BERMONDSEY GIRLS - Rose Amelia Wigzell - Part 5 - New Beginnings

Mum lived just long enough to see all her sons and sons-in-law back safe from the war, Lou, who she loved dearly, being the last one home. Her poor heart it was, strained by having such a hard life, and trying to stand and do things when in constant pain.  Her lovely black hair had turned pure white when she was in her coffin, but she looked at peace and without pain for once.  We all missed her so much, and I so wish she had lived to see my girls, and all the other grandchildren she would have had. 

The first time I saw her after the funeral was when I was giving birth to my first child.  This baby was so precious to us, as Lou had been warned that he may not be able to father children after all the tropical diseases, and I had already lost one twin, so I was terrified when the labour was so long – several days I was in Lewisham Hospital, but just when I was beginning to give up hope, there my Mum was by my bed, saying ‘It’s all going to be alright Rosie, your baby will be fine.’  And she was.

Mum and Dad's friends Lil and Jim Darling moved round the corner to 61 Arnulf Street, and their son Jimmy came home from the Army with a German bride, Ursula.  People weren’t always kind, but I felt sorry for her and we got on famous for a while. I had my daughter Linda in 1950, and Ann married Len and moved away to Crawley New Town in 1952. Ursula had her son Jimmy round about the same time as Linda was born.  Like many other couples living with in-laws, we wanted a place of our own so we could be a proper family.  With all the destruction in London, our only hope was apply to the council.  I was told there was nothing available for us, unless we had another baby.

Well I wasn’t going to be told by anyone how to run my personal life, but eventually we had another daughter, Patricia, in 1954.  Ursula had her second son round about the same time.  We both went back to the council – same kids, and same Mum and Dad all in same sort of three bedroomed house.  I got told I’d had the wrong sex child – maybe I could try again? Guess who got housed first? Give you a clue. It wasn’t us.  The German bride, with exactly the same circumstances as us, got given a place in posh Beckenham.  Not just a place, but a HOUSE.  All I ever wanted was a little house with my own front door, and here they were favouring people we had been at war with five minutes ago!

I was livid!  I went back to the Council and threatened them with the papers.  I told them I would sit in their office with my children until we were re-housed.  I made such a fuss they gave us the maisonette in Lewisham where we lived from 1955 until we both died.  In the meantime the foreigner had been moved yet again to a larger house.  From what I can see nothing has changed, we are still being done over by the Germans. And everybody else on the planet. And I never did get that little house with my own front door.

The maisonette in Granville Park Lewisham was brand new, 16 places built on the site of four large bombed-out Georgian houses, We had a tiny garden, a piece of land around a field like an allotment, just stone and rubble and bits of china from the bombing, but Lou enjoyed making it nice; he even built himself a little greenhouse.  We were lucky enough to get the ground floor, though it was up a few steps which became awkward in our old age; but at least I didn’t have to lug Tricia’s pram up several flights like the people upstairs did.  No lifts then.

I was so sad to see it go, but I sold my lovely little piano to buy us some furniture, though Lou had spent his spare time in the little shed he called his workshop at home in Bellingham; amongst other things he made a beautiful sideboard, all polished and carved ready for our new home. We used to laugh when our daughter, just a toddler, used to sit under the workbench watching, and roll in the wood shavings!  She’s got the sideboard now.  That bit of furniture holds a lifetime's memories.

And so I lived a nice life with my little family.  Lou worked hard at Birkbeck College as the Maintenance Foreman, and I looked after my own kids and often several others in the block.  People came and went over the years, as their families grew larger, but we were never offered anything more. It was hard at first getting used to the trains running at the bottom of the garden, but after a while we scarcely noticed them.

It was a fair old trot taking the kids backwards and forwards to Lewisham Bridge School, especially pushing a pram up that hill, lunchtimes too, but I managed.  The long steep hill which was Granville Park came out near Lewisham Station in the High Street, with the old Rex cinema at the bottom.  At the top of the hill was Blackheath, and during the summer we could walk across to Greenwich Park; that was nice, feeding the ducks and that. 

Not long after we moved in they brought the old Cutty Sark to Greenwich, and we often took the girls to that, not my cup of tea but Linda especially loved it.  Later in life my Linda doing her genealogy found out that Lou’s mysterious grandfather had at one time resided in one of the big houses on the Heath, just at the top of our road in fact, five minutes’ walk from us.  Funny old life really, Lou never knew him, he was killed in the Boer War in 1900.

Our upstairs neighbour Ann Greenaway who was the same age as Tricia would often come too; her Dad was very ill with cancer; their two kids often slept the night with us when he was poorly, and Lou would sit with him to give Peggy, his wife, a break.  I used to feel sorry for young John, Ann’s brother, forced to sleep in the same room as three girls all taking the mickey out of him and playing tricks, collapsing his camp bed and that! But we managed and Ann was only about ten when her Dad passed away.  I could sympathise with that, poor kids.

There were about 30 children in the block, so the kids always had someone to play with.  Even after all these years my girls still keep in touch with some of their childhood friends.  There were still two bomb sites in the road when we moved in; part of the one near the bottom of the hill had been a coal yard and backed on to the railway, an obvious target for the Germans.  It was a great place to play; where the houses had been there were all sorts of wild flowers and grasses growing, though they were more interested in the solid bits and pieces, chunks of broken pots and furniture and so on.  It didn’t occur to the kids it was the remains of some folks homes and my girls had quite a collection of blue and white china fragments, though they were told over and over again not to play on bomb sites – apart from the danger of falling over and hurting themselves, you never knew if there would be unexploded bombs under the rubble, and I’d had enough of that for one lifetime.

 It was at least ten years before they built a nice little block of flats on the bit where a house had been, private I reckon as they had garage spaces behind, at a time when very few people had cars. The rest of the space which had been the coal chute and store stayed empty for about twenty years, until an old peoples’ home was built there by Social Services.  Even now you can still smell the coal when the wind’s in the right direction! There was another site almost opposite our flats, a lot smaller than the other one, and quite steep.  The kids played there too when they thought we weren’t looking, but that was also eventually filled by another block of flats.

Both our girls had plenty of mates, and when they were teenagers were out in their mini-skirts and parkas on mod scooters half the time, which was better than bomb sites but still a worry. Peggy worked at the Odeon cinema down the road, and managed to get the kids free tickets for some of the 60s concerts; they saw most of the groups that way, as well as their beloved Cliff.

The girls grew up only too quickly.  Linda did well at school and went to college to do her languages, with long trips away to France and Italy.  We were very worried when she decided to marry her long-term boyfriend John.  We never liked him much, too overbearing.  Two years later Tricia married David Millett, the son of Lou’s old comrade in arms in the RAF, Joe. It was a lovely wedding, bridesmaids all in pink.  The littlest one was our Will’s daughter Michelle, he had only recently died at a young age, and the wedding cheered us all up, as we had also lost our Elsie that year. Our Vi came to the wedding but passed away with bone cancer less than a year later. The flat seemed very quiet without the girls and their music blaring and their friends coming in and out.

Linda broke up with John about a year after Patricia’s wedding, and married Henry, a good boy whose family were from the same neck of the woods as us, and I am pleased to say both my girls have beautiful children and grandchildren, and are still with their husbands. 

Once we came home from shopping to find we had been burgled.  Linda was expecting our first grandchild Melanie, and the buggers took all the money saved for a new cot, the locket that belonged to Mum, and my own wartime utility wedding ring, as well as my Mum’s.  I hope they had a shock when they discovered Mum’s had a brass heart. I never wanted any jewellery after that.

Things changed quite a bit when Lou retired from the College in 1983.