It was just after midnight on 14 October 1927, when Lily Moore (née Pope) gave birth to a twenty-three-inch-long baby boy at a maternity hospital in Jeffreys Road, Stockwell, London SW8. The baby’s father, George Alfred Moore, was twenty-three and a police constable stationed at Bow Street. Of course, I’m only quoting this from hearsay. I was much too young to recall such a momentous event as my entry to this world.
I was christened Roger George Moore and we lived about a mile from the hospital, on Aldebert Terrace, London SW8. I was to be the couple’s only child. You see, they achieved perfection first time round.
I don’t remember what the flat on Aldebert Terrace was like, we moved before I was old enough to absorb my surroundings. However, I do remember our new home: it was a third-floor flat 200 yards away in Albert Square–number four, I think. It had two bedrooms and a living room-cum-kitchen. I remember the mantelpiece seeming so high to me; above it was a mirror and the only way I could see my reflection was to stand on the bench positioned along the opposite wall.
Life was happy in Albert Square. It’s funny how little things stick in your mind: the beautiful smell of freshly cut wood from the timberyard next to our garden. To this day I can visualize the two gas brackets on either side of the mirror in the living room. There was no electricity, you see, and these were our only means of light. The china mantles gave off a low, hissing illumination. It was a comforting sound and one I associated with being home in the bosom of my family. The main source of heating was a coal fire. Oh, how this schoolboy’s bare legs would be red-mottled on the shin side from sitting too close to the burning coals; especially when making toast with a long-handled fork. We’d spread beef dripping on it, oh what joy! When I was a little older, I took pleasure in helping my mother black-lead the grate. I was a very obliging child.
Illness played a great–and unwelcome–role in my early life. Mumps were soon followed by a raging sore throat, and it was decided that I should have my tonsils removed and adenoids scraped at the same time. I wasn’t really too sure what this would entail, but was promised that when I woke up from the tonsillectomy I would be fed ice cream. That alone would make my stay in hospital worthwhile, I decided.
Wearing only a little surgical gown and bed socks, I was placed on a trolley, rolled down a corridor and pushed into a lift, its sliding trellis doors seeming very sinister. (I’d only ever been in a lift once before, at Gamages Department Store in Holborn, and that was a much happier occasion, when Mum took me to the toy department to meet Santa Claus.) As we descended in the hospital lift, I felt sure it was to the place where naughty children went if they couldn’t go to heaven. Sunday school had obviously left its mark. I still vividly remember looking up from the operating table upon which I’d been placed, at the big, round lights glowering down at me and the people wearing green masks standing all around. A lady with a sieve filled with cotton wool gazed down into my eyes and then placed the sieve over my face. I felt suffocated by a strong foul-sweet odour, which pulled me down into a long tunnel with yellow and red rings flying at my face. The sound–which I can still hear in my imagination today–was a boom-bam-boom-bam, gradually getting faster and faster as I fell down into hell.
My next recollection was of the smell growing fainter and the boom-bams replaced by the soft murmur of nurses’ voices. I was back on the ward. Then I was sick. I never did get the ice cream they had promised. I was deeply disappointed at the time, but looking on the bright side it might have been strawberry flavour, which I hate.
Aged five, I started school at Hackford Road Elementary. A fifteen-minute walk from Albert Square: turn right on Clapham Road, go to Durand Gardens, cross the main road, trot round the Gardens and there was the school–three floors high, red-brick with large tall windows and surrounded by a red-brick wall.
I don’t remember being left at the gates by my mother or indeed anything about my first sight of the classroom and the other boys and girls. I do, however, recall finding myself in the boys’ urinal and being forced to stand facing the dark grey wall, with a trough at the base, with my legs wide apart as some senior ruffians took turns to see whether or not they could aim between them without splashing my bare legs. English schoolboys’ short trousers left plenty of room between the top of the socks and the bottom of the trousers for the exercise. I can still see my mother waiting at the school gates that first day as I exited the playground, walking with my red-raw knees wide apart thanks to the stream of bubbling warm pee that did not quite make it between them. ‘Tut-tut-tut,’ she said, as I recounted my first day’s ordeal.
It reminds me of a sign I later saw in toilets:
Your head may be in the air, young man,
Your thoughts away as you enter;
But spare a thought for the floor young man,
And direct your stream to the centre.
One evening when we were walking home from school, I told Mum that some boys who had seen her drop me at the gates had asked, ‘Was that your mum? She’s a great-looking tart!’ I didn’t know what they meant. Mum was horrified, not at being described as great-looking–but a tart! Really!
Mum was born just after the turn of the last century in Calcutta, where her father was stationed in the army. She had two sisters–the older, Amy, and then the younger, Nelly. Then came my Uncle Jack, who eventually followed my grandfather’s lead and became a regular soldier.
RSM William George Pope was the grandfather I barely knew. He was widowed when Mum was just sixteen. The loss of her mother affected Mum very badly: she said she thought she would never smile again. It was never discussed how Grandma Hannah died, families didn’t talk about such things, but I suspect it was cancer. A few years later, after returning to Britain, Grandfather Pope took a second wife, whom I was to know as Aunt Ada. She gave birth to my three ‘cousins’: Nancy, Peter and Bob, with whom I spent many of my childhood holidays in Cliftonville, the posh end of Margate on the Kent coast. Though we were all around the same age, they insisted that I treated them with great respect and address them as Auntie Nancy, and Uncles Peter and Bob. I dutifully obliged. Grandfather Pope died in my fifth year.
My paternal grandfather was Alfred George Moore. His only son was my dad, though there were a number of sisters born after him. Sadly, like Mum, Dad was sixteen when his mother, Jane Moore (née Cane), ended her life by placing her head in a gas oven. In those days, suicide precluded the right to a church burial. Dad, who up until that time had taught in a Sunday school, was left numb and disillusioned with organized religion. His father then married the woman whom my father believed was responsible for the suicide, an illicit affair had obviously been going on for some time, and I can only imagine how it must have destroyed my grandmother, to lead her into taking her own life.
Understandably, after this, Dad was very unhappy at home and wanted to leave as soon as possible. At the age of nineteen he saw his chance, and enlisted in the Metropolitan Police. He moved into a police section house and gained his independence from the father he had now begun to despise.
Mum, meanwhile, was working as a cashier at a restaurant in central London–Hill’s on The Strand. From her window position, she would often see this attractive young PC on point duty–before the days of traffic lights busy crossings were manned by policemen. Between directing the buses and cars Dad had also noticed the fair-haired blue-eyed beauty behind her till. Being a rather smart restaurant, Hill’s wasn’t the sort of place Dad would have been able to pop in for an afternoon cuppa. Eventually, however, the opportunity arose and he invited her to a dance. At that point he was actually considering joining the Hong Kong police–to get further away from his unhappy memories of home–but taking Mum to the dance convinced him the grass was greener at home. They married on 11 December 1926 at the Register Office of St Giles in London.
I very rarely saw Dad in uniform, since by the time I was born he had become a plan-drawer, which meant he drew up the plans of, for example, the street on which an accident had occurred, or supplied the sketches and measurements of a crime scene. He had an office at Bow Street, where he and a fellow policeman, George Church, were the E Division plan-drawers, and he remained there until his retirement.
A lot of the time Dad could work at home and, when required, would put on his uniform and go to court to swear to the accuracy of his plans–usually when I was out at school. Working at home meant that he was able to choose his hours and during the summers, if the sun was shining, he would take me swimming and complete his drawings at night. When I was asked as a child what work I wanted to do when I grew up, I replied that I wasn’t going to work–I was going to be a policeman like my father!
Having left school at thirteen, Dad never lost his thirst for learning; he always had books on mathematics to hand and he taught himself French and Italian. He was a superb athlete and gymnast, and could perform on any equipment–the rings, parallel bars–you name it. He was very strong, and had powerful fingers that could grip the fleshy underside of my arms if I misbehaved. He was musical too–he could play the banjo and the ukulele–most stringed instruments, in fact. He was also an amateur magician, a member of The Magic Circle and Institute of Magicians; he even went semi-pro at one point, appearing under the name of Haphazard the Hazy Wizard.
An accomplished amateur actor, as well as playing the lead roles Dad would often direct plays, do the make-up and build the sets. He was a real jack of all trades. I’d sometimes go along with Mum to see his shows. It was so exciting to be in the theatre or church hall and enter this world of make-believe. Early seeds were sown in my mind. I was very proud of my Dad.
Mum and Dad were a great partnership. Mum was the homemaker, Dad was the breadwinner, and I always knew that they loved each other. They didn’t argue a great deal, but perhaps their secret lay in the fact that they never let the sun set on an argument–they would always make it up before they went to sleep.
I’d only been at school a few months when I contracted double bronchial pneumonia. Too ill to be moved to hospital, I was attended at home by the local GP and a District Nurse. I have a clear memory of this lady putting what she called an ‘anti-flagestion’ poultice on my chest. I have tried to find out what exactly an ‘anti-flagestion’ poultice is, but to no avail; maybe it is the confusion of a child’s mind. Whatever it was called, the grey, earthy-looking mess that was spread on lint and placed on my chest and back burned like hell.
One night, after his evening visit, the doctor told my father that he would call again in the morning and that he should prepare my mother for the worst: he would be signing a death certificate. One can only imagine how the young parents of an only child felt.
They must have dozed off, however, because they later told me that they were awoken by a thin voice singing, ‘Jesus wants me for a sunbeam’. A year of Sunday school had prepared me well to announce to the world that my fever had at last broken. A footnote to this tale of woe was that to pay for medical fees (this was fifteen years before the National Health Service came into being) Dad had been forced to sell his motorbike, which he did without quibble or regret.
After that, my recovery was rapid and soon I was out and about. One of the things I loved to do was go roller-skating with my mother. Mum had been a good roller skater in her younger days and always promised me that when my feet were big enough I could have her precious skates. I’d measure my feet time and again to check how they were doing. I had my own set, but hers were ‘grown-up’ skates, and I really wanted them. We’d skate for miles together–sometimes going from Stockwell to Battersea Park, round the bandstand and back home again.
Then there was my ‘gang’–Reg from number six, Norman from number three, Almo from around the corner in Aldebert Terrace, and Sergio from number sixteen–we’d shoot our toy guns, throw stones and get into the odd scrape. We were typical kids. One favourite pastime was to filch a large potato from home and take it to the night watchman’s brazier to bake. It’s a shame you don’t see braziers any more–or night watchmen, come to that. We had a pal who would let us put the potatoes in the fire and then we’d all sit round and tell stories while they cooked. Sometimes he’d even give us a bit of margarine to put on the baked potatoes–oh the smell, the taste! Even to this day, after all the gourmet food I’ve enjoyed over the years, nothing compares to the flavour of those clandestine potatoes on a cold evening.
Sometime during my seventh year we moved across the Square to number 14. Our new home was a first-floor flat consisting of my parents’ bedroom, a sitting room and my bedroom, off which was the kitchen. We had our own toilet on that floor, but the bathroom was shared between us and the two floors above. What a depressing room; a deep free-standing bath and a hot-water geyser that needed a few pennies in the meter for a reasonable bath.
The kitchen sink was where the family washed. Dad had what was called a Rolls Razor–the blade was stropped by moving it back and forth in a metal box that had a strip of leather on its base. When everyone was out I would lather up and stand close to the open kitchen window, with Dad’s pipe in my mouth, hoping that a passer-by would catch sight of me, an eight-year-old trying to pass as a teenager. What a poseur!
For my eighth birthday, I was given a tin toy aeroplane, with propellers that turned when I wound them up and green and red lights that flashed on the wings. I remember Dad turning the lights out at my birthday party so that we could see the lights flashing. This, however, was not my principal birthday gift. Pip had four legs and a perpetually wagging tail; he was a wire-haired terrier and was just a few months old. I was so very happy. Sadly, we had only had Pip for five weeks. One evening, as Mum walked Pip to meet me from my Cub Scout meeting on Clapham Road, poor little Pip ran into the path of a taxi. His young life was snatched away and we were all devastated. I cried all night.
My tears had hardly dried when Uncle Peter, Aunt Nelly’s husband, arrived one morning with a scruffy, undernourished, mongrel–part Irish wolfhound, part Heinz 57 varieties. Peter had come across this sad creature tied up in the back garden of a house where he had been doing some work. The owners were not attached to the bedraggled mutt and had no hesitation in passing him over to Peter. The poor dog must been treated extremely cruelly for most of his young life, so much so that when we took him to the local vet, he advised having the dog put down, as he would never recover from his fear of humans. However, the vet had not taken into account my mother’s fierce love for all creatures. He was named Ruff. And rough is how he seemed on our first meeting. But kind words, good food and plenty of walks turned him into the most loving, funny and adored member of our small household.
Another momentous event in my eighth year was learning the truth about Santa Claus. On Christmas Eve I always slept in the same bed as Mum and Dad so that, come the big day, we could share the joy of opening our presents together (actually, it was more a case of them seeing my joy on opening the presents). This particular year I wasn’t asleep when ‘Santa’ came in to lay out the presents and, unbeknownst to Mum and Dad, I was watching them through the mirror on the wardrobe door as they tiptoed around, stuffing one of Dad’s socks with nuts, tangerines and sweets. Next morning, they feigned surprise at seeing all the presents, but I knew…oh yes, I knew it was them! I wasn’t the least disappointed that Santa didn’t exist. On the contrary, I was thrilled that my parents would do this for me; that it wasn’t someone else who gave me all these things, it was them.
Still in my eighth year, I complained to Mum that my ‘wee man’ was sore. I was hauled off to the doctor and had to stand with my trousers around my ankles while the offending portion of my anatomy was bounced on the end of a pencil. The decision was taken that, for hygiene’s sake, I would be circumcised. That, I knew, was something they did in the Bible: I’d heard it mentioned in the morning lesson during prayers at school. The word always made the girls snigger.
Knowing I probably wouldn’t get any ice cream this time either, the only appealing thing about the whole episode was that we would have to take a bus ride to Westminster Hospital. In those days the famous hospital was across the road from Westminster Abbey.
Once again I experienced what was to become a familiar routine of being dressed in a surgical gown and bed socks. Then came the oh-so-hateful sickly-sweet smell of chloroform, the tumbling down of the yellow and red rings, accompanied by rapidly increasing boom-bams!
Awakening in a large ward, I found myself in a bed at the very far end of what I discovered was the male, not the children’s, surgical ward, next to an extremely tall window from which I could see across to Westminster Abbey. I could also hear the regular booming of the bell from the Clock Tower of the Palace of Westminster, better known as Big Ben. I had a sort of ‘cradle’ over my nether regions to ease the discomfort of the bedclothes coming into contact with the aftermath of the unkindest cut of all.
Having vomited for what seemed an eternity after the surgery, my body was left aching and, eventually, starving. No food that day, they said; all that was allowed was that my fevered lips were moistened occasionally with damp cotton wool. Next morning, the ward became a hive of industry: beds being made, pillows plumped up, bedpans and bottles being shunted around and then, the breakfast trolley! Tea was poured from a white enamelled jug with a blue lining, why that particular piece of information springs to mind, I have no idea. Maybe to delay the memory of the porridge? Ugh. A thin gruel-like mixture with a knob of margarine floating on the surface which, in turn, supported a blob of ‘strawberry’ jam. Not Mum’s cooking, that’s for sure.
At tea time the man in the next bed to mine told the nurse to give me one of his boiled eggs; a luxury supplied by his family. Picking the top off the egg I discovered that it was very runny, hardly boiled at all. My nose wrinkled with disgust and I must have a let out a sigh of discontent, as it resulted in a torrent of abuse from my neighbour, who went on to tell me that I was an ungrateful little sod and to get on with it. I did. You would think that after that humiliating experience I would never ever complain about the way my eggs are cooked. Wrong! Three score and ten years later, I still complain in hotels if the eggs aren’t right.
When it was time to leave the hospital, after thanking the nurses and my generous neighbour, as we boarded the bus home Mum told me that, as I had been a ‘good boy’, she had a surprise for me: a new pair of roller skates. I couldn’t wait to try them out…and it was with knees wide apart, trying to protect my very tender member, that I shuffled and rolled my way around the Square before having to surrender and wait for happier and less painful times.
The one advantage I had over the other boys in my gang was a bandage on my pecker. A flash of that bandage was enough to gain much respect. There is a lot to be said for a little suffering. For the week or so that I bore my bandage, I was the leader of our gang. Whenever there was any query as to who was boss, a flash of that bandage swiftly saw me confirmed.
My ‘new look’ evoked quite a lot of interest in the Square too. The sister of a friend, who was some three or four years our senior, decided that she should be awarded a private screening, so to speak. This grand preview took place as we perched on a bricklayer’s cart, in the alleyway at the back of our house. The cart had two big wheels, a long handle and was extremely unstable. The young lady, so excited by the sight of the object of so many people’s attention, tried to sit on it; thereby upsetting the delicate balance of what should have been Cleopatra’s barge on the Nile when she enjoyed her first tryst with Antony. We were deposited in the dirt, she with her knickers adrift and I with mud on my bandage, which I knew would have to be explained away.
There were others who were interested in what was kept buttoned for the most part too. I first related the following story in 1996 at a UNICEF conference on child abuse, where Her Majesty Queen Silvia of Sweden delivered the keynote speech. There is a reason for prefacing my story with this fact.
My friend Reg and I, both being cubs (cubs scouts in the US), somehow or other acquired a tent that we carried up to Wimbledon Common, which was, we thought, like being inside the railings of Albert Square, only a million times bigger. We set up our camp and, feeling very grown-up indeed, sat inside our stronghold to decide what we would do next. Should we eat our sandwiches? Or go looking for tiddlers and frogs in the big pond? Our deliberations were interrupted by the entrance of a stranger who had the nerve to sit down, uninvited, and then start to mutter something about me having nice knees. I was not one who enjoyed that sort of compliment and so exited the tent, leaving Reg to tell him to sod off, or to come outside with me.
A few minutes later, the stranger emerged from the tent and approached the branch of the tree where I sat swinging my ‘nice knees’.
‘Your friend says that you have a big dicky,’ he said.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ I stammered.
He moved even closer, saying something about he would show me his…I did a backward roll off the branch, at the same time screaming, ‘Reg!’, who scurried out of the tent. Together we ran off to the pond, where we proceeded–as small boys will do under such circumstances–to paddle, splash around and skim a few flat stones across the water.
Some time later, bored with the pond, we took ourselves back to our tent. It was still there but our friend was not. Neither were our sandwiches! The dirty old pervert had obviously decided that if he couldn’t have our bodies then he would have our grub. We trudged back to our respective homes, hungry and wiser–and hoping that the sandwiches would choke him!
I did not tell my mother about that day until I was well into my teens. Somewhere in the back of my childish mind there must have been some feeling of guilt.
When I related this tale at the UNICEF conference, somehow the facts were contorted and a story appeared in the papers saying I was ‘abused as a child’. Then, later, I heard another ridiculous story that stated I was abused at the hands of my father. Both are totally unfounded and untrue–and hurtful.
Two new members joined our happy family. One was a black cat, whose name escapes me, the other was a rhesus monkey called Jimmy, which we inherited from my Aunt Nelly. Why? I don’t know, but he was a welcome addition to our growing menagerie.
Dad made a large cage for Jimmy and he lived in the kitchen. Having no table manners to speak of, at mealtimes Jimmy was put in his cage but would rattle his tin mug backwards and forwards on the bars as if he were a prisoner in Sing Sing (though he had not, as far as I knew, ever seen a Jimmy Cagney movie).
In the summer, Jimmy was attached by a twenty-foot chain to a tree at the end of the garden. There was an elderly lady at number 15 who liked to have her tea in the garden, and one afternoon I heard a piercing scream. I ran out to find Jimmy hanging from a branch tugging at the lady’s hair, which was white and piled up in a bun, or rather un-piling from a bun. I tried to wrestle him off her, but Jimmy was hanging on for dear life and in the end she hurled her teapot at him! Jimmy’s chain was shortened by ten feet after that, and my mother bought the lady a new teapot.
In another of Jimmy’s exploits, the screams came from number 13. He had climbed out of the window of our flat and entered our neighbour’s second-floor bathroom. Jimmy had been playing in the garden all day and I suppose he thought he’d take advantage of the bath that our neighbour had so kindly prepared. When she entered the room, ready to bathe, she discovered Jimmy looking like a drowned rat, inspecting the muddy marks he had slopped all over the walls and floor. She screamed louder than the lady in number 15. I can’t think what my mother had to give as compensation.
Although Jimmy was very happy to be with our cat and dog at home, that didn’t necessarily mean he got along with any other members of the canine or feline world. Mum used to take him out for a walk on a chain and he would happily hop along the railings beside her, though the sight of a dog would make him jump on to Mum’s shoulder for protection. Cats brought out the very devil in him. Reaching down from the railings or wall, he’d grab the cat’s tail with a quick tug and let out a screech, as if to say, ‘Gotcha!’
Summer holidays in Aunt Ada’s boarding house by the sea meant that the family pets had to be boarded and kennelled–which was fine with the cat and the dog, but Jimmy developed a mistrust of humans, and on a couple of occasions, when startled, he bit Mum. The vet didn’t think he could be trusted after the second time and sadly we had to arrange for Jimmy to leave us and take up quarters in Chessington Zoo. Every other week or so we’d trek down to the zoo armed with nuts and assorted fruits for him–which he would never share with his new housemates. They would sit back and respect the fact that these were part of a visit from his old family.
I missed Jimmy and his mischievous ways. I always felt I could get away with a little more mischief of my own when he was around.
I was always fairly good at school. It was rare that I’d ever be out of the top three in my class in any subject, but I was fortunate in having the gift of being able to look bright and intelligent even if my mind was elsewhere. I was the sort of kid who could dash off his homework in the morning and still have time for a game of football before school started. Taking after my Dad, art and drawing were my favourite subjects and it was generally accepted that I’d use these skills in some way when I left.
Being musically gifted himself, my father was keen to see me join in, so when his great uncle Alf gave him a violin, he decided that I should learn to play. So, off Master Moore went for lessons. After about six weeks the violin teacher told my father that he was wasting his money, my time and what was even more important–the teacher’s time! The violin went back in its case and was returned to my great-great-uncle Alf. I didn’t mind. I had more time to play conkers (chestnuts) or collect cigarette cards.
In those days, packets of cigarettes had cards inside from which, by collecting or swapping them, one could make up a ‘set’ of famous people, football stars, cricketers, film stars and motor cars, and the like. They became schoolboys’ currency. We’d play card flicking in the playground too. A card would be placed at an angle against the wall then, from a few feet away, you’d flick a card at it, and whoever knocked it down won the card. Fortunes were made and lost during playtimes at primary school. Sometimes I’d sneakily paste together two cards, making them stronger for flicking and winning!
Conkers was another extremely competitive game for boys. In the autumn, we collected horse chestnuts and threaded a string through each, knotting it beneath the conker. You swung your conker against your opponent’s and if you broke the other conker, yours would become a ‘oner’ or a ‘twoer’, according to the number you could beat. I once had a ‘thirty-fourer’: thirty-four other conkers had been destroyed by my own! There was an art to all of this, and the secrets of success were often attributed to tactics such as placing the conker in an oven and letting it heat for a while, or soaking it in vinegar.
Saturday mornings started with a trip to the ‘Tuppenny Rush’ to see a kid’s film either at The Supershow Cinema or the Granada, both in the Wandsworth Road. We were well served with ‘picture palaces’, as they were so aptly called. The inside of the Astoria, Brixton, was designed to resemble a gigantic Moorish Garden. The Regal in Brixton was another favourite, and the Ritz, opposite the green in Stockwell, was where I saw my first Tarzan film. Flash Gordon, played by Buster Crabbe, was a particular favourite, and his derring-do in Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars or Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe was great stuff and greeted with mighty cheers from all us youngsters. Then there’d be a couple of western series with Ken Maynard or Tom Mix. When a Red Indian (not very PC these days, I know) bit the dust, or when Ken or Tom shot the villain, you could hear the shouts from outside the cinema. And there were the cartoons as well.
Then there were the ‘birthday children’. If it was your birthday and you were a registered cinema-goer, your name was read out and up you’d go onstage, for a presentation–a free seat for next week’s show and a copy of a movie magazine.
I never imagined, sitting in those cinemas, that I would one day be working on cartoon films and even be an actor up on the silver screen. It was during those wonderful trips to the Wandsworth Road that my love of cinema was established.
Mum and Dad would sometimes take me to the cinema with them too. A Jean Harlow movie was a must for my dad and in return, Mum would see Richard Dix’s latest–I particularly remember The Tunnel. At MGM, years later, one of his twin sons, Bob Dix, was under contract at the same time as me, and we became firm friends, leading to me suggesting Bob for a part in my first Bond film, Live and Let Die. Mind you, he was killed in the first minute!
The ‘Tuppenny Rush’ left a penny over from my normal pocket money. Me and my gang–young sophisticates that we were–would go to a pie-and-mash café and have a halfpenny bowl of soup complemented by a halfpenny bread roll; dining on a marble table top. What luxury!
Occasionally, if I was needed on a Saturday morning, I helped the United Dairies milkman instead, for which I would be given the princely sum of sixpence–threepence more than my pocket money from Mum and Dad. I understood that money was tight and I’d been taught never to accept any money from a neighbour, if I’d done a good deed or run an errand for them. With this in mind, one Saturday I was collecting the milk money from an elderly lady–I think she had something like a pint and a half and the bill would have been a penny and three farthings. She gave me tuppence and told me to keep the farthing change. I declined her generous gesture and before I could say that I was not allowed to accept money from neighbours, she berated me, calling me a ‘snotty little ungrateful bastard’!
Summer 1939 was almost over and that brought the end of our visits to Jimmy at the zoo. The clouds that were gathering didn’t portend rain. They were clouds of war, and children and families from the cities were being evacuated to safe country areas. And so it was that, on 1 September 1939, I was to be found with a cardboard label in my buttonhole, a gas mask in a cardboard box over my shoulder, and a case packed with clean underwear and shirts and my best school uniform.
By this time I was a pupil at Battersea Grammar School. I had won a scholarship to enter this posh seat of learning, with its black-and-white striped blazers and black-and-white striped caps with a red-and-yellow falcon. Or was it an eagle? You see, I wasn't at the school long enough to know the difference. I do know that when the results of the scholarships were announced at Hackford Road we were allowed to go home early, and Mum took me to Lyons Corner House for the celebratory baked beans on toast and lemonade with real ice and a straw. I tried to drain all the lemonade without making the sucking-up noise that always brought complete hush over the restaurant, but it wasn’t easy. I was also allowed to speak to Dad at Bow Street Police Station on the telephone in a red kiosk. A rare treat and a memorable day!
Special occasions were always marked with a visit to Lyons. There were Corner Houses in Coventry Street and Marble Arch, they were all equally wonderful and I imagined that kings and queens lived in places like these–with lots of servants called ‘nippies’, dressed in black, with white aprons, and little white caps. There’d occasionally be an orchestra too, in these white-tableclothed rooms. Oh, it really was heaven. Alas, it was followed by a miserable few months.
It must have been horrible for my parents, seeing their only son evacuated to a strange home in an unknown town, but for me it felt like the start of a big adventure. Here I was, with hundreds of other children all lined up at Victoria Station, embarking on a train ride to who knows where? There were a few tears as the train left the platform, but by the time we reached the countryside, we children were having a ball.
Neville Chamberlain’s attempts to avoid war had been in vain, and so they were digging trenches in the parks. Sandbags were in evidence everywhere and Europe trembled on the brink of the Second World War. Children were being evacuated from all the major cities and my school was taken by train to Worthing on the south coast: ironically, a spot closer to Germany could not be found. I can’t say I remember being scared or having time to be miserable, it was all too new for me to really absorb and process.
We were divided up and taken off in ones, twos and threes to houses that would accept these city kids for the duration. I was taken on my own to a rather smart house, with Tudor-style beams and a red-tiled roof. The owners had two sons a little older than me. We were walking down a road on my first Sunday morning–it was sunny and windows were open–and I heard the voice of the prime minister on the radio, saying that a state of war now existed between Britain and Germany. As if to punctuate that statement the air-raid sirens started to wail. What, up until then, had seemed like only a game, became a reality. The sirens were a false alarm. In fact, the only real conflict going on was in Worthing between the two boys and their new boarder.
Looking back, I can see it must have been strange for them to have an unknown eleven-year-old dropped into their lives and be told they had to get on with him, but they made it abundantly clear that I wasn’t welcome, and for a suddenly very homesick young boy that’s hard to take. Children can be cruel to each other in many small ways, and in fact it was their attitudes towards me that made me decide never to send my own children away to boarding school. Unfortunately their mother didn’t like me much, either.
For tea one day there was a special treat, boiled eggs. I lovingly prepared my little white bread soldiers to invade the runny depth of my yolk and, having taken the first dip, was coldly reprimanded by the lady of the house. There was a lot of tutting and sniffing and I was informed that I was a common and dirty little boy. What was it with me and boiled eggs? I had no idea what was ‘dirty’ about sticking a piece of bread in an egg.
The family just did not take to me at all…I had many friends who recounted their experiences to me after the war; and they seemed to have had a good time with their surrogate parents. I was just unlucky. My escape from this minor hell was achieved by yet another trip to hospital, courtesy of an outbreak of impetigo. Unattractive and highly contagious, nasty scabs appeared all over body and face. I, of course, went down with it and was placed in isolation, in a small cottage hospital. I remember my room was big with pale blue walls and a large bay window. I felt terribly lonely.
By this time, my father had sent my mother to Chester, to stay with the family of one of his police colleagues. No one knew what exactly was going to happen in those early days of the war. We had seen the rehearsal that Hitler had enjoyed with his dive-bombers in the Spanish Civil War and that was what we expected. My father had to stay on in London, at Bow Street. From my lonely room I sent Dad a pathetic card, telling him how sad I was and, fortunately, he came to my rescue. I can remember him coming into my solitary sickroom, taking a quick look around and saying, ‘Come on, son, get dressed. I’m taking you up to Mum in Chester.’
Chester was brilliant. The Ryans, with whom my mother was staying, could not have made me feel more welcome. The father of the house was in charge of a railway signal box in Chester and I spent many happy hours among all the levers that changed the points and signals, sometimes even being allowed to pull them when required. In the evenings, the adults would play cards, while I would sleepily lean my head against my mother’s ribs and doze. I can still hear the beating of her heart. What I wouldn’t give to hear that same heart beating now. I did go to school for a short time in Chester, but I always wore my Battersea Grammar cap! We only stayed there a few months before, early in 1940, moving back to London and Albert Square. The war seemed far away, and the threats of bombing had thus far proved empty.
Then came Dunkirk: thousands and thousands of British and French troops being rescued from the beaches by gallant little boats that set out across the English Channel in the face of the Führer’s might. I stood by the side of the railway at Clapham North and watched the bandaged and dishevelled troops being transported to the capital. Three hundred thousand British, French and Belgian troops were evacuated between May and June of that year. Prime Minister Churchill declared it a miracle.
The summer of 1940, after Dunkirk, was warm and sunny in Albert Square. To me it seemed one of the best summers ever; the sun shone and I was able to pursue my now favourite pastime–swimming. We had two pools to choose from: it was either a walk down to Kennington Park or a tram ride to Brockwell Park, which was my favourite. The best, however, was when Dad could take me to Ashstead Ponds, which was a train ride away but well worth it. A natural pool in a former quarry, Ashstead Ponds was situated in the middle of fields and bordered by a flower nursery. The water was cold and dark, with no hint of chlorine.
In the middle of the pool was a raft where one could lie down and take a break. Lazing on the raft one day Dad and I heard the drone of approaching aircraft and the stuttering rat-tat-tat of machine guns. The drones got louder and became a roar. There, above us, were two planes engaged in combat–a real dog-fight. They twisted and wove above us, then moved out of sight. Dad told me to swim with him to shore and to take cover before anything else happened. Not long after, the Hurricane fighter came thundering back–rolling from left to right–executing what was to become a very welcome sight: the Victory roll.
Saturday nights in Albert Square developed a ritual. Two family friends–Bert Manzoni and Dick Wilde–came for a late tea and then stayed on to play cards, either whist or something called nap. Only pennies were ever won or lost. Bert was a son of my godparents, an Italian family who had owned a café where Mum and Dad had done some of their courting. Such was their friendship that when young Roger came along, the Manzonis were asked to do the honours, despite the fact that they were Catholic and we were Church of England.
Bert must have been in his late twenties or early thirties when I knew him, but when he was six or seven he had started to develop a disease that would eventually eat all the skin and features of his face away. I don’t know what the condition was called, but it was as if his face was one big running sore. He had hardly any eyelids and in winter the cold would make his eyes run incessantly. He could never go to a restaurant as unkind and ignorant people would stare. On buses or trams they would move away from him. As far as I was concerned I had never seen him any different and he was the kindest man I knew.
His best friend, Dick Wilde was a carpenter and worked at the Elephant and Castle, an area of South London not far from Stockwell, and the birthplace of Michael Caine. Dick had been born with a club foot and as a consequence had spent his entire life with a built-up boot, leaving him with an uncomfortable hobble. Dick was a communist, a real radical who firmly believed that the red flag should be flying over Buckingham Palace, and I’m sure he must have been under observation by the Intelligence Services. I don’t think for a moment that he would have been involved in any act of sabotage against our country, he just talked a lot and, of course, when the USSR finally came into the war, and became an ally everything in Dick’s garden was rosy.
One Saturday afternoon in September, the tea table had been cleared and the cards were about to be dealt, when we heard the not unfamiliar wail of the air-raid sirens, followed quickly by the distant drone of planes and the thumping bangs of anti-aircraft fire. Dad led us all down to the Anderson shelter that he had helped erect in the garden: heavy sheets of corrugated iron set just below the surface of the ground, with a heavy wooden door. The shelter was useless against a direct hit, but would protect you from shrapnel and save you from being buried under the rubble of the house collapsing. There were two bunk beds, on which we were all sitting when we heard the haunting whistle of a falling bomb. It seemed an eternity before there came the not too distant crump of the explosion. The war was really with us.
This was the start of the Blitz, and for the next two hours the explosions continued all around. The noise was deafening; the bombs and the anti-aircraft fire were combined with the clanging of fire engines and ambulances. From time to time the ground shook under us. After a couple of hours, there came an eerie silence. Dad opened up the shelter and the bombardment seemed to be over. Looking up, there was no more blue sky, just dark grey billowing smoke clouds drifting overhead. When the all-clear sirens were finally heard, we made our way out of the shelter, only to witness the skies flame red as hundreds of homes and warehouses blazed away. We went up to the roof and to the east we could see where the worst of the bombing had taken place. On that night over nine hundred German fighters and bombers had spread death and destruction–mainly over East London and the docks.
One family we knew well caught it badly. The Messengers lived near us and had a shelter built in their basement. During a raid their son, Bob, went back into the house–his dog following him up the stairs–when a bomb dropped on the house. The house was totally demolished and everyone in the shelter was killed. When the rescuers were working through the rubble they heard the dog whimpering and found Bob, almost unhurt, next to him. Bob and that dog became inseparable after that. He even took it to the cinema with him.
It was to continue like this for months, but after two weeks, Dad took time off from Bow Street to take Mum and me out of London, and to safety away from the bombing. Why he picked Amersham I do not know, but after a visit to the local police station he found a special constable’s family who could take us in. It wasn’t a particularly happy experience for Mum and me. The head of the house kept pigs and as far as I recall he looked a lot like one of them. There always seemed to be the stench of old potato peelings stewing away to feed the pigs, and the nights were made intolerable by the distant sound of the Blitz and us knowing that Dad was there in the midst of it all.
I was enrolled in the local school, Dr Challoner's Grammar School. I don’t know if there ever was a Dr Challoner; I never met him. I do remember that it was a particularly cold winter and the snow that fell was the first I had seen that was not on London pavements. The surrounding hills were turned into sled runs, a great improvement on the curved pieces of tar barrels that we tied with string to our shoes and with which we attempted to ski down Aldebert Terrace.
The end of May 1941 saw our return once more to Albert Square. I don’t know if we’d outstayed our welcome or whether Mum just wanted to be back home with Dad. On that journey back, it was strange to see the devastation that Hitler had wrought on a city, and it struck me that I was only seeing one city out of many that had been bombed. What evil, what slaughter. As we approached the centre of London we saw nothing but rows of terraced houses with four or five missing from the row, and empty burnt-out warehouses with their glassless windows staring unseeingly as blind men at our passing train.
We were relieved to find our flat undamaged. It was good to be home. Of course, there were things in Amersham that we missed. Ruff, who had been with us through that sojourn, would certainly miss our long walks around the woods of Chesham Bois. But we were home, and with Dad. Nothing came close to that joyous feeling.
It wasn’t to last though. Herr Hitler’s continued attacks on London made my parents fearful for my life once more, and that summer I was sent off by the school authorities to Bude in Cornwall. Our final destination was to be Launceston College. However, three of us London boys were selected from the gang to live with a family named Allen. The Allens were farmers–and the most delightful people you could imagine.
Before starting the autumn term at Launceston College, we spent our days on and around the farm, helping with the daily chores, and wandering off to the nearby Tamar River and bathing in crystal-clear water. The food was wonderful! Mrs Allen made the best pies, particularly blackberry and apple, with which we were able to have lashings of Cornish clotted cream. Our particular treat was to have the crust that formed on top of the cream as it was laid out in wide dishes close to the kitchen range. Oh, what gourmet days!
There was one incident, however, that has stayed with me all these years. I was in one of the barns with a couple of other boys, and we saw a swallow nesting in the rafters. In a moment of complete madness–I can think of no other reason–I threw a stone and the bird fell dead to the ground. This had such a profound effect on me that, as a consequence, I am completely opposed to any form of blood sport whatsoever where animals are injured or killed. I loathe hunting and shooting.
I can’t say that I liked Launceston College either, possibly because I was expected to study hard. I wrote to my parents begging to come home, and adding that I’d happily cycle all the way back to London, as I only had sixpence and that would not buy a train ticket. I didn’t actually own a bicycle in Cornwall: it was a ploy! It worked though and my ticket back to London duly arrived. I missed the blackberry and apple pies and the cream but again was joyous to be homeward bound, bombs or not.
By this time, the raids on London had ceased. Children started to trickle back, which created a problem for the school authorities: there was no Battersea Grammar now, so I was enrolled at Vauxhall Central School. Because of the wartime conditions, and with lots of children still evacuated from London, Vauxhall Central was a ‘mixture’ of grammar, art and technical schools. This suited me fine, as subjects such as Technical Drawing, never offered by grammar schools, were on the syllabus. We also had classes in shorthand and typing. The latter was a great favourite with the boys, due mainly to the lady who taught that particular subject: she was very well endowed in the breast department and when she demonstrated speed typing, her breasts joggled in time to her fingers. Lots of suppressed, ‘Cors!’ from the newly arrived pubescent boys.
As I said, I always found school pretty easy going, so in addition to doing well and managing to get through the Royal Society of Arts exams without too much bother (it has to be said, standards weren’t particularly high at the time), I became a prefect and a bit of a leader at the school. Maybe it was my height: I was always taller than anyone else. There was one thing, though, that always bugged me as a youth: I had a slight weight problem. Always tall for my age, I was also ‘chubby’–some even called me ‘tall, fat and ugly’–which seems a little harsh.
It was at this time that I started to feel the first pangs of ‘love’. The object of my adoration was a very pretty girl of about my age, with blonde curly hair and bright blue eyes. I lusted for her and sometimes would walk her home from school as she didn’t live that far from me. The romance might have been permanent had I not met her mother. When I looked at her and then at her mother, I thought, ‘One day she is going to look like that…’ and that was enough to put me off.
So much for real love.