It was at the house party that I met Lily. As soon as she walked into the front room, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She had lovely brown eyes, beautiful long black hair and a wonderful smile. She was always smiling, even though, I learned later, she didn’t have an awful lot to smile about. She was a little shorter than me and was wearing what I call a ‘teddy bear’ coat, with a furry texture, and a pink scarf. I didn’t even notice the others girls.
We started chatting and she seemed to like me. For the whole of that long glorious weekend she hardly left my side except when she went to the kitchen to help make sandwiches with the other girls or they went off to bed upstairs at the end of the evening. I could have walked home each night as it was only fifteen minutes away, but I didn’t want to miss seeing as much of Lily as possible. I slept downstairs on cushions on the floor and dreamed of Lily.
What I liked best was walking and I used to go down to Barking Creek where I watched tugs and fishing boats and gulls squabbling overhead. The further I went on, away from the mills, timber yards and gas works, the more desolate it got out near the marshlands. I used to watch herons flying out of reed beds and listen to distant shipping horns. We walked there that weekend. I was happy keeping with Lily, talking and laughing, getting closer to her while the others went ahead or off on their own. Even though I was shy and usually careful about what I said, I felt I could talk to Lily; she was a good listener.
Lily was a seamstress and worked with her sister. In her spare time she loved dancing and she used to sing with a band. She wanted to be a properly trained singer but her mother Ada wouldn’t let her. You crossed Ada Mathers at your peril. Lily had to learn a trade. She was very good at dressmaking and made all her own clothes (except the teddy bear coat, of course) and continued to do so all her life. She made all our Brian’s clothes when he was growing up. Clever girl.
I have a photo of Lily when she was about 17, here, now, by my side. She is wearing a pretty floral blouse, with three fancy buttons down the front, which she designed and made herself. I have treasured the photo all my life. It was one of my most valued possessions, surviving the labour camps and The Long March home. Lily, always there by my side.
Ada wasn’t really to blame for wanting her daughter to have a good trade like dress-making, what she thought was the best for her daughter and the family. We were living in difficult times and every household was counting the pennies. My father, too, thought that earning your keep was more important than following your dreams. Like me, Lily had ambitions which weren’t fulfilled although she continued singing with the band until the war broke out. Later, when we were married, I loved hearing her sing around the house, even though I have a tin ear, and I was pleased that our son, Brian, turned out to be musical.
Lily didn’t say much about her parents and later on, when I found out more about them, I could understand why she didn’t want me to meet them. After that weekend we met regularly, spending our free time together so that I saw less of my pals and more of my girl. I borrowed the family car from time to time when my father let me and I took Lily for a drive around town, or into the country, proud to be seen with my beautiful girl but she never wanted me to drive her home.
I brought Lily to my home a few times, when my parents were up in town and Winnie and Elsie were there. We would sit and talk, have tea and then I would walk her back to Barking Station, get a platform ticket and see her onto the train. It was sad every time I said goodbye to her. If it was hard then, imagine what it was like for me during those five years of captivity without seeing the face of the one I loved and hearing the voice which made my heart miss a beat.
It was a shock, I’ll admit, the first time I saw where Lily lived and met her parents. She couldn’t really put it off any longer as we had been seeing each other a while and were pretty serious. They lived in Stratford, what I called West Ham, in a rather run-down area in a very small mid-terrace cottage with two bedrooms, a tiny garden at the back and an outside toilet. Lily slept downstairs in the front room so she didn’t have a place to call her own.
Alf, Lily’s father, was a cooper who repaired barrels for local breweries. He used to get these huge whisky casks brought in on the horse-drawn carts. When they arrived in the yard, he and his mate lifted them off and turned them over onto blocks of wood to drain the dregs into a bucket underneath. You would be surprised how much liquor came out of one of those casks. They would strain the whisky through a lady’s stocking set up on a tripod to filter out any impurities, such as dirt and grit which had collected inside. It was then decanted into empty White’s lemonade bottles. Alf made himself a special wooden suitcase, lined with cloth, to carry two of these bottles in and out of work each day. No wonder he used to fall asleep drunk every evening and Ada had to help him to bed.
One day he was coming home from work and was so drunk that he fell down the steps in the bus, the suitcase broke and a shard of glass got lodged in his arm. He didn’t feel a thing and refused to go to hospital. However, he was taken there in the end to have it seen to and was kept in. I visited him in New Cross Hospital and saw how he was bruised from waist to feet. He still didn’t feel a thing and protested ‘Fuss ’bout nowt.’
Lily’s mother, unfortunately, wasn’t much better. Ada wasn’t a very nice person and took no nonsense from anyone. She was a cook in a pub and worked long hours for low wages. But that didn’t put her off spending every spare penny (and more) on the dogs. She was never happy unless she was having a bet. She even pawned her son Alfred’s best suit, the one he wore on Sundays and to go courting. Things were rough at home and I know that one of her sisters married early to get away from the rowing and Lily left home as soon as she could.
Lily and Charlie, Charlie and Lily, whichever way you said it, it was the same: we were a couple. We had been going out together for about 18 months, still enjoying going for walks, to the pictures and the occasional dance but I wasn’t keen on that. Two left feet, that’s me. Lily would try to get me on the floor but when I resisted, she would go off and have a jitterbug with some other fellow. I didn’t mind because I knew I would be hopeless even if I had wanted to have a go. At other times we would just sit at home, snuggling up and enjoying being together. I was saving money and Lily was putting things away for her bottom drawer. No actual plans for marrying had been discussed and, with war looming, our minds were concentrating on what was happening around us and what it all might mean for the future. Would I be called up? Where would I go? What would Lily do? So, the night Lily told me it was all over came as a real shock. What on earth had happened for her to say this? Had she got cold feet or met someone else?
I was at Lily’s place one evening, a terraced house she had moved into as a lodger. She had met a woman by chance at the bus stop one evening after work and they had got talking. Lily said she was unhappy at home and mentioned a recent unpleasantness with her mother. This woman offered her a room in her house; her husband was a butler at Buckingham Palace and was rarely at home. Lily was lucky to find somewhere nice to live. I was sitting quietly in the small armchair in her little bedroom as I did three or four times a week. It was cosy with the curtains closed, the lamp on and we could forget the world outside. Lily was very quiet and just sat there on the edge of her bed and I knew something was up.
‘Have I done something wrong?’ No answer. ‘Lily. What is it?’ And then those words, spoken so slowly.
‘Well, I’ve been thinking.’
There was a long pause. I could hear people passing in the street, singing and laughing. ‘Someone’s happy,’ I thought. ‘Don’t say anything,’ I said to myself and then out loud, ‘Don’t say anything else, Lily. Please, don’t.’