Climbing the Stairs (15 page)

But of course I’d lived in Hove as a girl – and in a way it was like going back home for me. We also used to take our annual holiday there but we had to give that up – not
because we couldn’t afford it; after all we could stay with Mum. We couldn’t afford the consequences. You see we’d taken our holidays in June, July, and August for three years
running and our three children were born in March, April, and May. Well, if we’d kept on going down Lord knows how many children we would have had.

We couldn’t really afford three children anyway. We should have stayed at two but as the first two were boys I was dying to get a girl and the doctor said to me when I told him this,
‘Feed your husband up on pickles, spices, and onions and then you’ll probably get one.’ So I did that. I rather like spicy foods anyway. Albert didn’t know what I was doing.
But it was all rubbish because I still got a boy, and yet everyone had told me it was going to be a girl. All those wise women said, ‘Oh, you’re carrying it different this time –
it’s all round instead of being stuck out in the front.’ People tell you this nonsense when you’re carrying a baby, and they are mainly spinsters who do so. It’s a funny
thing to me that people who have never had any babies always seem to know more about it than those that have. To my mind that doctor should have been struck off for giving me that load of cobblers,
or I should have had my head examined. I don’t know which.

Anyway it was a boy, born on a Sunday. All my children were born on Sundays. I don’t know whether that means anything – all were boys and all weighed eight and a half pounds. You
couldn’t have anything more monotonous than that, could you?

With the last one, when Albert went down to get the midwife in the morning she said, ‘Oh, I’m just going off to church.’ Very annoyed she was that I was having it then. What
did she expect me to do – wait until after the service? It’s true, I did – until after the evening service, much to her annoyance.

It took ages. It always did take me ages to have children. Some people can drop them like a hot cake. I do think they’re lucky. The first of my babies took nearly three days to arrive.
When they do it’s never worth it. I mean, when you see them, little miserable-looking red objects they are, bawling away and all the relatives come and say; ‘Oh, isn’t it
lovely!’ and even a mother’s eye can see it isn’t lovely at all. I like them eventually but I’ve never been blind to the fact that they don’t look anything at all to
start with. But your relatives tell you it’s marvellous. Then they say it looks like Albert or it looks like you and you don’t want it to look like either of you because you know
perfectly well it won’t get on in the world if it does.

At any rate when this one was finally born it was about seven o’clock in the evening. I suppose the midwife did think it was a long time in coming but she didn’t think it was as long
a time as I did. When it arrived she said, ‘It’s another boy, Mother.’ And I said, ‘I don’t care if it’s a monkey so long as it’s got here at last.’
She was really taken aback. I could sense that and she said, ‘I look upon every child I deliver as sent down from heaven, planted in earth’s soil to grow up as a flower.’ But she
was a spinster and had never planted anything in the ground, otherwise she wouldn’t have talked like that.

It’s all daft, isn’t it? This rubbish you read in romantic magazines – Charles Garvice and Ethel M. Dell – as if it was something mysterious and beautiful. It’s a
revolting business. People walk in and out the room when you’re in the most peculiar position, you’re looking your worst and you’re suffering the tortures of the damned. It
isn’t a bit like what you read in books. Not for the mother. It’s all right for the father – he just sits around.

The reason I had three children was because birth control at prices the working class could afford was only just beginning to come in. The well-to-do have always been able to have birth control
either by doctors providing them with things, or with cosy abortions if they didn’t work. But all we did was try to be careful. Nobody told me about the ‘safe’ period. We
didn’t chat about those sort of things then.

Mind you, I don’t think there is any safe period. The Catholics call it Roman Roulette down our way. I’m not one but when you look at some of the huge families that Roman Catholics
have, either they wanted a huge family or they kept slipping up badly. It depends a lot on the sort of husband you’ve got, doesn’t it? I mean if a husband can regulate his desires to
the safe period it may be all right. But what I know about men, they never regulate themselves. It just depends on how they feel. If they’ve had a damned good day at work they feel like a
kind of a whoopee at night and they don’t bother to inquire. Or if you tell them it’s not all right they say, ‘Oh well, let’s take a chance.’ They don’t have to
have them, you see. Makes all the difference in the world.

After I’d had two children I heard about a birth-control place in Ladbroke Grove for working-class women. It was in a very poor neighbourhood next door to the employment exchange; at that
time there was a lot of unemployment around and the men used to hang about outside. The premises were a converted shop, and though it wasn’t labelled birth-control clinic all the men knew
what it was; the women who went there used to feel so conspicuous, we used to slink up to and into the place as though we were doing something really depraved. The men used to grin as you went in
– but it was worse when you came out. ‘All ready for it now, darling,’ they’d say – or words to that effect.

The methods they had then weren’t nearly as convenient as they are now. They were somewhat irksome to say the least and you had to keep coming back to be refitted. The thing was
unattractive to look at and uncomfortable to wear. And you had to wear it most of the time. I mean you couldn’t ask your husband after you’d given him his supper whether he would be
liable to require the contraption tonight – it’s not a sort of fireside conversation, is it? Anyway people like us didn’t discuss things like that – not working-class
families. The whole thing was shrouded in gloom and mystery. You went to bed and you drew the blinds and you put the lights out and everything went on in the dark. It was all bound up with the way
English people felt then about sex. Even amongst married people it was sort of faintly illegal. I suppose we consider that anything that’s nice and that we get for nothing must be illegal. As
far as that contraption was concerned, if you went to bed without it and then discovered that it was required, it was either too late or it was the death knell of that spontaneous combustion that
the love act ought to be. I mean, you just imagine when you’re sort of full of love and somebody nudges you and says, ‘Have you or haven’t you?’ If you haven’t,
you’ve got to get out of bed and do all the preliminaries, so by the time you get in again all the emotions you had have evaporated in the cold night air. So that’s why we had
three.

After Albert joined up I moved down to Hove. My mother got me a six-roomed house for a pound a week. It was cheap even then. Of course we’d not had a house in London and we’d only
got enough furniture for three rooms so I put a bit in every room. At least everybody had a bedroom to themselves. The boys thought it was marvellous all having a room each instead of all being in
one as they were before.

In spite of the fact that people were leaving the town there still seemed to be plenty about and a fair amount of life considering that it was wartime. And there were the troops, Canadian
troops, not American. It was really too marvellous for words after living in London, where the ratio of women to men was about five women to one, to have all these spare men knocking around. And
they’d come up and talk to you. They used to spin you the tallest yarns how they’d got ranches out in Calgary and Alberta and places like that and hunting lodges in the mountains. I
didn’t believe them, of course, though I pretended to. What did it matter – they looked so marvellous in their uniforms?

Our local pub used to be full of them and six formed themselves into a singing group and they’d entertain us. They’re very sort of forthcoming, Canadians; they don’t suffer
with inhibitions like the English. And they used to start singing and the whole pub would join in. Even Albert when he was on leave liked it and he’s not very gregarious. We used to have
marvellous times at the local. Mind you, anywhere looks better to a female if there’s a lot of men about even although you’re not having anything to do with them – just the fact
that they’re there and they’re surplus.

In a way I felt sorry for the British soldiers because these Canadians took the girls away from them. If you went into a pub with one of ours, he’d buy you one half-pint and you’d
have to sit and sip it the entire evening. Whereas of course the Canadians could afford to buy whiskies and gin. Can you wonder that all the girls went stark raving mad for them? This business of
everybody being so virtuous and all walking on the straight and narrow path – it’s only because the opportunity is lacking.

At that time I was doing daily work, charring. With the boys to keep, Albert’s money as a corporal wasn’t enough so I had to go out. The lady at one of the places I worked kept open
house for the Canadians: officers of course not troops: and from time to time these officers would start chatting me up. They loved Brighton. When they had left Canada they thought they were in for
a grim time but as they said, it was not only a home from home but it was far more. I remember Madam colouring up a bit when one of them said this, perhaps she thought I didn’t know what was
going on. Then they’d say how hospitable people were over here and I’d say, ‘Yes, but you wouldn’t find them like this in the normal way, it’s just that the war brings
out the best in people as well as the worst.’ That was a sort of innuendo.

Well, month after month went by and then one morning I woke up and somehow I could sense a difference in the town, a kind of quietness. I couldn’t think what it was. Something seemed to be
missing. Anyway I went to work and the lady said, ‘They’ve gone.’ ‘Who’s gone?’ I said. ‘All the Canadians have gone.’ ‘They couldn’t
have,’ I said, ‘they were here yesterday.’ ‘But didn’t you hear, all through the night those lorries? They’ve all gone. I shall be absolutely lost having nothing
to do for them,’ she said. I wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that.

I’ve often wondered though what became of them all. I’ve never met any who came back. Some girls I knew got married to them and left to join them after the war, and of course there
was the quota of unmarried mothers. But Brighton was like a gold-rush town around that time – like Canada had been with the Klondike – one moment it was filled with riotous assembly,
with laughter and noise and then it was as if the mines were depleted. Suddenly the men were gone. Mind you, I think the publicans thought the gold had gone too; their trade fell right off.

Then gradually the town got back to normal as the local men came out of the Forces, but before that happened it seemed to me like a ghost town and my idea of a ghost town is a town full of
females.

When Albert was demobbed in 1945 we were faced with a problem. He could have had his old job back but that meant moving to London and we couldn’t get anywhere to live there. Also the boys
were doing well at school. So we decided to stay where we were. Albert tried to get a job as a milkman but at that time there weren’t any going.

When he went to the labour exchange there was the choice of two places. One was with the gas company as a kind of stoker and the other one was a furniture remover. So he went to the furniture
removers and they offered him the job. The wages were very low, only five pounds a week which even in 1945 wasn’t much. But even at that it was better than it had been. In the old days it was
like being a docker. You went into the warehouse and if there was no work you got sent home again without pay. But although the wages were low the work was interesting which I think is important. I
mean it’s far more important to have low wages and do a job that you really like doing than to have high wages and grind away week after week at something that bores you to tears.

It wasn’t static, not sitting on your backside in an office from nine to six. It wasn’t even like a milk round where you’re going around the same old customers for seven days a
week twice a day. You’re going everywhere or anywhere. Albert went up to Scotland, into Wales, right down into Cornwall and he was meeting different people all the time. And he learnt about
furniture and antiques of all kinds.

Eventually he became a packer because he was such a careful workman and he used to see to the most expensive china – like those Dresden figures that were in all nooks and crannies and
worth thousands of pounds. He still got the same money but he looked on it as a sort of promotion. The hours were irregular – when you’re moving someone’s furniture you
can’t say, ‘I’m knocking off now,’ when it comes to five or six o’clock. It can’t be left in the street, can it? But we didn’t mind irregular hours because
we’d been used to them when he was a milkman.

At first I got very worried when he was late coming back at nights. I used to think of all the terrible road accidents that there were and wonder if something of the sort had happened to him.
But, as he said, if anything did hit their pantechnicon they wouldn’t have suffered I remember one very foggy night, it was ten o’clock and they should have been back at five. I was
that worried I rang up the manager of the firm to see if he’d had any news of them.

He said, ‘Mrs Powell, I’m worried too. They’ve got ten thousand pounds’ worth of antique furniture on board.’

There’s words of comfort for you!

I said, ‘To hell with your antiques, I’m thinking about Albert.’

That riled him. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘what do you think I can do? Take a lantern out to look for him? If so, you’ve got another bloody think coming.’

And he slammed the receiver down. Talk about old-world courtesy.

Albert’s had some strange jobs. One place they went to was an old lady’s house where she kept twenty-four cats. The council had put a compulsory moving order on her. It was too
terrible for words. The place smelt like a sewer. And this old dear was in tears because these cats had got to go to a cats’ home. She knew them all individually – she’d lived
with them for years. They’d each got their own basket with their name on. Albert and the others hated doing it but if it hadn’t been them it would have been someone else.