Sliding Down the Banisters of Life

Sliding Down the

Bannisters of Life

Basil Jay

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© 2013 by Basil Jay. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 06/25/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-9969-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-9970-6 (e)

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CONTENTS

FOREWORD

REFLECTIONS ON A TITLE

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1 THE NINETEEN-FORTIES

(1i) MY VERY EARLY LIFE

(1ii) WHITTINGTON

(1iii) MARGATE

CHAPTER 2 THE NINETEEN-FIFTIES

(2i) AUNTIE DORIS AND UNCLE (NUNKY) BOB

(2ii) HARRY HILL and MY INTRODUCTION TO MUSIC

(2iii) THE ADORABLE JOYCE

(2iv) YOU’RE GOING TO NEED A WHEELBARROW

(2v) STICKY-OUT JUMPERS

(2vi) GINGER JACK AND AN IDYLLIC CHILDHOOD

(2vii) THE ‘ACADEMY’ THAT WAS ST.JOHN’S

(2viii) THE SUNDAY SOCIAL AND SODS AND ROTTERS

(2ix) THANET TECHNICAL COLLEGE

(2x) LITTLE LEGS LIKE BEETLES

(2xi) ARTHUR MAXTED FAI

(2xii) THE TEMPOS

(2xiii) JUST HANG IT ON THE WALL

CHAPTER 3 THE NINETEEN-SIXTIES

(3i) A COMPLICATED LOVE LIFE

(3ii) STARVATION POINT

(3iii) TILSON AND EADES

(3iv) A STAG NIGHT AND A WEDDING

(3v) GETTING TO KNOW EACH OTHER

(3vi) TIMOTHY JOHN

(3vii) WEBBER AND COMPANY

(3iii) THE LITTLE HOUSE

(3ix) ROUND TABLE

(3x) TANIA JANE

CHAPTER 4 THE NINETEEN-SEVENTIES

(4i) JEREMY RICHARD

(4ii) INDIA/LOCKED-UP FOR A KILLING

(4iii) ANTIQUES FAIRS

(4iv) I LIKE SWIPE

(4v) GERRY JACKSON

(4vi) OSIAS KARNIOL

(4vii) A VERY SAD DEATH

(4viii) PRIVATE PIANO PERFORMANCES THE BIRTH of BOTMS A STIFF UPPER LIP, AND A DEBATING SOCIETY

(4ix) WESTERLEIGH THE CONVENT OF OUR LADY EASTBOURNE COLLEGE

CHAPTER 5 THE NINETEEN-EIGHTIES

(5i) MARUDEAN

(5ii) MANOR ESTATES LIMITED

(5iii) JOINT VENTURE FUN

(5iv) THE GREAT STORM OF 1987

(5v) RECEIVING STOLEN GOODS

(5vi) A BOTTLE OF THE USUAL

(5vii) THE FORM BS4B—1

(5viii) THE THORNE

(5ix) A LIFE ON THE OCEANS’ WAVES

(5x) SKI-ING

(5xi) THE EIGHTIES CONCLUSION

CHAPTER 6 THE NINETEEN-NINETIES

(6i) AN INTRODUCTON TO TREASURE ISLAND

(6i) I PREPARE FOR EXILE

(6ii) THE ISLE OF MAN

(6iii) AMBITION FULFILLED

(6iv) A £300MILLION SHAKE DOWN A TURKISH BATH IN ISTANBUL AND A HURRIED EXIT

(6v) ROLLERBALL ROCCO

CHAPTER 7 THE NOUGHTIES

(7i) SHOES WILL NOT BE WORN

(7ii) THE YEAR I WAS SIXTY

(7iii) A LIFE ON HOLD

(7iv) ANOTHER BIRTHDAY

(7v) MY CANCER RETURNS

(7vi) A TIME OF GROWTH

(7vii) MAKE MINE A DOUBLE

(7viii) SOUTH AFRICA

(7ix) OUR BULGARIAN ADVENTURE

(7x) ARRESTED FOR MONEY LAUNDERING

(7xi) THE GRANDCHILDREN ARRIVE

(7xii) THE WONDER OF IRELAND

CHAPTER 8 THE TWEENIES

(8i) A 90th BIRTHDAY

(8ii) I REACH THE BIBLICAL END DATE

(8iii) A PROMISE BROKEN

(8iv) IN A SINGLE MOMENT

EPILOGUE

For Polly

*

Think of me at night when sleep is near

And I, who loved you, are so far away

Think of me then, and I will come to you

Nor leave you till the night turns into day

Stretch forth your hand, and through the depths of dark

Another hand shall touch your finger tips

And as of old, my voice shall breathe your name

And press a kiss upon your dreaming lips.

My love for you transcends the earthly life

And know, that love will never ever end

You were, and are, my very darling wife

But more than that—you’ve been my dearest friend.

DEDICATION

To Jack and Emma,

May this book, through my eyes, give you an

insight into a world, far removed, from that in

which you will grow up

FOREWORD

What is an ordinary life?

Basil Jay—is the alter ego of Barrie Eades who drew his first breath as he entered this life on 28th July 1942. Just twenty-nine months later, on the 23rd September 1944 his young father drew his last breath as he left it. Ironically he was just twenty-nine years old. One year for each of the months of his new son’s life.

Basil was brought up by a brave and determined young mother, who, by her own choice, spent her life alone. Basil’s father was a regular soldier, and when war broke out in 1939 he was a Staff Sergeant serving in India. John (Jack) Eades was an accomplished poet and a wonderful raconteur as his many letters home from India show.

So will the scales, one day, reflect these qualities that were in two wonderful people, through the life of Basil Jay?

Within this book you will learn that Basil is a musician, writer and poet. He reluctantly joined the professions as a chartered surveyor, but, became a successful property developer (thanks largely to the 1980s—a decade of aspiration) retiring at the early age of 48.

He drove himself and his young family to India and back in a fourteen year old comer van (65 Days to Delhi). With no experience, he sailed a small boat (37' long) down to the Mediterranean and then spent many months exploring its coastline and its multitude of islands.

He three times fought the spectre of cancer with great humour and honesty (The Tiger Books). He faced gunmen in Iran and Pakistan. He was locked up for an alleged killing in Afghanistan. He witnessed an ‘Honour Killing’ by stoning in Ghazni. He was accused of drug smuggling in Pakistan (They called it the Hippie Trail). He became a Tax Fugitive and was denounced by a disgraced MP in the Houses of Parliament. He was arrested for money laundering in England in the early years of the twenty-first century. He spent five days in a steam bath in Istanbul, unknowingly, with an arch criminal who was trying to steer him towards, and coerce him into ‘fronting’ a £300 million shakedown in Turkey. He, with colleagues, lost $400,000 in a scam by American tricksters funding a $200 million development in Bulgaria. It was a scam that resulted in the incarceration of its perpetrators.

Basil has known many highs, and also his fair share of lows. He has owned, in one moment a sparkling new Daimler, and a classic Rolls Royce Corniche (which he once loaned to the Romanian Royal family when they visited Brighton), and in the next moment (thanks to an over-zealous and envy filled tax inspector) an old and rusty Fiat Panda and a mountain bike, neither of which anyone would want to borrow (not even to visit Brighton).

He owned, and lived for twenty years, in a twenty-six room, country house, with an indoor swimming pool, a gymnasium, and several acres of landscaped gardens, and then, after the brief period of, afore-mentioned ‘tax inspector induced’ disaster, he found himself in a ‘two up and one and a half down’ cottage, with no garden, on the Isle of Man.

He built, throughout the 1990s, from scratch, and with self-learned knowledge, a second successful business in the Isle of Man, which is still trading today with offices in four countries. In the process he has been privileged to dine with Government Ministers and major criminals—it was sometimes hard to tell the difference!!

Has he come out unscathed? Perhaps the answer lies within these pages.

What is beyond doubt is that Basil won that most special of life’s lotteries, a marriage that has lasted happily for almost fifty years, and a wife who has stood beside him through all of his dreams, no matter how outrageous they have been, or whether or not they were dreams that she shared. A marriage that has produced three children and two grand-children.

So this is Basil’s story. Musician, Writer, Poet, ‘Frustrated’ Thespian. Surveyor, Property Developer, Businessman. Adventurer, Chancer, Tax Fugitive, **Money Launderer??** Receiver of Stolen Goods?? Three-time Arrestee, Irreverent Hospital Patient, Friend of Government Ministers and Villains, Just an ordinary life??

** The asterisks to be observed

Barrie Eades 2012

(alter ego of Basil Jay)

alter ego : n : (aelter i gau (egau)

Latin—alter =other + ego= I, self.

thus = Second Self

REFLECTIONS ON A TITLE

I had great difficulty in deciding on a title for this book. My ‘first-choice’ title has been with me since long before I started structuring the book in my head. It was going to be ‘Sliding down the Razor Blade of Life’. It seemed like a good ‘pick me up off the shelf’ sort of title, which was good. But then it brought tears to the eyes, and suggested that life would do nothing more or less than, as my Aunt Doris would have said, ‘rip the arse out of your trousers’ from your first breath till your last—no chance for respite. And that was bad. I wanted a title that would convey the good, the exciting, the wonderful, the exhilarating, the sometimes downright hilarious times I have had through my journey through life, whilst giving an opportunity to feel the bad, the sad, and occasionally, the heart-breaking moments that, now and again interrupted the journey. The Razor Blade of Life, would certainly do the latter, but give little or no chance for the former. After all, how can you convey the wonderful and the good with ‘the arse ripped out of your trousers’.

The Roller Coaster of Life, and The Helter Skelter of Life, had to be non-runners, because, whilst the ride is exhilarating, there is no way you will ever fall off, so no measure of the bad times, only the good.

My next thought was sliding down, or even, climbing up the Greasy Pole of Life. But, if that was the title, there is a fundamental problem. If you fall off, there is no option but to go back to the beginning, whether it’s the top, or the bottom of the pole, and starting again. Now, life is special and gives you many wonderful opportunities, but, starting from the beginning again is not one of them. Then I thought about the wonderful old house called The Thorne which I was able to purchase in 1971, and where we lived, and our children grew up, over the next twenty years. I thought particularly of the great wide staircase that led to a galleried landing, I thought of the wide, and highly polished oak bannisters, and the way the children would slide down them to either, dismount before the bottom, fall off half way down, either on ‘tit or on tail’, or hit the great knob of the newel post with a painful thump at the end of the ride. Those falls would represent the lows, and the part of the anatomy they landed on, the severity of that low. But all the time you were hanging on, the enjoyment of that breakneck, ever speed-increasing, mind-blowing, and adrenalin-filled, rush towards the ‘Newel Post’ which would signify the end of your ride, would signify the fun of life’s ride. I knew then, that I had my title, the Bannisters of The Thorne, would be my Bannisters of Life. And so, the structure of the book began to take shape. A book not only of my life, of its undeserved heights, and its occasional, sometimes tragic, often hilarious lows, but also it would be the story of the people that my life touched, and whose lives touched mine. Sometimes to run parallel for many years, sometimes to be no more than the proverbial ships that passed in the night. It would be the story of two women in my life. My dear mother, with whom I shared the first two decades, and my darling wife Polly, with whom I have shared, and God willing, until I reach my Newel Post, will continue to share my life. It will be the story of my children and, of their children. It will be a story of friends and of business partners, of bank managers and tax inspectors, of gun men and con men. A story that will tell future generations of my family, and anyone who reads it, not only what my life was like, but what the world was like in the middle and late decades of the twentieth-century and the early decades of the twenty-first. A time before mobile phones, the internet, and emails. A time before there was a cash machine on every corner, and a time when a ‘Game Boy’ was a pal who would plunge into the sea with you on a cold March morning, or put glue on a teacher’s chair, knowing that it would mean ‘six of the best’ by the slipper or the cane. It was a time, first of austerity and rationing, and then of hope and aspiration. But it was always a time with the prospect of the adventure that was life’s blood, a time for children to climb trees, or spend the day, from dawn to dusk ‘playing out’ with friends. A time when, if someone tripped up a kerb they would dust themselves down, and say, with a wry grin, ‘Whoops, drunk again’, instead of picking up the phone to a lawyer who would make no charge, and would welcome their question ‘I’ve just fallen over, who can I sue?’ a time when ‘Elf and Safety was unknown, but Common Sense wasn’t. It was a time, I venture to hope, the story of which will hit a chord with all of those, of a certain age, who read its pages.

I have done outrageous things during my ride down those Bannisters of Life. Never things of malice, or intentionally to hurt, but things that have sometimes caused embarrassment to others, and made me feel ashamed. I will talk about them with the same honesty that I will talk about the things that have made me proud.

I am sitting now on the terrace of our home in Tenerife looking over the sixth fairway of our lovely golf course. It is a Thursday in winter, although the sun is shining brightly and the golfers who pass below, wear only lightweight golfing outfits. It is Ladies day, and as the girls (I still, and will, always call them that, although most are now, like myself and Polly, in their own sixth or seventh decade) pass beneath my terrace they wave, and I blow them kisses. I am waiting for Polly to pass through, and will blow her an extra big kiss, because this is her story as much as it is mine. And as I have written the words of this book, so she painted its cover, as she has, quietly and subtly, for over half a century, painted the cover of my life.

So, I have built my new ‘House of Life’, the Bannisters are polished and shining, and the Newel Post looms hard and threatening at its end. So hold tight and let’s go, and I hope you enjoy the ride.

Basil Jay

April 2013

PROLOGUE

We’re upside down a timorous voice from the back seat.

Why are we upside down? a second voice, strident rather than timorous, but also from the back seat, followed by a squeal, "Damn and I’ve broken a nail. The timorous voice continued, wailing, anyway, what’s happened to us?"

The silly sod’s only gone and rolled the car, the voice came from the side of me, and although pitched probably an octave below his normal range, began to crack, this time aimed at me. You took that bloody bend like a maniac, we’re lucky to be alive. The fact is, I didn’t feel too lucky at that moment, my wonderful ‘new’ old car, would, I was sure, be dented beyond repair. What would I tell my mum, who had paid for it.

The voice, that had so succinctly explained what I had done, was that of my equal first very best friend Tony, of whom more later.

Is anyone hurt? I mumbled, I suppose thankful that each of my three passengers had been able to articulate their discomfort, by being, just the weeniest bit, cross.

I turned my head and looked at Tony (not an easy feat when you appear to be scrunched up in an upside down sitting position), Tony didn’t answer, but the next moment I heard a grunt of satisfaction.

For the love of Mike (whoever he may be), I said, there is a time and place you know. He just grunted again and with an extra effort got the passenger door to open six inches or so. He attempted to insinuate his 5 foot 3 inch frame through the gap, but was stopped by a voice from above (no, not that far above, just about level with the still revolving wheels).

Are you alright in there? the voice from above said, immediately joined by another.

I can see what they’ve done, the voice said, they’ve only gone and taken this bend too bloody fast… and they’re not the first you know

They won’t be the last either re-joined the first voice. We could now hear the sound of a number of shuffling feet and random voices.

A Wolsey 4/45 did it about a month ago.

There’s no such thing as a 4/45, it’s a 4/40. Another voice.

No it’s not it’s a 4/44… my Uncle Gerald had one. This was immediately followed by a new, rather aggressive voice.

I knew your uncle Gerry, he had the Wolsey 16/80; you’re talking rubbish.

Whatever, said the second voice again, all I know is that it landed on its roof, just like this one.

This looks like a pre-war Standard 8.

No it’s not, this is about 1955, the old pre-war Standard 8 had forward opening doors.

What like this one you moron. Whilst the argument was raging above our heads, I took the opportunity to screw my head around to look at the back seat and see how our two passengers were getting on. I was immediately treated to a wide expanse of far more silky thigh and stocking top than I had expected to see on this our first (now probably our last) date.

Had we better call the police? a new, female voice joined in from up above our heads.

Only if they’re hurt said the first voice again, there is no one else involved and you can’t do much damage to a ploughed field

Coooeeee trilled the female voice are you alright in there?

Please get us out of here said the timorous voice from the back.

I’ve torn my bloody dress, said her cross-patch friend.

Hold tight said the voice from above; we are going to gently rock you back onto your wheels. Miraculously it turned out to be a fairly easy process. A couple of rocks each way, which threw us into each other, but did none of us any damage, and we were on our side. I took the opportunity to take a second glance into the back where I was treated to considerably more bare thigh, and even, oh joy of joys. a glimpse of red lacy knickers. The evening, I thought, may turn out alright after all. One more heave and we were back on our wheels. Willing hands opened the doors, which somehow had remained quite free from damage, and we stumbled out onto the ground. Once we had regained our feet, Tony was the first to articulate his thoughts.

Bloody Ada Baz he said what did you do that for? I looked at my brand new, ‘old’ Standard 8, a delightful two door run about that I had purchased for £40 (thank you mum) and christened Lulu. We appeared to have climbed a small grassy bank, and flipped over onto the roof at the edge of a ploughed field. I was concerned about damage to my wonderful new (old) car. Tony seemed more concerned about the welfare of the two lovely girls we had met at the whelk stall on Margate sea front, just before we had invited them to walk with us through the door of adventure from where they would eventually taste the fruits of desire (I got that out of a book). In other words we asked them if they would like to come for a spin in my new (old) car. We now checked that the girls were reasonably OK. Everything seemed alright, the pretty little brunette seemed more concerned about her broken nails and torn dress than anything else. Having been excited by the view I had enjoyed whilst, not only my car, was being coaxed to the perpendicular, and, with profound thanks noting that said car had received hardly any damage (thanks, largely to the fact that a deep furrowed ploughed field can be almost as gently receptive as a 6 foot snow drift), I could see no reason why the evening should not proceed as originally planned, with revelry, followed by ribaldry. Whilst I was making a detailed inspection of Lulu, looking carefully for signs of damage, Tony had been making an equally detailed inspection of the girls. Both appeared to have come out of the adventure relatively unscathed, but I was clearly not going to get out of this incident without a full girly inquest.

You were driving too fast screeched the little blonde who, in more affable times, had introduced herself as Rachael.

You were showing off lamented her friend in a voice close to tears. You could have killed us she took a sobbing breath, "and it’s only the second day of our holiday. Rachael was back on the warpath.

You shouldn’t have been driving screamed Rachael, You’re an imbecile. She took a deep breath, and I guessed the tirade was almost over. In a quieter voice she said How long have you been driving anyway? Tony answered for her

He passed his test last Tuesday. There was no more to be said, but it was clear that my ‘dreamed of’ evening of revelry and ribaldry was destined to end in a muddy field without even the littlest bit of either. Tony walked the girls, who, thankfully were only shaken, to the nearest bus stop, whilst my quick response accident unit, clearly themselves relieved that there was no need for either an ambulance or police, man-handled me (and Lulu), out of the field, down the grassy bank, and back on to the good old tarmacadam.

We never saw the girls again, but then, I never rolled another car over again either. I was seventeen and a half, and had just had my first ‘grown up’ experience of falling off the Bannister of Life.

CHAPTER 1

THE NINETEEN-FORTIES—

A Decade of War and its Aftermath

*

BROKEN BUILDINGS AND BROKEN DREAMS

BROKEN BODIES AND BROKEN HEARTS

My first decade

I am born, I am bombed, and I go to live at the seaside.

ENGLAND (and the world) DURING THE 1940s

The Second World War took place in the first half of the decade, which had a profound effect on most countries and people in Europe, Asia and elsewhere.

The consequences of the war lingered well into the second half of the decade, with a war-weary Europe divided between the jostling spheres of influence of the West and the Soviet Union. To some degree internal and external tensions in the post-war era were managed by new institutions, including the United Nations, the welfare state and the Bretton Woods monetary management system, providing to the post-World War II boom, which lasted well into the 1970s.

However the conditions of the post-war world encouraged de-colonialisation and emergence of new states and governments, with India, Pakistan, Israel, Vietnam and others declaring independence, rarely without bloodshed.

The decade also witnessed the early beginnings of new technologies (including computers, nuclear power, and jet propulsion), often first developed in tandem with the war effort, and later adapted and improved upon in the post-war era.

THE AVERAGE COST OF LIVING IN ENGLAND

DURING THE FORTIES

In 1939 a workman’s normal wage was 50shillings—(£2.50) a week. Today in 2012, the average wage is in excess of £500 an increase of 200 times, the wage at the start of the 1940s

If the price of petrol had kept in line with the overall increase, a gallon (four and a half litres) now would cost £7.50p. Which means that today, with all the rises in oil prices and increases in taxation, petrol is now CHEAPER than it was at the beginning of the 1940s. But of course it wasn’t such a necessity then—most workers lived within walking distance of their place of work, ‘bus fares were low, and there were small shops selling food etc. on many street corners.

Postage stamps were one-and-a-half pence—that’s 400 letters for a week’s wages. Today, at 36p you can send 694 !! Even if stamps go up to 50p.—500 letters—postage will STILL be cheaper than the beginning of the 1940s!

In fact, almost EVERYTHING today is cheaper than then, with the exception of house prices, which have gone crazily in the other direction.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE FORTIES

1940

Battle of Britain

Leon Trotsky Assassinated

Nylon Stockings on the Market

Stone Age Cave Paintings Found in France

1941

Japanese Attack Pearl Harbour

Mount Rushmore Completed

Nazi Rudolf Hess Flies to Britain on a Peace Mission

Siege of Leningrad

1942

Anne Frank Goes Into Hiding

Battle of Midway

Battle of Stalingrad

Japanese-Americans Held in Camps

T-shirt Introduced

1943

French Resistance Leader Jean Moulin Killed

Grave of Katyn Forest Massacre Found

Italy Joins the Axis

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

1944

Ballpoint Pens Go On Sale

D-Day 6th June

First German V1 and V2 Rockets Fired

Hitler Escapes Assassination Attempt

1945

President Roosevelt (FDR) Dies

First Computer Built (ENIAC)

Germans Surrender

Hitler Commits Suicide

Microwave Oven Invented

U.S. Drops Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

1946

Bikinis Introduced

Dr. Spock’s The Common Book of Baby and Child Care Is Published

Juan Perón Becomes President of Argentina

Nuremberg Trials

Winston Churchill Gives His Iron Curtain Speech

1947

Chuck Yeager Breaks the Sound Barrier

Dead Sea Scrolls Discovered

Jewish Refugees Aboard the Exodus Turned Back by British

Marshall Plan

Polaroid Cameras Invented

1948

Berlin Airlift

Big Bang Theory Formulated

Dewey Defeats Truman in the Newspaper

Gandhi Assassinated

Policy of Apartheid Begun

State of Israel Founded

1949

China Becomes Communist

First Non-Stop Flight Around the World

George Orwell Publishes Nineteen Eight-Four

NATO Established

Soviet Union Has Atomic Bomb

But despite what had happened during those first five years of the decade, years of war, years of tragedies that would, without doubt change the lives of so many, I was unaware. If there was an empty space in my life, it manifested itself much later in my life, but, for me the decade was one hardly remembered other than odd incidents which culminated in the decades very last year, in a most immense gift, and one that I have been conscious of for the whole of my life. The gift was the seaside town of Margate—but let us treads slowly through that decade until we reach that magic ending.

(1i)

MY VERY EARLY LIFE

My father, John Alfred Eades (but always known as Jack) was in the regular army. He had enlisted in the early 1930s, and by 1937 was serving in India as a Sergeant. John (Jack) Eades was a sensitive man. He was a poet, he was a man who could bring the world to your armchair, and could paint a picture of the life that he was living, for all who were not there. His joy of life, of living, and of experiencing the world were encapsulated in the many letters and poems that he wrote to his mother, to his sister Doris, and to his little sister Rita. Rita had followed him into the world twenty-one years after he himself had drawn his first breath—they shared a mother, but had different fathers, my own father’s father, Alfred Eades, having disappeared in the early 1920s in a most mysterious fashion. My father lived and, although born in Hackney, London, was brought up at number 101 Hewitt Road, Harringay, London N8. Each morning my grandmother, Maud Wixley, (but always Nanny Wixley to me until the day she died at 95 years old) would stand inside the large bay window of the front room with the two children Jack and Doris, a six year old boy and a four year old girl, and watch until ‘Daddy’ reached the bottom of the road. He would then turn, wave, or blow them a kiss and walk around the corner to the bus stop that took him to work (a bus actually took him, not the bus stop). He always stopped at the corner, he always turned, he always waved whilst one big, and two little people waved back and blew him kisses. BUT, on a bright sunny May morning in 1921, he reached the end of the road, he didn’t turn, he didn’t wave, there we no blown kisses, he simply turned the corner, and… . was never seen again.

Here comes the first of my many indulgencies in this book. Just recently I have come into possession of the manuscript of a book called ‘Millfield Memories’ written by my father’s sister Doris, I would like, from time to time in these early chapters, to quote words and passages from her book, including the following poem which showed, not only the hurt of ‘a vanishing father’, but also her wonderful ability to convey her own emotions to a reader.

He shut the door and left the house, sauntered down the road,

His gait was slow and hesitant, like he bore a heavy load,

He did not turn to wave his hand, or blow his usual kiss.

As, nose pressed to the window, sat this little child of his.

He went that day, went far away, how that child for him did yearn,

He went without a farewell kiss—and never did return.

The years went by, the scars were deep, though time did heal the pain,

She loved her father dearly, but she ne’er saw him again.

After some years, the courts allowed my grandmother to marry again, and Charles Middleton Wixley, a butcher who died at the grand old age of 99 years, came into all of our lives.

Sometime between May and June 1940, my father, now in France as a Staff Sergeant, found himself badly wounded and lying on the beach of Dunkirk; he was one of the thousands of men who found themselves part of what, must rank as, the greatest maritime evacuation in history. I know little of what happened between the time he was taken off one of the little ships at Dover, was bundled onto a train and sent to an army hospital in the North of England, where a grand old country house in Chester, had been commandeered as an army Hospital and also where my mother, just 20 years old, was an auxiliary nurse. They clearly, as later pages will tell, enjoyed an extra-ordinary Nurse-Patient relationship which led, eventually, to St Giles Church in the small village of Whittington, in Staffordshire, where my mother had, although born in Monmouth, lived for most of her young life. For on Trafalgar Day, October 21st 1941, my mother married her one time patient, John Alfred (Jack) Eades, and Dorothy Ivy May Goulding, who always hated her initials D.I.M, became, D.I.M.E, a family joke that persisted through time—but I get ahead of myself. My father who had been badly injured on those awful beaches, spent more than twelve months in that army hospital, and then was discharged from the hospital’s care and shortly afterwards was given an honourable discharge from the army, having served almost ten years as a soldier. I know little about his life from when he left hospital and the army, to when he left, his deeply loved wife and son, and indeed the very life that he had had so many plans for. He died on November 23rd 1944, when I was just short of two and a half years old. Sadly I remember so little of him, but over my life have come to discover that I have inherited his great love for literature and poetry. I believe that after his discharge from hospital they, my father and mother lived in a small flat in North London, just off Turnpike. But of this period in their lives, although I was, apparently, both conceived and born in the flat, I remember nothing.

Seventy years later, I did, what I promised my dear mother I would never do, and had to arrange for her to go into a Residential Care Home. We arrived at lunch time, and I walked her into the Home’s dining room, and stood by the table at which she had been seated, whilst four other residents joined her. I introduced her to the people who sat down, and waited whilst she ate. When the meal was over, Polly and I left to start to clear out a lifetime of, what my mother always called ‘clutter’, but which I have always seen as social history, a history we all have a duty to pass down to our children, who in turn can pass it to their children, and so through the generations. My mother stood at the window waving, and I felt that, although her health had decreed it necessary, I had let her down in a way that, throughout my life, she had never let me down. I will tell more of that awful moment in my life later, when the decade decrees.

Polly and I started going through saved paperwork of many years, and amongst rent reviews dating back 35 years, and Christmas and Birthday cards dating back even further, I found a closely typed, three page story written by my father’s sister, my Aunt Doris. It was undated, but told a beautiful love story. It was the story of a 20 year old nurse, and a 25 year old, badly wounded soldier, who had survived the beaches of Dunkirk, and found himself in that Army Hospital in the North of England. I read it and re-read it with tears in my eyes. In its entirety, my second indulgence, I reproduce it below.

John (Jack) Eades       Dorothy Gouldng

ONE MAN IN HER LIFE

Jack Eades, was my dear brother, and was one of the last of the wounded to be taken from those awful beaches of Dunkirk. Although he was a London boy from the soles of his feet to the top of his head, he was taken to a hospital in the North of England, a place he stayed for more than twelve months.

It was at this hospital that he met a young nurse. Her name was Dorothy Goulding, and she was in the middle of her training. It was in the operating theatre that she first met Jack, when he was undergoing surgery. She was attending her very first operation, so, it is little wonder that she fainted, but, after all, such experiences are all part of a nurse’s training, and a nurse she was determined to be. As soon as she recovered she was back on her duties, embarrassed and ashamed at what had happened. Her heart went out to the young, dark haired lad who was wheeled back into the ward, a boy not really much older than her own 20 years, although, pain had already etched age upon his face.

When he was back in the ward, lying on his stomach as his extensive injuries were to his back, she was told to stay by his side and to wait until he regained consciousness. Every now and then, she would touch his hand, it seemed cold. She would hold it between her own small hands willing her warmth to flow from her hands to his. After what seemed like hours he opened his eyes. The first words he spoke she would never forget.

"God, this must be heaven . . . I see an angel" From far, far away he heard a comforting voice

"Ah! My Soldier awakes . . . are you feeling better?"

Soldier she had called him. Memories came flooding back: Noise! Crowded Beaches! Dead Bodies! Chaos! He felt again the grinding pain in his back as he was carried from the beach to a tiny boat. The small waves that were often above the waists of the men who carried him, were strangely soothing as they splashed over his own tortured body. Then, in between the relentless tossing of a small boat on a big sea, oblivion,

blessed sleep. He remembered, what seemed like days, bumping along pot holed roads in huge lorries crowded with others like him, or, being heaved into trains and left on a stretcher in the guard’s van while the train painfully puffed across the countryside, every waking mile an agony, then the morphine, and a few miles of blessed, sleeping relief. And now he was here in a clean white bed, where everybody spoke in whispers.

Whenever he awoke, his angel was there beside him, holding his hand, sometimes holding a cup to his lips. In the painful weeks that followed she was there all the time. She never passed his bed without a glance, without re-arranging disrupted bedding, without plumping flattened pillows, without making sure that he was as comfortable as his terrible wounds would allow him to be. She would stroke his damp hair with gentle fingers. When he was well enough to eat, it was she who would always feed him. She would write letters, at his dictation, to a devoted mother, to Rita, a darling and much loved little sister, twenty one years his junior. The young nurse began to think of them as her family, but always thrust the thoughts away, knowing they would never be a permanent part of her life, although she noticed, that there were no letters to a wife, no letters to a girlfriend.

If there were other nurses around, Jack never noticed them. It seemed that his special nurse, whose name he had found out, was Dorothy, was there when he awoke in the morning, and when he finally drifted into an uneasy, pain-filled sleep at night. She became his life during those terrible months.

Jack’s mother visited him only once during his time in the North of England. She lived in London, she had an elderly mother and a family to care for, and travelling in those dark

and dismal times was difficult in the extreme. And then, the Battle of Britain began. Jack had arrived at the Hospital in early June 1940. The Battle of Britain began to protect our shores in the late summer of 1940 and then the Blitz, with the merciless bombings of London which began in the early autumn of 1940 and raged for almost eight months until the early Spring of 1941. During this most awful time, Jack’s mother had to rely on wonderfully detailed letters, written, she supposed, on Jack’s behalf, by some nurse or other.

Jack was improving slowly, and, if he leaned on his side he was able to do quite a lot for himself. One day, while Dorothy was arranging his pillows for him he asked if she could ‘pop back’ before she went off duty, as he had a very special job he would like her to do for him. When later that evening she arrived at his bedside he had pen and paper ready for her.

I would like you to write a letter for me he said

But you write all of your own letters now soldier, so come along and don’t be lazy.

They both laughed as he told her that it was a very important letter and it had to be posted straight away. Because she would rather be with him at any time, and for any reason, she condescended to stay and grant his wishes—after all she was going off duty for two whole days, and the time would drag so much until she could see him again on Monday. Besides, she felt that she understood this handsome boy more than any of the other nurses, and thought of him as her special soldier. She had never had a boyfriend before because she had spent all her time since she had left school, studying, first the academic subjects she needed to begin her training as a nurse, and then

the training itself. She never seemed to have any time to go out with boys, because, like all the girls of her own age and living in a very small village, she knew all the boys around, had actually gone to school with most of them, and there were none that she felt she wanted to make a special friend of.

In the last few months she had often thought that if she ever had a boyfriend, she would want him to be just like this boy . . . . Her special soldier. She had watched his face while he was sleeping and felt with him the twinges of pain he was experiencing in his sleep. She had joked with him when he was having a good day, and come to realise that when he was feeling pain, she too was terribly unhappy, and yet, when he was laughing, she was at her happiest and went about her work singing inside, and because he was happy she seemed to pass her feelings on to everyone in the ward. When he joked, all the other patients and nurses would joke with him, and when he had spent a bad night, the ward was always very quiet in the morning, and Dorothy’s eyes were not sparkling as they did when, yes they had noticed, she came on duty, and before the swing doors had shut behind her she had looked towards the third bed on the left where Jack was. Her whole day, and theirs, depended on how Jack was. They all loved her and although she was unaware of it, they all knew that she was madly in love with the boy in the third bed.

Settled beside his bed she started to write slowly as he dictated the words. She had done this many times, a letter every week telling his Mother how much better he was. Some letters were more light-hearted than others, and when a letter started with a joke or an amusing incident it proved he was really on the mend. But, this letter was different, and she felt her heart sink as he dictated the first words.

"Dear Mum,

I am writing to tell you that I have planned to get engaged to the most wonderful girl as soon as I can get out and buy an engagement ring. I know you will love her as I do, and we shall probably be married within a year, just as soon as I can walk without these confounded crutches".

Dorothy could feel tears welling up in her eyes, at the thought of losing ‘her soldier’ although she had told herself so many times that it was inevitable, that one day he would get better, and then he would leave the hospital and her. Dorothy kept her head down as she wrote the words, afraid that her tears would fall on the paper and smudge the ink. Who was this girl? Why hadn’t she visited him all the time he was in hospital? Had he got another nurse to write his letters to her?

As he stopped dictating, she looked up, and their eyes met, and, in that wonderful moment she realised that he was talking about her and she realised that there was something there that had been simmering away for all these months. For a split second they were all alone in a ward that had gone deadly quiet, and then, he repeated the words that had so startled her, but then carried on.

Have you ever heard of an angel who can fillet a kipper? Well I have one right now, here beside me, and in a moment she is going to promise me that she will fillet all the kippers I can eat for the next fifty years.

As he dictated the next sentence she stopped writing

Her name is Dorothy, and she is my nurse.

Jack stopped dictating and holding both her hands in his he said Darling, will you marry me? They were words she had longed to hear but never in her wildest dreams thought that she would. All she could do was nod and nod, before managing to say. "oh yes . . . yes please".

As she said those words the ward erupted into spontaneous cheering

The men all calling out to Jack to kiss the bride. It was impossible still for him to take her in his arms as he would have liked to have done, but with all eyes upon them, he took her hand and held it close to his face. She bent and kissed his long white fingers.

I wasn’t joking about the kippers you know he said with a smile

Do you like them every morning for breakfast? she said, or shall we have porridge in the winter when it’s cold. They both laughed happily when they realised that all the eyes in the ward were fixed on them.

We’re engaged boys said Jack, as if they had not already gathered as much, and all drinks are on me as soon as we can all get to The Old Mill at the same time. I give you all a week to be on your feet and up at the village, and Jock, I’ll let you have my crutches, I plan to be off them by the week-end

Dorothy was loath to leave him now. She wished she was not off for the week-end, and they just sat there holding hands. She told him of the time, just after his operation, of the many times that she had warmed his hands with her own; about how

cold he had been, and how she had felt the warmth and the life coming back into him; and how she had so much wanted nothing more than to share that life with him. The life he had so nearly lost.

As soon as he was able, he asked if he could have an hour or two in the town, and could nurse accompany him, to make sure he was alright. It was on a day that Dorothy was off duty. He purposely asked for that day so that she could go with him. He bought her the ring at the ‘first opportunity’ just like he told her he would, just like he had promised her. It was just before Christmas 1940, but he was not allowed home until the spring of the following year.

The wedding was arranged for the autumn. I, as Jack’s sister, and a trained seamstress, made the dresses, and in the small village of Whittington, where she lived, near the ancient city of Lichfield, Dorothy was The Bride of The Year.

Dorothy never did finish her training; she could not bear to be away from him for even a moment. The war was still on, so they lived with Jack’s sister for a few months. Before they had been married a year, a baby son was born to them. They named him Barrie. Jack managed to do a little light work in an office, but he had more days in bed than in his office chair. The doctor said that his lungs were ‘riddled’ with shrapnel. However, they managed to find a flat not far away from his mother and sister, and they enjoyed making a home around them. The baby was not a year old when they finally had their home complete, with cushions arranged ‘just so’ with tea cups at the ready. Dorothy thought she would call around and ask her mother and sister-in-law along for a cup of tea to see how comfortable the flat looked. They were just half way between

two houses when the bomb dropped. They ducked into a doorway, and then ran the rest of the way before another bomb came along. Before Dorothy had time to put the key in the lock another bang almost knocked them off their feet, and as the door opened the dust and filth came full blast at them, choking them with thick white dust. They rushed up the stairs. It was then that Dorothy sank to the floor uncontrollable tears shaking her body. Jack’s mother took the baby and wandered into the bedroom wondering what she would find. Luckily the ceiling was not completely down, but the baby’s cot was covered with thick dust and plaster debris. They all walked slowly from room to room. Dorothy’s new sister-in-law hugging her closely to her. Everywhere the story was the same. Windows broken, ceilings down, and masses of debris everywhere. Dorothy sobbed at the realisation that her mother-in-law and Jack’s sister would never see how beautiful she had tried to make it all. It took a whole week just to clear up the mess, and, in the meantime, Jack and Dorothy and the baby stayed, once again with his sister. But even when the ceiling had been repaired, the windows put back in, all their lovely new furniture, at least that which had survived was scratched or broken. Soon after this Jack was taken ill again and had to stay in his bed. His mother stayed with Dorothy at night so that they could take it in turns to watch him, but, at last he had to go back into hospital.

There had been no more bombs since the one that had damaged their home. Jack’s mother had dreaded that one would drop whilst he was in his bed, and could not get out to the Morrison shelter, and at night, when it was her turn to sleep she would lie awake just listening for the dreaded sound of the ‘Doodlebug’, that terrible pilotless winged bomb, which everyone knew was safe all the time its engine could be

heard, but was about to dive to the ground the moment the engine stopped. The ambulance arrived and Jack was carefully tucked around with blankets on the stretcher and taken out of the bedroom, along the landing, then, just as they took the turn of the stairs, the dreaded noise of the Doodlebug was heard. And then it stopped. There was a pause and then a terrific bang and part of the ceiling over the staircase collapsed covering the stretcher and the red blanket with thick dust. An ambulance man quickly pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and covered Jack’s face as they lifted him outside and into the ambulance as quickly as they could.

Jack’s sister took the baby again, and his mother and Dorothy stayed at the hospital day and night, just popping home, one at a time, Jack was never left alone. He knew the end was very near, they all did, only with their eyes did they give away the terrible secret each thought the other was not aware of.

At first Dorothy tried to convince herself that it was just another bad spell, and told him that he would be home again soon. Then the day came when the Doctors told her that there was no hope at all, that was when, leaving the baby with his sister, she stayed with him night and day, as he gradually grew weaker. As she sat listening to his uneven breathing she thought back to all those nights less than three years ago, watching, touching, feeling for some kind of life, but knowing all the time that his hands would become cold, and that she would never warm them again as she once had.

He looked at her with those large brown eyes, the lashes resting frequently on his cheek; the lashes that she would joke with him were what she had first fallen in love with. She was thinking of the few happy years they had spent together,

of the day she had rushed out to summon her in-laws to see how nice their little home looked. She blinked away the tears as she remembered the sight that greeted them when they returned, and the hours that it took to make their home liveable again. The sleepless nights, waiting for some-one else’s home to be blasted and hoping it would not be yours. And then the last time Jack saw the home that they had planned and worked for. The tumbling ceiling as he was carried out, what a thing for a man to remember when he is dying.

She re-lived the year that he was returning to health and the two years of happiness they had spent together; she remembered their joy at the birth of their baby son—and now Jack was dying.

As she held the cold white hand in hers, she felt his pulse stop. He died in her arms as he had come back to life in her arms in that other hospital. The hospital radio was playing Ave Maria as the nurse came and led her quietly and reluctantly away, still looking at the quiet form lying under the sheet on that lonely hospital bed. It was music that would bring tears to her eyes whenever she heard it in the long and lonely years that lay ahead.

Dorothy’s love life had started at twenty and finished at twenty-four. She never did have another man after Jack. She lived for her son Barrie . . . their son, who, like so many other boys of that time, did not remember their fathers after the fighting was at last over.

Dorothy has three grandchildren now, and her memories, old memories, memories both sad and happy, of the only man in her life, and the three wonderful, but oh so short years into

which time she crammed them all, leaving her the rest of life to remember.

32 Fairfield Road

Dunstable

Doris Knight

The name and address above so modestly printed, is that of his dear sister who had endured so much as she watched the brother she loved die, and who, some 30 years after his death, wrote his story for his son and for the grandchildren that he would never know. Dad’s sister Doris, had first shown her undoubted talent for poetry when she was just seven or eight years old. My father and she were very close, both in temperament and in age (just two years separated them in age, and, I am told, a cigarette paper width in temperament), and then, when she was about six years old, a young brother was born. When the new arrival was about eighteen months old, and my Aunt Doris was perhaps getting on towards eight, her new brother, whose name I have never learned, contracted measles, which developed into pneumonia, from which he died. My aunt knew that when people died they were buried (there was no cremation in those days) and she… . but please, yet further indulge me, and let me quote again from the book ‘Millfield Memories’, written by my aunt many years later, and published in 1976. The book was written when she was a grown woman, remembering her emotions as a little girl, but the wonderful poem that follows was written by that little girl of just eight years old. Words, and a way of conveying emotions, that so belied her tender years.

(an extract from)

MILLFIELD MEMORIES

"By the next morning, my darling little brother was dead, they called it, twenty-four hour pneumonia. I knew, as young as I was, that when people died they were buried—there was no cremation in those days—and I had heard that when an uncle of my mother had died he had been ‘put to rest’ at a cemetery on Chingford Mount. I had asked my Grandfather what ‘Chingford Mount’ was, and he had told me that it was a very steep hill and there was a place at the top where anyone who had gone to heaven was put in a hole in a lovely box, where earth was gently placed over them, and the Vicar said prayers; after that, people who loved them went on Sundays and put fresh flowers on, what they called ‘their grave’. That way they were never forgotten. Jack and I had ourselves had measles and were not fully recovered. I happened to be looking out of the bedroom window and saw the hearse, with our little brother, coming along the road. I wrote this poem which sums up what went through my mind as I called my brother Jack to the window to watch.

Come Jack; come see this horse and cart

With the little wooden box,

Come quick, before it stops outside,

Before the driver knocks.

You see beneath the driver’s seat

It’s white, and oh so small,

Our baby brother’s inside that

Wrapped in a woollen shawl,

They’ll take him to the Cemetery

On the hill up Chingford Way

And put him in a great big hole

Then stand around and pray.

And then they’ll throw some earth on him

Then all come home again,

Then when our measles spots have gone

We’ll put flowers where he’s laying

I have never forgotten that day, the day that my big brother Jack and I stood at our bedroom Window and watched our darling little brother being taken away from us . . . . for ever.

The words of a little girl, words which conjure up an age when child mortality was so fragile, but also show, such a talent for words, and an ability to express emotions, a talent and an ability that she shared with my father.

It is when I was reading her story about my mother and father, that I first understood more clearly the story of our being bombed out of our flat betwixt Finsbury Park and Harringay in North London (Haringey as the PC brigade re-christened it and insist on calling it today—although it must be said that some argue that they have simply revert to a spelling of much earlier times). My grandmother, the dear, and never to be forgotten, Nanny Wixley, and my dear mother used to tell me how we had something called a ‘Morrison Shelter’ in our dining room, come lounge, come many other things. It was, so I understand, a substantial structure made of metal, not unlike a cage, which somehow fitted underneath the ordinary dining table.

It derived its name from Herbert Morrison, the then Minister of War, but was also known as a ‘Table Shelter’. When the bomb warnings sounded, and the sounds of the ‘Doodlebugs’ filled the London sky, my mother and my father would huddle with me underneath this inadequate protection and await the ‘all clear’ to sound. You have now learned how, one day the dreaded unthinkable happened, and the Morrison Shelter did not have to prove its worth. As the words of my Aunt explained, our home was all but destroyed, but we, not thanks to the Morrison shelter, but thanks to my dear mothers desire to, at last, show off our completed home to her mother and sister-in-law, she and I, survived. A few minutes earlier, or indeed later, and it would have been, so I am told, ‘Goodnight Vienna’ and although the world would still have carried on turning for others,