Bombsites and Lollipops: My 1950s East End Childhood Page 11

  ‘Dad! When’s it Good Friday?’ I prattle innocently. ‘When we gonna go to the Tower?’

  My dad looks at me blankly.

  ‘What Tower? Whatya talkin’ about? And where’s my cufflinks, Mol?’ he asks my mum.

  ‘Can’t find ’em anywhere.’

  ‘Tower of London,’ I repeat, still not getting it. ‘We’re gonna go to the Tower on Good Friday, you said, Dad.’

  But my dad doesn’t respond. I’m bewildered at this but I’m silent, pensive. Something is very, very wrong and I can’t work out what it is. My mum, meanwhile, has gone into the bedroom to rummage around and, in a flash, she’s back with the missing cufflinks which she dutifully hands to her husband.

  ‘Leave your dad alone, Jac,’ she says, seeing my puzzled little face.

  By now, I’m sucking my thumb, a baby habit that I don’t relinquish until a few years later. It’s a sign I’m confused or troubled.

  ‘Dad’s gotta go to work now. We’ll talk about Good Friday later on,’ she tells me as the front door closes behind my dad.

  But we never do. And I never have that outing to the Tower with my dad: it was never going to happen in the first place. My father was sozzled, pissed, well and truly inebriated that night; he’d made his promise to me after a heavy night in the pub. And in the morning, of course, he didn’t remember a word of it, let alone that he’d made a promise. Nor did he wish to be reminded. When drunk, who knows, maybe he saw himself as the man he hoped to be: a kindly, loving dad who took his little girl out on a rare day off work? But in the cold light of day, when more or less sober, he didn’t have the time or inclination for that sort of thing: my mum was there for all that. His role was to get out there and bring in the readies to pay for everything. That was the deal.

  I don’t know precisely when it actually dawned on me that my dad’s promise had been broken because he was drunk and didn’t remember a thing about it the next day. But the Good Friday Incident proved to be the real turning point in my relationship with my father, the point when he went from being a hero of sorts to someone who would let you down, make a promise and break it. It’s a rotten thing to do to a child. And I was sensitive enough for it to affect me permanently.

  Gradually, over time, I became increasingly conscious of my dad’s drinking habit and how it changed him, turned him into a person I didn’t like – and eventually didn’t want to know. The big wedding incident had been a very public demonstration of how shaming he could be socially – but by the time that happened, I’d already started to work it all out. Sober, he was quite grumpy and morose (it was really a permanent hangover). But after several double scotches, he was a horrible, noisy, loudmouthed stranger. The sort of person you didn’t want to be around, let alone live with. And I never went anywhere or did anything with my dad, just the two of us, until I’d reached adulthood and actually left home. Even then, it proved to be a rare event: by that time I couldn’t stand to be in his company for more than an hour or so.

  Growing up like this, in a very small, cramped flat, meant that it was very difficult to escape from both the day-to-day reality of living with someone whose life was dominated by alcohol – apart from the constantly overheard conversations and exchanges between my parents in their bedroom, I’d frequently hear my dad retching his guts out in the bathroom – and from my own jumble of intense feelings about it all. I didn’t understand it; what child does? And I couldn’t blank it out, ignore it at all or hide in another part of our home because it was so tiny, so claustrophobic. Talk about nowhere to run. It was there, all the time, year in, year out, two men living in our home – one grumpy, hungover and struggling to function, the other occasionally effusive, loud, boisterous, but increasingly as time passed, verbally abusive, explosive and very, very angry at the world. Even now I have younger relatives who fondly remember my dad’s social face: funny, generous, lively and outgoing. ‘Street angel, house devil,’ is my response to this. You had to live with it to know it.

  In today’s terms my dad wasn’t just a heavy drinker – he was an alcoholic. Drink was a permanent crutch to get him through. But then, of course, such terms were never bandied about. Some men just drank more than others. And my dad was far from alone in his struggle to use booze to adjust to post-war life and responsibilities he couldn’t quite accept. There were plenty of other people in pubs matching him drink for drink. My dad’s siblings knew all about his excess drinking of course. But he was more or less accepted, with a shrug, as the family black sheep. Every family had one, didn’t they? And they’d grown up alongside The Old Man’s drinking, though none of them, apart from my dad, developed the pub habit in any way.

  As for my mum, she’d always known the youthful Ginger as a bit of a drinker, though he’d been more of a happy drunk when they were young. And he probably had less cash to fling around on whisky in their early courting days. Now, she was stuck with it, lived with it. Her compensation was our bizarre financial security – and me. So rather than become bitter or aggrieved – like my grandmother, who became overwhelmed with bitterness and permanent resentment about Jack’s Drinking – she immersed herself in the joy of what she loved, a sane approach given the circumstances. It made life easier. Had she confronted him or challenged his behaviour things would have been a lot worse all round.

  Throughout the fifties, our little home started to change. Our flat began to show the material evidence of what was happening outside – the country’s slowly emerging consumerism. My mum wasn’t especially house-proud, aspiring to a comfortable and carefully thought out home. She just went out and bought whatever big item we needed after my dad had handed over the money. First came the seventeen-inch TV set from Bardens on Kingsland High Street, bought on hire purchase. Each week she would march down to Bardens and pay off the l6/6d (sixteen shillings and sixpence) weekly payment, spread over two years. My dad could have easily handed over cash for the set, around £70, then. But he liked the idea of the new HP; it appealed to his sense of ‘have it now, pay up later’. And so my mum was able to replace the somewhat shabby utility post-war furnishings in our flat with brand new furniture: a three-piece moquette lounge suite, at £40 (just seven shillings and nine pence a week), and, for their bedroom, a £60 walnut mahogany bedroom suite at eleven shillings a week from Davants down the road, as well as a new dark-green fitted carpet to cover the grim and ancient lino in the hall and living room. For some reason, probably because they didn’t have a clue about hiring a decent local fitter to lay a brand new carpet – they certainly couldn’t do it themselves – the carpet was poorly fitted. And it remained as it was. Getting value for money or a good job done didn’t figure with either of my parents. You paid. And if you got a bad job, you shrugged and lived with it. It wasn’t that important.

  We acquired a fridge from the local North Thames Gas Board showroom, also on the ‘never-never’ (long-term credit), another eight bob (eight shillings) a week. The fridge was a tiny box by today’s standards but it worked. Processed cheese squares wrapped in silver paper, nestling in their little round box are an early memory of what we kept inside our first fridge. And, of course, the new frozen foods – things like peas and fish fingers were popped into the tiny freezer section at the top.

  The TV, however, was a technical disaster. Getting it to work needed considerable patience. The picture was often fuzzy and, no matter what you did with the indoor aerial, there were frustrating nights trying to get it to work properly if you wanted to watch programmes like What’s My Line? (I was somewhat fascinated by a rather rude man called Gilbert Harding, a permanent fixture on the show, perhaps because his big glasses reminded me of The Old Man) or even the puppet Muffin the Mule (which I thought was silly; I wasn’t a kid for puppets or even dolls).

  Often, we’d wind up peering at the screen, trying to watch a programme while horizontal lines ran right across the set or there was some other form of major interference. Yet no matter how dodgy the picture, after the coronation in ’53, Britain’s t
elly habit really took off. Even if you wound up stuck with nothing but the Test Card, the permanent fixture on the screen between programmes. Viewing hours were very limited in those early days, until commercial telly got going after the mid-fifties.

  Around this time we also acquired what became my dad’s most cherished possession: a proper cocktail cabinet, which took pride of place in the corner of the living room. This too was bought on the never-never, courtesy of our high street; it was an ugly, shiny edifice with a pull-down handle that revealed the full works, the bottles of sherry, advocaat, gin, whisky, brandy and Babycham and the accompanying little cocktail glasses with plastic cocktail sticks, all lit up by an internal light. It was all incredibly sophisticated. But since we rarely entertained, it never got used unless my parents had a drink before stepping out for a big night.

  Our cleaner, Annie, arrived each week to do very little except moan about everything and everyone, wielding a duster for a brief half hour, thus ‘earning’ her two-and-sixpence. My mum was always complaining about her, after she’d left. In those days, there was no Dyson or Henry to whizz round the floor, but a rather pathetic carpet sweeper, which didn’t really do the job. Nor was Annie’s ‘dusting’ up to much. If it did get vigorous and my mum and I had gone out briefly, it usually meant returning to damage.

  ‘I can’t believe it, she’s broken something AGAIN,’ Molly would wail, holding up the remains of a ceramic ashtray, new ornament or cup.

  ‘I’d swear she does it on purpose.’

  Annie had a big family, about six kids, and a layabout husband who always seemed to be home sick or out of work. My mum felt sorry for her and was just too kind to go the whole hog and sack her. Nor did she dare dock Annie’s wages for the breakages or bother to tell my dad about her shortcomings. And so she ‘cleaned’ for us every Friday morning for several years, only resigning when the authorities finally rehoused the family in far-off Dagenham, much to my mum’s relief. And despite my dad’s encouragement, Annie was not replaced. My mum said she could manage the dusting and a proper Hoover vacuum cleaner was eventually acquired, also paid off in a two-year repayment deal.

  We needed to keep some of our home intact, after all.

  CHAPTER 17

  THE ELVIS YEARS

  I am conjuring up magical powers on stage – in Stoke Newington. I don’t know it but this is my swansong as a child performer, playing the sorcerer’s apprentice in my last ever primary school concert at the Town Hall.

  The concert, set to a scratchy recording of classical music, is based on a segment of Fantasia, the animated hit Disney movie of the 1940s, with Mickey Mouse playing a youthful apprentice magician who creates magic he can’t control. And I’m very conscious of my power, immensely pleased with myself, as I stride onto the stage in my apprentice costume, waving my axe, summoning up mysterious elements I don’t understand and creating havoc – until my cloaked master with the pointy wizard hat returns to set things right.

  ‘Don’t mess around with things you don’t understand’ is the useful metaphor for the piece. Yet this, somehow, is lost on me. It is the storytelling itself, the dramatic effect of live performance, spouting words set to powerful music that has me in thrall. But when the overenthusiastic clapping of the admiring audience of mums and dads fades away, so does my performing career. For I am now about to step up to grammar school. I’ve passed the Eleven Plus exam with flying colours. A glorious future awaits me …

  ‘Skinners’, glorious Skinners’ were the opening words of my new school song. Well … it was glorious for some. It certainly had illustrious origins: The Skinners’ Company’s School for Girls was founded by the Worshipful Company of Skinners, one of the oldest of London’s medieval Trade Guilds, or Livery Companies.

  Housed in a Victorian building on Stamford Hill, this was a grammar school that placed sporting excellence above academic achievement, which naturally had me right out of the picture from day one. And my brief stint there – just over three years – proved to be a total flop, a bit of a disaster. From hero to zero. Within a year of arrival in September 1956 – the same year that Elvis started to make shockwaves around the world – I’d morphed from the swot child, the eager performer who’d never been kissed, didn’t yet use lipstick or wear a bra, into a sulky, sarky Elvis-mad teenager who’d lost all interest in performing – or study.

  At primary, I’d remained, somewhat obsessively, at the top of my class every year. My final school report said: ‘Shows outstanding ability in any form of written expression.’ Hopes for my future soared. Call it puberty, call it lack of a competitive spirit – I’d had little competition at primary from my premier league niche – but once placed with a group of equally bright girls of my own age, I simply stopped bothering. And I became a mess: wild, uncombed hair, school skirt pocket stuffed with rubbish, relentlessly taking the mickey out of the teachers, sarcastic, pretty insolent much of the time. I didn’t have much respect for authority – or the chance to learn. And it really showed.

  Certainly, the Skinners’ teachers were a very different bunch to the ones I’d known at Princess May. These had been mostly kind, enthusiastic if you showed aptitude and more or less seemed to quite enjoy their work, even if they did have to teach classes of nearly fifty kids in a tough East London environment.

  Skinners’ teachers were more formal, maiden aunt spinster types with cropped hair. They wore stiff tweedy suits with box-pleated skirts. A few of the younger ones were pleasant and communicative. Yet the majority were older, mannish looking or academic, remote characters, inhabitants of a somewhat cloistered, middle-class world very far away from the rough and tumble of the East End.

  Now, of course, I understand more about the backdrop to their lives: mostly well-bred, privately educated women from a very different era. Free secondary education for girls only became available to all after World War II and before that, teaching itself had been one of the very few professions open to women. But not only were female teachers very badly paid, they were often asked to resign if they married. So it really was the unmarried woman’s career choice.

  Yet real social change, especially for women, was now on the horizon. The Pill was just a few years away. The office jobs market was poised to boom. And while our teachers were trained to teach girls who were bright and had real potential, in the case of my year onwards there was a bit of a problem: our interests were being fired, as never before, by all manner of huge consumer-led distractions, the big ones being the start of rock’n’roll (Bill Hailey, he of the ridiculous kiss curl, had already launched the era with ‘Rock Around the Clock’ in l954), which coincided with the arrival of the record player and the telly and, of course, the dawn of the worldwide phenomenon that was Elvis. How could these women, from a world of genteel, polite spinsterdom, possibly hope to hold our attention, compete against all that?

  ‘STAND, CREATURE!’

  This was the usual form of address from the Latin teacher, Miss McLelland. Political correctness was a long, long way ahead of us. Teachers like McLelland, a dark-haired woman in her late forties, made no attempt whatsoever to conceal their disdain for their charges.

  ‘COME TO THE FLOOR, CREATURE!’

  I’ve been caught red-handed. Stupidly, I thought I was safe right at the back of the classroom. But her beady, ever-vigilant eye has spotted me, trying to pass a Harold Robbins book to a giggling Annie Black under the desk. But while my class teacher, Miss Edgar, an English instructor wasn’t a stern disciplinarian, especially with those who demonstrated signs of an affinity with language, Miss McLelland gave no quarter to anyone. Older than many of the other teachers, she had a fan club of none – primarily because everyone hated Latin and couldn’t wait for the lessons to end.

  ‘Latin is a language as dead as dead can be/It killed the Ancient Romans/And now it’s killing me’ one bored wag had scratched onto one of our old wooden desks. And it was true. I didn’t mind French. But Latin was beyond the pale.

  ‘CAN YOU SHOW US WHAT
YOU’RE READING, CREATURE?’

  I shrug. ‘Dunno Miss McLelland. Found it on the bus.’

  ‘HAND IT OVER, CREATURE!’

  Grudgingly, I hand over the offending paperback, which she flicks through, winces then holds aloft at the class.

  ‘NEVER/LOVE/A/STRANGER,’ she says, pronouncing each word with pure venom.

  A few brave souls snigger. I’m done for, yet again. Another detention, my second that week. I am way, way up high on her list of Most Detested Creatures.

  ‘LEAVE THE ROOM, CREATURE AND WAIT OUTSIDE!’

  The trouble was, I didn’t give a monkey’s. There was no remorse whatsoever. At least, in primary school, when I’d got into hot water for pulling the huge plaits of my rival for scholarly supremacy, Valerie Neal, another swot who had the misfortune to be fat, a total affront to my senses, I’d felt mortified after the event. I floundered to find one but I had no excuse, I’d just given into a really bad impulse. Yet at Skinners’ I experienced no guilt at all for constantly being called out, being disruptive – the teacher’s oft repeated description of my attitude. And, of course, I was always a sitting target for getting caught. Other equally cheeky girls managed to stay on the right side of the teachers because they cleverly operated the two-faced technique: devils in the playground when authority wasn’t around, seemingly angelic in class when it was (a useful survival tactic for office life too, though one I never learned at work, either). I never bothered with subterfuge.

  As far as I was concerned our teachers were a joke, ancient, from the Dark Ages, something else to laugh about, sneer at. Learning, alas, was no longer my pleasure, though I was still keen on books and read avidly. And big-selling US fiction authors like Harold Robbins who wrote of risqué topics like prostitution were bound to be of interest: at that stage, of course, any mention of anything remotely sexual was likely to be pored over – it was the only kind of sex education available. And Robbins’ books didn’t hold back … one of the few commercially successful authors of the era who made millions by writing about relationships in vivid prose.