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Thank God for bicycles

I now use the name Petra Clarke but when I was young I was called Petal Leighton. My first name betrays my background in that my mother was Dutch. In 1936 she left her 7 older brothers and sisters to marry my English father. Custom demanded that I had to be called the family name of Petronella in honor of their oldest sister, Nel, who had remained unmarried and who reared many of them. All of the married brothers and sisters had done likewise and I had many cousins bearing my name.

I was born in August 1938. I have no memories of the early war but I can recount the stories I heard. My father worked for the Eagle Star Insurance Company in Chiswell Street. Overnight all the offices in that area were firebombed to a crisp — this is the area that was redeveloped as the Barbican after the war. The company found a refuge for the war years at Cobham House in Surrey. Cobham is about 15 miles south of London and we lived in Broxbourne about 15 miles north of London. The daily commute was unsustainable. Many people’s jobs had relocated and many families were in a similar situation to ours. House swaps were common. We took over someone else’s house, furniture, curtains and all in Cobham. I believe the owner moved to Wales. Meanwhile our house in Broxbourne was left as it stood and was let to a family called Sullivan.

My father exchanged bowler hat and umbrella for the impedimenta of cycling to work, trouser clips, rain cape and waterproof leggings, tyre levers and puncture repair needs in a handy box. He worked in Claims and long afterwards I asked him how they had managed when all the records were burned in Chiswell Street. His reply led me to understand that many of the decisions had been more common sense than strictly verifiable.

My earliest memories are of the house in Surrey. In practical terms it was in Oxshot, although according to the postal address, our house was the first in Cobham. It was a detached Edwardian house with a garden backing on to the rail line to Waterloo. Early on my parents offered a room to an old lady called Miss Hastings who had been bombed out of central London. She lived in the front bedroom and I was half afraid, half excited to go in when she read me stories. She must have shared our kitchen but I never remember her out of that room. Looking back it must have been a lonely existence for her because I never heard that she had any visitors from her former life. After the war she moved to a residential home in Margate.

As the war went on we also gave a home to a young woman, Jean Ross, who had married a Canadian soldier based somewhere near serving the ack-ack. Jean was alone with us most of the time. She occupied the dining room at the back where we had an Morrison shelter and obviously her husband joined her sometimes. I remember my parent’s slight anxiety about giving up their right to the nightly protection of the shelter. However, I gathered that it hadn’t been used much because my mother found it claustrophobic and also she wanted to be with my father and there was inadequate space for all three of us to sleep under it in comfort. As the war progressed, I guess my parents became somewhat fatalistic and we three slept comfortably in the upstairs bedrooms. There was also a Anderson shelter in the garden but this was even more useless because the floor was perpetually flooded. It was creepy and damp even to step into its doorway and I was never drawn to play there.

This calm was unsettled with the arrival of the dooblebugs. Many of these had fallen short of central London and landed near to where we were. The closest was about 400 yards away where a small terrace of cottages was struck in the night. I remember being woken by a sound as of a huge delivery of coal. It was the complete destruction of the brick houses so that next morning there was a huge conical pile of rubble just as if the coalman from the skies had come. No-one died, which was a source of amazement to everyone. I was sorry for the children who had lived there; when we went to gawp next day I saw toys sticking out between the bricks.

My father was too old for the army but he joined the Home Guard. He had the regulation scratchy khaki uniform — very thick, and the familiar hat which folded flat when not in use so that it could be carried under the tab on the shoulder. Before exercises he had to black up, I think with coal, in our kitchen. We often went for picnics on Oxshot heath and he showed us the sandy hollows where he had practised throwing fake mortar bombs. He was hopeless at throwing. However, he was a good shot and won trophies at the Home Guard competitions held at Bisley. I don’t remember any of the Dad’s Army tensions. In fact I think it was through the friendship of the men that we got into the pig keeping business.

The plan was that several families would pool their household waste to rear a pig. The sty was a few hundred yards along on the road to Cobham. I guess that the men must have built it. My memory was of two or three pigs in separate small pens. OUR pig was assessed frequently for growth by the five or so families involved and I was taken to see it when we took the cabbage stalks. Oh the disappointment when all we got was two small joints of pork. My mother bore a simmering resentment that the shares had not been fair, but my father didn’t agree. When I look back I think: a) the pig was probably bigger in the mind than in reality, and b) communal endeavour has its problems.

Another memory of food concerns cooking apples. The original farmhouse, whose lands had been used for the suburban development we lived in, stood opposite our house. It had little surrounding land left but this ground carried a few old fruit trees. The woman living in the farmhouse used to give out apples in the autumn. She told my mother that they were ‘good bikers’. This much confused her because she did not pick up on the local intonation given to ‘bakers’. For ever, long after the war, we ate ‘biked apple’.

My mother’s foreign origins gave her a more serious jolt when police came to our house to arrest the woman speaking German. She had been speaking to me in Dutch as she wheeled me in the pushchair and this had been overheard and reported. It must have been especially hurtful when her relations were going through such a hard time. From that day she spoke only in English. Fortunately I picked up Dutch quite easily from visits after the war but I wonder if I was helped by that early exposure.

I missed out on much of the angst of the war because I was so young. My mother told me that my father was very despondent at times, as I suppose everyone was then. Our family tried to uphold honourable standards in how we lived. My father was particularly angry about the black marketeers. After the war, when I was older, I understood why. The staff of the Eagle Star were reassembled in a central London office and everyone had their tales of the war to tell. It was one man’s boast that he had never missed his bacon and eggs for one day during the war. It was the plural of eggs that was the last straw. My father’s brother was employed by the Liverpool Mersey Docks and Harbour Board as their Engineer in Chief during the war. It was his daily routine to visit the docks to assess the bombing damage. He knew what perils the seamen faced to bring us our food.

Many people were anxious about relations and friends in the military. I still have the event etched in my mind when our neighbours received a knock at the door to deliver their son’s belongings. It had to be explained to me that this meant he was dead.

But it wasn’t all misery. We made the best of it on bicycles — me pillion. A favourite outing was to Hampton Court where we picnicked on the grassy bank of the Thames opposite the Palace. We paddled and swam in the river. We also went to Frencham ponds which I found a bit dark and frightening with over hanging vegetation. One year my parents hired a cottage on an island in the middle of the Thames. The first days were exciting because the only access was by rowboat but I think I got bored towards the end. I loved it in Oxshot where I had a soul mate in the boy next door. My memory is of non stop play in our gardens. His father was away but he came back safely after the war. The appearance of this strange new figure unsettled the happy known terrain of the back gardens.

I had a few soft toys from my early years before rationing began to bite. They were of a wonderful quality compared with today’s soft toys and, in due course, they were available for my own children. As shortages developed my father made me toys. I remember a boat for the bath. It was made from two different sized flat lozenge shapes nailed one on top with a length of dowel as a funnel and painted marine blue. Then there was a more than one doll’s bed and other toys I cannot remember. I still have the home made domino set, blue and yellow with black dots.

I went to school at the age of five years. Soon after a small deputation from the school arrived and was shown into our front room. They had come to urge my mother, who had been a primary school teacher in Holland, to return to teaching. This was not entirely welcome to either of my parents because the assumption at her marriage in 1936 was that she would no longer work. This was still the most common arrangement in our middle class society. However, she agreed to work part-time and even took my class at times which was difficult for both of us.

I don’t remember much of what my parents did to entertain themselves. After the war they were constant readers and my father played the cello in weekly amateur quartets, but I cannot remember any such activity in Oxshot. Maybe all their efforts were more practical. I seem to remember it as a time of communality, rather than solitary pursuits.

I was a fragile child and suffered several broken bones. The nearest orthopaedic hospital was in Pyrford where St Thomas’s hospital from central London had relocated to an old sanatorium. Hospital visits were of course by bicycle and I do not remember much adverse about this mode of transport except for one occasion. I broke my leg at school and my mother took me home on the bicycle, riding pillion with my leg dangling in great pain. Then it all became worth it because our GP took me to Pyrford in his car, which was by first ride. Another time I was an in-patient for 8 weeks. My parents were allowed to visit once a week for 2 hours. In order to get my favourite panda to me without waiting a week, it was sent by post. It didn’t arrive and I went home without him. About 3 months later he was delivered back in Oxshot. I think it must be true that the services were more efficient then than now in spite of the chaos of war.

My father’s older unmarried sister, who had previously earned her living as a piano teacher, relocated from her home in Hull to Claygate which is the next village to Oxshot. She found a job as live-in housekeeper for a widower and his unmarried son. I adored her even if my father thought she was a bit scatty. This was her best bit. She walked over from Claygate across the fields every Sunday afternoon. Except for the warm feeling that the memory of her visits still evokes, I remember only one episode. She was outraged because overnight the hanks of wool sold for darning were now only sold as hanks of cut lengths. How mean! How heartless to take away her only pleasure! Of course the wool had not been for knitting, but she thought it was a particularly unkind cut. Both of my father’s parents had died of old age before the war, so Auntie Nessie was my surrogate granny. She was creative in her sewing and brought me dresses that had used bits from old adult clothes. She was also a good cook and even very plain biscuits were as nectar. Another of my father’s unmarried sisters was a cold fish. She spent the war in Liverpool reading other people’s letters on the censor. My father’s third unmarried sister, Edna, who was very brainy, spent the war years in Hull teaching secondary school girls.

My mother’s family was a great source of worry about which little could be done. Several semi-coded radio messages were sent by the Red Cross to Holland to say that we were OK. The message had to be identifiable, say with sisters’ and brothers’ Christian names, but not so explicit that the sender or recipient could be identified by the Germans. I know that at least one message heard by a friend in Holland was passed on to the relations, maybe more were. It was always a hazard that Dutch Nazi sympathizers who lived near one’s family would get hold of the message. After the war there was a great denouement of who had been NSB (Nazi collaborators) in the houses near the family home in Hilversum. Of course by that time they had all hurriedly left for new lives perhaps also with new names.

We also sent Red Cross parcels. We were concerned about one family in particular. My mother’s brother in Dordrecht had eight young children. Dordrecht was on high ground but surrounded by the flooded area so there was no chance of going into the woods to cut firewood as the people of Hilversum were doing. The situation was in every way bad. Most of the parcels were sent to that family. They didn’t all get through but some did. Afterwards we heard that a pair of man’s shoes had brought tears of joy to my Tante Janna. Like all good mothers she put her needs last, but these shoes were too small for my Oom and not suited for any of the children. After the war she waxed lyrical about the shoes and apparently wore them daily right through. When we visited this family in 1946 they were all alive but it had been a terrible struggle and some of the teenage girls still looked oddly fat which I was told was honger edema. Looking back now it seems a long time for it to persist but that is what I was told. By the time of the next annual visit the children were normal teenagers.

There were stories from all of the large Dutch family but no-one died as a direct result of the war. My mother was distraught with weeping when she received a letter soon after the war telling her that the oldest sister, Nel, had died in 1944. She was known to have rheumatic heart disease so perhaps medical care would not have saved her. What upset my mother was that she had not known and her hopes of seeing her dearest relation were dashed. Looking back it is a cause for thanksgiving that, although I had family in very dangerous areas, Liverpool, Hull, South London and Holland, no-one was killed or injured. I wish we could say the same for today’s conflicts where up to 90% of the casualties are civilian.

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