grandparents named their house after
Speaking of names, as well as the hotel and lots of surrounding land, my grandparents also owned the little ferry boat that you hopped on to get across to Salcombe Sands. The name plaque on the side of the boat, which read ‘Clara Heath’, probably wouldn’t have meant much to Jon or most other daytrippers, but it meant everything to me. Dad’s mum was called Clara Heath and my full name is actually Elisabeth Clara Heath-Sladen – although Dad never used the Heath part. The first time I was old enough to read the sign on that boat I thought I would burst with pride.
I would love to be able to say the Sladen name is alive and well in Salcombe but the story of our family fortune is a sadly familiar one. Dad had three uncles: Fred, Tom and Frank. Frank was a local sporting hero who captained the local cricket and football teams during the war, but when I met him, as a little girl, he’d gambled everything away and was living in a hovel.
The only Sladens with anything left by the time I was born were Dad’s parents, who still had their big house. Grandpa always used to tell him, ‘When I’m gone, Tom, this will be yours.’
I think Dad was a born adventurer. When the First World War began he was only fourteen, four years younger than the minimum age to be sent to the front line. Two years later, however, he turned up at the army recruitment office claiming to be eighteen. I don’t know what he was thinking but after some basic training he was sent off to fight. I’ve still got some shell cases he smuggled back.
I don’t think it turned into the adventure Dad was expecting. He once showed me a picture of five young lads in smart military uniforms, all smiling as if they didn’t have a care in the world. It only took me a second to spot Dad among them.
‘I was the only one who came back, Lis,’ he said, tears in his eyes.
And that was the last word he ever spoke on the subject.
Dad was still a teenager when the Great War ended, and he needed a profession. You can’t be born in Salcombe and not love the sea, so he signed up to work for the Cunard shipping line. Unfortunately his first posting wasn’t to be in Devon – it was in Liverpool. For a young lad who had never been out of Devon before the War, Merseyside must have seemed like the other end of the world.
But that was where he met my mother.
There were all sorts of film connections in Mum’s life although she never had any interest in amateur dramatics – she preferred dancing and tennis. Apparently there were gasps at her christening, when the vicar baptised her ‘Gladys Trainer’ because everyone had been expecting him to say ‘Mary’. Mum always blamed the last-minute switch on her mother’s love of the actress Gladys Cooper – although I don’t think she was famous when Mum was christened, so we’ll never know.
It was another actress who became associated with Mum as she grew up. To her friends she was the ‘Vilma Banky’ of Liverpool. Vilma was a silent film star from Hungary and everyone said Mum really looked like her. She was about my height, with dark hair and green hazel eyes. Oh, and the most beautiful nose. I wish I had it!
Funnily enough, one of Mum’s boyfriends said he wanted to take her off to America but she didn’t believe him. Eventually she read he had opened a film studio in Hollywood. I’ve still got pictures of the pair of them in his old car.
In the end Hollywood came to Mum instead. Whenever the old 1930s movie star Charles Coburn used to call at their neighbour’s house in Huskisson Street, Mum would pop round to talk to him. He hadn’t worked with Marilyn Monroe in
By the time Mum and Dad were dating, Dad was being posted all over the world. One of the first people to be sent trading to the Gold Coast in 1920, he absolutely delighted in every moment of it. Every so often family members or friends would return from visiting Lagos and bring new reports of Dad’s antics.
‘Your Tommy’s as bald as a billiard ball and brown as a nut.’
‘Your boyfriend’s riding motorbikes through the jungle!’
Dad was about five foot eight, with piercing blue eyes and, when he allowed it to grow, blond curly hair. He was kind of square to look at, quite a powerful-looking build. I’ve never seen anyone tan like him. It must have been his time overseas because he always said, ‘You can never have too much sun or too hot a curry.’ How I tried to prove him wrong with the curry, but I never succeeded.
After years of to-ing and fro-ing from exotic climes, in 1930 Dad returned to Liverpool to marry my mother. It wasn’t a white wedding. Mum’s mum had recently died and she didn’t feel up to making a fuss. I think Dad always regretted that he didn’t get to see Mum in the full veil and sweeping train because he wanted only the best for her. They had a six-month honeymoon instead, travelling the high seas on the Cunard line.
Upon their return, Dad decided it was time to put down some roots in the area, so he gave up his Cunard job and became a bookmaker. He’d always loved sport, like his uncle Fred, and in particular the horses. I think profits were good for a few years but a bad run of favourites winning and the oncoming recession pushed him out of business. I’m sure he thought he would just get another job, but finding work during the Depression of the 1930s was impossible.
Dad was unemployed for five years but he stayed busy. ‘He kept the house beautifully,’ Mum recalled. ‘He always set the table, our shoes were always gleaming – the shiniest on the street – and he could pack a suitcase like no one else!’
Even though Dad was due to inherit his father’s large house one day, five years without a wage coming would have been impossible without the money Mum managed to bring home from her little job. A lot of women were forced to turn to cleaning or other physical work during the 1930s and Dad would have been horrified had his wife been forced to go down that road. But when Mum heard that Bon Marche, the big department store on Basnett Street, was looking for hat models she and her sister Dolly (‘Doll’) ran along. I’ve still got pictures of them posing in all the milliner’s finery. It was the ideal job for her and that store is still there, although today it’s called John Lewis.
Dad finally found work as an accounts clerk at the Automatic Telephone Manufacturing Company in Edge Lane, where he remained until he was sixty-five. Retirement didn’t suit him, though, and he worked for another ten years at Thomas Cook, where he was in charge of the currency. Unlike me, he was brilliant with figures.
