Child from Home (3 page)

In the late summer and autumn of 1939 Mam saw squads of khaki-clad soldiers working on the nearby area of wasteland that the council called the Newport Recreation Ground. We called it ‘The Common'. The soldiers belonged to the Royal Scots Fusiliers and the King's Own Scottish Borderers (known as ‘Kosbies') and they were in the process of raising huge barrage balloons. The Kosbies seemed small men who wore Glengarry bonnets with a pompon on top and they were nicknamed ‘the bantams' by the local people. The balloons, which were about sixty feet long, looked to me like great, fat, floating pigs with huge ears. They were often called ‘Blimps' after the well-known First World War windbag who went by the name of Colonel Blimp. They were attached to a winch by means of a long steel hawser and each was strategically placed with its nose facing into the wind. They were raised to a height of about 5,000 feet and the thick, mooring cables were strong enough to bring down low-flying aircraft. When it was windy we could hear them twanging and humming, and in high winds they had to be storm-bedded, which involved anchoring them down to concrete blocks. On one never-to-be-forgotten stormy night, one was struck by lightning. Just prior to the blaze, eerie bluish-white lightning had been seen arcing from one steel-wire cable to the next.

There were also odd contraptions called Thompson-Haslar units, which looked like large metal dustbins with funnels that emitted black, oily smoke. They were mounted on the backs of special, wheeled trailers pulled into position by army vehicles. The smoke units were being tested and would later be used, taking into account the prevailing wind direction, to screen the industrial sites. The Common covered a large part of the open area at the Newport Bridge end of Cannon Street and a long wooden fence, constructed from upright railway sleepers, hid the railway lines. Here, workmen had dug a network of nine-foot-deep, interconnecting slit trenches that were lined with wood, and the roof was supported by timber props. Along the sides were low wooden benches, or ‘forms'. Rows of wooden, double-storey bunk beds had been installed and the local people entered the new, underground airraid shelter by means of a concrete ramp, which led down to thick, metal, blast-proof doors. The tunnels were lit by rows of electric bulbs powered by a generator and the timber-framed roofs were covered with corrugated metal sheeting, which had a deep layer of soil on top. In an emergency an exit could be made by means of wooden ladders that were fixed to the sides of brick-lined shafts placed along the tunnels at intervals. These and the brick street shelters were to be used by hundreds of local people.

On the far side of The Common there were rundown allotments with the fences and sheds patched up with roof felt, bits of rotting wood and rusty corrugated metal sheeting. Close by stood a pigeon park, now in a state of disrepair, with the white paint of its wooden lofts flaking and peeling – all symptoms of the recent hard times.

Groups of poorly clad men regularly gathered on a corner of The Common, most wearing ‘art silk' mufflers tied in a tight knot above collarless shirts. Many of them had the gaunt-faced look of the long-term unemployed, depleted by too many years of hardship. Depressed and broken in spirit they felt that they were of no use to their families or anyone else, and could be seen slouching around at the street corners or on that particular area of The Common day after day. Several had hacking coughs, spitting great gobs of phlegm on to the ground or sucking on an empty tobacco pipe and staring blankly at nothing. A few, fortunate enough to have a few halfpennies in their pockets, played pitch and toss in the constant hope of winning a few more coppers to spend on beer and tobacco. A couple of scruffy lads stood cavy (lookout) for them, giving warning should the other type of ‘copper' appear.

Our house backed on to The Common and one day the rozzers (a local term for policemen) turned up in force. The hapless illegal gamblers scattered and one tried to make his escape by climbing over the wall into our backyard where Mam was hanging out the washing. She was heavily pregnant and the man's sudden appearance startled her, making her cry out, at which Dad dashed out through the kitchen door. He was really angry and grabbed hold of the man saying, ‘Bugger off sharpish mate or I'll punch your bloody lights out.'

As a young man, Dad had brought home numerous presents from his postings in the Far East, one of them being the large tortoise that we kept as a pet. A beautiful ivory model of the Taj Mahal at Agra that he had brought back from India stood on the sideboard and could be lit from the inside. One of my earliest memories is of bleeding profusely after pushing George down Booth Street on his three-wheeler trike. We had been to visit Gran, who now lived round the corner on King George Street, when I slipped, and as I landed on my left knee a sharp piece of gravel cut deeply into it. I still have a small pyramid-shaped scar to show for it. In another incident I was wearing semi-transparent, rubberised pants that were elasticated and fitted tightly round my chubby thighs and, desperately needing to go to the lavatory, I could hold on no longer. I passed water, which soon saturated the Terry towelling of my inner pants and, when it could absorb no more, the ‘pee' could be seen slowly filling up the ‘see-through' pants. I remember the lovely warm feeling of it before it seeped out and turned cold as it trickled down my legs.

My maternal grandmother, Florence Emma Bradford, a small, plumpish, fifty-year-old widow, lived a little closer to the bridge than us. Her fifteen-year-old daughter Irene (always known as Renee) was a slim, attractive, auburn-haired girl. A great bond of unspoken affection had developed between my parents and Mam's winsome young sister. Dad used to call her his ‘Little Princess', and he spoiled her rotten.

Gran's eldest son, John, was twenty years old and was serving his apprenticeship as a plater at the Britannia Steelworks, a large, steel-plate rolling plant in the Ironmasters District. In February of the previous year he had joined the Territorial Army attending meetings in the Drill Hall every week and going on weekend training camps. The part-time soldiers were known colloquially as ‘the Terriers' or, as some said, ‘Saturday Night Soldiers'. Uncle John had joined chiefly for the excitement, the sense of adventure and the glamour of the uniform, which seemed to attract the girls. The extra money was also very welcome. In late autumn 1939 he received a letter from the local office of the Ministry of Labour and National Service, stating that he was now liable for conscription into the regular army and was to report for a medical examination. Small but strong, he passed A1.

Soon afterwards his call-up papers – with a four-shilling postal order to cover his travelling costs – were delivered. In the meantime, Gran fed him well, as like most women of the time, she considered it her duty to wait on the men hand and foot. Uncle John was just one of the thousands being mobilised and in early February he made his farewells. Travelling with several other young men to the army barracks at Richmond, North Yorkshire, he swore the oath of allegiance; ‘took the King's shilling', was read the Riot Act and became number 4390218 with the rank of private. After being vaccinated he was issued with a uniform and kit, which included two enamelled tin plates; an enamel mug; a knife, fork and spoon, and was put into the 5th Infantry Battalion of the Green Howards.

The recruits were broken down by hard work and strict discipline before being built up again into an efficient fighting unit. They learned to work as a team, which was to stand them in good stead when they eventually went into battle, and as an unmarried private he was paid just fourteen shillings (70p) a week plus bed and board. Each week during the long basic training he managed to send part of his meagre pay to his mother. A few weeks later, following the outbreak of war, he was sent on embarkation leave. He sailed from Southampton as part of a naval convoy – with a fighter escort overhead – bound for the French port of Cherbourg. It was too dangerous to take the shorter, more direct route to Calais through the Straits of Dover, as the ship would have been within the range of German bombers. The 5th Battalion of the Green Howards then moved up to the Belgian border that had seen so much bloodshed during the First World War.

Gran's other sons, Archie and Harry, were aged thirteen and eleven years old respectively. Her other daughter, twenty-six-year-old Hilda, and her son Jimmy, were living with Gran's younger sister Ruby, having left Hilda's Irish Catholic husband, John Nolan. His faith frowned on mixed marriages at that time and throughout her turbulent and unhappy marriage there had been prolonged and bitter conflict with much ugly name-calling. Gran, who was a forthright God-fearing woman, declared, ‘I've got no time for the Nolans with their hypocrisy, boozing and excessive religious humility, and John's mother is a hard-bitten, intolerant, religious bigot. I'll never forgive her for bawling after them in the street “I hope you die in your bed and rot in hell you Protestant bitch!” just after their marriage in the Register Office. She called Jimmy a bastard – because to her mind the marriage was not legal – saying, “If you are not married by a priest you are not married at all”.'

There was a fair amount of resentment of the Irish at that time as there had been more than a hundred IRA bombings on the British mainland. Aunt Hilda had fallen for John Nolan's smooth talk and they had married in 1934 – the same year as Mam and Dad – and had rented a house just round the corner from Gran. When in drink, John Nolan was inclined to be violent and after he had been sent to prison for theft in 1936 they separated, leaving Hilda on her own to bring up their young son.

Great-great-grandfather John Knights worked on the colliers that sailed up and down the east coast, and reputedly became quite wealthy after moving up through the ranks to command various ships. It was said that in later life he lived in some style in large and impressive houses in the more affluent parts of the town, with one story alleging that he had a sock full of gold sovereigns hidden up his chimney.

John's eldest son, Henry Knights, was Gran's father, and he too was a merchant seaman. In 1886, at the age of just nineteen, he married a twenty-year-old local girl called Caroline Martha Wanless who we always knew as ‘Granny Knights'. She was a live wire and a real character who was not averse to the odd tipple or a regular ‘flutter on the gee-gees'. By the time Gran was born, the family had fallen on hard times.

In 1906, when she was just sixteen years of age, Gran eloped to get married, leaving home wearing work clothes on top of her best clothes so as not to arouse suspicion. She knew all too well that her mother was dead set against the marriage to her twenty-six-year-old boyfriend. He was weather-beaten and had skin like brown leather as a result of working on the River Tyne in all weathers. Granny Knights called him a foreigner, as she was barely able to comprehend his broad Geordie accent. He had been blinded in one eye by having sand kicked in his face as a young boy. The couple had married at Trinity Church, North Ormesby, on the eastern edge of the town. Grandad always called her Lol and they had a hard but happy life for more than thirty years before death intervened.

My maternal Grandad, Archie Bradford, hailed from South Shields, County Durham, and was a chronic asthmatic but he nevertheless managed to find fairly regular employment. He worked mostly as a dock labourer or as a lighterman on the two rivers and his job involved unloading ocean-going ships on to the lighters. The ships, being of too deep a draught, had to be anchored in the deep channel in midstream. A lighter was a kind of wide barge with a shallow draught on which the goods were taken to the wharves to be lifted ashore by cranes and derricks. Grandad worked long hours over many sweltering summers and chilled-to-the-marrow winters, until two years before the war, he died after an asthma attack. He would ‘fear no more the heat of the sun nor the furious winter's rages'. He lived just long enough to see his two eldest daughters wed and the first three of his grandchildren come into the world, these being Jimmy, me and George. Three years prior to his untimely death he had promised Renee that he would take her to see the opening of the Newport Bridge, but she developed several septic abscesses on her neck and was bitterly disappointed. Boils were all too common amongst the undernourished children of the area at that time.

Gran had endured a very hard life. It had been a long grim struggle for survival throughout the late 1920s and '30s, the years of the terrible Great Depression, and, as a result, she had ‘lost' five of her eleven children. It appears that great poverty invariably leads to a higher birth rate as having lots of children improved the odds of some reaching maturity. Three sons and a daughter died in their infancy, one of them being her firstborn son Archibald, named after his father, and a little later, a much loved, gentle and delicate daughter – named Florence after her mother – died at the age of only eleven years. She became ill after a rusty nail sticking up through the paper-thin sole of her boot punctured her foot. The tiny black spot under her big toe became infected leading to the septicaemia that killed her.

For many years Gran had lived on the edge of an abyss of uncertainty, just one of a warren of people who had to endure real hardship in squalid and wretched conditions. Fortunately for her, her eldest daughters were in work as domestic servants, enduring interminably long hours for miserably low wages. Like many sisters they didn't always see eye to eye and Gran, losing patience with them, would say, ‘Can't you two go five minutes without arguing?' Mam worked as far away as Leeds for a time, but they managed to send a little money home to keep the family's head above water. After marrying they were obliged to support their own families, but, luckily, Uncle John had started work as a trainee crane driver in the Teesside Bridge Steelworks on leaving school in 1933, and Renee became a domestic servant on leaving school four years later.

During the long hard years of the Depression, Grandad used to walk down to the nearby Newport wharf early every morning to see if the foreman was taking on any men, and, if he was lucky enough to get a day's work, Renee would take him his bait (food) tin and a can of cold tea at the midday break. The work was hard and could be dangerous or even fatal. Gran's elder brother John had died of suffocation after falling into a container of red ore powder. Gran was tough, resilient and stubborn and, although entitled to poor relief, she was far too proud to accept any form of charity. Although close to destitution at times, she would never beg, suffering her many and repeated hardships in silence. She would never let others see her emotional pain and gradually this rigid, grin-and-bear-it stoicism became the norm. She just got on with it because if she didn't, she would go under.