Chapter 6

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=200 BGCOLOR="#003333" TEXT="#F7F7FF" background="12ad4c00dduajq.gif"> <div> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="0" WIDTH="95" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#C0C0C0" BORDERCOLORDARK="#808080" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 46 ><NOBR><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="46" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="91" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></NOBR></tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="stan hedges homepage"><U>Home Page </U></A></div> <bR> <div>  <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#FFFFFF" FACE="Times New Roman" >Chapters</FONT></div> <div> <A HREF="id132.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Autobiography"><U>One</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id144.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter 2"><U>Two</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id145.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter 3"><U>Three</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id146.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter 4"><U>Four</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id148.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter 5"><U>Five</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id149.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter 6"><U>Six</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id151.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter 7"><U>Seven </U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id156.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter 8"><U>Eight</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id158.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter 9"><U>Nine</U></A></div> <div> Ten</div> <div> Eleven</div> <div> Twelve</div> <div> Thirteen</div> <div> Fourteen</div> <div> Fifteen   </div> <div>  </div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="stan hedges homepage"><U>Home Page</U></A></div> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#FFFBF0" TEXT="#080000"> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>Chapter 6</B></div> <div> A Circular Route to London</div> <bR> <bR> <div> IT soon became clear that Mum had not been entirely honest with Mrs. P.   In fact, she'd hardly been honest at all.  It was true she was on a mission to re-unite her family, but not for the reasons given, proving a rare instance of her ability to follow a premeditated course, if only when the devil drove. </div> <div> I remember her being very cross with me as we journeyed back to London, though it would be many years before I understood the feelings that tormented her, and my own part in them.  With no concept of maternal love, a child lives only to gratify its momentary needs.  It follows that only an innocent child could hurt her as I did that day.  Her pain in discovering her youngest son, her baby, could reject her after an absence of little more than a year must have been even more shocking than my own dismay at discovering I was born an unwanted, unnecessary burden to my parents.  To be truthful, I'm not sure if she ever forgave me; not entirely.  From that time onward I never doubted that Sid was her favourite son, her idol.  In a sense he became the beneficiary of my innocent indiscretion, receiving a bonus from that orphaned part of her which rightly belonged to me.  </div> <div> Certainly throughout childhood, and even into my twenties, I felt her affection for me was grudging.  I lived with the feeling that any show of affection was a temporary phenomenon, a short reprieve, and seldom spontaneous, and always qualified in that it needed to be earned.  I believed she thought of me as `not quite one of us', whereas she and Sid were a team, an entity.  For instance, after my passing the scholarship to East Ham Grammar School in 1945 she often  boasted of my scholarly achievements to friends and family, while in private she might call me a `smart Alec', a `know-all' or `a cocky little sod'  -  terms unlikely to imbue one with a sense of well-being.  Though I'd long since returned to speaking in colloquial cockney tones, my manner and way of speaking had already begun to irritate her, perhaps even baffle her at times.  Very often she misread my meaning.  When this happened I'd receive quizzical looks, as if to say, `You're up to something. I know you are, crafty little sod.  I bet you're being sarcastic.</div> <div> But then, without the requisite language, Mum was never able to analyze her motives or emotions, much less understand them.  Even with average intelligence, her elementary education could do little to improve her knowledge of human motivational behaviour.  Add to this her becoming a surrogate mother to five younger siblings at the age of ten, thereby missing a good deal of schooling, and then leaving school at fourteen to go to work, it's unsurprising that, knowing nothing of psychology, or any other scientific discipline for that matter, her response to every situation was predicated on pure emotion.  She trusted her instincts unconditionally.  Once an emotion was aroused, her words and actions were little more than animal responses, her subconscious impulses.  One could sometimes tell from a certain conciliatory manner that, upon reflection, and in the cold light of day, she'd come to regret her part in some particular incident.  If she could say or do it all over again, she would, if you see what I mean.  But apologise?  Never!  In maturity, one sees her words and actions for what they were, spontaneous, unpremeditated reflexes.  If she was capable of premeditation, it certainly wasn't the norm.  </div> <div> As to learning for its own sake, she could never see the point.  All a waste of time in her opinion; all the learning in the world couldn't change anything for `people like us'.  In truth, she could read and write well enough for all she needed, which was to read the News of the World on Sunday  -  in common with most working-class Londoners  -  and the Daily Mirror the rest of the week.  Here she often picked out a horse from the day's runners  -  and not always when she just happened to have a few shillings to spare; quite often she'd take a philosophical punt with her last shilling.  She'd celebrate a win as though it was manna from heaven  -  it might mean a joint of beef on Sunday, for instance  -  while losses were accepted with stoic equanimity.  `Oh well, it was worth a try.  Never get nowhere if you don't try.'  And so, apart from the acquired learning of her everyday working-class experience, I doubt if, in the wider sense, she ever absorbed a single piece of academic knowledge after leaving school.  The world beyond her family and friends was all part of the great `them', and no place for the likes of her.  </div> <div> All this, simply to explain Mum's true reason for taking us away from the safety and luxury of the Manor House.  And for that we must return to October 1939. </div> <bR> <div> After missing his ship a month after we three arrived in Wedmore, and being not yet liable for military call-up, Dad was seconded to work in Luton on the production of military vehicles (probably through a government directed-labour scheme).  Mum was left behind in Second Avenue again.  And once again the idea of remitting an allotment held no appeal for Dad, so she was left to fend for herself once more, responsible for the rent, as well as paying Mrs Pitcairn for any extras not covered by billeting fees, such as clothes, etc..  </div> <div> However, it later transpired that sometime after her visit to us that summer, she'd received a letter from Dad's landlady in Luton.  The lady had written to advise Mum that, if she wanted to save her marriage, she should pay an urgent visit to Luton in the very near future.   </div> <div> What else could it be but a woman?  Needless to say, she was round to Gran's like a shot the same morning, flourishing the letter before the whole assembly.  </div> <div> `The bastard,' cried Gran. `I told you from the orf he was nothing but a shitpot.  That's all he is: a whoremongering shitpot. Wait till I get my `ands on him!'</div> <div> `Now then, Mother,' said Lou, still refusing to believe there wasn't some good in the man. `He might be ill, for all we know.'</div> <div> `Tcher!  If he is it'll be another dose of clap, most like.'</div> <div> `Well, there's only one way to find out,' said Florrie,  `Get down there and find out what's going on.  Don't let him know you're coming though.  Just turn up, all unexpected.  I'll come with you, if you like.'</div> <div> Which is how Mum and Florrie journeyed to Bedfordshire the next day on a covert mission to expose the truth.  </div> <div> On one of my weekly visits, Mum gave this version of events:</div> <div> `So at knocking-off time we make sure we're waiting for him outside the factory.  We stands in a doorway not far from the gates.  And, sure enough, out he comes, arm-in-arm with some tart, grinning his bleedin' head off.  And Stanley, without a word of a lie, she's all <I>over</I> him!  Didn't need a mind-reader to see what them two were up to.'</div> <div> However, Mum and Florrie decided not to confront him immediately.  Instead, they thought the better plan would be to embarrass him by returning on another day and confront him with his children  -  all before his lady friend and workmates, thereby disclosing to me her true reason for bringing us away from Wedmore.  </div> <div> Mum and Aunt Florrie had rented a small cottage in the countryside outside Dunstable before they left that day, a place where she and Dad could join us if things worked out for them.  And so, once we reached London that day, Ken returned to Gran and Faf's, while Mum, Sid and I continued on our journey to Dunstable. </div> <div> On the following afternoon, the deed was done.  </div> <div> I remember nothing of their conversation outside the factory, only that we ended up returning to the cottage without him.  It seems Mum gave him an ultimatum and, like most ultimatums, it achieved the direct opposite of the desired result.  So Dad remained with the other woman, while we three and Aunt Florrie hung on for a month or two at the cottage.  </div> <div> I still remember the fields behind the cottage, and the man who used to call with a gun tucked under his arm, carrying the odd pair of rabbits or brace of pigeons.  Though it's possible he had genuine sympathy for us all, I think one can assume his benevolence was directed more towards Mum than us two boys.  If so, it was sadly done, for so far as I recall his overtures were in vain.  I also remember a horrible day when my right arm was badly burned.  It was my own fault.  I'd been reaching for something on the mantelshelf over the old-fashioned cooking range when I slipped and, with arm outstretched, fell across the hotplate.  Mum and Aunt Florrie rushed me to Luton and Dunstable hospital.  'Same old Stanley,' said Aunt Florrie, 'always in the wars.'  </div> <div> I also had my sixth birthday there, and in so doing received my very first parcel.  It was from Mrs Pitcairn.  Inside was a little wooden horse, painted pie-bald, with legs that swung backwards and forwards.  But best of all, I remember the day trip to Whipsnade Zoo.  Perhaps it was a birthday present from Mum.  That day I saw my first sea lions, penguins, lions and tigers, as well as a chimpanzee's tea party.  But more importantly, I had a high ride on an elephant!</div> <div> Mum's marriage was over.  As things turned out, we were not to see Dad again until a year after we returned to London.  </div> <div> By that time he was in the Royal Navy, on embarkation leave for the Far East.  He spent a few chilly days with us at our latest address before departing our lives for ever.  Though he never wrote to us, he stayed in touch with Gran and Faf Hedges.  Gran told me later, very proudly, that he was Captain's tiger (i.e. steward) on the aircraft carrier, HMS Speaker, which was based in the Far East.  His home port was Sydney, Australia.  In his letters to Gran he began to mention a lady called Ethel, and her daughter Valerie.   Then, in August 1945, after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombs brought an end to war in the Far East, Mum received a letter from him asking if she would give her permission for him to be demobilized in Australia, and was she willing to undergo a divorce by proxy as he wanted to marry Ethel.  Mum was expecting a child by Johnny Nicholls when the letter arrived (my half-brother Victor being due in February, 1946), so she happily agreed.  And so, in 1946, the long, dismal saga of their marriage finally ended.</div> <div> However, before closing the book on Dad, I should tell you of my own sequel.  For though Mum, Ken and Sid never saw him again, I did.  As a merchant seaman, I went to Australia twice in the coming years; November, 1952, and October 1967.   On each occasion he was affability itself.   On my first visit he took the greatest pride in showing me that, with his own hands, he'd cleared a plot of land at a place called Panania, a rural area fifteen miles from the centre of Sydney, and then thickly forested with eucalyptus trees, close to the Cook river.  The house was almost complete, but he, Ethel and her young daughter, Valerie, were still living in an ex-army bell tent while the work progressed.  However, by the time of my second visit, in 1967, he'd become a model citizen, foreman of a local engineering works, and a founder member of the Panania Bowls Club.  His friends now called him `Snowy', his black hair having turned white.  On neither occasion did he display remorse for having deserted us during the war.  And I, to my everlasting shame, never raised the subject; a lapse of moral fibre which I still regret.  He even tried to persuade me to settle there on each of my visits, promising all the help necessary.  But though I didn't know him well, I knew him well enough to know I'd be a fool to take him at his word.  I lost touch with him immediately after the second visit.  In 1971, Ethel informed Ken that he had died from asbestosis.  He was sixty-three.   </div> <div> And that, if you didn't realise it, was a digression.  So back to 1941.</div> <bR> <div> In January 1941, having given up on Dad, Mum decided to leave Dunstable and return to London.  `No use hanging around that dump,' she said, `Dead and alive hole, that was.  Anyway, what was the point?  It was all finished.'</div> <div> With no idea what the future might hold, having 'no visible means of support', as they used to say, and even though London was still suffering persistent bombing both day and night, we returned to Manor Park in January 1941.   </div> <div> I once asked her how she managed to get by in 1938/9, when Dad was at sea for months at a time, leaving her with no provision; it would've been impossible to keep herself and two boys on the few shillings she earned as a barmaid.  How on earth did she manage?  </div> <div> 'I've been waiting for that,' she said.  'Been wondering if you'd ask about that.'  There was a pause while she lit another cigarette from the previous one.  (The dear old girl was still smoking forty Senior Service a day on the morning she rose from the breakfast table and fell dead from a heart attack two weeks after her eighty-eighth birthday).  'Alright, nosey little sod, I'll tell you.  But go on, make us another cup of tea, eh?'</div> <div> Mum could tell a good story.  So, with the tea made, I filled my pipe and settled back.</div> <div> 'Well, I'd started doing the odd bottom job here and there, of course.  But that was never enough to live on...'</div> <div> 'Hang on a minute,' I interrupted. 'Are you saying you weren't doing abortions before 1938?'</div> <div> 'Of course not.  Didn't know how to did I?  Anyway, most of the time I did it for nothing.  Poor little cows.  It was the Sister at the 'ospital that put me up to that.  Do you remember when you and Sid were staying at Heigham Road with Reg and Madge Gregory?  Well that's why I was in there.  I'd done meself a mischief,  so the Sister told me how to make sure it didn't happen again.  A 'course, once I told May, Florrie, Madge Gregory, Molly Fitz and a few others, they were all after me, weren't they?'  (So that explained how I'd got through the net in 1934.  In my day it had been all 'hit and miss').</div> <div> 'Now then, are you going to let me tell this story or not?'</div> <div> I apologised, and she continued.</div> <div> 'You remember me telling you about the bailiffs?  Well, a week later your father goes back to sea, leaving me with hardly a penny to me name.  Not enough for a loaf of bread.  All I had in the world was threepence, just enough for a bus ride to East Ham.  So I'm standing at the bus stop on me way to Gran's, hoping to borrow a shilling or two to get you two a bit of dinner when, all of a sudden, I'm in tears.  There I was, standing at the bus stop, crying me eyes out.</div> <div> `Then this woman comes up to me, puts her arm round me, and says: ''Whatever is it, love?  What on earth's upset you?  Is it a man?  I bet it's a man.  It's always a man.''</div> <div> 'Well that did it.  Out it all comes, don't it?  I told her everything.</div> <div> '''And have you still got the Possession Order?'' she says.  So I showed it to her.</div> <div> '''Hmm,'' she says.  ''Worth a pretty penny, one of these.''</div> <div> 'How come? I says.</div> <div> '''You come along with me tonight darling, and I'll show you what you can do with this.  I'll show you how to get sailors to pay good money for a sight of this.''</div> <div> 'So that's how I come to meet Kitty Marks.  She'd been on the game for years by then.  </div> <div> 'That night we goes up the Ferndale Arms, near the docks in North Woolwich.</div> <div> '''Just leave it to me,'' she says.  ''You won't have to say a word.  Once we get chatting, I'll just tell them your not on the game.  You're my sister, a respectable girl, and I've only got you out with me to cheer you up, on account of this Possession Order of yours, and how you and the two kids will be out on the street unless you can come up with a few quid by the weekend.  And Bob's your uncle. Without so much as giving 'em a kiss, I'll lay pounds to a penny you can make ten bob or a quid a night.  Maybe more.''</div> <div> 'So that's what we used to do.  And it worked an' all.  For a few months.'  </div> <div> At this point she burst out laughing, and I had to wait a minute or two while she regained her composure before I could ask what she'd found so funny.  </div> <div> 'Oh, we did have some laughs!  Did we just!  Oh, and I must tell you this.  Wait till you hear this...</div> <div> 'Well, it starts getting a bit tatty after a few months, don't it?  As you can imagine.  So what d'you think?  I only 'as to start ironing it before we can go out!  Talk about laugh!  But <I>inventially</I>, when it's too far gone anyway, it starts falling to bits.  I try sticking it together with flour and water.  But it was no use.  Even I have to give up sometime.  Now this is what made me laugh:  As it was mostly sailors we'd been stinging, Kit says it's only right and proper it should have a proper sailor's funeral.  So one night we comes out of the Ferndale, half sloshed, and we goes up to the ferry. We gets on.  Then, halfway across, I tears it to shreds and we chuck all the bits overboard!  Oh, we used to have some laughs, her and me.  We really did.' </div> <div> This tale went a long way to explaining much of what happened after we returned to London, for though it is certain that nothing made by man can last for ever, and certainly not a Possession Order, after our return to London there were to be many times when it would've been useful.  </div> <div> Mum's married life was never more than a battle with poverty, insecurity, infidelity and fear, seldom knowing where the next meal was coming from, destitution always just around the corner.  Incredibly, she always remained unbowed, swaggered with the carriage of a queen, living by her watchword, 'Enjoy yourself while you can, darling; we could all be dead tomorrow.'  </div> <div> So far as she was concerned, she'd surrendered her virtue the day the bailiffs came.   And with Dad going back to sea, leaving her penniless, then finally deserting her after giving him a last chance in Dunstable, every man she met from then on was fair meat, someone to be exploited for all her body was worth.  </div> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <A HREF="id151.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter 7"><U><B>Next Chapter</B></U></A></div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>