大象传媒

I am 72 now, but my memory of those war-time years is for the most part fresh and sharp. My parents, two sisters and l were on holiday in West Wittering on the south coast the day the war began. We never returned to our house in Garden Avenue, Mitcham and 60 years on l still nurse a lingering resentment about that. Dad left us to join his Territorial Army unit. Mother was too nervous to let us return to London, so we went to Guildford to stay with some people we met on holiday. It was a disaster. Mother spotted bed-bugs crawling up the wall, so we left as soon as possible. At various times we had fleas, headlice and impetigo, though not at the same time. We had so many changes of lodging and school, all private evacuations, that l have no recollection of one in Worcester: the name of the school, what it looked like or how long we were there, but l do remember lying awake hearing planes droning overhead. Can you tell 'theirs' from 'ours' by the sound of the engine, l wondered? This was 1940-1.

Eventually mother, my middle sister and l crossed to southern Ireland to take refuge with Uncle Frank and Aunt Lucy in Athlone. This was a gamble, as Hitler might have landed in Eire first. At that time no-one knew where he would invade next.We crossed the Irish sea in February 1941. I was excited by the rat-tat-tat of a machine-gun - a few practice rounds. We were probably in greater danger from U-boats than attack from the air. We stayed in Athlone very happily until the end of the war, but Mother got restless, or else she and my aunt did not get on - I'm not sure which. She returned to England and stayed in lodgings near where Dad manned an anti-aircraft battery on various sites round London. She was an ARP warden. One Christmas Dad got leave unexpectedly and they went to our empty house in Mitcham. After searching the larder all they found to eat was a tin of sardines hidden in a dark corner - their Christmas dinner! After l heard this story, a great joke, l was puzzled why they went at all. What could they possibly do there all day? Towards the end of the war Dad found a tenant who rented the house but that was a big mistake.

In Athlone my sister and I attended a Protestant 'dame' school, Rosleven School. One of the pupils was a survivor from the torpedoed evacuee ship City of Benares. She was regarded with awe but privately I thought she was spoilt and hysterical or was I jealous of the attention she received? I was given a good grounding in Latin, but none in Science. There was a curious subject called General Knowledge - lists of questions and answers on unrelated bits of information. I still have a school prize dated 1942, a Bible presented by the Meath Board of Education. Miss Webster was large, dark and imposing. Miss Richardson was thin fair and dainty. They were joint owners and teachers. We had to learn Irish, but as a patriotic Brit I promptly forgot it.

My uncle Frank was manager of the Athlone Labour Exchange and knew who came and went in the area. Now and then he was visited by a young, handsome Englishman in civilian clothes. I fantasised he was a member of the British Secret Service checking up on German and Italian refugees. To this day I do not know if I was right. My cousin does not confirm the story, but why else would a fit young Englishman be in a neutral country, unless on active service? He never had meals with us, but went as mysteriously as he came.

Uncle was a great provider and Aunt Lucy a marvellous cook. The big, black kitchen range was fuelled by peat, which burns quickly and leaves large amounts of ash. There was no coal to be had. In the autumn Aunt Lucy laid down 12 dozen eggs in isinglass to see us through the winter, We had all the meat, milk and vegetables we could eat, but never saw a banana till the end of the war. Petrol and tea were in short supply. We went blackberry picking on the shores of Lough Ree on the River Shannon, the adults in a car , my sister, two cousins and I on bicycles. We ate a huge picnic and swam as well. Sometimes in the school holidays we children made a fire on the lake-shore, boiled a kettle to make tea and sailed little boats and rafts made out of dry reeds as we paddled on the waters-edge. A really exciting place was a ruined house, burned down during the Troubles where it was rumoured the family silver melted in the fire and was still there under the rubble. A dangerous place to play hide and seek, but we were too sensible to risk our lives looking for melted silver and came to no harm.

My parents visited us every six months and the British Customs became suspicious. Dad was stripped searched. They were looking for watches and fountain pens. Watches l can understand but fountain pens....? The real joke was Mother was the smuggler - contraceptives for my aunt (though l did not learn that until years later) They were banned in Eire. Also round her waist she hid an apron with pockets for seed packets from Dobies of Edinburgh. Uncle grew all our vegetables. Uncle Frank listened regularly to the Overseas Service of the 大象传媒 and when the full horror of the concentration camps was revealed my sister started to wet the bed, so Uncle withdrew to another room to hear the news bulletins. There were no official celebrations to mark the end of the war in Europe, but Uncle built a huge bonfire on the front drive and on VE Day invited as many people as could be squeezed in to the house. The guest of honour was an Irish Merchant seaman who had been a POW in Japan and had just been repatriated. It was a somewhat staid party, as l remember. No singing or dancing. I think Aunt Lucy was a teetotaller, so no alcohol either, but we were celebrating with cups of tea or bottled coffee.

Postwar Britain was an awful shock after Athlone. We could not return to our house in Mitcham because our tenant was in a wheel-chair and when the war ended the Government decided tenants should have security of tenure. Property prices had rocketed as so many houses were uninhabitable from the bomb damage, so greedy landlords were making a quick profit by putting up rents. Dad had an ailing wife and three teenage daughters but our tenant did not budge so Dad sold her our home as a sitting tenant. I never forgave her. For six years l had looked forward to going back to Mitcham where l was born. I felt uprooted. Dad took a posting to Leeds and we settled in a rented house in an industrial suburb. Everything was drab, in need of repair, in short supply including food. In the bitter winter of 1947 we ran out of coal. Dad sneaked along the railway line at the back of the house picking up lumps which which had fallen off the coal-tenders on their way to Middleton Colliery. It was stealing so we kept quiet. For Dad, a civil servant, it might have been grounds for dismissal.

With hindsight l realise we were lucky. No-one in the family was killed or injured, or made a prisoner of war. Dad returned to his work at the Ministry of Health, which paid his salary throughout his army service. From 1945-49 l worked very hard at my new school Cockburn High School to catch up on the education l had missed in Ireland. l wanted to pass matriculation and get to university. (I did!) Mother died aged 54 years from a stroke, five years after the war ended. How unlucky my parents generation was to live through two world wars. Their lives were cruelly afflicted as young adults and again in middle age. Uncle Frank was badly wounded in the trenches. Mother was five years older than my father and was lucky to find a husband. Dad, a great survivor, had Spanish flu in 1919. In the second world war he was treated with great respect by the youngsters in his battalion as an 'old' soldier. He lived to a good age and never lost his edge. This is the first time l have written about the war - and is my tribute to my parents and to my aunt and uncle who cared for my sister and me in desperate times.

20 November 2003

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