We had been back in London for about six months when I was getting ready for work one morning sitting on the chair sewing a button back on my coat.
My brother, who had been in the RAF out in Burma for quite some time walked into the kitchen and dragged me out of the chair saying “Get out of my so-and -so chair”
I was surprised at the vehemence that he was showing and asked him who the hell he was swearing at.
He raised his hand to swipe me across the face just as my mother walked in with the teapot and pint milk bottle on a tray. I just picked the milk bottle up and hit him across the neck with it. I was seeing red because it was all uncalled for.
My mother managed to put the tray down and she started on me calling me all the little mares under the sun.
I ran into the passage to get my bike and I shouted at my mother “ Stick your ray of sunshine right up your a**e because I wont be staying to be treated like that by him or any one else.”
I shot out quickly to work before she paralysed me.
The same brother was de-mobbed in 1946 after being called up in 1940.
What a changed chap he was from when he first went in the R.A.F.
He suffered from terrible bouts of malaria as well.
SO sad to think he had come back as he was.
That did not excuse his aggressive behaviour though, and it made me aggressive in the fact that I would give as good as he dished out.
It was just by a fluke that I found out that if I totally ignored him and talked over him or through him that hurt him much more than wanting to brain him.
Anyway to get back to my tale.
When I got back home in the evening my brother acted as though nothing had happened and started talking to me as though there had been no fracas that morning.
I ignored him and I would not answer him but I did tell my mother in front of him that I would be going back to Loughborough to live because I was cheesed off with the life there and the eternal rowing.
I went back to Loughborough a fortnight later to live with an old neighbour.
I was at that time writing to my boyfriend who was in the RAF.
I had met Cliff while out with some girlfriends before I moved back to London.
We became friends and hung about together with nothing more than friendship in mind at first because I knew he would be getting his calling up papers.
While I was in Loughborough our friendship got more serious, although by this time he was in the R.A.F.
My sister was living with her husband and little lad in a rented house and she asked me if I would like to go and live with her. It was just coming up to Christmas time in 1947.
I was glad to go because the neighbour who I went to live with was over run with bugs.
These darn things used to hide from the light and only come out at night. They looked similar to a lady bird but my goodness they had a bite which brought up big weals on the body that itched like hell which could turn septic.
I understood now why my mother fumigated everywhere whenever we moved.
I had not been lodging with my sister for long when her hubby decided to go to London to live in the top two rooms in the house where my parents lived. So I finished up back in London after being away from it for about four months.
I had to go with them because I could not get anywhere else to live. I think my mother was pleased to see me back so that I could do some of the housework.
Once back there I got a job at a pen factory in Hackney Wick. It was a futuristic factory owned by a Scotsman.
It had quite a few toilets for the women and a woman was employed to wipe every toilet clean after the women had used them.
There were two big fountains in the toilets that had a foot press to work them. I had never seen anything like it.
We had special coaches to pick us up in the mornings and to take us home at night.
It was a journey over Tower Bridge every day but I loved it because I wasn’t biking to work and getting my bike wheels caught in the ruddy tram lines.
If there was any hint of smog a message came over the tannoy for all Peckham girls to get to their coaches which were waiting to take them home.
This could be at 2pm in the afternoon because smog in London at that time was a sure killer.
I can remember one day when the smog started coming down thick and fast. It was just 2pm then and we boarded the coach for the half hour drive home.
It was absolutely terrifying because the smog had deadened all sound and we found that we were going up the Tower Bridge as it was opening.
We all sat at a peculiar angle until the bridge closed again. Everyone had a hanky or scarf tied round their mouth and nose.
That smog even baffled the fog horns on the ships.
I got in home that night at 7pm.
I was by this time engaged to Cliff and he very often came home on a 48 hour pass to find me scrubbing the floors. He said one day “As soon as I am de-mobbed we are getting married because I can’t stand the way you are being used as a maid”
It was a grim Christmas Eve in 1948 because Cliff had come to spend Christmas with me and my family.
A row developed between my father and mother which involved my eldest brother.
He wasn’t there because he had started courting and had gone to his woman friend's house for Christmas.
Cliff and myself were in the front room while my parents were going at it hammer and tongs in the living room.
Cliff said that he would go and have a word with them to ask them to tone it down because it was Christmas Eve. I told him to stay out of it because knowing my mother she would not appreciate it.
However he still decided to try.
I heard him knock on the door and say “ Ma and Pop, will you call a truce because its Christmas time.” SILENCE
Then my mother yelled at the top of her voice “Who asked you to come and interfere between my husband and me you ginger haired git. When I want your bleeding advice I will ask you for it.”
Oh my word I felt SO sorry for Cliff.
He came back with his face as red as the hair on his head as I said, “I told you NOT to.”
Not a happy Christmas at all that year.
However Cliff was due to be de-mobbed in the June of 1949 and he said that as soon as he was and got a job he would find us rooms so that we could get married.
One day while working at the pen factory the usual visit came from Andrews the Scottish owner. I had a box of rejects at the side of me and the foreman picked them up and put one of my cards in it.
It was just as Andrews came to him and took one out to examine it that I realised what had happened. The foreman was a brown noser and always tried to look busy doing nothing of importance when Andrews did his rounds.
All of a sudden Andrews shouted out “What effing rubbish is this? Who the so-and-so hell is MJ?”
I stood up and said, “I am and that was a box of rejects that he ( as I pointed to the foreman ) has picked up just to look busy. I would appreciate it if you did not eff and blind at me because I can do the same. If you pulled him ( pointing to the foreman ) down from where he had crawled up your a**e and if he was any sort of a man he would tell the truth and he would say what he has done.”
Andrews looked at me agog and said “Get down to my office.” This I did but had to go down three flights of steps while he made his way down on the lift.
As I walked in his office I was expecting my cards.
I wondered if I was hearing correctly because Andrews said
“I just wanted to tell you that I like a person with spirit and you lassie have it. I admire you for sticking up for yourself and I DO know what Bill (the foreman ) is like. Now take yourself back upstairs and let’s forget it.”
I went upstairs in a dream because I had never known a boss like that.
From then on he always made a point of saying “Good Morning” to me and when he found out that I was getting married and I would be leaving he came to me and told me to get my coat because he was taking me to get my wedding present.
He bought me a beautiful Persian carpet that measured 7ft wide by 8ft.
He even had it delivered to my home.
Life is full of surprises.
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