As the storm clouds of war gathered over Britain in the late 1930s, working-class families braced themselves to make more sacrifices.
Brothers, husbands and fathers had been lost on the fields of France and Flanders in ‘the war to end all wars’ of 1914–18, but now another generation readied itself to take up arms to defend the nation.
Those lucky enough to survive the First World War had returned to battles on the home front: the daily struggle to make ends meet, the fight against deadly diseases with no money to pay for medical care, and the reality of life on the dole or on the breadline throughout the hungry years of the 1920s and 1930s.
Yet through it all, against the odds, families survived.
Children thrived, women coped, and people made the best of it. The turbulent years between the wars saw huge social changes and upheaval, with mass unemployment, marches and strikes as unions fought for better pay and conditions. Working-class men and women gained the vote for the first time. It was inconceivable to many ordinary folk that they now had their say at the ballot box but there was no turning back. However, many would grumble that the vote didn’t put bread on the table or mend the holes in their kids’ shoes.
For most women, day-to-day life went on much as it had done for their mothers and grandmothers. Keeping the family clothed, clean, fed and healthy was a full-time and gruelling job. It was a thankless task, but it was done with love and the support of an extended network of aunts, cousins, grannies and neighbours, who were there to provide a listening ear, words of comfort or just a nice cup of tea when the going got rough. Hopes were brewed, poured and sipped at in Britain’s sculleries, as they had been for generations.
The old adage that kindness cost nothing was woven into the very fabric of the clothes that were knitted and sewn and mended by the hearth, in the failing light of gas lamps. All life’s troubles were scrubbed away at the washboard and run through the mangle in the back yard before being hung out to dry in the alley in the cold light of day, because all the neighbours knew your business anyway.
In the cramped rows of two-up, two-downs, the spirit of community was forged in the pit of poverty and despair.
This is the true story of a family who lived through these trying times and their journey through the first half of the twentieth century, which tested the mettle of the entire nation.
Annie, calm, kind, accepting of her lot, was like so many other working-class women, mothers and wives. She was raised in Soapsud Island, the close-knit community of London’s laundries, and her expectations extended little beyond the washtubs where she worked from the tender age of twelve to earn her keep.
Her mother, Emma, a respected and highly skilled silk ironer, kept a secret from Annie to spare her the shame of a choice she’d made in the grief of widowhood when Annie was just a baby. Annie and her brother George grew up believing their father had died a hero in the First World War. But after Annie discovered the truth about George’s parentage, which is revealed in the prequel to this book, All My Mother’s Secrets, she began to understand why her mother had lived a lie. The bonds between them were strengthened by the half-truths told in order to survive in a world which judged women harshly. Annie vowed to keep the shocking truth from her brother George, just as her mother had done.
She accepted, as so many did, that some secrets are kept for a reason; some secrets must never be told.
Her mother Emma got married for a second time, to laundry hand Bill, and they had two daughters, who Annie helped raise from the age of fifteen, as well as working all the hours she could. She was selfless and single until her mid-thirties, when she fell in love with their lodger, Harry. On the eve of the Second World War, Annie married Harry, a dependable union representative from the local factory, and all her dreams of starting a family of her own began to come true.
She was in awe of Harry, who was eight years her senior, taciturn, political, well read but strangely reluctant to talk about his upbringing in the Northern powerhouse of Newcastle, where coal and shipbuilding were king. Harry received letters from his sister, Kitty, a mysterious and forthright woman who worked as a journalist at a time when women simply did not do such things, but Harry never invited her to stay.
When war came to their doorstep with the harsh reality of the Blitz, the world as they knew it was turned upside down and the past came back to haunt Harry and threaten Annie’s happiness.
This is their true story, of loss and hope, of enduring love and the unshakeable bonds that bind generations through all life’s hurts. It is one of secrets and lies and the will to survive.
It is the true story of a family facing extraordinary choices to keep living ordinary lives in a world where nothing would ever be the same again.