Lang - Faces in The Windows

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I give my humble thanks to my brother and sister who shared their memories and thoughts with me so that our story could be written. I so hope that you enjoy the book and that you find healing of the emotional scars that we all carry and that cannot be seen by others.

To my Mum and Dad who sacrificed so much for us so that we might live. Our family relationships were never the same after we returned from our second evacuation. I never felt like I was ever truly home. I didnt know where home was. After my beautiful father, whom I loved so much, passed away I would return to London to visit my Mother and I got to know her all over again. Our long talks and sharing and not being afraid to show love to one another created moments together that we cherished. She was my Mum in the end and I was finally Home again. I am home at last and now wherever I may be I realize a house is not a home. A home is wherever your heart and loved ones are.

To my ever patient husband, Robert, who worked alongside of me and put up with all the tears, emotions and conflict. This book would never have been written if he had not encouraged and dragged me screaming on many days to put pen to paper for a book about a time that I didnt want to relive in order to write. I am now glad that I did. Thank you for standing by me and believing in me through the work, the laughter and the tears.

Prologue

This book is based on my life as a child growing up with war. I was born in 1935 in London. When WWII started in 1939 I was four years old and I lived with war in my life for the next six years. It has taken me four years to recall, relive and write about the experiences as I lived them and the effect they had on me, my family, friends and countrymen. This has been a difficult task as the emotions are relived as they are recalled. I hope that readers of this book take away from this story a remembrance of the wide reaching effects of war and credit the strength and tenacity of the English people, children and grown-ups, who lived through this experience with me for enduring. I hope that English readers will appreciate being able to read the story as in those times it was not the British way to talk about these things because showing emotion was a sign of weakness. We all just got on with it.

MY FAMILY

Before my story begins, I believe it is very important to introduce you to my relatives. It is important as they are very pertinent to my story. My father Henry was born and grew up on the streets of the Elephant and Castle. At that time not the best place to grow up. He spent much of his childhood waiting outside the pubs for his mother, my grandmother, who would be in there drinking as long as the pub doors were open. She spent every penny her husband, my grandfather, earned. He worked. She drank. My dad had no place to go but to wait outside the pubs for her to throw him and his sister Winnie a packet of crisps for their dinner and maybe lemonade if they were lucky. As a child he was always hungry and cold with threadbare clothes that he had long outgrown. He and his dear sweet older sister Winnie had a terrible life. They would beg on street corners so they could eat if she, my grandmother, didnt take their money from them first. She would hock everything in sight at the pawn shop in order to drink. At thirteen my father worked as an apprentice to a building contractor and he would have to hide anything that he wanted to keep. He would stow it away under lock and key in a trunk that he kept. When he and my mother to be decided to get married he bought the first new suit and shirt that he had ever owned. He was so proud of that suit, and he locked it in that trunk. The day before the wedding he unlocked the trunk to take the suit out and press it, ready for the big day. But sadly it was gone. The trunk was empty. The lock picked. He knew then and there that my grandmother must have taken it and indeed she had. She had hocked the suit, shirt, tie and everything else he had and then she had drunk away the money she got for his things. My poor dad had to wear his old shabby suit. He bought a shirt front that had no sleeves and celluloid collar and cuffs to wear under his suit coat, the sleeves of which were short and showed his bare wrists. I look at the wedding pictures today, lovingly and sadly, and my grandmother had the bloody cheek to show up at the wedding and be in the wedding photograph. I am sure that she was hoping that there would be booze at the wedding. When my grandfather became ill and was dying my grandmother ripped the sheets off the bed underneath him and the blankets too. She took them to the pawn shop. Ah, but revenge is sweet. The day he died he got sweet relief from his life and my grandmother. She took his life insurance policy that very same day and climbed up ten flights of a curving stairway at the insurance office and got paid for the policy. She then climbed back down the stairs heading for the pub before his body was even cold. Ah but; this is where revenge is sweet comes in. There were tram lines all around the Elephant and Castle where the double decker trams rumbled along on their big steel wheels. In her extreme hurry to get to her favorite pub and drink, she accidentally caught the heel of her shoe in the tracks and took a severe fall and broke her leg badly. She spent the rest of her days in a leg iron that fit into the heel of her shoe. With that and a cane she was still able to make it to her favorite pub. I really think that the booze must have pickled and preserved her because she outlived most of her family to a right old age of 90. She was a real character indeed. My grandfather, her husband, Henry, was a real gentleman, very quiet, well-spoken and had a good word for everyone. By trade he was a French polisher which today I believe is a lost art. He also taught my father that craft. From what my dad told me, my grandfather had tried to protect him and my auntie Win from my grandmother, but he was a much weaker person than she and to keep peace in the family he turned a deaf ear to it. It made life a little easier for him. My dad was so much like his father, a very hard working man. He worked tirelessly to support our family. Whatever it took he was always there for us. We were poor but we always had food on the table and clean clothes, however old and hand me down they were. We as kids didnt know that we were poor. My auntie Win died of a broken heart after her young husband of two months went to war and was killed in Flanders field in 1917. I wish I could have known them both. Keeping true to form my grandmother sold all of Wins belongings before the poor girls body was picked up by the undertaker. In my early years my father would take my brother, sister and I on Sundays to see my grandparents. My Mother refused to go. She couldnt forgive my grandmother for stealing my fathers wedding suit. They lived in a two room cold water flat located in the Elephant and Castle. The memories will never fade of the smelly dark greasy noisy hallways and stairwells. You could smell everybodys Sunday dinners cooking and the pervasive odors of long past dinners as well as the strong aroma of overcooked cabbage and the smell of urine from men urinating in dark corners. I can still remember climbing the steep dark creaking wooden staircase, up six flights, to their flat and hearing the sounds of kids screaming coming from behind closed doors, grownups arguing and fighting and lavatories being flushed by the long chain handles. There was only one bathroom on each landing for six families on the floor. The slop from families chamber pots being carried to the lavies made an unimaginable pong and the filth in those bathrooms would have deterred most people from using them, but use them they did as there was no other recourse. Father never let us use them. He would tell us to hold it till we got somewhere he thought clean enough for us to use. My grandparents flat was dark because the one window in the kitchen looked out onto a brick wall. It didnt open. They cooked on an iron coal stove in the kitchen. The cook stove also served for warmth in the winter. There was only one sink with a cold water tap. In the summer it was stifling in there. The air smelled fetid. There was nowhere for cooking and body odors to go. One small bedroom completed their living quarters. My grandfather was so ill one time when we visited that he was in a dirty disheveled unmade bed, unwashed and unshaven. My heart broke for him. My dad would do what he could to make him comfortable and always left them money which he knew would end up at the pub. At the same time my grandmother would be in the kitchen swigging from a bottle of gin that she kept in her bloomer pocket. Grandfather died shortly after that last visit. May he rest in peace? I know what it means to be poor but that was drunken poverty. My grandmother died many years later, living her years out in a nursing home. I never saw her again after my grandfather died. My mothers family was quite different. My mother Ruby was the eldest of seven children, two girls and five boys. One boy child was scalded to death at the age of three. He had pulled a chair over to the stove and toppled a large pot of boiling water over and scalded himself to death. My mother who was barely five at the time was in charge of watching him. I dont think she ever really recovered from the shock of his death. Who could? Then there was my uncle Pinky, known as such for his always ruddy face. I never knew what his real name was. Uncle Lenny was the next child. I was too young to remember them and eventually they both immigrated to Australia and New Zealand so I never saw them again. Next was my Uncle Eric who I adored. He was so full of fun and laughter. His sense of humour was so well known. He was also a great tease. I always told myself that I would marry him when I grew up. Then there was Aunt Doris whom I will speak of later. Then last but not least came the baby of the family, my Uncle Ivan. According to my mum he was a gorgeous baby. As her baby brother they were very close. She had been there for all the children, helping to raise them, especially Ivan, due in part that my grandfather William Thomas Edwin Didmon and my grandmother Emily were seldom at the house. Grandmother worked at the pub pulling pints and my grandfather was away se rving with the royal horse field artillery. He was later posted to France fighting in the trenches at the battle of the Somme 1916 World War I. Fifty eight thousand British troops died on that first day of the offensive, July 1 1916. The most soldiers to die on the first day of any battle in history. By the end of the war in the Somme, November 1916, four hundred twenty thousand British souls had perished. But, amazingly, my grandfather survived and lived until his death in 1932. Regrettably, I never got to meet him. Thank God he was to miss the horrors of another war, 1939 to 1945, World War II, the war to end all wars. As a young man he had worked as a solicitors clerk. He liked the theatre and music but vaudeville was his love. He was very active in a theatrical troop called the Victory Boys. They were a cheeky bunch in their straw boater hats, red bow ties, white pleated shirts and arm garters. They sang barbershop and were quite successful locally. He wanted to make music part of my brother and sisters life as well. When he was ill he would have them stand at the foot of his bed and sing in their very young voices, All things bright and beautiful, over and over till they got it right. Their reward for all their vocalizing was a brand new penny, but only if they got the words right. I am sure that he loved them very much but like many Englishmen of that era to show emotion would have been a sign of weakness. How sad to have missed out on all that love. My mother inherited grandfathers love of music. She had a beautiful voice and played the piano by ear. My nanny Emily Lodge was a very attractive bar maid at a pub in Peckham when she met William and they fell in love and later bore seven children. I did meet my Nanny. I knew her for four years before she passed away in 1939 from cancer. I will never forget her. She always wore her hair up in a snood and wore a beautiful pin at the throat of her high necked silk blouses. She always smelled of sweet lavender. She was always a very regal lady. I admired and loved her from afar and missed her so much when she went away to Heaven. My mother didnt have an easy life growing up. My Nana was always working at the pub to help feed and support their seven children. My Grandfather was away serving his country. When he was around after returning from France he exhibited a Victorian strictness. There was never any talking at the dinner table, as the saying goes, Dont talk unless spoken to. You were to be seen and not heard. There were beatings with the switch for miniscule misbehaviors. My mum said he was changed quite dramatically when he came home from the war. My mother who was a nurse probationer was never allowed to go out with friends, let alone boys. When my aunt Doris, her sister, wanted to be a dancer I think the roof fell in even though he had at one time loved musical theatre. It was, Do as I say not as I do. In my parents case love would not be denied and my dads sister Winnie secretly introduced my dad Henry (Harry) to my mother Ruby. My dad was instantly besotted with her dark beauty and fell in love instantly. They had many clandestine meetings. My mother was so fearful that her father would find out she confided only in her mother and my aunt Win. Mum was in love but when she found out that my dad was five years her junior she was shocked and embarrassed. It just wasnt done in those days to be courted by a man five years your junior. How could she possibly love him? But he pursued her mercilessly until she finally agreed to marry him. He was a man who knew what he wanted and even though she told him he still had the marks of the cradle on him it never deterred him. He was in love. My mother was more reserved with her feelings but love him she did. Their next big hurdle was for my father to ask my grandfather for her hand in marriage. He would have to face the lion in his den. A one on one appointment was made for a Friday evening at my mothers house. Her father did not even know that she had been seeing a beau so he assumed the private talk was for my dad to ask if he could have permission to court my mother. Marriage was not even a speck on the horizon for my grandfather. Oh, my father was a brave man indeed. On that Friday evening at the appointed time a loud roar erupted from the parlor. All the children scattered from the parlor door where their ears had become adhered to the door frame permanently. My grandmother and mother were summoned into the inner sanctum for a melee of questioning. I understand that my grandfather stomped around the house harrumphing here, there and everywhere for a week. Everyone stayed out of his way, especially my mom but eventually he gave in and gave his consent for them to court for two months and then the nuptials could commence and consequently they did. They were married for 35 years. They were a working class family. There were five of them. My beautiful mother Ruby and my forever gentle patient father Henry Leonard. First born was a still born little girl. Second born was my older sister Rita who has the most beautiful copper curly hair. Next born was their most wished for bonny boy whom they named Leonard Henry but who became affectionately known as Boysey by all of the family. Boysey is a term of endearment which unfortunately stuck. He hated it as he grew up and it caused problems. After several years our mother insisted that they use his birth given name but it was a hard habit for everyone to break. It was the only name that he was known as. My Mum and Dads family was now complete. Who could want for more, one girl and one boy. But in early August of 1934 my mother came down with a severe cold or so she thought that was what it was. But guess what, eight months later, in April of 1935 a bouncing baby girl was born. I do think many times in later years that she wished that it had been just a cold. I certainly was not planned but there I was, Sheila Ruby Harvey greeting the world and bawling with gusto, gutsy, red faced and determined. I would need that determination and guts for what life was going to offer me and that is where my story begins.