Some tatty bunting left over from the VJ Day celebrations was still tied to the top of a lamp post on Grove Road. It had hung resolutely through the winds and the rain of a London winter as a little reminder of the happiest day when the war finally ended.
There had been another big street party after atomic bombs were dropped by the United States and Japan surrendered soon after, but when pictures of skeletal-looking soldiers who’d been held prisoners of war in Japanese prison camps began to emerge, alongside stories of their horrendous suffering, the appetite for celebration had been muted.
The bunting fluttered in the wind, as Annie and the children made their way up to the grocer’s shop to see if the bananas had finally arrived. A big ship had docked a week or so ago down at Avonmouth and children were going to be allowed to have the first ones. They were chattering amongst themselves about what this strange new yellow fruit would taste like as they rounded the corner and saw a big queue forming outside the shop.
‘I’m going to share it out between us,’ said Anita, puffing her chest out a bit. She was the eldest and there was no way she was going to let her little brother and sister snaffle it.
‘But I want it!’ cried Patricia, toddling along. ‘It’s my banana!’
‘You won’t get anything if you carry on like that,’ Annie chided. ‘We all have to queue and wait our turn and share things fairly, you’ll see.’
In some ways, life after the war hadn’t changed that much. People accepted long queues for food as just one of those things. Annie didn’t mind because it was a nice way to catch up with neighbours and pass the time of day.
There was still rationing for milk, tea, sugar, meat, butter, lard, cheese and sweets and some said that flour shortages meant that bread was likely to be put on the ration soon – which seemed daft to Annie, now the war was done, but folk like her were not to question these things. It was up to the powers that be.
Her friend Esther was standing at the end of the queue, with her shopping basket, looking a bit forlorn. She seemed rather rudderless now the war had ended and with her kids in school, the days were long. There was still a lot of voluntary work to be done, with so many people having lost their homes or their loved ones, but the sense of urgency that had provided the focus for her work had departed. What’s more, things were a bit difficult for her indoors because the children had got so used to living without a father that they found it hard to adjust to having their dad, Paul, back at home from the Royal Air Force.
‘How’s everything?’ said Annie, giving her a little hug.
Esther had dark circles under her eyes, as if she hadn’t been sleeping.
‘It’s not easy,’ she said. ‘Paul’s gone back to his mother’s for a while. I think it’s for the best.’
Annie lowered her voice, so that the woman in front of them in the queue wouldn’t hear.
‘But what happened?’
‘He’s just so moody and regimented, he’s treating the house like his barracks and he wants to impose so many silly rules on me and the kids,’ she said. ‘I can’t live like that, Annie. I’d rather be alone.’
‘You don’t mean that, do you?’
‘He just seems to snap over the silliest of things,’ she went on, staring into space as the queue inched slowly forwards. ‘He’d shaved his moustache off when he was demobbed and because I didn’t notice, he treated that as a betrayal. It was as if I had slept with another man. He didn’t speak to me or the children for a week and then when he did, he started barking orders at us.’
Annie thought for a moment of all the things Harry had told her about how men suffered mental scars from being in the war.
‘He’s probably seen some terrible things, lost friends in those fighter planes in all those battles,’ she said. ‘It can take time for men to readjust to life at home, that’s all. Give it a chance, Esther.’
But Esther shook her head sadly. ‘I’ve seen things too, in the rest centres. Mothers who have lost children, wives who have lost husbands. People suffered and made sacrifices on the home front too for so long. I can’t go back to having him rule the roost. Nothing can ever go back to the way it used to be before the war. I don’t want him telling me what to do any more.’
Annie bit her lip to stop her saying anything to upset her friend further. Esther had the right to make her own choices.
Just then, she spotted Bessie hobbling along Churchfield Road with her book of coupons in her hand to join them at the grocer’s. ‘Why don’t you let me get your shopping for you and you can go down to my mum’s and take the weight off your feet?’ said Annie to the old woman.
Poor Bessie, she’d spent her entire life standing on freezing-cold stone laundry floors and now she struggled with the daily pain of having worked in such harsh conditions. On bad days, her walk was a hobble and her legs looked like a pair of tree trunks under her wrinkled stockings.
She nodded gratefully and was just shuffling off when a wild-eyed young bloke, who couldn’t have been more than twenty or so, almost knocked her flying.
He was wearing an army greatcoat which he clutched to his thin frame and he jabbered away to himself before grabbing a great handful of apples and trying to make off with them. He was so scrawny, his eyes seemed to be eating up his face.
‘Oi!’ cried one of the other women in the queue. ‘Put those back, you bleeding tea leaf!’
The grocer ran out to see what the fuss was about, and he collared the thief. As luck would have it, a copper came strolling past but when the man caught sight of his uniform, he did the strangest thing. He fell to the floor, weeping, and curled himself into a ball with his hands over his head and started whimpering, ‘No! Please, no!’
‘He was in the camps in Burma,’ someone whispered. ‘It ain’t his fault.’
The copper took off his helmet and kneeled down beside him before offering him his hand. ‘It’s all right son, there’s no enemies here. Come on, we’ll get you home.’
The grocer prised the apples from the fella’s grasp and stuffed them into a brown paper bag, before quickly handing them back to him. ‘These are on the house. Just come and ask me if you want anything and you’ll have it, no charge, see? We’re your friends here.’
‘Why is that funny man lying on the ground?’ said Anita.
‘Don’t stare, it’s not his fault,’ said Annie. ‘He’s scared because a nasty person did something terrible to him during the war, that’s all. But we are not like that here. This whole town is his home and we must all look after him.’
George returned from the war to a hero’s welcome.
He was tanned but so much thinner and his khaki uniform hung off him in a way that had Mum piling extra dumplings onto her boy’s dinner plate, much to Bill’s annoyance.
The children clambered all over him like excited puppies and he was such a good uncle, he was barely back in his civvies before he was busy building a wooden fort for John and a doll’s house and a cot for Anita and Patricia.
The next plan, true to his word, was to buy some chickens and keep them in the Anderson shelter, which he lined with hay. Tending those birds provided hours of entertainment for the little ones, as well as free eggs, which were still on the ration. Mum was pleased as Punch with that turn of events.
‘I knew you’d make it home safely,’ said Annie, as they stood in the back garden watching Bill showing John how to feed the new family pets.
George turned to say something but was caught out by yet another coughing fit.
‘Have you seen a doctor about that cough, George?’ she said.
‘There’s no need, really,’ he replied with a wave of his hand. But Annie wouldn’t be dissuaded. Her brother had been seriously ill as a little boy, with TB, which was rife in the laundries of Soapsud Island, where the family had worked for so long. He’d suffered damage to one lung because of it.
‘George, please,’ she began. ‘You know you need to look after your chest . . .’
His voice fell to a whisper. ‘I don’t want to worry Mum but yes, it’s TB. I saw a lot of doctors in the army when I was over in Italy and France and the fresh air there seemed to help but there’s nothing to be done about it. I just have to keep myself well, that’s all.’
Annie nodded. She’d seen so many women with the condition in the laundries; thin, white as the sheets they were scrubbing at the washboards. People lived with it because there was no treatment, only long stays in sanatoriums and operations too gruesome to talk about, which some said left you worse off than if you’d just let the disease take its course.
‘We’re all going to die sometime, Annie,’ he said, smiling down at her. ‘I’m home now here, with you all, and I want to live each day to the full.’
He was true to his word and within a few weeks of coming home, George had got himself a job as a carpenter and was walking out with a girl from Ealing, who he’d met at the varieties in Chiswick.
Mavis was introduced to the family over a cream slice at the Lyon’s tea room in Ealing Broadway, although Ivy stayed at home with Charlie, who was back from the army. A visit to the Lyon’s tea room was definitely a cut above as far as Acton folk were concerned. Annie had never set foot in the place before; she’d only admired the white and gold lettering on the frontage, not to mention the gleaming liveried van which was always parked outside. George had put on his best bib and tucker and was nervously adjusting his tie when Mavis hove into view, puffing away on a cigarette.
She was generously proportioned and as she grabbed George in a kind of a bear hug to plant a wet kiss on his cheek, Annie thought she might break him in two. When she ate, she sank her teeth right into her food, consuming it with gusto, flicking fag ash everywhere.
‘Ooh, fag ash Lil!’ said Elsie under her breath.
Mum looked a bit concerned when George started coughing. ‘Maybe you could put that out while we eat?’
‘Oh, no!’ cried Mavis. ‘He don’t mind a bit, do you, George? In fact, I keep telling him to take it up because smoking opens up your airways in the morning.’ George wheezed a little as he laughed. ‘Cough up,’ said Mavis.
But despite everyone’s worries, Mavis was a good sort and George was very fond of her. So fond, in fact, that before long, Mavis was stomping up the aisle, so he could slip a ring on her nicotine-stained finger.
After they were married, they moved to Ruislip, which might as well have been the moon as far as Mum was concerned.
‘Ruislip!’ she muttered to herself, running some sheets through the mangle in the back yard, as George’s hens pecked aimlessly and wandered in and out of the Anderson shelter. ‘What on earth did he want to go and move to Ruislip for?’
In some ways, Annie thought her mother might have preferred it if he were still abroad fighting. At least then he would have sent a postcard.
Annie had only sent her eldest daughter up to the shops two minutes ago to get Harry’s evening paper, so she couldn’t be back already, surely?
The knocking at the front door got louder and she turned the gas down on the stove, so that the bacon she was frying for tea didn’t get burned to a cinder.
‘All right, I’m coming!’ she shouted, bustling up the hallway. ‘I don’t know why you didn’t take the key with you!’
She opened the door to find that Anita wasn’t standing behind it after all. In her place was a well-dressed woman with a brolly hanging over her arm and a suitcase in her hand.
‘I’ve come to see Harry,’ she said, with a determined look in her eye. ‘I’m his sister, Kitty.’ She stepped over the threshold without waiting to be asked and handed her hat to Annie. She glanced around the hallway with its peeling paint and sniffed at the air. ‘You must be his landlady?’
‘No,’ said Annie, who was unable to hide the look of surprise on her face at the very suggestion. ‘I’m his wife!’
Harry ambled down the hallway to see who the visitor was and stopped in his tracks when he caught sight of Kitty. Her face was set like stone.
‘Well, Harry, you’ve been busy in London, haven’t you?’ she said. ‘Too busy to come up and visit me and Mum in Newcastle and now I see why.’
Right on cue John and Pat bundled out of the kitchen brandishing Anita’s favourite dolly, which they liked to pinch to tease her. Anita then came in the front door with the Evening News, handed it over to her mum and scampered up the stairs in hot pursuit of her little brother and sister.
‘Are these your children?’ said Kitty. She addressed the question to Harry, but Annie answered.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘All three of them – Anita, John and Patricia. Come down here and say hello to your Aunt Kitty, children.’
Three little heads bobbed over the bannisters before there was a stampede down the stairs.
Kitty’s expression softened a little as they gathered in front of her. ‘Why, they remind me of us when we were young, Harry!’
Harry didn’t smile. He looked at the floor, as if he was waiting for it to swallow him up.
There were so many questions in Annie’s mind about why Harry had been so secretive, but it wasn’t her way to make a fuss, so instead, she took off her apron, smiled at her sister-in-law and said, ‘Shall I put the kettle on?’
Harry and Kitty settled in the sitting room upstairs and Harry shut the door firmly behind them. Annie knew, without him having to say anything to her, that he needed to have some time alone with his sister. Kitty certainly was every bit as forceful as Harry had warned her, so it was no surprise when she heard raised voices from both of them.
Annie brought them some tea and sandwiches on a tray and when she went in, Kitty was sitting, crossly, with her arms folded and Harry was gazing out of the window. You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife.
Annie left the room but hovered in the hallway outside. She shouldn’t have done so, really, because it was eavesdropping, but she just couldn’t help it. Harry’s sister had turned up without so much as a by-your-leave and had mistaken her for the landlady! Why on earth hadn’t Harry told her the truth? Anger knotted itself into a furious little ball inside her stomach but she didn’t want to spoil the visit and so she willed herself to be calm, for Harry’s sake and the children’s.
She pressed her ear to the door.
‘What else was I supposed to do?’ Harry said crossly. ‘There was a war coming and I fell in love, of course I married her. We wanted to start a family together! I don’t need your permission to live my life.’
Annie couldn’t catch Kitty’s reply, but she heard Harry say, ‘There was no way I could go back there, Kit, you know that, so please let’s not go over that again. You’ve got to let it lie. Promise me that.’
Perhaps Kitty had been insisting that he should have moved the family to Newcastle during the war, after all? Their voices grew quieter so that she really had to strain to hear and Harry murmured something which she couldn’t make out.
Then Kitty erupted: ‘But I must have the children come to stay with me. It’s only right. You cannot cut them off from their Newcastle family like this. It’s not what Dad would have wanted. You’ve made your choices and you’ve done what you’ve needed to do but we are family and I won’t let you keep me apart from the children, not any more.
‘We both want the same thing. We both know what’s done is done, so there’s nothing to worry about. It would be good for your eldest to get out of London and see something of the city where you grew up, wouldn’t it?’
Annie heard the chinking of china being loaded onto the tray and hurried away downstairs to the kitchen to check on the children, before she was caught out being a nosy parker.
When Kitty came into the kitchen she was wreathed in smiles and gave each child a hug, before asking Anita, ‘Perhaps you’d like to come and stay with me in Newcastle very soon?’ She added hastily, almost as an afterthought, ‘If your mother will allow it?’
Their eyes met and Annie nodded. She’d waited so long to meet this woman who knew Harry better than anyone. She wanted to be friends with her, even if they came from very different worlds. And Kitty had a point – it would be good to show the children where their father came from. Besides, it was clear to Annie that Kitty was clever and that might lead to better opportunities for the children.
The world was a different place since the war: things were being rebuilt, there had been a general election and the working man had had his say, to the extent that a Labour government had swept to power. Working-class people like them had a bigger voice because of the sacrifices they’d been prepared to make fighting for their freedom and Annie wanted to make sure her kids had more chances than she’d ever had, toiling in the laundries from the tender age of twelve, just to help her family make ends meet.
‘It’s a long journey, though, King’s Cross,’ Annie said, turning to Harry. ‘Perhaps we should wait a year or so until she’s a bit older?’
‘Of course, you wait as long as you like,’ said Kitty. ‘But she will come one day soon and that will be enough to keep me happy. And if she takes a book along with her on the journey, the time will fly by.’
Anita clasped at her dolly for a moment before replying: ‘Would you meet me at the station in Newcastle?’
‘Yes,’ said Kitty. ‘We can arrange everything and I will meet you at Newcastle Central Station.’
She caught Harry’s eye. ‘It’s where some journeys end and new adventures begin.’
Kitty was animated with the excitement of it all. ‘And when you come, you can stay in your dad’s old room. He was always my younger brother, you see, and he still is, really, and you are very much like him. You are your father’s daughter, such a clever little girl, I can see that.’
Then she turned to Annie and said, ‘Thank you.’