大象传媒

51b - (concluded from Part One)

"What else did I do during the war? I am trying to think, I had all sorts of ideas, but I can鈥檛 鈥� Oh yes, that was another thing, I had no family actually so I was on my own in London, and I decided to live in 鈥�, there were some girls鈥� hostels, there were three of them in London, they were called the Ada Lewis Hostels, and they had been instituted well, well before the war, and they were for young women or girls who had come from the country to work in London, and these were safe places for them to live, and of course they were used during the war by all sorts of people, girls who worked like me in ministries and things like that. And I was walking back, I don鈥檛 know why I was walking, maybe it was one of the all nights when the transport didn鈥檛 work, and walking through the Elephant and Castle, down the New Kent Road feeling pretty miserable and rather frightened because the guns were going off like mad, and I came across some railings in front of a house, and the houses stood well back from the road and it had a gold plate on, the Rev. So and So, and I thought right, that鈥檚 a reverend, I鈥檓 going to go and talk to him so I did. And I went up and rang the bell and this young curate opened the door and I said can I come and talk to you please, and he must have been a bit astonished but anyway, yes he said come in, so I went in and we had a chat, and after a bit (he was very nice of course), he might have been the vicar for all I know, and then I said well thank you very much I鈥檒l go now, and he said well come and see me any time you want to have a chat, so I got out of the front door and down to the gate and went. And I had gone a little way up the road and thought I am going back there, so I did, I turned round and went back, and said do you mind if I come back for a bit? He must have been totally confused, no he said come in, so I went in and I had another talk, and this time I said well I really will go this time and walked back to my hostel up the road, but he must have thought well, she鈥檚 a bit daft.

Well I was frightened, of course I was frightened because in those days the guns were going off. I was frightened most of the time because I was in this hostel the night that the Elephant and Castle was badly bombed, it was very badly bombed one night, and I think 鈥�, I know at least one fireman was killed if not two, blown off the top of these ladders where they were directing the hoses to 鈥� But on the whole I never 鈥�, my war was very fragmented.
Ah the doodlebugs when they started, yes they were 鈥�, they were terrifying really. I am a frightened person I think, because the thing about those, was you鈥檇 hear them approach and then the engine would cut out and you never knew where it was going to fall, as you know. That was 鈥�, once it had fallen that was OK, you thought oh dear, somebody else has got it, but they were very frightening those things.

I don鈥檛 remember the Air Ministry defences being specially 鈥� Ah, the one off Whitehall was, we had chaps on the 鈥� They built gates at the entrance to the road which weren鈥檛 there when I first went there, and they had airmen out there with rifles who used to challenge you when you went in and out you know, who goes there or whatever it was they said, which we all thought was rather funny! But nothing, but Churchill used our office a lot, because it was in the office that the Permanent Under Secretary, I鈥檝e forgotten his name now, it will come but I have forgotten it, he was a farming type, great big type and he used to grow sugar beet I remember that, apart from being in the office. And Churchill used to come over to see him, and this bloke lived in a flat on top of the building, on top of 鈥�, and Churchill used to go up there and we were told, he went out on the roof a lot, he loved watching the fires! And he used to go and visit there but I wasn鈥檛 there all the time, I did have more, less interesting jobs, I can鈥檛 think of anything else about the Air Ministry.

The only thing, you obviously had to have a card to get in and what not, and there鈥檚 nothing 鈥�, I don鈥檛 remember anything in particular about them being terribly defended. They were offices 鈥�, what they did, the Ministry took offices in funny 鈥�, all over London. For instance there was one group of offices over Harvey Nichols in Knightsbridge, and then there was the one that I finished up in, in Berkeley Square, that was a very large building and they had most of that building I think in Berkeley Square, 鈥榗os we used to walk around that part of London which to me was the 鈥淲est End鈥� which was terribly up-market and look at all the shops and envy them all at lunchtimes and things like that.

Food was no problem for us at all, because 鈥� Well as I say I lived in a hostel a lot of the time so food was provided, but lunchtimes I had lunches in London, in town, and hundreds of little restaurants sprang up for little office girls and little office boys and things like that, and you could get a jolly good meal; they used to put on special meals cheap, and the Corner Houses did a lot of 鈥�, they put on a lot of cheapy meals or good meals, and that 鈥�, I never had any trouble with. I had trouble with sweets, not that I wanted sweets we all had our ration of sweets, and once I got married in 1944, the war was still on, the rationing was still on, then I began to find that it was a bit difficult to get food to cook, but until then, no I suppose the hostel gave me breakfast, I had lunch in town in either Lyons Corner House or one of these small restaurants were 鈥�, just what happened was they were private houses really, big houses, and people just adapted them to make into a little restaurant, I assume there was some sort of legislation but it didn鈥檛 worry me, and that was fine.

But it must have been terribly difficult for mums with small children, though of course they were 鈥�, well they could be 鈥�, they were all evacuated at the beginning of the war, which is what happened to my aunt - she was bringing me up, she was evacuated with her two sons into the country, and then finally they all came back, they got fed up with that and came back.

There were ration books for buying food to cook and you know, but if you had lunches out or any meal out 鈥�, of course there were some things they could give you, I can鈥檛 remember. I loved Welsh Rarebits, I used to have cheese on toast for them, but the lunches no, I can remember one restaurant near St. James鈥檚 Park I used to go to, and it was meat and two veg, or fish and two veg, I found that I was using 鈥�, what was the name of the place where all the prostitutes went, not the restaurants.

It wasn鈥檛 Soho, though I knew Soho though, it was the other end, and I can鈥檛 remember off hand, and that I realized 鈥�, well I didn鈥檛 know at the time, was the haunt of quite a lot of prostitutes; there was a nice restaurant there that I used to use, you know I can鈥檛 鈥�, Shepherds Market, that鈥檚 right it was Shepherds Market which was very well known as a 鈥�, and it was quite a nice place there, what else did I do?.

Speaking of the V1 ans V2 Rockets threatening us, I suppose the point was, since you never heard them coming, you didn鈥檛 know till it was there, and then you were dead anyway.
I used to sleep in the Anderson shelter, they were funny really. But I remember at the beginning when I was married I lived in Swiss Cottage and my husband was still going to work, he was under essential works order, because he was some sort of 鈥�, it鈥檚 difficult to explain what he was, he was a sort of photographer/lithographer reproduction agent. He used to reproduce pictures for various magazines, and they popped it 鈥�, he was once locked in a gallery, at the National Gallery to take a photograph of the triptych, and they locked him in, and then came back for him an hour or so later, by which time the only one thing he wanted desperately was a loo by then, but he was 鈥� And what he used to do among other things, which I didn鈥檛 know until years later, he was a forger. He used to forge, it was very serious at the time of course, he used to be part of the forging team that forged the papers that our bods used when they were dropped over France and Germany, but of course it was a worry because as he said, these things, the originals, were rubber stamped, but the rubber stamps weren鈥檛 new, they鈥檇 all been curling round the edges, and they had to get that right in the printing, and that was very difficult, they never really knew whether they were successful or not, they always just hoped they were, so he used to do things like that, and that was why he was under the essential works order.
He worked on a gun site once, I don鈥檛 mean the physical place, on the site for the gun itself photographically and the odd job like that he did during the war.
But those things I didn鈥檛 know about, and then finally we went, at the end of the war, out to East Africa

But I was very lucky, I had one, well not exactly a boyfriend a boy I knew, he was waiting for his call up, and while he waited he worked as a stretcher bearer at Lewisham Hospital, and I was told (I never saw him after that), he had had one leg blown off, so he never even got there, no well I mean I don鈥檛 suppose he was very happy about that either. But my war really, except when I was on my own for it, I suppose I was lucky, I didn鈥檛 get hurt in any way, and as I say it was very fragmented. I enjoyed the Unity Theatre bit a lot, and then people who worked there, two people we knew who worked there, they pitched up in Kenya with us a bit later on, people suddenly turn up all over the world, even more so now.
I can鈥檛 think of anything else that was really 鈥�,

Well you won鈥檛 have had much about a theatre, ah yes there was one 鈥�, there is a bit about that theatre, I am sorry it鈥檚 a lovely one really.
They did a play, a Spanish play called 鈥淔uento of Khahuna鈥� - I can鈥檛 even spell it, but The National Theatre did it a few years ago as a matter of fact, but anyway we did it in Unity, it also had social content, very good. And at that stage they said I could do the props, well I had never done the props before, I mean props to me that was easy, it was obviously simple, and this thing, my husband built the set, and it was a market scene, and it had to have baskets of fruit standing around, so I thought well, baskets of fruit, yes. I went to Covent Garden, I mean when you consider, when I think of it now I鈥檇 never have the nerve or I wouldn鈥檛 do it, 鈥榗os I went to Covent Garden, and I must have been what 18/19, and talked to some of the 鈥�, this was before Covent Garden moved to where it was now, and talked to some of the people there, and explained who I was and what I was doing, and said could they lend me some baskets, yes they said; thinking about it now they must have wondered. Anyway they lent me half a dozen of these tall baskets and the trolley to push 鈥榚m on, and I pushed these baskets to Unity Theatre, and then I made these 鈥榚re props. Well what I did I filled the baskets with paper, and then made oranges and lemons out of plaster of Paris to put on top. Well I鈥檇 had not experience of this at all, so I made these oranges and lemons, but of course by the time they were finished, they were like - they were the weight of small bombs, they were terrible, like cannon balls, and I put all these on top of my baskets, stood around well that was fine, they looked all right until one night somebody kicked a basket over! And these little cannon balls went bonk, bonk, bonk all the way down the stage and off the front; well the audience thought this was quite amusing; the trouble was that this was not meant to be a comedy, it was a very serious play about the ordinary people being suppressed by the aristocracy, and there were my little cannon balls going bonk, bonk, bonk! After that, nobody kicked a basket over.
And then there was another thing, we did an Indian (this was the sort of theatre this was of course), we did an Indian play, or documentary written by a chap named Monkrage Annand, who I know now is a famous Indian poet, at the time I knew nothing about him. Anyway this again was the British in India, suppressing everybody as you know, and this was 鈥�, there was a cocktail party (I knew nothing about cocktail parties except only rich people had them), and so I had to get the props for this cocktail party and what we needed were ices in sundae glasses, so I went to Wyndham鈥檚 Theatre which at the time was closed, I found the stage door, went in, found somebody in an office I don鈥檛 know whether it was a stage manager (of course
they weren鈥檛 showing anything), and explained the position, and could I please borrow some sundae glasses, yes, six sundae glasses I came away with, and I thought well honestly, these days you wouldn鈥檛 鈥�, it never seemed odd to me at all getting these.
And then of course I went and made the ices, what did I make it with, Plasticine I think, and put a little 鈥�, then you had cream coloured Plasticine with a cherry in the middle on top, but of course when these poor charlies came to eat them, they couldn鈥檛 get 鈥�! That was the beginning of my career at the theatre, and the end of it at Unity. Everybody was so good there.

Oh there was a camaraderie, everybody there, 鈥榗os they got their baskets back of course, but they took a chance, they didn鈥檛 know who I was, but everybody was bit odd, and there was a lot of camaraderie because that same trolley, I remember one Saturday afternoon, the dramatic company that I belonged to, which was the Civil Service Dramatic Company, we did a panto at Christmas, Aladdin, and we put on a show at Unity Theatre as a sort of guest artist, but I was stage manager by then, as a stage manager I was in charge of the set and the props, and nobody ever helped me much there, they were all busy doing their own thing and doing their own jobs at work, and I had to get this stuff down to 鈥�, from Unity we had a rehearsal room just off Leicester Square, which I could store stuff in, and I remember pushing this trolley down, and then I had to take it somewhere else, down 鈥�, I got it down to Leicester Square and down through Trafalgar Square, and there鈥檚 me pushing a trolley full of props, with a big Aladdin notice on the top, again you wouldn鈥檛 do it now really, you did do things. Well of course that was partly too, you were young and when you鈥檙e young you do daft things, and it was terribly important! I mean obviously I was saving the war, doing something that was important.

No the war was horrible for lots of people, and of course the people I knew, girls, whose fathers were killed and brothers and boyfriends and things like that, I was just one of the ones who really wasn鈥檛 affected very much, except for the toothpaste and soap - that is probably still there."

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