈥檚 bare toes which were sticking out at the end. Mother hated traps with dead mice in them so Bonnie got a kitten and the mice vanished.

As we now had no roof over our heads we were accommodated in a hostel catering for the many families made homeless every night by the bombing. I don鈥檛 know where Bonnie went. I never saw her again. I doubt she married 鈥淒r John鈥� as she was older than he was and his family didn鈥檛 approve of her at all. Perhaps she went back to nursing; there must have been need of all the nurses they could get.

We were not in the hostel long. I don鈥檛 even recall spending a night there. Father and Uncle Charles had not yet been given permission to leave London and Aunty Clothilde would not leave without her husband. But mother and I were very soon in Euston Station and on the train to Blackpool. I was glad to leave but sad Father wasn鈥檛 coming. But he promised he would come as soon as he could. It was a big steam train with a large black engine. I couldn鈥檛 wait for it to take us out of London which had become a nightmare city. It was a long journey and I was quite alarmed when after dark, the sirens sounded. But nothing happened to the train.

We arrived in Blackpool at about 4 o鈥檆lock in the morning at the Central Station, which now no longer exists. It was dark and a cold wind was blowing from sea. It was October already. Mother had accommodation found her by her friend, Miss Cardwell 鈥� Dorothy to mother. Dorothy would have let us live in her bungalow with her except she already had an elderly uncle and a French refugee family living with her 鈥� people who had the room were asked to take in refugees or evacuees. Dorothy had found mother rooms in a guess house. So we took a taxi. But when mother rang the bell at the address we had been given, no one answered the door. After repeated ringing a woman poked her head out of the bedroom window and shouted 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 come in, I鈥檓 full up鈥�. The taxi was by now gone and we were alone in a dark, empty street. Mother pleased with the woman to no avail. Finally the woman told her 鈥済o to the police station. Ask them to help you鈥�. So we set off.

I felt very miserable, apparently stranded with mother in a strange town in the middle of the night. Fortunately the police station proved not too far a walk though we had to ask the way again. It was lucky there was anybody about that time of night but we did meet with a man on a bicycle 鈥� probably returning from a night shift. The police were quite sympathetic. After asking a few questions (mother amused them by stating that her husband was in London 鈥減utting in broken windows鈥�) they said they would drive us to Miss Cardwell鈥檚 address. So we arrived at Dorothy鈥檚 bungalow in a police car in the early hours of the morning. It was a bit of a shock to the residents. The French lady must later have said 鈥淥h Miss Cardwell, I wondered what you鈥檇 done to have the police arrive in the middle of the night鈥�. But Dorothy rose to the occasion all right and put us up for the rest of the night and for the next few days she slept on her settee and gave her bed to mother and me.

I wished we could have stayed with Dorothy permanently. She was a very nice person. I liked the lovely bungalow she lived in. I liked her elderly uncle who took me round the large, beautiful garden with its lily pond and small hothouse containing a peach tree with real peaches hanging on it, each peach protected by a little net hung underneath to protect it from bruising, should it fall off the tree. The garden seemed like a kind of paradise. I made friends too with Peter, the Airedale terrier. It seemed just the perfect place to live 鈥� near a park too.

But when very soon Father, Uncle Charles and Aunty Clothilde arrived, having got permission to join us, we could not, of course, all be fitted in. It was not so easy to find more permanent accommodation at short notice so first we were given beds at a boarding house in Adelaide Street. It seemed a very miserable place to me. It had actually been converted to lodge servicemen station around Blackpool. So all most rooms contained were camp beds and lockers. But the people running it seemed a seedy lot: a very fat landlady and her colourless husband. There was also another man, a cripple who could crawl but not walk. He slept in the broom cupboard under the stairs. The place gave me the creeps and I was glad to move to another one.

This was a guest house on the south side of Blackpool. The lady who ran it was young and quite pretty. She had a small boy and a tortoiseshell cat called Tjoe-tjoe. Her husband was away in the army. Tjoe-tjoe was going to have kittens and as the small boy bothered her, my Aunty Clothilde let her stay in her room. Tjoe-tjoe had her kittens under my aunt鈥檚 bed 鈥� in a nice soft basket. I was allowed to see but not touch them.

But this stay too was short. Soon Dorothy came round to tell mother that she had found us a place to live if we wanted it. It was with a Mrs Mills who lived about ten minute walk from where Dorothy lived. Mrs Mills had two little girls near my own age. Her husband was living away from home doing war work in London. It seemed an ideal place to live to me. It did not prove so ideal from the point of view of my parents. However, we were to live there for six months more or less. And for me this was a very happy time, despite the fact that I succumbed in quick succession to whooping cough, measles and mumps and so missed even more schooling than I already had.

We left the Mills when Mr Mills was sent back home, having been found to have TB. He took to coming home drunk and mother decided that it was not a good idea to share a house with an alcoholic. She was working by then, teaching Belgian children in Preston, to which she travelled on the bus from Blackpool. Father had been put on war work, camouflaging factories. Mother 鈥� with help from her friend Dorothy, got us another place.

This was with Mr and Mrs Chadwick, a childless couple in their forties. I was not pleased to have to leave a house where I had playmates but I had no say in this, of course. We were to live in with the Chadwick鈥檚 for the remainder of the war, until we returned to Antwerp in October 1945.

I started school at Devonshire Road Infants School, after recovering from the mumps. I felt a bit offended at not being allowed to start in Junior School as I did not understand how the English system differed from the Belgian one, where you started primary school in the calendar year you reached six and all children would start together in September. Here we had also been immediately started on 鈥渏oined up writing鈥� and had used ink. Here we had to print and in pencil. This seemed babyish to me. However, I had catching up to do, since though I now spoke English, I could not reach or write it. I was moved up to Devonshire Road Junior Girls School the next September. I stayed there for the whole of primary education and sat the first 11 plus in 1945. I obtained a grammar school place but was most upset not to be able to take it up, as we were returning to Antwerp later in the year, once the war was truly over.

Apart from some raids when we were first in Blackpool, the war years had passed peacefully there. Only one bomb was ever dropped there, by mistake, and it fell on someone鈥檚 greenhouse. The only other incident was when two of our own planes collided near the sea and one fell on the central station. In summer, holidaymakers came as usual. We were hardly aware there was a war on, had it not been for the servicemen on leave and the ones who had been wounded in the hospital there.

Mother had soon got a transfer from Preston to Fleetwood, which was nearer and easier to get to. . The children she taught during the war were in English schools but had a few periods when they were taught their own language by a Belgian teacher. Most were fishermen鈥檚 children from Ostende so Flemish. Mother only ever had one or two French speaking pupils, but this was fine, as she spoke fluent French too. During the latter part of the war, Father was no longer on war work but employed in private decorating. His boss would have liked him to stay as he was a skilled craftsman. Mother however, would have lost her pension had she not returned to Belgium and naturally the family wanted us to return. Uncle Charles and Aunty Clothilde decided to remain in Blackpool and spent the rest of their lives there. Neither ever saw Antwerp again.

Going back had its good side, though it was difficult for me to once more switch to a different language (Dutch) in school. There was no austerity in Belgium after the war. Recovery from the war was rapid, mainly due to the Belgian government having sold uranium to the Americans 鈥� which was mined in the then Belgian Congo. Rationing soon ended and it became a land of plenty. I was amazed, that first autumn, but all the fruit available in the shops. Antwerp had been targeted by flying bombs but the damage was son cleared up and in many ways, it was as though the war had never been.

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