As Luck Would Have It

Grandpa and Grandma were mainly with us during the Blitz. Grandpa stood outside the shelter and stationed himself as if on guard. I can’t say what he thought he would be able to do if a bomb fell on us. I do remember later that if anyone farted in the shelter they were made to stand outside – expelled as a punishment. Perhaps this was what Grandpa kept doing!

Soon I would go away, too; that was inevitable. But to where, and with whom?

2

OUR WAR

Dad was called up into the army and left us in 1941, but as he had bunions so badly (at one time he was in Croft’s Hospital with them, where they cared for him in the maternity ward!) he was never sent abroad to a war zone. As a humble private he served in the Royal Army Service Corps at postings in Scotland, Wales and the South.

When Hitler threatened to invade England Dad was stationed on Clapham Common, pasting up and setting out dummy tanks and guns of painted cardboard on the Common. They used lorries and dug tracks in the ground to make it all look real, so the Luftwaffe flying above would think we were heavily fortified.

Uncle Henry joined the Catering Corps. He was stationed at Reykjavik in Iceland. Later he was posted to a barracks in Buckinghamshire, so eventually – after the Blitz and not necessarily for my safety – Hilda took Raymond and me to stay with her not far from him in Little Brick Hill, a village outside Bletchley, near Cosgrave. We lived upstairs in the village pub. Mum stayed behind in Essex Road working, so she was very lonely and of all of us most exposed to danger. She’d come out to see us at Little Brick Hill whenever she could, and this was always a treat.

But my life with cousin Raymond was quite the opposite.

Raymond and I were billeted together in the pub, sharing a room. My cousin Raymond was six or seven years older than me and I spent a lot of my childhood years with him. Auntie Hilda treated me with kid gloves – she would love the Jesus out of me – while Raymond got the rough end of her tongue. It was he, not me, the golden boy, who always seemed to come in for it.

Not long before we were evacuated there was one hell of a ruction which I will never forget. I was round at Poplars Road and Auntie Hilda asked Raymond to take a jar of precious jam through to the front room and put it in the cabinet where she stored the best pieces. He picked up the jar and pranced up the passageway, puffed up with airs and graces as he went, possibly the more so as I was watching, but as he came through into the front room the lid spun off the jam, and the jam shot out of the jar all over and up the wall. Hilda was so furious that she completely lost her rag and knocked him to kingdom come.

‘Auntie, Auntie, stop it, stop it!’ I screamed, as I stood by terrified.

Now that we were living together in Little Brick Hill, Raymond at last had me in his power and at night under the bedclothes he had the chance to take his revenge. He would scare and terrorise me, tickling me, pummelling me, playing at ‘tortures’ under the sheets.

‘Why can’t he stop trying to frighten me all the time?’ I remember thinking. ‘I am so much younger than him, so why is he tormenting me so much?’

It was pretty obvious to someone a bit older. With hindsight I could quite understand him wanting revenge on me. I was treated as the special one, the one apart from the rest of the family, while Raymond was the ‘bloke’, the laddish one. Later I realised that I was always accepted as the one who didn’t quite fit in, who wasn’t going to take an ordinary route through life.

One day we went apple scrumping together in the orchard of a big house where a grand lady lived – a highly dangerous thing to do, for it was trespassing and illegal. I didn’t feel part of it, but I followed where Raymond led. The school I attended gave a picnic party for the local children, but they wouldn’t allow evacuated kids like Raymond and me to join in. Learning of this, Hilda went ballistic, stormed off to the headmistress, and made such a fuss that in the end, while we were still not included, we were taken back to the pub and had our own picnic. At that tender age I’d never heard language like Hilda’s – it was quite some gab she had the gift of!

All was clear from bombing raids when I returned home to Essex Road in late 1944. Like the thousands of young children sent out of London to avoid the Blitz and the destruction of much of the East End, I was restored to Mum – and Dad when on leave. We were reunited, Hilda and Raymond, too. Grandma and Grandpa were full of joy to see us again. Dad was still away, but hardly very far away: in Clapham.

Victory was in sight. But unknown to us there was a new and even deadlier threat. We came back to what was the most terrifying ordeal of all, the destruction caused by the pilotless planes; first the V1 flying bombs, then the deadly V2 rockets launched on London from mobile trailers.

The flying bombs were like a dark shadow, chugging, rattling and droning across the sky, with their 1,000 pounds of explosive which always seemed to be released at a point just above your head. We would sense that, because the noise would suddenly cut out, and we never knew if they’d glide onwards or fall straight down. During the cold, miserable winter of 1944 we got to know these new weapons: all at once, without any warning, there would just be this eerie silence. They were fired straight into sub-orbital space and came down so fast that if we heard them we had been lucky and had escaped.

One day this happened to us. ‘Face down on the floor everyone!’ shouted the white-coated fishmonger. I was round at Poplars Road. Raymond and I had been sent out to buy fish for Kitty, our cat.

There was a flash and then a huge explosion as the rocket hit the Baker’s Arms bus shelter about 150 yards away. Everyone threw themselves on the floor of the shop. Buildings were blown up or simply collapsed. Debris flew everywhere. Bodies, blood and severed limbs were scattered across the street; ambulances screamed and sirens wailed as fire engines and rescue squads arrived.

Raymond and I had flattened ourselves on the fishmonger’s floor. We’d had a very lucky escape. There was dust and debris everywhere. A woman came up to where we lay flat on our bellies, quivering with terror.

‘Where do you live?’ she asked. ‘Do you live locally?’

This kind woman then took each of us by the hand and brought us back to Auntie’s place in Poplars Road. Here a couple of front windows had been blown out and we found Hilda in a petrified state, sitting on top of the kitchen table. She was perched there as if there was a swirling flood rising around her.

‘You must take shelter under the table,’ she’d been told before the air-raid warning and the rocket struck. Definitely the safest place was to shelter under it.

‘But I can’t, no I can’t!’ she shrieked. ‘There’s a mouse there!’

The Pathé or Movietone newsreels at the cinema where we viewed the horrifying footage of these new terror weapons were miles away from the reality of their destruction. The rockets had a double demoralising effect on a tired and war-weary East London, where destruction had been diabolical. Over 6,000 people died, many in our area, and tens of thousands more were wounded – a huge toll. My evacuation to Bletchley had then proved to be effective because my worst moment of the war was back at home on my return.

Even so, these years, when so many suffered death, destruction and misery, were for me a happy and secure time when only at rare moments was my sense of good fortune disrupted or broken. We were fighting the Germans, but that was all I knew.

I didn’t see much of Dad, so I was hardly aware of him, but in the laundry he sent home to Mum he would include sheets of Bakelite (which he used in his war work in the army to wrap up the imitation planes and soldiers) for me to play with. Aside from the separations, there was such a great spirit with everybody pulling together, and we kids had a great time.

Later when I was a bit older on my return to Leytonstone in late 1944 I remember rushing down the steps in daylight to the shelter, but without Dad. He had gone away and was now a stranger, a shadowy figure who occasionally visited on leave. He played very little part in my life in those early infant years.

Yet even without having my dad there to look after me I was never worried, never scared, and never had any decision to make: I was supremely well cared for by everyone. I never felt lonely and on my own.

I accepted life, I accepted what I was doing, the world around me, and what was happening to me without ever questioning it.

3

THE RETURN OF ALFRED JACOBI

The war in Europe was over. I had seen virtually nothing of Dad now since 1941 and was excited at the thought of his homecoming.

On Victory in Europe (VE) Day in May 1945 we held a fancy-dress party in Poplars Road. Everyone carried out chairs and tables into the middle of the road and covered the tables in tablecloths of all different shapes and colours.

With basic foodstuffs rationed, we had been fed on spam – plentiful tinned spam – and cheese-and-potato pie was my favourite, which Hilda used to bake. Vegetables were even scarcer than fresh meat, but I was too young to know what they were, so I hardly missed them. Powdered milk and powdered eggs were part of the staple diet, and there was hardly any fruit to eat. Everyone has their first banana story. I had no idea what to do with the first banana I held in my hand, how to peel it and get at the inside, but it was exotic – extraordinary.

Foods which had been scarce were brought out of hiding and piled high: sausages, eggs, cakes, cold chicken, mince pies, cup cakes. Fizzy drinks, too: ginger beer, lemonade, Dandelion and Burdock, and the new import, Coca-Cola.

There were races and stalls, as well as the sumptuous spread, and everyone was merry, danced and sang and had the time of their life. I wore a costume made by Mum out of wartime ration cards and books, all of which she had carefully sewn together. I had a painted sign pinned to the front of my costume – ‘Mother’s Worries’ – and with this I won first prize. They even took a professional photograph of me wearing it as ‘Wartime Ration Boy’.

When Mum took part in the egg and spoon race, she fell over just as she was winning and nearly broke her nose. She was covered in blood and I was screaming. I was terrified by what had happened and suddenly had a terrible premonition and fear that she would die.

I was too young, not yet seven, to take in the speeches on the radio, the thanksgiving service, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, voicing his relief and exultation, and everyone paying their tribute to the King as the Head of our Great Family. All this was going on, yet I missed my chance to listen to the Archbishop of Canterbury who spoke in such a dignified and unselfconscious manner, without an inkling that one day I would be playing his predecessor, Cosmo Lang, who was something of a villain, in The King’s Speech.

When we were back home fireworks lit up the sky, which made me for a moment start up with fear, as not long before flashes and explosions had told a different story.

Uncle Henry could pick up any tune on the piano and play it. Just as victory was declared and we were celebrating at home, he got very drunk. He was the one who had cooked for victory all through the war, and been in Iceland, but now he was very inebriated and started hammering out something on the piano. Turning to us with a big grin he said something in a kind of roaring voice which really upset me, really terrified me.

‘I’m going to set the house on fire tonight!’ he roared.

I instantly burst into tears. I took Uncle Henry’s jovial remark quite literally, instantly remembering the V2 rocket that had hit the Baker’s Arms bus shelter. It seemed the most dangerous thing anyone could say, and even though I knew he was very jolly and drunk I really believed he was about to set our house on fire with a box of matches.

I looked around at everyone and they didn’t seem to mind – but I minded!

The VE Day celebrations in 1945 had been and gone and still no Dad had appeared. But then in 1946 there was a national holiday commemorating Victory in Japan (VJ) Day and suddenly Dad was back, still in uniform. Immense crowds gathered in central London, and the rejoicing was universal. The lights were switched on in Piccadilly Circus and the Coca-Cola sign illuminated. We caught the Tube and joined the great congregation of people. Dad hoisted me up on his shoulders above the crowd to give me ‘a flying angel’.

I loved it. I was with him at last.

This was the first time I reckoned my father as a presence. Would I rush at him, throw my arms around him as Mum did with me? I had a sense of ‘Was I going to like him? Would I take to him?’ It was from both of us, Mum too, this feeling of reticence. Mum and he had to get their lives together after the war. There were to be no more babies – and what about sex? Neither ever spoke about it, and I guess probably never did even with each other. I had no insight into where babies came from: I must have lived in cloud cuckoo land. But I never thought about it. Why should I? We never lived in a sexed-up universe.

I’d love to have talked more to both of them, heard more about their experiences, for what had happened during the war would be with them for the rest of their lives. I never discussed with my mother how it had been for her, never questioned her, which I regret. But everyone, in spite of the extreme deprivation, had helped one another, and we knew what it really meant to be a neighbour.

So many people around us lived life without complaining, not fearing death or injury, and accepting one or the other when it came. Life generally was dedicated to a higher role, and it was rare for those around us to exaggerate their sorrows or miseries, or their survival.

But soon people retreated into themselves again and became self-centred, so that feeling of camaraderie after the war didn’t last long.

4

THE CHRISTMAS CONNED ’EM

At the end of the same year, Christmas 1945, there were twelve of us at home, and I was now seven years old.

The Poplars Road crowd came to our house every Christmas. After Christmas dinner, for which Mum cooked the turkey – the first I’d ever seen – and after we’d heard the King’s Christmas Day speech on the Home Service – the first since VE Day, 1945 – we settled down to play games. One was called ‘Conned ’em’ (slang for ‘conned them’ and not to be confused with something that sounds identical!). Conned ’em had become a family ritual, and we played for money.

We divided into two teams, and to start someone would find a sixpence. The captain of one team placed the tiny coin of silver under the table, and then each one in turn held their hands under until the captain put the sixpence into one of their hands. Then, watched by the other team, they brought up both clenched fists. The other team took it in turns to guess, plump for a hand, and call out ‘Peace’ if they thought the sixpence was there. It sounds simple, but there were tricks and different calls, which was why it was called ‘Conned ’em’.

On this occasion the betting built up into quite a big pile of money. I disappeared under the table and started to pray I would win everything. They watched as I made my retreat, and as usual Raymond, my cousin, was looking very suspicious. I had a flash of instinct and knew who had the sixpence, so I came out from my hiding place and called out ‘Peace!’ at Raymond.

And that was it. I’d judged correctly: he had the silver sixpence and I’d won the pot. He was furious and stormed out of the room.

It was only much later that I discovered that Raymond was not Uncle Henry and Auntie Hilda’s natural son, but had been adopted. Even at a very early age I had a sense of my own entitlement in the way I was treated by Mum and Dad, and Hilda. I could see that Raymond was sort of humiliated in, or by, my presence. Even so, and despite the fact that he terrorised me somewhat – although not too seriously and certainly not traumatically – we spent a lot of time together.

Looking back I can see how there was a slight conspiracy in the family to protect me as someone different, not quite run-of-the-mill, something that in a way cosseted me as special, as if somehow they knew I was going to break the mould, but were not sure how this would happen.

5

MUM

Throughout my childhood, Mum would often be sitting at her Jones sewing machine, extending the life of worn sheets and towels by cutting and re-sewing the less worn outsides to form the middle. Until rationing was stopped in 1952 our allowance of clothing coupons, just over a hundred a year, made people thrifty and careful to re-knit jumpers which had been unpicked for the wool, and to save and cut down old suits.

Kids wore smaller versions of what their parents wore. Mum kept and stored everything that could be re-sewed or adapted for other use, and as a child I had just three sets of clothes, one for school, one for play, and one best suit. I ached for more grown-up clothes. Tea, meat, butter, sugar and footwear: all, too, were rationed.

No dishwasher, no washing machine: Mum did everything on her own. She never had a big wardrobe, and didn’t have many clothes. Yet as she worked in a store drapery department, and was the boss’s secretary, we always had these lovely materials around the home which she’d make into costumes for me, tasteful wallpaper or decorations, and plenty of knick-knacks, although these were rather kitsch. Otherwise there were net curtains in the front room to stop people looking in, and rich drapes. Very house proud, very clean, and while she was out at work during the day Mum worked hard in the home, but now when I look back I can see she was a terrible cook.

Dad and I would never complain, but her best shot was cooking a joint for Sunday lunch. Her Sunday roast was passable, although well done – and it would always be very well done. Later I would be able to say that she couldn’t ‘nuance’ a rare steak. For her it was just meat, and whatever the meat was – lamb, beef, pork – it came out the same. I remember her omelettes were always open, like Spanish ones, large and on the leathery side. Sunday afternoon teas were of tinned salmon, spam, cucumber, radishes, bread and butter; altogether our food was plain and wholesome. She wasn’t interested in cooking; she didn’t have time to be interested.

Mum spoke, like Dad, with an East End accent, but was slightly more educated than he was. She had been to Hackney Cassland Road School, quite a good school near where my other grandmother lived, and she’d even learned to speak a bit of French.

I had only ever visited this granny once, as a very young child, when I had some flowers – a bunch of anemones – pressed into my hand to give her, and I was waiting outside the door.

‘Can I take my flowers in to Granny?’ I asked.

Mum said yes and I marched boldly in with them, and laid them beside Granny on the bed where she lay asleep.

I looked at Granny Lapland as she lay there. She seemed so peaceful and I did hope she would like my anemones.

There was a strange atmosphere in Granny’s room, as if time were standing still.

It was only later that I found out she was dead.

I knew from the age of six, when I dressed myself up in Mum’s wedding veil, that I was going to be an actor.

‘Do you know what you want to be when you grow up, Derek?’ I remember Mum asking me one day when I was older.

‘Oh yes, Mum, I know – I’ve always known. An actor.’

Would Mum and Dad mind, would they oppose me? It was a world they knew nothing about, nor did I.

‘Don’t you worry, dear, we’ll see you right. I’m sure you’ll land on your feet whatever you do.’

‘Oh well, it will be something different from your Dad and Uncle Henry – less boring perhaps – although as a chef Henry always fancies he’s a bit different from the run of the mill, don’t he?’

Henry was short and stocky, sandy-haired and freckled. He had a great sense of fun, and sometimes took risks, putting big money on horses and dogs. Later he’d take me with him to Walthamstow dog stadium, which was very exciting.

For a short time I joined the cubs and scouts, and once went to an annual camp. I remember with no affection sleeping in a tent in a famous scout park, being endlessly soaking wet, and loathing the communal life when we lived off things called ‘twists’ and ‘dampers’. We ate a sort of soup, which I suppose was chicken soup with barley, and which we made ourselves.

In the evening we sat around the campfire singing the usual ‘Ging Gang Goolie’ – ‘Ging gang goolie, goolie goolie goolie, watcha!’ – and being very silly. We played awful games like ‘British Bulldog’, when ten boys would be pitted against one, which was an excuse for a roughhouse. I am physically not very brave, so it didn’t suit me at all.

When I acted in plays as a child, I was always dressed up in all the ‘best frocks’, because Mum made or provided the costumes. It soon became apparent that, with Mum’s involvement, school was an extension of home and home an extension of school. She was outgoing, gregarious, chatty and quite extrovert, sometimes even flamboyant, and would speak her mind without inhibition. She could be very demonstrative. I was quite shocked later on when she met the famous actress Diana Wynyard in a car park opposite the Old Vic. She threw herself at her, and kissed her.

But there were other times when I heard her crying out in pain and anguish – though never directly in front of me, for she didn’t want me to know she was suffering from an illness I wasn’t supposed to be aware of. She would never complain how terrible the pain was. She tried to hide it, and sometimes she’d just go upstairs to be on her own. I was never taken up to see her.

Dad would ring up the doctor at once. Mum was careering round the room like a wounded animal, trying not to show pain, bumping into furniture, and never able to find relief, while Dad would prevail on her to sit down.

She’d had a mastoid operation before I was born, and the middle ear problems she suffered were recurrent. Our doctor visited us every week to examine her. He came every Wednesday and would give her medicine for them. During these terrible attacks she couldn’t stand, couldn’t lie down and lost all sense of balance. It was agonising for Dad to see and hear her when she was undergoing one of these attacks. I always feared she would die, for basically she was my rock, my comfort.

These problems became a nightmare: I couldn’t stand the idea of her attacks, nor could I help them. I had a complete lack of wanting to confront anything, and also a lack of responsibility, which was possibly a sign of how I was protected by Mum and Dad from some of the harsher realities of survival. It was all too evident with my childhood pets.