Home (5 page)

A YOUNG WIDOW
named Winifred Maud Hyde came to work at the Esher Filling Station factory. Her husband had been a bomb disposal specialist named Pat Birkhead. They had been married only fourteen months when Pat was killed defusing a bomb. Despite her grief, Win had to find a job. She was hired as a capstan lathe operator, doing twelve-hour shifts at Dad’s plant. I met her there once, and I remember the snood that she wore to keep her hair clean and tidy and away from the machinery. She was a handsome woman with lovely eyes, and she seemed kind and real. My father and Win became friends, and when time and the war effort permitted, they would go up to London for an outing.

The radio at the filling station was always on, and often the workers
would listen to Mum and Ted performing on a program called
Workers’ Playtime
. One day, Dad heard Ted Andrews dedicate a song to “my wife Barbara and baby son Donald.” This was extremely disturbing to Dad—particularly since he and Mum weren’t divorced, and she hadn’t yet told him that a baby had arrived.

Donald Edward Andrews came into the world on July 8, 1942, at Rodney House, the Walton-on-Thames maternity hospital, where Johnny and I had been born.

While Mum was there, I stayed in Walton with Uncle Bill Wilby’s mother and stepfather, Aunt Paula (always called “Auntie Caula”) and Uncle Fred. Auntie Joan and Uncle Bill had moved to a flat in Belgravia, so Uncle Bill’s parents were the only relatives I could stay with. It was convenient because I could be near my mother and could occasionally visit her.

I don’t remember what Uncle Fred did for a living, but he left early in the morning and only came home in time for dinner. Auntie Caula was utterly dour. All day long she moaned about her aches and pains, and though she was kind to me, the entire cadence of her voice had a downward inflection. It wasn’t until Uncle Fred came home in the evening that things became more cheerful. He was a complete contrast to his wife: a short fellow, with sparkling eyes and a cheery demeanor. He always announced his presence in the evening by whistling. We heard his familiar trilling just before the garden gate clicked open. He’d come up the garden path calling out for his “girls,” and knowing Uncle Fred was home at last, my spirits would lift.

Their house was immaculate with not a speck of dust. They only lived in the kitchen and the parlor, though there was a front drawing room, where everything was covered in white dust sheets, includng a billiard table. There were stacks and stacks of
National Geographic
magazines, which I found wonderfully interesting.

I slept in a guest room upstairs, on an enormous four-poster bed, the obligatory white china piss pot tucked beneath it. With the perfectly starched sheets and the huge feather mattress, the whole experience made me feel hugely comfortable, and unbearably lonely.

I stayed there for two weeks while Mum recuperated from Donald’s
birth. (In those days one always stayed that long in the hospital after childbirth, even if complication-free.) I was taken a couple of times to visit the maternity hospital, but because of my age, I was told I was not allowed to go inside. Ted Andrews took me to the back of the building, where I stood in a rose bed and looked through the window of her room. My mother held up the baby, smiled, and waved. I missed her very much.

I later learned that Dad, not wishing to get divorced, had offered to adopt Donald if only Mum would return to him. It was one more act of chivalry on his part—but of course it didn’t happen.

S
OON AFTER DONALD’S
birth, we moved from Camden Town to Clarendon Street in Victoria. It was another ground-floor flat, slightly better—with a sitting room and bedroom on the street level, and a kitchen, bathroom, and living area below. Windows in the basement looked out onto a rectangle of concrete set beneath a grid in the pavement, on the other side of which were three arched storage areas with black painted doors. One of these became our air raid shelter, one was used for storage, and one became my bedroom. It had a whitewashed curved ceiling, much like a crypt, and no windows at all. I remember lying in bed listening to the crunch of bombs dropping during the night raids, and though scared, feeling oddly safe being under the road. But to this day I have a fear of explosions: fireworks, guns, balloons—anything volatile and out of my control.

My mother often put baby Donald outside in his pram during the day to give him some fresh air. Since we had no garden, she would tie the pram with a padlock and chain to the railing outside our front door. One morning, I was in the basement kitchen looking up through the grid and I suddenly saw a strange woman lift Donald out of his pram and walk away with him.

I ran to tell Mum, and the police were notified and came around to question us. It was presumed that the woman could not have gone far, and after a search of the neighborhood they found the misguided soul, who had probably lost her own child or was unable to have one and, seeing this baby unattended, had taken it for herself. Happily, Donald was perfectly
fine, but he had in fact been kidnapped for about four hours—and my mother was, understandably, distraught.

In September of 1942, Johnny and I were evacuated to Wrecclesham Farm, in Farnham, Surrey, about thirty miles south of London. With Uncle Bill away in the Royal Air Force, Aunt Joan came along also—presumably to look after us, since I was only six and Johnny was four. We should really have gone to the west or north of England, where many other children were being sent.

Why my mother chose Wrecclesham Farm, I don’t know—but I think she and Ted had once stayed with the owners, a family by the name of Gardener, when they had been doing a concert in the Farnham area.

“Auntie Gardener” was a dear lady and the matriarch of a family that seemed to bicker a lot. She had a very stern husband, Wilfred “Pop” Gardener, and a physically attractive son, Phil, whose use of the English language seemed mostly limited to loud expletives.

The farmhouse was big, old, and comfortable, with the most enormous fireplace I’d ever seen. One could actually walk inside it, and sit in either side of the hearth under the square of the chimney. This was fascinating to me, definitely a place where Santa Claus could manage an entrance. It was also practical because its heat was the main source of warmth in the house. In spite of its charm, the farmhouse was incredibly damp.

Auntie Joan and I shared a large bedroom, and Johnny had a closet-sized room down the corridor. Our room did have a small electric heater, and we used stone hot water bottles in the big bed at night. But the sheets were so moist that steam almost rose from them when touched by a warm body, and they smelled horribly of mildew.

The farm had a lot of acreage. It was also a popular riding school, with stables and several horses. I loved the smell of the tack room, the leather saddles, bridles, and the whole sensory experience of the animals. Johnny and I would help one of the local farm girls lather and clean the tack, and feed the horses and bring them in from the fields at night. I saw the smithy work on the horses’ hooves. And, of course, I learned to ride.

When I went out with Pop Gardener, I was perfectly fine. But every
time I went out with Phil, I was so nervous about his bluster and his cussing that I always managed to fall off. Somehow, as soon as we began to trot I would feel myself slipping, tilting sideways. I would put my hand on the horse beside me—usually Phil’s—to steady myself, but the horse would naturally move aside as it felt the pressure and I would topple between the two. Phil was always exasperated.

“Christ, Julia, get back up!”

Occasionally my gray pony, Trixie, would jerk her head down to eat grass and I would slide right down her neck and suddenly be looking up her nostrils. I remember feeling very silly much of the time…sensitive, scared, foolish. I was a complete wimp.

The loose hay in the barn was always piled very high, and Johnny and I used to climb the stacked bales and jump into the soft mound below. It was a delicious game, safe and free, and we screamed and laughed, having fun together for the first time in ages. Phil bawled us out for damaging the horses’ feed, and that pleasure was curtailed.

Phil and Aunt Joan were certainly having fun. They were immediately attracted to each other, and often sparred playfully. One time Phil picked Auntie up, she screaming and protesting with delight, and dumped her in the water trough. I was dreadfully upset.

“You leave my auntie alone!” I yelled, pummeling him with my fists. Years later, Aunt often said that Phil was the love of her life, and she should have married him.

Even though we were protected from the worst of the Blitz and the ravages of the war in London, there were still occasional air raids in Farnham, and when the sirens sounded we would go down through a trap door into the basement for safety.

Rationing continued, and even at Wrecclesham Farm, with its chickens and produce, everything was scarce. Butter, milk, cheese, and sweets were in short supply. The equivalent of one T-bone steak had to feed an entire family for a week, and peaches and bananas were extremely rare. To this day, they still feel like a luxury to me.

Once or twice a week, Johnny and I would share a boiled egg for breakfast. I would have the yolk one day and he would have the white. The next day he would have the yolk and I the white. Why no one
thought to make a scrambled egg, I don’t know. Fortunately, there was plenty of bread and cereal. The black market sprang up around this time, too, and certain hard-to-get items like real nylon stockings could only be bought at a premium price when funds allowed. Regular stockings were mostly made of lisle, and were rather thick.

At lunchtime, which was the main meal of the day in the farmhouse, everyone gathered in the living room. There was a huge oval dining table in the center, and as we ate, we would listen to the midday news on the radio. If anyone dared make a sound, Pop Gardener would bellow, “QUIET!”

The newscasters had serious names like Alvar Liddell and Bruce Belfrage, and in their serious, well-cadenced voices they read the news with careful precision and crisp diction. We would listen to Churchill speak, hanging onto his every word.

I enjoyed my time at the farm. I was back in the countryside again, and Johnny and I were together. But we didn’t have Dad, and we didn’t have Mum. Once in a while, one of them would come to visit, and I would always beg, “Couldn’t you stay?” But they couldn’t, of course, both being so busy—Dad with the war effort, and Mum and Ted entertaining and helping to keep morale high. Thank God Auntie was there. For a great deal of my life she was a surrogate mother, vivacious and fun, and Johnny and I depended on her completely. Little Johnny once cried, “Oh, Auntie! Don’t take me out without you!,” which became a beloved family phrase.

IN THE SPRING
of 1943, there was a momentary lull in the war. I was reunited with my mother and Ted Andrews at Clarendon Street, and Johnny went to live with Daddy once again in Hinchley Wood.

Two things happened at this point. I was enrolled in school, and Ted Andrews decided to give me singing lessons. Aunt departed from Wrecclesham as well, and took a one-room flat in London. She was teaching dance at the Cone-Ripman School, a conservatory for the performing arts, which had academic classes in the morning and all kinds of dance lessons in the afternoon. This was the school I attended. It seemed huge and I felt lost at first; I was only seven years old.

I don’t know why Ted started giving me singing lessons. It was often reported that my voice was “discovered” when singing to the family in the air raid shelters, but that was a publicity gimmick—dreamed up by my stepfather or the press. More probable is that I was horribly underfoot with nothing to do, and he decided to give me lessons to keep me quiet, so to speak. Or perhaps it was an effort on his part to get to know this new stepdaughter who was intimidated by him and who didn’t like him. Whatever the case, it seems that he and my mother were surprised to discover that my singing voice was quite unique. It had phenomenal range and strength, which was unusual at such a young age.

It was decided that I should go visit a throat specialist to ascertain that I was doing no harm to my vocal cords. Our cleaning lady at the time was a smoker, and when my parents were away or out on business, she would ask me to go down to the local stationer at the corner and buy her a fresh packet of Player’s Weights or Woodbines. I’d bargain that I’d only do it if she let me try a cigarette when I returned, which she very foolishly agreed to.

Cigarette in hand, I’d go behind the bathroom door, open the windows so the smell wouldn’t linger, and rather guiltily puff away. I absolutely hated it, but it seemed the thing to do at the time.

When she learned that I was to visit a throat specialist, this silly girl panicked.

“Lord help me!” she cried. “The doctor is going to look into your throat and he’ll see it’s black like a chimney from the cigarettes. He’s going to know you’ve been smoking!”

I was so anxious by the time I went that it was all the poor man could do to pry my mouth open and take a look inside. I gagged and retched from the instruments thrust down my throat. Of course my vocal cords were perfectly healthy…but I never smoked again, thank heavens. In retrospect, it was a godsend—everyone was smoking in those days, including my dad, my mother, and Ted Andrews. The specialist declared that I had an almost adult larynx and that there seemed no harm in continuing my singing lessons.

IT WAS AT
Clarendon Street that I began really to love reading. My father had taught me to read when I was very young, and it became my salvation. I would curl up in a chair and read for hours. Oddly, my mother would call me on it, saying, “That’s quite enough for one day!” or “You’re being lazy, wasting your time away!” Perhaps she had a legitimate reason; maybe I needed to help with the washing up, or maybe she was worried about my strabismus or something, but I took it rather badly, resenting her for not allowing me that lovely escape. There was a period of time when I did not read for quite a while. I felt guilty at loving it so much. It wasn’t until later, when a tutor encouraged me to read some of the classics, that I enjoyed it once again.

DURING THE MOMENTARY
lull in the war, Mum and Ted decided to move out of London. They bought a house on Cromwell Road, Beckenham, Kent, which became our home for the next five years.

Kent is often known as “the garden of England” because of its orchards and fruit trees, and parts of it are beautiful. However, it is the county in southeast England that abuts the English Channel, and as such it was right in the middle of the flight path between Germany and London. Any bombs that weren’t dropped on London were dumped on us as the Luftwaffe returned home.

Just before we moved, my parents’ divorce came through, and my mother and Ted married immediately in a civil ceremony on November 25, 1943. In later years, Mum told me that she had hoped to wait a while before remarrying, but Ted Andrews had been insistent—and of course there was Donald.

One day, not long afterward, my mother and I were crossing the high street in Beckenham when she suddenly suggested that we find an appropriate name for me to call Ted. It should not be “Daddy”—because Daddy was my daddy—but something that would signify he was sort of my
second
daddy. Up to this point I had been calling him “Uncle Ted.” I didn’t like the conversation at all, but my mother proposed that I call him “Pop.” I disliked the name, but she thought it a good idea, and thus Ted became “Pop” from then on.

It was also at this time that my name was officially changed from Julia Elizabeth Wells to Julie Andrews. I presume that Mum and Pop wished to spare me the outside feeling of being a stepchild. They felt that “Julia Andrews” did not flow well, so I became a Julie. I didn’t have any say in the matter, and I don’t think my father did either. He must have been hurt.

Our new house was a modest step up for the family. There was a front room, a kitchen, a dining room, and a parlor at the back with a small, enclosed loggia, which led into the garden. We’d had a piano—an upright spinet—in our flat at Clarendon Street, but in Beckenham Mum splurged on a baby grand, which was housed in the parlor. At the beginning I shared a bedroom with Donald, which was not a success since I got little sleep, and eventually I was given my own tiny room at the end of the corridor.

The small back garden had a square pond in the center of it, which was home to a few rather sickly goldfish that soon expired. Also in the garden was an Anderson air raid shelter, set beneath a grass mound. There were concrete steps at the side leading to the shelter below. It had two bunks, a stool, an oil lamp, and a few other bits and pieces in case we had to stay down there for any length of time. Whether it would have been any real protection in the face of a direct hit, I don’t know, but Andersons were much to be desired in those days, and it was probably one of the selling points of the house.

Once we had settled in Beckenham, I was given a puppy—an adorable English cocker spaniel. It was golden and velvety soft, with sweet breath and pluggy feet. Sadly, this lovely creature contracted a disease that led to Saint Vitus’ dance, and for some reason, my stepfather insisted that I go with him to the vet to have the puppy put down. I remember sitting in the car with it jumping and twitching in my lap while I lovingly tried to soothe it. I stayed in the vehicle while Pop took the little bundle inside. I was so sad, I could hardly bear it.