Spring arrived with the thud !
of Swifts returning to their nests,
and the haze of blue carpet
lining the wood floor
as we drive past.
Fear of frost and snow also passed,
Now the Clematis will bloom
all along the fence,
and promise bees a Summer long sun.
I've been wanting to write about the love story that is my Mum and Dad, but one essential word evades me. It's to do with getting rid of a ghost in someone's heart and mind, but it's not an exorcism, it's a much gentler process I'm remembering.
My Mum and Dad grew up on the same street. The war brought them together in this way because my Mum, Nana and three uncles were evacuated there from the centre of Liverpool after the blitz. They were sent to live with an elderly man and I used to have a few momentos from that time which I presume originally belonged to him; an ink well with a poem about the Boer War by Rudyard Kipling inscribed on it and an arm bracelet in the shape of a snake made out of bone and meant to be worn around the upper arm, which I suppose was from the twenties. I gave them away because after years of contemplation, I decided they didn't belong with me. I've inherited alot of things like this. I can feel their specialness, but I don't exactly know their provenance, so it takes me a long time to part with them. I realise that in all truth though, wherever they end up is just another random place and I continue to worry about the spirit that lives in their material.
I assume my Dad was also evacuated to this not exactly sea-side town, more a small village near the sea, with his mother, I can't be sure because he didn't like talking about the past and Mum never told his story to me so I have very little to go on. I know he was born in Liverpool, I have his birth certificate, so I'm guessing they both arrived at a similar time. Both had elder brothers away from home, my Dad's was serving as a Batman to an officer in Australia, Mum's eldest brother spent the war serving in the Merchant Navy. Both of them had lost their father at an early age. There, the similarities ended.
Mum's early memories of the war are of deprivation, starvation and terror. Starvation because my widowed Nana couldn't afford to feed them properly. She worked nights sewing sugar bags at the Tate and Lyle warehouse in Liverpool docks, leaving her elder sister in charge of my mum and her other two brothers. According to family legend, she was cruel, starved them so that they would go round other houses begging for jam butties, refused to let them out of bed to go to the toilet at night which apparently caused some complication of Mum's bowel, rendering her unable to walk for a while, (pre-NHS days, the money could not be found for a doctor so she was wheeled around in a push chair until it rectified itself). The nights when my Nana was home didn't seem much better; apparently she refused to go down the road to the air-raid shelter if the air-raid siren sounded and the aunty would drag the crying children down without her.
I have to presume life got better when the family was evacuated out of the centre of Liverpool after the blitz, though I really don't know what they did for money then. Perhaps they depended on the ' Parish ' they often talked of, which I think was money from a poor fund handed out by the local authority, and the kindness of the old man they lodged with.
I don't know how my father's mother managed either. There was some talk of her being a housekeeper to someone who ran a golf club but I really can't see that any golf would be being played while the war was on. Maybe they too had to suffer the ignominy of accepting charity.
Amidst all the chaos and unhappiness, my Dad was doing well at school. I think school can often be a respite for children in dire circumstances, if the teachers are good. He was identified as someone who could take the exam which could enable him to go on to grammar school instead of leaving education and entering the world of work at 14.
I don't know how many times he failed this exam and was allowed to resit it. It's testimony to his teachers that I know he stayed on at least 18 months longer at school than my mum who left to pursue a training as a nanny aged 14. She got a uniform and always talked with pride about this work, though I'm not entirely convinced she was very good at it at that time. Some of the tales she would tell about her routines and the children she looked after were supposedly funny, but made me uneasy even as a child myself. These were the days when strapping children into and onto things was deemed good practice.
Training works at a really superficial level I think. If you have a very young woman, albeit bright and competent, from a severely deprived background, choosing and being chosen to look after other peoples' children, even with training, even with some psychological input ( Dr Spock in my Mum's case ) can it truly translate into optimum care for the children involved ?
There was a tale to tell about my Nana not paying my mum's ' stamp ' from the money she handed over for her keep each week and this resulting in mum having to leave that line of work. Perhaps she was sacked, who knows, but then began some interesting years of working in a variety of different places including the Penicillin factory, Dunlops, and RAF kitchens. This last job seemed to be her favourite and she used to recall happy memories of dancing with soldiers on Friday nights. Thankfully, she didn't become a G.I. bride, or I wouldn't be me.
Apparently, my Dad wasn't partial to dancing, so he and my Mum didn't ever date each other during their teens. Something happened and Mum became engaged to a Scottish fellow who for many years I thought was called Jimmy Stewart, but it dawned on me eventually that was probably a family nickname for the man who broke her heart.
Whilst Mum's heart was being broken, Dad went from his first job as a runner for the export office at Liverpool dock to an apprentice coach builder, I think making buses, but later going on to make aeroplanes at Hawker Siddeley. There's a huge missing chunk of the story here because somehow, Mum returned to Liverpool from a visit to meet her future in-laws in Scotland single again, having given Jimmy Stewart his ring back and Dad returned from where to where I have no idea and they met in the middle, where Dad proposed to her, famously swearing to stop drinking and to rid Mum of the ghost of Jimmy Stewart.
But now I come to write it, I realise that for all these years I thought they meant Andy Stewart, the Scottish entertainer who would host the New Years' eve show we all watched on tv for years. Two quite different characters indeed.
As indeed my parents were. In fact, they were like chalk and cheese. Dad was tall, blond, quiet, bookish. Mum was small, dark, extravert, an ardent film lover. Dad would listen and quietly tap his fingers to classical music, enjoying composers such as Beethoven and Liszt through to Holst and Vaughan Williams. Mum would sing and dance along to popular songs on the radio ranging from This is My lovely Day and Let's Twist Again to anything by Tom Jones and Neil Diamond. Dad read science fiction and historical novels. Mum read women's magazines.
I did them all.
I have this photo. What used to fascinate me was their hair. I always thought they both looked smashing,
but wondered at their hair, if it was the style or the wind perhaps, a sudden gust had impossibly lifted their
fringes and carried them upwards ? Having accompanied my Mum for weeks on shopping trips to find
just the right clothes and accessories for my brother's wedding, I know that she will have spent months
planning her own wedding outfit. I love her hat and I really wish I'd got the chance to ask her what
colour her suit was. I'm imagining it as cream. I know the spray in her lapel would have been freesias
because they were her favourite flower. Dad managed to look dapper whatever he wore. Something
to do with the way he carried himself, even when he reached eighteen stones. I feel very proud of
them both when I look at this photo', despite them being stood in front of the shed wall.