white tiled walls, shiny counters and uniformed staff. Its pyramid displays of tins and packets and the smell of ham and spices. I loved watching the butter men in their straw boaters cutting slices of butter off huge blocks. They slapped them into shape with wooden paddles, popped them onto the scales; they were always exactly the right weight for the customer.
I loved running errands, working in the shop and being on my own. I have always been of a nervous disposition and, to be honest, the war made me worse because I was frightened all the time. Frightened of what was going to happen to me and frightened of the awful things I saw. When I came home I found it hard to settle back into home life and the business. Everybody else had moved on with their lives but I still felt like the family errand boy and worse, I was afraid of my own shadow.
I have always been a hard worker, willing to learn. When you are on your own you have to pick things up quickly. And that is what I did and always have done. I was used to being around horses on the delivery round and I watched my brothers clean out the stables and put down bedding. When Alf and Reg were too busy at weekends to do it, they would ask me to go over instead. The two horses were kept at Harrow Road at the back of my grandparents’ place. They were stabled at the side of the house in an outbuilding like a garage with big double doors, along with the two carts. Today you wouldn’t be allowed to have a horse living right on your doorstop in a suburban street.
As I got more confident with the horses, I was allowed to take them one at a time to the blacksmith on the other side of town near the Quay. The first time I did this I arrived at the house and crept round the side and into the stables, trying not to make a noise. I opened the doors quietly and then moved the carts out. I didn’t want Grandma Edwards to hear me and come out and give me an earful.
We didn’t have a saddle so I got on the horse’s back, put a halter over his head with a piece of rope attached and just went off. The roads were busy and buses and cars were trying to overtake and I got in a real mess every few yards trying to control him. The poor thing got upset at the honking and kept turning sideways, pulling on the reins. I was trying to keep hold of the horse and pull him back straight and it took me ages to get him to the blacksmith’s.
The smith was waiting for me in the yard. He was a big chap with whiskers and dressed in a leather apron. I apologised for being late and told him what had happened getting across town. He looked at the horse, then looked at me and shook his head. ‘Where are the blinkers? You’ve got to have the blinkers on?’
How stupid of me! ‘They’re in the stable,’ I told him.
‘Why didn’t you put them on? The horse hasn’t got anything over its eyes, poor wretch. Didn’t know which way to go.’
‘I never thought,’ I said feeling very stupid. I never did it again. That’s how you learn from your mistakes. So I said to myself, ‘Charlie, you’re fourteen. You’re doing a man’s job now. You’d better wake up and get things right in future.’
2
Always by My Side
When I was seventeen years old, all I wanted to do in life was learn to drive. I thought it was a manly thing to do. I didn’t have proper driving lessons, well nobody did then, but I had a few lessons from a friend who worked for a haulage contractor. He worked nights helping the night watchman who did odds and ends like repairing punctures. They had a large fleet of lorries, all sizes and weights, and he taught me to drive on an old Standard car which had been turned into a truck. It had a gate-change gear box which was the world’s worst to drive, never mind for somebody learning. Nothing like a modern gear box. You couldn’t just slip it into gear; you had to double de-clutch which was really hard to do.
As soon as I had my seventeenth birthday, I sent off for a provisional licence. When I got it, Alfred offered to take me out in his rather clapped-out 10cwt black Ford van. There was a broken window in one of the back doors, no driving mirror on the left hand side, and no L-plates. On one occasion, Alfred had a bad thumb and decided to go home early from the shop back to Dagenham. His van was outside and I said jokingly, ‘Come on, get in the van. I’ll drive you back.’
And so I did. I got in and drove off fine, reached the top of the main road, turned right into Longbridge Road and then out of town towards Dagenham. It was dusk and I was driving along when all of a sudden I saw a policeman ahead, walking along the pavement on the edge of the kerb. He was wheeling his bicycle in the road and he turned round at the sound of our engine. He saw us coming, stopped pushing his bike, leaned it against a lamp post, stepped out into the road and put his hand up for us to stop.
As soon as I saw him, I pressed my foot down slowly on the brake and we came to a halt just in front of him. The policeman started to walk round to me in the driving seat.
‘He’s going to ask to see my licence,’ I said to Alf. ‘What am I going to do?’
‘Just keep smiling, lad,’ said Alf.
‘If I show him, he’ll see it’s provisional. And we’ve got no L- plates.’ I wound the window down an inch and forced a smile.
‘Excuse me, sir. Do you know you’ve only got one front light on?’ the policeman said. Then he walked round the passenger side front wing and touched the little light which decided to come on after all. He came back round. ‘Oh, it’s all right,’ he said, ‘must be a loose connection. But get it seen to as soon as you can.’ We drove off and luckily we got away with it.
Now all I needed to do was to take my test, pass it and get out on the road legitimately before I got into real trouble and found my luck running out.
It was important for me to pass my driving test. I had never passed any exams at school and wanted to prove to myself that I was good at something. This was something for me, not for my father or my brothers. I wanted to get out on the road and be my own boss, at least for a little while, even if it was only going to market or delivering potatoes to another shop.
I had a few more lessons with my friend in his truck with the awkward gear box and then borrowed Alfred’s van for the morning and went off by myself to the Test Centre in Romford. I was used to driving in and around Barking but there was much more traffic and different obstacles to negotiate in Romford. I was worried that I would get lost or take the wrong turning.
I met the examiner outside the centre. He was a very formal looking man, a bit like Neville Chamberlain, dressed in a dark grey suit and a black homburg hat. He checked my provisional licence and insurance before we even got in the van. As we sat inside, he asked me questions on the Highway Code and I had to show him I understood the correct use of signals. I wound down the window, put my arm out and did left and right, and up and down, as commanded.
When I finally drove off, he gave instructions such as ‘Go straight on,’ ‘Turn right at the junction,’ and ‘Keep left here,’ that sort of thing. I was keeping my eyes on the other cars and the bicycles, clutching the steering wheel while working out when to change gear. I was nervous and forgot that I was driving Alf’s van and not the vehicle with the peculiar gate–change gear box and got a bit confused. What I did was to take my right hand off the wheel, lean across, nearly into the lap of the examiner, in order to get a good grip on the gear stick which is what I was used to doing.
‘What are you playing at?’ said the examiner and banged on the dash board with his clip board. I braked sharply and stopped and the examiner nearly hit his head on the windscreen. I apologised about my attempts at double-declutching and explained about the other vehicle. He looked at me a bit odd but said. ‘All right, Mr Waite, you can proceed now.’ That’s it, I thought, my licence down the Swanee at the first attempt.
We went on a bit more until we came to a road which went up an incline. ‘Stop,’ he said. ‘Hand brake on.’ Then he got out of the van and disappeared round the back. What’s going on? Now I’m on my own in the car. A couple of seconds later, he got back in and said, ‘Pull away, please, and then stop on the hill.’ I did as instructed and then he did it again – jumped out and went round the back. What he had done was put a match box behind one of the rear wheels so that if the car slipped back, when I was doing my hill start, he would know. Fortunately, he found the matchbox still standing up. After an emergency stop and reversing in the road he signed a bit of paper and handed it to me. He told me that I had passed.
