from that moment. I secretly observed him standing in a little group of relatives. He had a perpetual smile on his lips, and occasionally he would nod at something.
The discussion was apparently about Stanley Baldwin, our Prime Minister—I knew that because Granddad talked of little else. Everyone put in his four pence except Stan. He didn’t utter a word, but nodded now and again, raising his eyebrows at something or other. I was waiting for him to join in but he didn’t, and I came to the conclusion that he must be a very wise man who kept his counsel; or to look at it another way he could be stone deaf and couldn’t hear a word anybody said. Anyway, Aunt Marie was the first to spread her wings. When she and Stan married they went to live in a little village called New Longton, not too far from Preston, away from Oldham for privacy but close enough in case of emergencies.
Uncle Ernest was next to go. Still in his mid-teens, he enlisted in the Royal Navy and in peacetime that seemed like a pretty smart move—sailing the high seas, three meals a day, not much pay but regular, and when he’d served his twelve years he’d still be young enough and with sufficient skills to obtain a steady job ashore. So his departure from 36 Leslie Street left only Granddad and Grandma. Two down and two to go, but already I was missing Aunt Marie and Uncle Ernest. Is there anything so fickle as a child’s thoughts?
As a child I was a very sickly specimen. In fact my father told me many years later that a doctor, shaking his head sadly as he looked at me, said, ‘You’ll never rear him.’ Naturally, being but a few months old, I was totally unaware of the doctor’s opinion and I simply continued to live. On the other hand when John came into the world he must have shone like the evening star. He was a beautiful baby, radiant, healthy and, judging by his ever-present smile, comfortable with his surroundings. It was inconceivable that any germ or virus would defile such a perfectly healthy child. Hospitals weren’t full of little ‘uns like John; the wards were more likely to be occupied by people like me. On the other hand, it is all clearly logical if you think about it: what self-respecting germ is going to be satisfied with a stale crust when there’s a leg of lamb on the table? Poor John happened to be the latter, and he was carried off to hospital with scarlet fever. I was mortified, and the atmosphere at home was dark and sombre, as if the gas mantle had gone out and we didn’t have enough for the meter. Weeks seemed like months, but it all ended happily when Mother collected him from hospital, and although it was foggy outside the sun was in our hearts. But it left me with a sobering thought: if scarlet fever could happen to John, was I next in line, and would Dad start worrying all over again if it was possible to rear me?
Illness struck once more, and to everyone’s astonishment it wasn’t me. It was Vernon this time and, more serious than scarlet fever, he had the dreaded diphtheria, which was high up on the mortality list. Why Vernon? He’d always looked pretty healthy to me—after all, he’d virtually been brought up at the Staceys’ on a more balanced diet, too costly for Leslie Street. Prunes and custard don’t encourage diphtheria, so why him? Truthfully if I could have changed places with Vernon I would not have hesitated. I felt better equipped to deal with illness than either John or Vernon.
On that black day the clang of the ambulance bell opened practically every front door in Leslie Street, not out of idle curiosity but because the residents were bonded together by a genuine concern and sympathy for the grieving household. Inside 36 Leslie Street, as we waited apprehensively while a burly ambulance man was upstairs preparing Vernon for his admittance, something extraordinary happened: a little black bird flew in through the open front door into the kitchen, turned and flew out again. My stomach was gripped by a cold foreboding. It was a bad omen. A few moments later, the ambulance man made his way carefully downstairs, carrying Vernon, wrapped in a blanket, his face white and bloodless, and his eyes closed as his head lolled against the ambulance man’s chest. I was convinced that I’d never see Vernon again, but, God be praised, as usual I was being over-dramatic. After some weeks, or it may have been longer, Vernon was cured and discharged from hospital. Dad walked him home and what a joy it was when he arrived! Mother, John and I shared a huge smile of welcome. In those long-forgotten days in the north-west we were certainly not demonstrative, but our faces said it all. We were a whole family again. It had been a harrowing time—first John smitten by scarlet fever, and then Vernon struck down with diphtheria—and the most I could contribute was a runny nose.
Oddly enough for a delicate child, I never saw the inside of a hospital, not even to visit John and Vernon; but I hadn’t escaped completely unscathed. I was laid low for a few days with mandatory mumps, and I must say I quite enjoyed the experience, propped up in the bed with hot milk; and, best of all, Grandma Sykes brought me a comic to read every day, wiped my face with a warm flannel and combed my hair. I’d never had such personal care and attention in my life.
On the day of the doctor’s visit, Grandma Sykes was like a nervous chicken awaiting a fox, plumping up the pillows, giving my face an extra shine, stuffing the comic in a drawer, even running a damp cloth over knobs on the bed rail until there was a rat-a-tattat on the front door. Grandma smoothed her apron and gave me a warning look as if to say, ‘Don’t go away.’
Dr Law was respected by the whole community, where it was generally accepted that he was a fine man. I’d seen him in his surgery a few times—once just to pick up a prescription for cough mixture, and on another occasion when John had pink eye and I went with him—and on each occasion Dr Law was seated behind his desk, which we had to go round so that he could examine little patients without having to bend down. On the two days when he had called at our house about the scarlet fever and diphtheria I hadn’t been at home, and I’d never actually seen him standing up, so when he had to duck his head to enter the bedroom where I was prostrate with mumps I got quite a shock. He was immense, well over six feet tall; his brown hair had an off-centre parting, and he exuded good health and breeding in stark contrast to the pinched white faces of undernourished Lancashire.
As he approached the bed, he spoke in a deep, melodious Irish brogue. ‘And how are you this morning, young man?’
Grandma, following him in, brought up a chair.
‘Thank you,’ he said in a dark velvet voice that made her blush, and he sat down to put his stethoscope on my chest. ‘’Tis a fine morning,’ he said as he listened to my heartbeat.
I nodded, as it was still uncomfortable to speak.
He stood up and, placing his stethoscope in his bag, he said, ‘You’ll do.’ Then he nodded and Grandma saw him out.
When they’d left the room, I slipped out of bed and wobbled over to the window. As Dr Law climbed into his trap, he said a last few words to Grandma, raised his trilby to her, and then slapped his reins on the pony’s rump and clip-clopped to his next patient. Oh, if only I could grow up to be half as good a man as Dr Law.
There was only one drawback to the billeting arrangements. At five thirty every weekday morning, the knocker-up came, a man shouldering a long pole with wire prongs on the end of it with which he tapped on the front bedroom window like brushes on a snare drum to let my father know that it was time to rise and shine. However, Granddad was in the front bedroom now, and so he had to scramble out of bed in his shirt, tippy-toe to the window, push it up and stick his head out to let the knocker-up know that they’d got the message; then, pulling the window down, he tiptoed on the cold oil cloth into our bedroom to wake up my father. This done, he’d tiptoe back to his own still-warm bed, because his place of work was closer and he didn’t have to get up until seven thirty—what luxury!
The services of the knocker-up cost my father a penny a week. Imagine: on those cold, dark, winter mornings, the unfortunate man would have to tap, tap on bedroom windows 240 times a week just to earn a pound, barely enough to keep him out of the workhouse. And by the way Granddad didn’t tiptoe in order to be quiet: if he’d put his feet flat down in winter they might have stuck to the below-zero linoleum.
Talking of shirts: they were the standard sleep attire for males; the ladies wore nighties. We all knew about pyjamas, of course—we’d learned about them from American films. We were aware that the well-to-do brushed their teeth, but a toothbrush had yet to make its appearance in our house or in any other domicile on our patch. Most of the grown-ups ate with false teeth, their smiles a bright uniform