´óÏó´«Ã½

Chapter 4. St Peter’s Place
Mr and Mrs C and Mr C’s son David lived in a Victorian house at the far end of St Peter’s Place. The lavatory was outside in the garden, close to a railing-topped wall that overlooked Paddock Lane.

Each day milk was delivered to the doorstep, but not in bottles. The milkman ladled the milk from a chum into gill and pint size lidded metal containers left outside for that purpose.

At the beginning of our stay, Mrs C busied herself as a housewife and Mr C worked on a mobile shop. This was a van with sides that opened up to reveal groceries, items for domestic cleaning and paraffin for the oil lamps used in house lighting.

Mr C was an amiable man who would let Maurice clean his rifle for him for those evenings that he was on duty with the Home Guard. Mrs C’s attitude towards us seemed to change when her husband was called up for service with the army. We had to be out of the house when Mrs C was at the part-time job that she had started and as often as possible when she was not at work. When we were in the house she was subject to fits of irritability that could be frightening. On one occasion we had done some shopping for her at the Co-op but had left the ration books behind by mistake. This annoyed her and we rushed out of the house to retrieve them. In so doing I slipped on the front step and ended up with a badly chipped front tooth as my face struck the pavement.

On another occasion Mrs C had, unusually, left us at home while she popped out on some errand. When she returned she had reason to visit the food cupboard in the room where we had our meals and spent most of our time while in the house. To her consternation she discovered that one of the tasty rock cakes that she had recently made and stored in a white enamel bin, was missing. Furious and determined to mete out punishment, she decided that the thief must be David, a lad of my age. As she smacked him and he cried out, I came to know the meaning of guilt and cowardice because it was I who had felt hungry, while she was out, but was too afraid of her anger to own up. As growing lads we were always hungry. At tea-time I would make a visual count of the number of slices of bread on the plate in the middle of the table and divide it by the number of people sitting down in order to work out the ration and how fast to eat it.

Each Saturday morning we waited at the comer of the road for the postman to deliver our pocket money from Mum and Dad in the form of 6d postal orders. Some of this was spent on food and some on the ‘pictures’ (cinema). On the way to school, hot rolls from the small baker’s shop near the top of Keere St. (or, Keere ‘Hill’ as we preferred to call it, on account of its slope) were always a delight. The man who served us had a foreign accent, so in our childish imaginations he was a German spy. One day we bought a freshly baked loaf from the baker’s shop just around the comer of St Peter’s Place and took it into the cinema with us. There, we three brothers, sitting in a row, proceeded to hollow out the soft doughy interior of the loaf and stuff it into our mouths as we watched the film. That was at the Cinema de Luxe on School Hill. It was managed by Mr B., a stout man with a commanding voice, who was irreverently known to children as ‘Fatty B’.

We loved the adventure films we saw there, such as ‘They Died with Their Boots On’, ‘Sanders of the River’, ‘The Mark of Zorro’ and ‘Gunga Din’. The cinema was a refuge for us but it was not always easy to get in. If an air-raid warning had been sounded we were only allowed in if accompanied by a ‘grown-up’, so this meant hanging about outside till an accommodating adult yielded to the plaintive plea, ‘Would you take us in, please Mister?’

On Saturday afternoons there would be screams of excitement from the children in the 4d seats at the front of the cinema as the lights went down at the start of the programme. Then, some of those sitting in the end seats of a row would pad up the aisles on all fours to the more expensive 7d seats at the back. However, the management became aware of this manoeuvre and usherettes’ torchlight’s would seek out the errant children, like searchlight beams directed at the enemy aircraft, and the children would be escorted back to their seats. We also visited the Odeon cinema, where memorable films included ‘Sun Valley Serenade’, ‘Holiday Inn’ and ‘The Ghost of St. Michael’s.’

When not in school or at the cinema we roamed the town and soon got to know every nook and cranny of it. Our geographical knowledge of the town helped us to avoid ‘trouble’. If, for example, we needed to go through Westgate St. but a gang of boys we knew to be unfriendly was up to some mischief there, then we knew we could slip down Pipe Passage instead.

Curiosity was a driving force in our out-of-school activities. We rushed up to see a German biplane, said to contain mail, when it landed in fog on a patch of grass near the prison. Later on, we hurried to the race course to see a British fighter plane that had crashed upside down.

Anything to do with the military was interesting to watch, whether it was army lorries, with their regimental insignia proudly displayed on their front mud guards, struggling to get up School Hill or the Bren-gun carriers that drove up and down the lower part of Keere St.

At that time soldiers of a Canadian regiment. Princess Priscilla’s Canadian Light Infantry, were billeted in the Grange and troops also occupied Lewes House on School Hill. In the space outside the house was a wooden board fixed to a post and in the centre of the board was a small square of coloured material which was supposed to change colour in the event of an enemy gas attack. We glanced at it with curiosity each time we passed.

Sometimes, boyhood daring combined with curiosity in prompting outside pursuits. One day, Ronald and I were climbing a tree near St. Pancras School when he fell on top of me, bounced off without dislodging me, and narrowly missed a set of spiked railings near the bottom of the tree. Fortunately, he fell on soft ground and was only slightly bruised.

When we inspected an air-raid shelter in Baxter’s sports ground, over the wall from Paddock Lane, I decided to investigate the emergency exit at the far end of the shelter. Climbing some wooden steps I lifted up a cast iron cover that sealed the exit and glanced around like a submarine commander scanning the surrounding area. Unfortunately, I broke the iron cover as I lowered it clumsily back into its initial position so we made a speedy exit from the ground.
More innocent activities were play in the hayloft of some stables in Nevill Road and on the swings and slide in Winterbourne recreation ground.

On a Sunday there was little to do outdoors and we atoned for our weekly ‘sins’ by going to St Anne’s Sunday School in the morning and to the Wesleyan Sunday School, next door to Rugg’s garage in Station St., in the afternoon. For our conscientious attendance at both of these places we were each presented with a book. Sometimes we would squeeze in a visit to church as well as Sunday School.

Occasional treats were visits to some of Mrs C’s friends. One of them lived on a farm down a lane at Barcombe Mills and a visit there gave us a first keen impression of life on a farm. Another friend of Mrs C was a maid who worked in ‘The Deanery’. This was a fine country estate situated just across the river. It was accessible via a private white suspension bridge that spanned the river. Normally, the gate on the public-footpath side of the bridge was locked to keep out intruders, though it did not prevent adventurous lads from climbing around the fan-shaped protective railings at the side of it. On our visit we had a key, entrusted to us by Mrs C who had borrowed it from her friend at the house. In the spacious kitchen we were treated by the maids to delicious bowls of strawberries and cream.

Mum and Dad came down to see us one day and stayed overnight. Among the things they brought us were some eggs, which were then rationed. When these were not served up to us for breakfast the next morning there were cross words between our parents and Mrs C. Perhaps this incident had something to do with our leaving Mrs C’s. Our next foster-home was to be with Mr and Mrs A and their sons back at Landport.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.