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Chapter 3. Landport
At the start of the war, building work on the initial plan for a council estate on a site known as Landport was still in progress. The estate site stretched from Arundel Green, at one end to some fields, adjacent to a farm, at the other. The farm was on the edge of some woods, through which a twisting country path led to Offham Church. The land between Arundel Green, Offham Road and Wallands Crescent was occupied by allotments. A stony lane that left the Offham Road near the Wallands led down past the allotments and was joined some way down by a twitten leading, via a clattery railway footbridge, to Pelham Terrace and The Pells.

Mr and Mrs W and their son Peter lived on the estate in a recently built house at one end of Lee Road. Mr W was conscientious by nature and short in stature. He had a deformed leg which caused him some difficulty in walking. We did not know whether he was born with the deformity or suffered it as the result of some accident. Despite boyhood curiosity, we felt it was impolite to ask and might cause him some distress and embarrassment so the subject was not mentioned. We wondered, though, if it was just coincidence that he was a cobbler by occupation.

Mrs W was a motherly lady, emotional in nature and prone to burst into song at the least provocation. She had been a nurse in The Great War and picked up some soldiers’ ditties, one of which she gave a regular airing. It contained the following lines:

I want a cottage of my own
With roses round the door
No more bullies for the messroom tea
No more sergeants put the wind up me’.

Peter was similar in age to me but went to St Pancras rather than The Pells because he was a Catholic. Ronald and I had moved to new school premises, St John’s Parish Hall, in Talbot Terrace but Maurice, being older, had transferred to Mountfield Road School.

Next door to the Church Hall was a bakery where cakes and buns were made for a shop at the top of steps leading from Talbot Terrace. Ronald and I helped out by offering to carry trays of freshly made cakes from the bakery to the shop. Our reward was a cake when we reached the shop but, just in case they forgot about this arrangement when we arrived there, we contrived to help ourselves to a cake on the way up and consume it before reaching the shop. It was sometime before we realized that it was possible to see the cakes being carried up, from a window at the back of the shop premises.

At school with Ronald and me was a boy we called Robbie. He and his parents lodged with his grandparents, in a house with a Dutch-barn roof, in Lee Road just a few yards from us. His parents had decided on a private evacuation from their home in Greenford, Middlesex, at the start of the war. Being London-born seemed to justify Robbie’s schooling with us. In time, Robbie took on the status of a brother. He was with us during the ‘horse-incident’. One day, on the way to school, we had just reached the stony lane leading from the estate when we encountered two people on horseback. As they approached, riding side by side and leaving little room for us to pass, an inborn fear of animals larger than myself turned to panic when one of the horses became agitated and I took avoiding action by springing over a low stone wall at the side of the lane into an adjoining field. Fortunately, some brambles broke my fall and I escaped with minor cuts and grazes but I did need some help to find and recover my gold-rimmed spectacles from the bushes.

Mr and Mrs W made us feel at home and life with them was happier than it had been in our previous foster-homes. Mr W left home at the same time each weekday carrying a satchel containing some food and a medicine bottle filled with milk for the mugs of tea he made throughout the day. He trudged up the stony lane, then into town to his little shop at the top end of Market Street, not far from the War Memorial. Diagonally opposite the shop was a council building housing the school’s dreaded dental clinic. In the other direction, a shop selling items of military interest had a window display that included campaign medals and a tailors’ dummy clothed in a soldier’s tunic.

Mr W’s shop itself was a delight. On the front bench, where he worked shaping leather soles with a sharp curved knife and stitched torn riding boots, there was a higgledy-piggledy pile of boots and shoes of all styles and sizes. Despite the apparent chaos, Mr W was able always to pick out the right footwear for an owner calling to collect it.

From time to time we visited the shop towards the end of a day and waited while Mr W finished off a job before walking home with us. Seated on small stools we played the game of 1 spy’ by the light of a gas flame. Looking around the shop for inspiration I would cast an occasional anxious glance at Mr W to see if he was in danger of swallowing any of the handfuls of nails he was storing in his mouth before hammering them into a needy sole.

Christmas 1939 was eventful. Among the presents were a pair of roller skates for Ronald and a football and boots for me. Outside, we tobogganed in the snow on sloping ground by some allotments close to the Tally Ho Public House. A possible reason for the name of this place became clearer when we saw some huntsmen with hounds in the vicinity of Offham Road on Boxing Day.

For New Year’s Eve, Mrs W arranged a small family party. After gobbling up home-made fondant sweets and playing musical chairs, we three boys were called upon to perform a party piece which Mrs W had composed and we had learnt and rehearsed beforehand. Standing in a row we delivered our lines. The first verse went as follows:

Here we are, three little evacuee boys Staying with Peter and sharing his toys From Croydon we came, when the war broke out
But none of us know what the war is about.’

Despite the care and comfort given by Mrs W. we missed our parents. When they came to see us there was an outpouring of emotion. On one occasion, even before they arrived at the house, I locked myself in the bathroom so that nobody would see me and cried.

I am not sure why we left Lee Road. Perhaps Mrs W found that looking after three extra boys was just too much for her. Our next foster-home was to be with Mr and Mrs C, and son David, in St. Peter’s Place.

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