There were some odd couplings during WW2. People who would never have met in normal times, married in haste because ‘you never know the minute’ and ‘there’s a war on’. My mum and dad were one of those couples. They met in the north of England during WW2 and went to live in his home island of Jersey when he was demobbed, and where I was born some years later. Most of my childhood as I recall, was spent on one of 23 beaches as Mum savoured leaving the mills, cobbles, smog and rain behind in Stockport. Being Roman Catholics they thought nothing of churning out babies, of which I was the first, but by the time the third arrived, it was clear that Mum was struggling with cooking, cleaning, ironing and managing three kids five and under.
One summer, I think I was seven so John must have been four, our parents had the innovative idea of sending us on holiday to our Stockport relatives to relieve the workload on Mum. We travelled from Jersey with our grandmother who had been over on holiday, and we would return with a great aunt whose turn it was for a holiday in Jersey. We had never been on a plane before and despite or probably because of the excitement, I was sick, and that’s all I remember about the journey.
Jersey was and still is in some parishes, covered in pastel coloured or pink granite houses. No trains, factories, or mills, just cows, tomatoes, potatoes and beaches. We were excited because my mum had told us how different Stockport would be and how big it was compared to our island. Dad just told us to be good and don’t speak unless you’re spoken to.
We were met at Manchester airport by our mother’s sister, Mary and bank manager husband, John. They had no children and had not much idea of a child’s needs. Auntie Mary was good on discipline though, bossier than Mum! She drove, having been an ambulance driver in the war she was very competent. Uncle John never learned, never needed to. He was the joker; she had no sense of humour, but we were to learn that she chided him for his jokes and playfulness at every turn. We drove through rainy streets of forbidding redbrick houses, ducking as we went under railway bridges, to their pebble-dashed semi in what was then a posh part of Cheshire, Cheadle Hulme, (no longer posh).
We stared, amazed, at double decker buses and tall mill chimneys pumping out smoke, while the car bounced over cobbles. When we got to their house, we were delighted to see tall trees at the bottom of the long garden in which we could play hide and seek. We ran to the trees and as we got to the end, a sudden shriek paralysed us. We clutched each other and heard the noise change to a slow chug. We looked up at the embankment in front of us in time to see a huge steam engine block out the sky as it slowly pulled away from the local station, hidden from view of the house. We ran back down the garden waving and were thrilled to see the driver blow his whistle and wave back. We spent a lot of time that holiday running up and down waving at trains as the line that ran past their garden was the busy Manchester – Crewe line.
We were taken out on ‘trips’ to Belle Vue funfair and a huge park with deer and a folly. We went to Mass a lot, far more than we did at home. On rainy days we went to tea with an endless supply of whiskery great aunts. Our grandfather had been one of 11 children, most of them spinster ladies, since the Great War had robbed them of any marriage prospects. They all worked in a hat factory as, at that time, Stockport was the centre of the hatting trade. Once a year, they were allowed to make a hat for themselves, and they gave full vent to their artistic side and wore the most extravagant confections made of brightly coloured tuille and net and feathers. We were fascinated by the fact that they wore the hats indoors while we had tea. The great aunts were eccentric, said and did unexpected things, and it was many years later I discovered that the expression ‘Mad as a Hatter’ was true. It was the heated glue they used in the making of the hats that made them so.
If Auntie Mary didn’t know how to entertain children, the great aunts were completely clueless. We would sit in their Victorian parlours surrounded by stuffed birds in dusty glass domes, Sacred Heart pictures and crocheted antimacassars on every chair. We were warned to ‘behave’ before we went, which meant sitting still and not touching anything, something that my brother John found very difficult. Being more inquisitive than me, he squirmed in his chair for the hour or so we were there listening to an enthusiastic great aunt telling our aunt, who had died, when they would be buried, which church the requiem mass would be heard in and if they weren’t going to have the mass in the great aunt’s parish, well there had better be a good reason for it.
John’s eyes would be darting everywhere from the heavy crucifixes to the picture of the Sacred Heart, whose eyes followed us all round the room. I could see John’s head swivelling to try to find a place where he wasn’t followed by the eyes. The great aunt would ask “What’s up wi’ ‘im? Is ‘e simple or what?’ I would dig John in the ribs, and he’d sit up again, straight.
They didn’t know what to give us to drink. ‘Will they ‘ave tea? She’d shout from the scullery.
‘No’, Auntie Mary would respond. ‘Have you got a bit of squash for them?’
‘Squash? What would I be doing wi’ squash? They’ll ‘ave milk and like it.’
We hated milk. We were made to drink hot milk every bedtime at home right after we’d had our cod liver oil and malt, but mum would put in some Ovaltine to take the taste away. Being made to drink cold milk in the afternoon was a shock to the system and we looked at each other helplessly. How do we get out of it we silently asked one another. John was sitting next to a preposterous plant in a pot. With dark green dusty leaves, it towered over us. He looked at it, then me and grinned.
The great aunt and Mary were sitting at the table; we were behind them on the wooden settle. Neither were watching us, so John poured a little of his milk into the plant pot. We sipped when anyone watched and poured when they were distracted with the latest Woman’s Weekly or knitting pattern. I have no idea if the plant survived or what the smell must have been like in that parlour weeks later, but we got away with it, even under the eyes of the Sacred Heart. He might have even smiled.
We found Stockport exciting but were very pleased to be returning to our beaches and the people who knew us best. They wouldn’t give us milk in the middle of the afternoon. We did miss the trains though and did our best to tell Baby Paul about them and draw pictures for him, but he was too young to appreciate the magnificence of the steam engine, so we gave up and built sandcastles with him instead.
We went on many more holidays to Stockport during our childhood, but that first one with all its discoveries and strange characters was the one that made the biggest and most lasting impression on us.
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I’ve read
These Days Lucy Caldwell - centred on a family’s endurance and resilience in Belfast during WW2, it follows the daughters and their experiences of the intense bombing raids. I was hopelessly ignorant of the bombing of Belfast docks and residential areas. The air raids were shocking and seem even more so when detailed in this tightly written novel.
I’ve also read Venetia by Georgette Heyer. yes, I know, but it was a book club read. Egad, the less said about it the better, Sir.
I’ve watched
Woman in the Wall, and been mesmerised by Ruth Wilson’s performance. The exposé of the Magdalen Laundries is long overdue. ‘Philomena’ went some way towards it, but this TV serial is raw and painful and gets to the heart of the mothers’ desperation to find their children.
Went to the cinema in the neighbouring village. It’s a bit of a mixed bag but we feel we have to go, or they might not give our Monday English speaking films. Bum deal last week - The Master Gardener - can’t think of any redeeming features so won’t even discuss, except to ask what the devil was Sigourney Weaver doing in it?
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