大象传媒

PART 2 (Read "Farthings from Heaven" on www.housers.net)

I hear it coming from a long way off. Through the din of gunfire and the clanging of fire engine and ambulance bells, a small, piercing, screeching sound. Rapidly getting louder and louder. Rising to a shriek. Cramming itself into our tiny shelter where we crouch. Reaching a crescendo of screaming violence that vibrates inside my head. To be obliterated by something even worse. A gigantic explosion that lifts the whole shelter鈥he whole garden鈥he whole of Digby Road, a foot into the air. When the shuddering stops, and a blanket of silence comes down, Dad says, calm as you like, 鈥淭hat was close!鈥�. He clambers out into the darkness. I join him. He thinks it must have been on the other side of the railway. The glue factory perhaps. Or the box factory at the end of the road. And then, in the faintest of twilights, I just make out a jagged black shape where our house used to be.
When dawn breaks, we pick our way silently over the rubble of bricks and splintered wood that once was our home. None of it means a thing. It could have been anybody鈥檚 home, anywhere. We walk away. Away from Digby Road. I never even look back. I can鈥檛. The heavy lead weight inside of me sees to that.
Just a few days before, one of the van drivers where Dad works had handed him a piece of paper. On it was written the name and address of one of Dad鈥檚 distant cousins. Someone he hadn鈥檛 seen for years. May Pelling. She had spotted the driver delivering in her High Street and had asked if he happened to know George Houser. 鈥淥f course 鈥� everyone knows good old George!鈥�. So she scribbles down her address, asks him to give it to him and tell him that if ever he needs help in these terrible times, to contact her. That piece of paper was in his wallet, in the shelter, the night before. One of the few things we still had to our name. The address is - Osidge Lane, Southgate.
What are we doing here? Why here? Where is here? It鈥檚 certainly not Isleworth - but might just as well be. The tube station we got off said 鈥橲outhgate鈥�. Yet Dad said this is North London. Or should it be North of London? Because, going by the map of the tube line in the carriage, which I鈥檝e been studying, Southgate is only two stops from the end of the line. It鈥檚 just about falling off the edge of London altogether! And why 鈥楶iccadilly Line鈥�? This is about as far from Piccadilly as the North Pole. Perhaps that鈥檚 the reason why we鈥檝e come. No signs of bombs here. Come to that, not much of the war at all. Not country, not town. Not a place to be evacuated to, or from. Everything new. And clean. And tidy. Ornamental trees, laden with red berries, their leaves turning gold, line the pavements. A garden in front of every house. With a gate, a path, a lawn, and flowers. Everything staked, labelled, trimmed. Nothing out of place. Except us. I鈥檝e still got my pyjama trousers tucked into my socks. The girls are wearing raincoats and headscarves. Dad has a muffler where his clean white collar usually is. Mum鈥檚 got on her old winter coat, the one she never goes out in. And carries a tied up bundle of bits and pieces we had in the shelter. Now and again I notice people giving us a sideways glance, then looking quickly away in case you might catch their eye. Are they shocked? embarrassed? shy, even? No one seems at all interested in asking if they can help this gaggle of strangers in a strange land. Not even the road sweeper when Dad asks him the way to Osidge Lane.

The door opens. A woman鈥檚 face. Dark eyes, dark hair, rosy cheeks. Her smile checked in mid air at the sight of us on her doorstep. Intake of breath. Eyes widen with shock. Her simple words brimming with concern. 鈥淕eorge! Nell! What鈥檚 the matter?鈥� Mum says:鈥� We鈥檝e just lost everything we had鈥� An answer hardly audible through the choking sob in her throat. Biting her lip to keep back the tears. It was the first time I鈥檇 ever seen my mother cry.

We are immediately swept inside on a wave of compassion. Kind words, helping hands, sympathy, hot food and cups of tea. Aunt May lives here with her husband, Uncle Ernie and their ten-year-old daughter, Pam. And two single ladies sheltering from the blitz. Five people in a small three-bedroom house. Now the five of us turn up, unannounced, out of the blue. With nothing but our ration books and what we are wearing. Taken in and cared for by people I鈥檇 never even seen before.
In every way Osidge Lane is different from our home in Digby Road. Yet it is just like coming home. We are safe. They are family. For this is a Houser house.
My new school is what I should have expected in somewhere like Southgate. Set in avenues of neat suburban houses, it too is neat and suburban. So too are the children that come here to be taught. Also too the ones that teach them. Conformity par excellence. And here am I, a cockney boy from Hackney, a year behind with my schooling, living in a small house at the very bottom of the hill that Dad had managed to rent cheaply. It belonged to a chemist who had fled back to Wales with his wife and child for fear of the bombing, leaving his dream house and hopeful ambitions behind. It had a bathroom, inside lavatory, fitted sink in the kitchen, a small garden at the back and a smaller one in front. But no railway or piano. It, like my school, had everything to recommend it. The only thing that was missing was the sense of belonging.
So we settled into a sort of routine, trying to pretend that it was all for the best. The two girls had found jobs locally; Dad had to struggle into London and back every day; Mum, missing her friends and street markets, with next nothing to feed and clothe us, did wonders making do; I got myself a newspaper round which meant getting up at half-past five every morning and walking through the dark streets with pieces of hot shrapnel pinging off the roofs and four shillings and sixpence at the end of the week.
I realised early on that I鈥檇 never make my mark as a scholar. French verbs and chemical formulae did little to lessen my inner sense of marking time. Worse, it relegated me to being just an also ran when I really felt that I was different and better than most. Was this confidence in myself the birth pains of unrequited ambition? Or simply an antidote to the gnawing doubts of inferiority I felt in this company? I had to find out.

Len Walsh, Captain of Games, sixth former and big for his age, stops me in the corridor and asks if I play football. 鈥淛ust a bit鈥� I reply. Which, considering that there was no school teams left in Hackney because they鈥檇 all been evacuated, and the Common had been dug up to fill sandbags, and not even enough mates for a kick about in the street, more or less summed up my last twelve months of football famine. Although not quite鈥ith not much else to do during those twelve months of not going to school, I had taken to playing on my own under the railway bridge in Digby Road. Just kicking a tennis ball against the wall and banging it back again, time after time. Hour after hour, day after day. At first I could only do it three or four times in a row, but as time went on I could reach ten, twelve, fifteen times without stopping. The bridge was a perfect place for it 鈥� dry when it rained, shaded when hot. Through that first winter and the long summer months, the ball, the wall and me were constant companions. By the time of the bomb I was quick on my feet, light on my toes, balanced like a dancer, and, from the middle of the road, could place the ball within two brick lengths of the target.
Which is why, when Walsh gives me a trial in the third team, I soon found I could run rings round them all. The next week I鈥檓 on the team sheet for the second team. And two weeks later there it is: HOUSER in the right half position for the first team pinned up on the school notice board. Who鈥檚 he? Which, considering I鈥檇 been there only a few weeks, still a mere third former and an inconspicuous sort of boy, was a very relevant question. But they all soon got to know me. Very average when it came to all those subjects they all seemed good at, but something special when it came to kicking a ball around. I was now a somebody. That was good enough for me.

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