Having my driving licence felt wonderful and gave me a real sense of freedom. Out on the road, window down, wind in my hair. This was better than roller skating behind the bus as it comes roaring round Ripple Road, down the hill and into Movers Lane. There’s ten-year-old me, hanging on for dear life to the rail at the back of the bus, ducking down so that nobody can see me, as we sail past my house. Yippee! And letting go as the bus slows down at the corner and I come skating to halt outside the Park gates. Freedom again.
I had my driving licence now and I felt I could do anything although the reality was that I was very limited. I could drive my brother’s van on my own and when my father bought a car, I became the family driver as he didn’t have a licence. Most Sundays I took my parents out somewhere for a change of scenery. Sometimes I was allowed to borrow the car and I would go off on my own. Of course, as a young fellow who had just started courting it meant I could boast to my friends, ‘I’m taking my girlfriend out for a spin in my car this weekend.’
It was Easter 1938 when I first saw Lily Mathers. I didn’t know it at the time but it was love at first sight. I was coming up to eighteen and like any young man, just wanted to enjoy myself and have a bit of fun. I wasn’t looking to get serious with a girl or get married but I felt we had something pretty special early on, Lily and me. I couldn’t stop thinking about her and knew that I wanted to be with her; I thought she felt the same although we didn’t talk about it. I assumed we had an understanding but things don’t always go according to plan.
Most weekends, I used to go out with a group of friends, working fellows like me. We used to put a shilling or two a week into a kitty and when we had enough we would decide what to do. A favourite activity was going up to London by bus or train and catching a pleasure steamer from Tower Pier down to Margate. I remember sailing on the
A return ticket cost about five shillings and we were happy walking round the decks, breathing in the fresh air and enjoying the change of scenery. Day trippers with a bit more money paid extra for a deckchair and sat outside or in an enclosed lounge area. There were kiosks selling food and drink and there was a posh dining saloon with waiters in uniform but I never saw the inside. If we fancied it, we followed some of the other fellows ‘to see the engines’ as they called it. The bar was situated near the engine room and there was a lot of drinking during the trip and some very merry people by the end. I never got drunk as I only drank lemonade or ginger beer.
After we arrived and docked, we usually had a couple of hours at the seafront, strolling along the Promenade, enjoying an ice cream or paddling in the sea with our trouser bottoms rolled up. Sometimes we went off to Dreamland Amusement Park where there were rides and sideshows but that could get expensive and it was all a bit of rush not to miss the boat home. At other times, back in Barking, when we had less money in the kitty, we went to the cinema and ate fried eggs on toast in a cafe or fish and chips wrapped in newspaper while sitting on the quayside and then larked around town.
One long weekend, which stretched over the whole of Easter, my pals and I went round to a friend’s house in King Edward Road. His parents were away so we decided that it would be fun to have a party and stay over. The obvious thing to do was to let all your pals know and make sure that some girls were invited. There were six of us fellows and eight girls, friends from work or church, someone’s sister; you know the sort of thing. It was only a small terraced house so it was cosy, you could say, but we moved from room to room, chatting, listening to music on the wind-up gramophone and my pal on the piano accordion and eating and drinking. We didn’t make much of a mess but I remember being the one tidying up afterwards, putting things back where they belonged.
I suppose that, by today’s standards, our behaviour was pretty tame. The lads didn’t go in for binge drinking like now, although some of them used to get a bit merry. A few smoked but I didn’t until I became a prisoner of war. I began smoking seriously when the tins of cigarettes started arriving in the Red Cross parcels. I remember receiving a load from a vicar in Surrey who adopted me. I don’t know how this came about, whether he drew my name out of a hat for some ‘Help a Soldier at the Front’ appeal in his parish, I never found out, but he used to send me 400 cigarettes at a time. Of course, I didn’t smoke them all. I used some for bartering for extra rations from the German guards.
It was at the house party that I met Lily. As soon as she walked into the front room, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She had lovely brown eyes, beautiful long black hair and a wonderful smile. She was always smiling, even though, I learned later, she didn’t have an awful lot to smile about. She was a little shorter than me and was wearing what I call a ‘teddy bear’ coat, with a furry texture, and a pink scarf. I didn’t even notice the others girls.
We started chatting and she seemed to like me. For the whole of that long glorious weekend she hardly left my side except when she went to the kitchen to help make sandwiches with the other girls or they went off to bed upstairs at the end of the evening. I could have walked home each night as it was only fifteen minutes away, but I didn’t want to miss seeing as much of Lily as possible. I slept downstairs on cushions on the floor and dreamed of Lily.
What I liked best was walking and I used to go down to Barking Creek where I watched tugs and fishing boats and gulls squabbling overhead. The further I went on, away from the mills, timber yards and gas works, the more desolate it got out near the marshlands. I used to watch herons flying out of reed beds and listen to distant shipping horns. We walked there that weekend. I was happy keeping with Lily, talking and laughing, getting closer to her while the others went ahead or off on their own. Even though I was shy and usually careful about what I said, I felt I could talk to Lily; she was a good listener.
Lily was a seamstress and worked with her sister. In her spare time she loved dancing and she used to sing with a band. She wanted to be a properly trained singer but her mother Ada wouldn’t let her. You crossed Ada Mathers at your peril. Lily had to learn a trade. She was very good at dressmaking and made all her own clothes (except the teddy bear coat, of course) and continued to do so all her life. She made all our Brian’s clothes when he was growing up. Clever girl.
I have a photo of Lily when she was about 17, here, now, by my side. She is wearing a pretty floral blouse, with three fancy buttons down the front, which she designed and made herself. I have treasured the photo all my life. It was one of my most valued possessions, surviving the labour camps and The Long March home. Lily, always there by my side.
Ada wasn’t really to blame for wanting her daughter to have a good trade like dress-making, what she thought was the best for her daughter and the family. We were living in difficult times and every household was counting the pennies. My father, too, thought that earning your keep was more important than following your dreams. Like me, Lily had ambitions which weren’t fulfilled although she continued singing with the band until the war broke out. Later, when we were married, I loved hearing her sing around the house, even though I have a tin ear, and I was pleased that our son, Brian, turned out to be musical.
Lily didn’t say much about her parents and later on, when I found out more about them, I could understand why she didn’t want me to meet them. After that weekend we met regularly, spending our free time together so that I saw less of my pals and more of my girl. I borrowed the family car from time to time when my father let me and I took Lily for a drive around town, or into the country, proud to be seen with my beautiful girl but she never wanted me to drive her home.
I brought Lily to my home a few times, when my parents were up in town and Winnie and Elsie were there. We would sit and talk, have tea and then I would walk her back to Barking Station, get a platform ticket and see her onto the train. It was sad every time I said goodbye to her. If it was hard then, imagine what it was like for me during those five years of captivity without seeing the face of the one I loved and hearing the voice which made my heart miss a beat.
It was a shock, I’ll admit, the first time I saw where Lily lived and met her parents. She couldn’t really put it off any longer as we had been seeing each other a while and were pretty serious. They lived in Stratford, what I called West Ham, in a rather run-down area in a very small mid-terrace cottage with two bedrooms, a tiny garden at the back and an outside toilet. Lily slept downstairs in the front room so she didn’t have a place to call her own.
Alf, Lily’s father, was a cooper who repaired barrels for local breweries. He used to get these huge whisky
