Rising Summer
Authors: Mary Jane Staples
Tim Parkes was three when his parents were killed in a train crash and he went to live with his Aunt May, first in New Cross, and then to Walworth where the living was cheaper. They managed splendidly – and then came the war. Tim Parkes became Gunner Parkes and Aunt May spent most of her nights in the Walworth air raid shelters with Tim keeping an eye on her whenever he was able.
When he got posted to Suffolk he wasn’t too pleased – Suffolk was Country, not like London at all. But in fact there were a lot of things about Sheldham that reminded him of home – the Walworth evacuees for a start. Those of them that weren’t creating havoc in the Suffolk village were creating havoc in Tim’s life. Minnie Beavers – ex-Camberwell – was fifteen, pert, pretty, and wildly in love with Tim. She was determined to inveigle him into marriage the minute she was old enough. Tim was equally determined to escape and choose his own girl.
By the time Tim had gone away to fight the war, and Minnie had joined the WAAF, a great many things had changed in both their lives.
RISING SUMMER
Mary Jane Staples
CHAPTER ONE
ON MY WAY
out of Battery Headquarters to begin my seven days leave, I called in on Bombardier Jones who was in charge of the ration stores.
‘Any chance?’ I asked.
‘Of what?’
‘Well, I’ve got some eggs for my week’s leave.’
‘Nicked ’em off some chickens, did you?’ said Bombardier Jones.
‘No, present from a friend. All I need now is something to go with ’em.’
‘You’ve got a hope,’ he said, but if he was in charge of the rations, I was in charge of the leave roster. ‘All right, slip the conniver six rashers, Parkes.’ Gunner Parkes was one of his two assistants.
‘Don’t be like that,’ I said, ‘there’s me Aunt May as well. I can’t go home with six rashers all to myself and none for her. She’s close to wartime starvation as it is.’
‘Poor old lady, ruddy hard luck,’ said Bombardier Jones.
‘’Ere y’ar, Tim,’ said Gunner Parkes, and he wrapped up a wodge of rashers in greaseproof paper and handed the packet to me. ‘Enjoy yer leave, mate. When you got me down for?’
‘In a fortnight.’
‘Good on yer,’ said Parkes.
‘Who’s in charge here?’ asked Bombardier Jones. NCOs were always asking daft questions like that.
‘You’re a good old bomb,’ I said, ‘so long.’
I caught my train to Liverpool Street from our local station in Suffolk and had the packet of rashers tucked inside my battledress blouse when I came off the train. There were always redcaps prowling about at main stations and if they caught you in possession of what you weren’t entitled to, you could look forward to a spell in the Aldershot glasshouse.
It was the second week in April, 1943. London was bright with sunshine but a bit knocked about. Evidence of the Blitz still caught the eye. So did a profusion of Yanks. GIs were everywhere. I took the tube to Waterloo and a bus from there. The clippie goggled at me.
‘Well, strike me pink,’ she said, ‘if it ain’t me one and only.’ She rang the bell and the bus moved off.
‘Watcher, Nellie,’ I said. Nell Saunders was a Walworth neighbour, married to Bert Saunders. They were both characters. Bert was in the Navy, so Nell had taken a job as a clippie. ‘How you doing, lovey?’
‘Oh, up an’ down, in and out, ’ere an’ there,’ said Nell, a sturdy young woman with a hearty laugh. ‘Clip yer a tuppenny one for luck?’
‘All right, give us a ticket,’ I said, ‘and a kiss as well.’
Nell gave me a smacker. Passengers inside the bus let go a cheer.
‘Got one for me, love?’ asked an old bloke.
‘I’ll kiss yer goodbye when you get off, Grandpa,’
said
Nell and clipped me a ticket. ‘Got some leave, Tim?’
‘Seven days.’
‘That’s the stuff,’ she said. ‘See yer down the pub one evenin’. Give me love to yer Aunt May.’
‘Bless you too,’ I said and took a seat.
Aunt May was priceless, a mother to me, having fostered me since my infant days. My parents had been killed in a train crash when I was three years old. My dad’s sister, Aunt May, a single woman, took me over, brought me up and gave me so much motherly affection that I never missed my natural mum. She’d been born in New Cross where her parents had a newsagents shop. We lived over the shop with her parents. She lost her mother when she was twenty-eight and I was nine. Her dad carried on with the shop and then he died seven years later, just after I’d left school at sixteen. Aunt May sold the shop and moved to Walworth, where living was cheaper: furthermore, its cockneys were her favourite kind of people. Investing the money from the sale of the shop, she had an income of about a pound a week and I contributed from what I earned in my job with an insurance company. So we managed fairly well, the rent of the house being only twelve shillings a week.
My parents were buried in Lewisham Cemetery and Aunt May and I always went once a year and took flowers. She told me that my mum and dad had been a lovely couple and were worth remembering. If I grew up to be like my dad, she said once, the world wouldn’t complain about me.
The bus trundled down the Walworth Road. In the
April
sunshine the old place looked quite bright and cheerful. South London had taken its share of German bombs in 1940 and 1941, but it had been tidied up a bit and there were Saturday morning shoppers out and about. The war had taken a turn for the better when Montgomery knocked Rommel for six in the Western Desert, and Walworth, accordingly, had a perky look.
I alighted at the East Street market stop. Nell saw me off the bus with a smile and a wink. There were always more winks in Walworth than anywhere else. I entered the market. It was crowded. There were wartime shortages and market stalls no longer had a fully laden look, but people were always hoping that what they couldn’t get in shops they could get in markets.
I knew East Street market as well as I knew my own home. I also knew Charlie Chipper who ran a fish stall and sold kippers among other things. Edging my way into the crowds I heard a greengrocery stallholder call.
‘Watcher, Tim, see you got yer khaki duds on, matey. Smart, ain’t we?’
‘Not as smart as you and your scales, Fred.’
The pots and pans stallholder spotted me next. Not a bit shy about all the people around, he sang his greeting in a voice full of Walworth gravel:
‘’Ere comes a treat, walkin’ down the street,
’Obnail boots on ’is plates o’ meat,
What d’yer think of that, then, Tim’s gorn barmy,
Look at what he’s done now, he’s in the bleedin’ Army.’
‘Same to you, Eddie,’ I called. Shoppers were laughing. I went on, making for the fish stall, hoping.
‘Hello, Charlie,’ I said as I reached it.
‘Well, well, and ’ow’s yerself, cocky?’ said Charlie Chipper. He wore a striped apron and a straw boater.
‘On leave,’ I said and waited until he’d finished serving a customer or two. Then I asked him if he’d got any kippers. Aunt May had a partiality for kippers. Not for breakfast, for tea. And I liked them myself. Walworth people were notable kipper-eaters and knew exactly how to separate the juicy flesh from the many bones. But fish was as short as other foods. The country’s fishermen forever had U-boats on their tails.
‘Well, me young cockalorum, I tell yer no lie, I ain’t got none,’ said Charlie, whose stall no longer swam with all kinds of fish and conger eels. His offerings were sparse, although there was a crate half-full of mussels. ‘I mean, I asks yer, kippers! Yes, lady?’
‘I’ll take me ’addock,’ said the new customer, a lovely plump old dear.
‘’Addock, what ’addock?’ asked Charlie.
‘What you promised me yesterday an’ you’d better ’ave it or me old man’ll come an’ do things to yer cockles.’
‘’Ere, yesterday’s been an’ gorn, yer know, missus.’
‘Well, course it ’as, yer silly man, it’s today now and I’d like me promised ’addock.’
‘I don’t see no ’addock,’ said Charlie.
‘No smoked ’addock?’ said the old dear.
‘Ah, now, well now,’ said Charlie, ‘yer didn’t say smoked, did yer? There’s smoked an’ fresh, yer know.
’Ere,
was it you wearin’ a brown ’at with feathers that come and asked me yesterday?’
‘Don’t come the old acid with me, Charlie Chipper, yer know it was and I’m wearing the ’at now, ain’t I?’
‘I like it,’ said Charlie, ‘that’s what I call a cheerful titfer and I got yer ’addock, Queenie. Smoked.’ He produced it, already wrapped, from a hiding-place under his stall. This was the age of under-the-counter stuff. ‘One an’ tuppence.’
‘Gawd ’elp us, you’ll ’ave the camisole off me back if you keep chargin’ prices like that,’ said the old dear, but dug into her purse and paid up.
‘It’s the war, yer know,’ said Charlie.
‘Course I know,’ she said, ‘I been bombed out twice.’
‘All right, me old darling,’ said Charlie, ‘see yer up the park on Sunday. Wear yer best frillies.’
‘I’ll give you frillies, yer saucy bugger,’ said the old dear and went on her way with her smoked haddock and a twinkle in her eye.
‘Now, about the kippers,’ I said.
‘Now, Tim, me young mate, I got me reg’lars to think about.’
‘My Aunt May’s a regular.’
‘So she is and yer been a soldier for a couple of years or so, Tim.’
‘So how about a couple of kippers before I die for my country and your smoked haddock?’
‘Fancy some mackerel?’ suggested Charlie.
‘Fancy getting your stall blown up?’ I countered. Kippers were like gold dust, of course, but there was always a way of getting a favour out of Charlie and that
was
to carry on a palaver with him. And I had a feeling some kippers were hiding themselves under the stall. I was after treating Aunt May.
‘Yer twistin’ me arm,’ said Charlie. ‘Still, if yer’d like to say a few kind words about me to yer Aunt May, I might be able to oblige yer.’
‘Yes, I’ll tell her to be up the park on Sunday wearing her best frillies,’ I said.
‘Now yer talkin’,’ said Charlie and he gave in with a grin. He ducked under his stall with a sheet of newspaper in his hand and came up a moment later with the newspaper wrapped round something just as three more customers arrived, all hard-working Walworth women.
‘There y’ar, soldier, pound of fresh Cornish pilchards,’ he said, in case the new customers got ideas. ‘One an’ four.’
‘Ruddy robbery,’ I said, paying up. ‘Still, ta, Charlie love.’
‘Give ’im a cuddle as well, soldier,’ said one woman. ‘’E’d like that, wouldn’t yer, Charlie? And I’ll ’ave some of them pilchards.’
I left Charlie to explain he’d just run out of pilchards and walked down King and Queen Street. It was no surprise to me to see a GI arm in arm with a girl. They stopped at the door of one of the flat-fronted houses. The girl opened the door by pulling on a latchcord and took her GI in. It was a fact, GIs were everywhere, they’d even found King and Queen Street in the heart of Walworth.
I crossed Browning Street and turned into Walcorde Avenue, where the small terraced houses were fronted
by
iron railings. Walcorde Avenue was considered fairly posh. Well, there weren’t too many streets called avenues in Walworth. This one led directly to St John’s Church by a little paved pathway. It was a cul-de-sac as far as traffic was concerned and it always looked neat and respectable. Aunt May, like most women, was in favour of respectability, although she wasn’t fanatical about it, being broad-minded.