1960
1960
‘Crap! Oh, what Crap!’
Our little village was in a whirl about a famous actress coming to our World War II commemoration but, personally, I was furious.
It was May 1960, 20 years since Millside was bombed in the run up to the Blitz and, as part of the national commemoration of the war, we were having our own ceremony. We thought it would be a rather low-key affair but suddenly out of the blue it was announced that none other than Suzie Bell would be coming and laying a stone on Ben’s burial place. Yes, THAT Suzie Bell, the star of many B movies, mostly war-based weepies, very popular with the matinee audiences of housewives and retirees.
You may think that she had every right to be there and that would be true, but fact is that she never bothered with Ben, and to me, she was just doing a publicity stunt to revive a somewhat fading career. And, of course, all the circus was there: local press, popular rags, even our local TV station, so Ben was getting all the attention he never had. So much so that nobody had a thought to spare for me even if I had been a key figure in the whole story, besides having been away from the village for many years.
But I am running ahead of the story, as usual. My name is Annie and on that day, I had returned to Millside for the event and a sort of personal pilgrimage. I had revisited my old haunts, walked down High Street where our shop used to be, and knocked on Mrs. Bassett’s door.
Dear Mrs. Bassett! She looked older of course, but her kind smile was still there. I had spent a few weeks at her place after the bombing and I asked her to let me into my old room for a while. She did and, with the excuse of making me a cup of tea, tactfully went downstairs and left me by myself. The room had not changed much, except for new curtains and a coat of paint on the walls, but, just as I hoped, the furniture was still the same. So, I went to the old wardrobe that dominated the room and pulled out the heavy bottom drawer. At the back there was a small recess and in it I found what I was looking for: my old diary, scorched around the edges, blotched by dampness, with pages missing, but still there, a witness of the events of that fateful year. As I began to read it everything came back with a rush, the feelings, the faces, the fear.
Mon 18 Dec 1939
16 TODAY
Dad got me this diary for my 16th birthday. It’s a beautiful notebook with a blue cover. He says that as he’s bound to go to war, I should keep a record of my life so he can catch up with me when he comes back. I told him, rather grandly, that grown up girls don’t show their personal diaries to their Dads but he replied that we are old pals and we have no secrets from one another. Well, I think he somewhat deludes himself but it’s true that I get on with him much better than with Mum and that working together in the shop makes us closer. We share jokes, sometimes at the expense of our most difficult customers, like stuck up Mr. Cribbles, with his serious self-important air and his silly moustache that bears a passing resemblance to Hitler’s.
Sometimes I wish I could get on with Mum in the same way, but it doesn’t work. Mum and I are too different and anyway she seems to be more interested in my brother Robert than in me. He is still her “baby” even if he is 13 and she is very proud of him and his ”academic achievements” as she puts it. Well, if I had gone to a fancy school like him, I might have achieved something as well. ...me jealous? No way!
AND TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY!!!
Was I jealous then? No, I really don’t think so. Anyway, I don’t know whether a posh school would have suited me, as I am a rather matter-of-fact person. And, thinking of it, that is why my mother and I didn’t see eye to eye on most matters. Fact is that Mother had social aspirations that I didn’t share in the least. She faithfully attended every meeting of the Parish Council, now re-named the War Committee, which she saw as occasions to rub shoulders with the most influential people in our rather restricted “society”. It never occurred to her that she was seen rather as a hanger-on than as a fully-fledged member of that select group and that when tasks were organised and allocated, she was regularly given the most menial and least pleasant ones. She was also part of the WAAF, the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, and carried out her duties with conscience, if not always with competence.
I sometimes think that she saw Robert’s schooling as a way to go up in our world through him. She, a small-town miss, had met my father at a country fair and had fallen in love with him. Being a mere shopkeeper’s wife wasn’t enough for her and that is why I was made to help Dad as soon as I left school while she withdrew almost completely from the day-to-day running of the business. Not that she had contributed much before. In those days before modern appliances appeared in British homes, being a housewife was almost a full-time job. And that, Mum did very well. After all it’s not easy to run a household, raise two children, and still manage to look quite “classy”. She was a pretty blonde in her late thirties who always tried to dress her best. Myself, at that stage, I was still a bit of a tomboy and dressing well wasn’t my main concern. But you mustn’t think I was a scruff. I too was a pretty blonde starting to show the right curves in the right places and in addition I had an infectious smile which people found attractive and a light scattering of freckles on my face.
Weds 20 Dec
Call this Christmas? Thanks to the blackout, for the first time there are no lights, let alone Christmas lights, on High Street. And of course, no children knocking at the door singing carols and holding their candles. I cannot believe I would miss them and their noise!!!
Well, I do but I certainly don’t miss Grace Cummings’ smug, face as she leads the little choir.
And that wasn’t the only sound missing, church bells didn’t ring anymore. Instead, we got sirens whose shrieking sound announced an impending air raid. That first Christmas at war was particularly felt by my generation. Our parents had been through the experience in the Great War, as World War I was named, but for us kids it brought an unfamiliar sense of terror and upheaval, but also a feeling of excitement and adventure. Not even the darkness of that winter, made worse by the blackout and by cowering in the shelters, could take that feeling away. After the alarm ended, we would go back to High Street and resume our normal life, but still feeling the thrill of the possible danger.
Oh yes, High Street. With or without lighting, it was nothing special. A few shops including ours, Corbett’s Hardware Supplies, the pub at one end and the school at the other. And of course, the post office, run by old-lady Fletcher and the church with the parsonage. This was the home of Vicar Horace Cummings, his wife Amelia and their children Grace and Philip.
Grace and I were the same age, had been sitting in the same classroom since year 1 and totally disliked one another. My mother was keen on me being Grace’s friend and tried to push me her way, in an attempt to get in the good graces of Grace’s mother. Anyway, it didn’t work. Grace didn’t miss any chance to show off her social superiority and would wrinkle her little nose at me.
‘You smell of paint.’ she would say, stuck-up little cow that she was! I on my part would go out of my way to pay her back and made sure to shake my pen when she was close by, in order to deposit large blots of ink on her perfect white blouse.
She was always dressed very properly, if somewhat dull. She had lovely dark brown hair and a pretty face somewhat spoiled by a rather snooty expression. In fact, what I really disliked about her was her “holier than thou” attitude. She was, or appeared to be, pious, virtuous, studious and -- a bore.
But back to the village now. Millside didn’t have any distinguishing features itself, except for the ancient watermill of its name. However, the neighbouring area could boast Albany Court, the posh school where Robert was a day boarder, and the even posher Manor House.
My mother would have given anything to become part of the privileged few allowed to enter its fancy iron gates, but her contacts with them stopped at the newly named War Committee. Its role now included fire-watching, blackout monitoring and air defence warnings. It also included the billeting, or housing, of evacuees. In that period thousands of children were being evacuated – that is, taken from their families in places most likely to be bombed, like London, and moved to the safety of the countryside. Rural communities were expected to host the city brats and keep them out of harm’s way in exchange for a small sum and the feeling of helping to “Save the Future of Our Country” as the slogan went.
