Her Ladyship's Girl (25 page)

He was eventually convicted and sentenced to penal transportation, but he escaped from the prison ship
Zetland
. He was recaptured and taken by hackney coach to Newgate Prison. But the
coach was being driven by his father-in-law, who took a detour through Petticoat Lane, where Ikey’s friends overpowered the guards, and he got away again. He fled to New York, but his wife
and children were arrested and transported to Tasmania. When he found out about this, he followed his family out there and that was the end of his reign around this area of London. But some said
his ghost stalked the streets around Houndsditch and Whitechapel, and Albert was sure he’d seen the man’s silhouette sitting at a back table in the pub one moonlit night. It
didn’t bother me. I’d seen worse things than Ikey Solomon’s ghost wandering around in the dead of night.

I had every alternate Saturday off, and Sunday the following week, and I went out dancing on those nights with either May or Lizzie, or on my own if they were working. Most of the big dance
halls were in the West End, but there was the Sackville Club in Fenchurch Street, which wasn’t far away, and Quaglino’s near The Tower and the Victoria Danse Salon in Holborn and the
Moulin Rouge in Brixton. Local church halls also ran dances on a Saturday night and there was always somewhere to go. I liked to dance and my limp got a lot of funny looks when I was doing the
Lindy Hop. The bigger venues had orchestras and the smaller ones usually had a three-piece combo and some just a piano. The floors in the West End were sprung or highly polished and the others were
just plank or stuck-down sheets of linoleum. Most of the people could dance after a fashion, at least enough to get round the room without crippling their partner for life – if you’ll
pardon the pun. The music was a mixture of all sorts – traditional waltzes and quicksteps and jazz and swing, and it took people’s minds off the drudgery of their working lives and the
doomsday predictions of global warfare.

And so life went on. I stayed at the White Lion all through the rest of 1938 and into 1939. Then the war came, despite what the politicians had told us. The war started on 1 September 1939, with
the German invasion of Poland. Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. It didn’t affect us all that much in the beginning. We thought the brave boys of the expeditionary
force would go over there and mop it all up in a matter of months and we were more affected by the cold winter in January 1940, when the Thames froze over and everyone went out to skate on it. But
the mop-up didn’t happen. The Germans surrounded our troops, along with the French and Belgians, and in June 1940 they had to swim for the boats at Dunkirk to make it back. After that, the
Luftwaffe tried to destroy our air defences so the Germans could invade. They attacked Portsmouth and the RAF airfields and aircraft factories, and the Battle of Britain started and was fought out
during the summer of 1940. But Hitler failed to gain air superiority and chose not to invade. Instead, he decided to blitz London.

They’d been evacuating people from the south of England from late 1939 – then the London Blitz started in September 1940 and loads of cockney kids began to get sent away to the
country. Everything had to be blacked out. The windows of the White Lion were painted black to stop the light from getting through during the hours of drinking, and the lamps were dimmed inside. We
never knew if it was day or night and, during that winter, it was black as the hob of hell outside at night-time. The street lights were either switched off or dimmed by being taped up, so only a
pin-point of illumination was visible. All vehicles and traffic lights had slotted shutters fitted which aimed the beams downwards, and the edges of the kerbs were painted white so people would
know where they were. The bases of trees were also ringed with white paint and men were told to leave their shirt tails hanging out so they could be seen. Signposts and train station names were
removed in case the Germans invaded, and loads of people got lost as a result. Deaths doubled on the blacked-out roads and thousands of people were killed from accidentally walking into trees and
falling off the kerbs and getting run over.

East London was hardest hit during the Blitz, because the Germans wanted to destroy the factories and the docks – it went on for hour after hour, night after night, and we had to run to
the air-raid shelters until the sirens went for the all-clear. I considered going back to Wales at this time, but there would be no work for me there and it felt like I’d be a rat deserting a
sinking ship. No, if May and Lizzie and George and Albert had to put up with it – so would I. A lot of pubs in the Aldgate area were bombed during the Blitz and the White Lion was one of the
few that escaped. We held events to raise money for the war effort and sometimes the cellar was used as a bomb shelter when we didn’t have time to get to the Tube station. Pubs were seen as
the beating hearts of their community, a place where people could meet and gain strength from comradeship in a very British way. As more and more pubs were destroyed, the busier we became, so the
war did well for Albert and the breweries that didn’t get blown up.

Albert had started selling hot food like I suggested by then. It didn’t catch on at first, but now it was proving to be a wise investment for him, catering for police and soldiers and
air-raid wardens working long shifts and for bachelors who’d rather pay for a meal than have to make it themselves. A lot of the East End cafes and pie’ n’ mash shops were blown
up during the Blitz, or their owners just shut up shop and left town till the bombing was over. Albert saw this as an opportunity and it was true what the old saying said – it’s an ill
wind that blows nobody any good. Meat and butter and sugar and tea were all rationed and the already basic fare we served became more and more like Mother Hubbard’s menu. But there were
always dodgy geezers coming in with stuff for sale, and Albert made good use of the black market in the area to get food the ordinary person wouldn’t be able to lay hands on. But, even then,
a lot of the essentials were hard to come by.

Aldgate East Tube station was the nearest and safest place to go when the bombs began to fall but, one Saturday night at the end of February 1941, I was out at a local dance when the air-raid
sirens went off. The closest shelter was the basement of the London Fruit Exchange at Spitalfields Market – it was called Mickey’s Shelter after Mickey Davies, who was a marshal there.
The place was crowded, as it would be on a Saturday night, and we were packed in like sardines. I was standing and the man next to me was sitting on a packing case. He stood up and offered it to me
and I accepted, as it was difficult for me to stand still in one place for a long time, with my foot. He was quite a good-looking man and his clothes were expensive and fashionable. He was short in
stature, about my height maybe, and slight of build. He sported a thin Clark Gable moustache and his teeth were pearly-white when he smiled.

I was getting on for twenty-three and he looked a good eight or nine years older than me, but not really middle-aged, as some of the men in their late twenties looked then. He offered me a
cigarette, but I told him I didn’t smoke. Then he held out his hand for me to shake.

‘Alan Lane.’

‘Anwyn Moyle.’

‘Welsh?’

‘Yes.’

‘
Sut wyt ti
?’
¹⁷

It took me by surprise that he asked how I was in Welsh. So I answered him back in Welsh.

‘
Yr wyf yn
.’
¹⁸

He laughed, and his teeth shone in the shelter lamplight.

‘I’m sorry, I only know that one phrase. It was taught to me by a colleague.’

‘A Welsh colleague?’

‘He was a Dylan Thomas enthusiast.’

We got talking about literature as the bombs fell on the burning city above us and I found him to be intelligent and charming and very good company in such a crisis. I hardly knew I’d been
down there when the all-clear siren went and we were able to emerge into the smoke and flying sparks. He noticed my limp and offered me his arm for support.

‘Where do you live?’

‘Commercial Road. It’s not far.’

‘I’ll walk with you.’

‘Oh no, that’s all right.’

‘I insist.’

So he walked with me to The White Lion and, on the way, I told him I was cook/barmaid there and he said he’d pop in for a pint and a pie some night when there was no madness falling from
the screaming skies. He doffed his hat and bowed slightly to me, like gentlemen did, and I rushed upstairs to my room and watched from the window as he disappeared round the corner into
Whitechapel.

The following Wednesday night myself and May were working and it was quietish by comparison to the weekends, with just a steady crowd in. Then the door opened and I saw Alan Lane standing there.
He looked round first, then walked slowly towards the bar. I ran into the kitchen to fix my hair and put on some lipstick and, when I came back out, May had served him a whisky and water and they
were chatting together and laughing. My eyes went green.

‘Ah, Anwyn,
sut wyt ti
?’

‘I’m very well, thank you.’

I elbowed May out of the way and she flounced off, pouting, to serve some of the other customers. We chatted when I wasn’t busy and he told me he worked as a dealer, though he didn’t
say what in. He lived in a big house in Clerkenwell and I didn’t see a wedding ring on his finger, so I assumed he was single. He asked me what I did on my nights off and I said I liked
dancing. This seemed to surprise him and I knew he was thinking about my limp.

‘You don’t notice it so much when I’m on the dance floor.’

‘What?’

‘The limp.’

He laughed, and his face smiled, even if his eyes didn’t.

May came over and tried to butt in, but my expression warned her away again.

‘You ever been to the Palais de Danse in Hammersmith?’

‘Yes, I used to go there with a friend.’

The mention of the Palais reminded me of the times with Lucy and I felt guilty as I hadn’t been down to her grave for a while. I made a mental note to go there and see her family on my
next Sunday off.

‘Do you still go there with him?’

‘Who?’

‘Your friend.’

‘Her . . . it was a girlfriend. No, we don’t go there any more.’

He had another whisky and water and lit a cigarette. He offered me one, which I declined.

‘Why don’t you let me take you? We can have dinner as well.’

‘Really? I’d love that.’

‘When’s your next Saturday off?’

‘Week after this one.’

‘I’ll pick you up here at six, then.’

I went to serve someone else and, when I came back, he was gone. May wanted to know who the handsome man of mystery was and I played it down and told her he was just someone I met in an air-raid
shelter.

‘Well. If you don’t want him, Annie, I’ll have him.’

I couldn’t wait for my next Saturday night off. But I had a free Sunday before that, so I went over to Bermondsey to visit Lucy’s family. The war was making things
even harder for them than before, and I felt really sorry for the working-class people of London who seemed to bear the full brunt of everything, while the rich could swan off to their country
estates or some other safe haven. If it wasn’t poverty, it was disease, and if it wasn’t disease, it was bombs and bullets. I went again with Lucy’s sister down to her grave in
Bow Cemetery and I laid some fresh flowers and said another little old ways prayer.

There was an air raid on the way back and I was a long way from any shelter. I saw a group of people run towards Tower Bridge when the sirens began to squeal and I followed
them. They ran down onto the pebbles near the water’s edge and took shelter underneath the bridge on the south side. I ran with them and we had to crouch down to get into the tight space
underneath the bridge span. Next thing I knew the air was alive with noise and fire and bits of shrapnel were flying everywhere. We covered our heads with our arms, but it wouldn’t have done
any good if we’d got hit. I could hear the deadly drone of the planes overhead and the sound of the anti-aircraft guns trying to shoot them down. The acrid smell of burning was everywhere and
the thick smoke nearly choked me. Some of the people under the bridge were crying and others were praying and I just hoped I lived long enough to see Alan Lane again. The raid only lasted about
twenty minutes, but it seemed like a lifetime to me. We stayed under the bridge until the sirens sounded the all-clear.

Then we came out to the aftermath.

I made my way back up off the bank of the Thames onto the walkway and across Tower Bridge. The view from the parapet, looking east, was like a view of the end of the world. Fire and smoke spread
throughout the East End and buildings crumbled and minor secondary explosions rang out. I stumbled along past the Tower and East Smithfield and the Royal Mint and into Mansell Street. Fire engines
were spraying water everywhere and soldiers and air-raid wardens were trying to cover the dead bodies with black sheets and tarpaulins. Ambulances and military medics were ferrying the wounded to
hospitals and the whole place was dark and hell-like, apart from the searchlight beams piercing the sky like giant lighthouse lanterns. It took me over an hour to pick my way the mile and a half
home and I had to have a brandy off Albert to steady my nerves when I got in.

The White Lion continued miraculously to escape the bombs and life went on behind the bar and in the kitchen. But I had more than the London Blitz on my mind. I was looking forward to dinner and
dancing with Alan Lane.

He came for me in a black Morris Oxford car at 6:00 p.m. precisely on the Saturday evening. He drove us to the Black Gardenia restaurant near Tottenham Court Road and we had a three-course
dinner of carrot soup with brown bread, followed by roast chicken with parsnips and potatoes and then homemade chocolate cake for pudding. It was lovely. I don’t think I ever tasted anything
so nice in my life. We went on from there to the Palais and we danced the evening away to the music of the Lou Preager Orchestra. Alan was a good dancer and he made allowances for my limp. We had a
wonderful time. He was very knowledgeable and talked about many things and I felt so scintillating and sophisticated in his company. We left before midnight and I thought he was going to drive me
home. Instead, he took me to a place called Crockfords in Curzon Street, Mayfair. The man on the door obviously knew Alan because we were ushered inside with a well-practised smile while others
were being turned away.