Ellie Page 6

  ‘I’d better be going.’ Mrs Dunwoody got up. ‘I’ve got so many serious problems to deal with, children wetting the bed, others with lice. Some children won’t eat, others are stealing food. As for some of the mothers with babies!’ She shook her head, as if baffled by it all. ‘Would you believe that one mother complained because it was too quiet here? I don’t think it dawns on some people that this country is at war and we have to put up with a few inconveniences.’

  Chapter Three

  Dagenham, March 1940

  Bonny Phillips stood at the top of the stairs, ears pricked up. It was after ten on Friday night, and she’d been sent to bed an hour earlier, but a certain tension between her parents during the evening and now their raised voices had made her creep out of her bedroom to try and discover what was going on.

  ‘I’ve been over and over it.’ Her father’s voice sounded weary with exasperation. ‘We must do what’s right for her, Doris.’

  It was pitch dark on the stairs, except for a faint golden glow beneath the living-room door. Bonny shivered in her thin nightdress and the sisal stair carpet prickled her bare feet.

  ‘I don’t want Bonny to go, Am,’ her mother replied, her voice strangled as if she was crying. ‘She’s not quite eleven, just a baby, I couldn’t bear being separated from her.’

  ‘Do you think I want her to go?’ Arnold replied. ‘But this isn’t sending her off to just anyone, she’ll have a good life with Miss Wynter. She’ll be safe when the bombing starts and she’ll have her dancing lessons free.’

  Bonny had never been away from home, not even for one night. Last September, when most of the other children at school were evacuated, she was disappointed when her parents declined to send her too. Home was 88 Flamstead Road on the Becontree estate in Dagenham, a very ordinary council house. When many of the children returned home at Christmas with amazing stories about country cottages and big houses at the seaside, Bonny had felt resentful.

  In fact, the war had been a great disappointment in every way so far. Last year, when they’d all been given gas masks and practised going into the air raid shelter in the school opposite, Bonny had thought it was all going to be very exciting. She’d even felt a bit like a heroine staying behind at home, facing danger. But nothing had happened, other than planes droning overhead. Even when the siren went off it was only to practise. It had been an exceptionally cold winter, thick snow, pipes freezing up and shortages of everything. Grown-ups talked about rationing all the time, and now Dad had dug up most of the back garden to grow vegetables. They called it the Phoney War. Almost all the evacuees had come home again to stay. Yet from what her dad was saying, it sounded as if something was going to happen at last.

  Bonny Phillips was an exceptionally beautiful child, with long, silky blonde hair, wide, almost turquoise blue eyes and the kind of soft, plump lips that made even the most hardened child-hater weaken. Perhaps if she’d been a little less beautiful, or her parents just a little less obvious in their adoration of her, she might have developed a nicer nature. But as it was, Bonny Phillips had an inflated idea of her own importance and a total disregard for others’ feelings. Mrs Salcombe, the Phillipses’ next-door neighbour, had a blunt explanation for anyone who cared to mention how spoilt Bonny was. ‘Doris and Arnold thought she was a bloomin’ miracle, and it’s another bloomin’ miracle someone hasn’t strangled the little bleeder.’

  Doris was eighteen in 1907 when Arnold Phillips came to mend the boiler at Dr Freeman’s house in Islington where she worked as a maid. She was a dumpy, plain girl with mousy hair, so shy she rarely even spoke to the female staff, let alone a man. But she was taken by the tall, slender young man with blond hair and a thin moustache and when he asked her to walk out with him on her night off she sensed right away that he was the only man for her.

  Their romance flourished as they discovered how much they had in common. They both came from large, poor families, Arnold’s in Shadwell, Doris’s in Bethnal Green, and both had a fierce desire to better themselves. Doris was impressed by Arnold’s knowledge of machinery, his gentle, affectionate nature, while Arnold fell for her bright blue eyes, her clear complexion and her ladylike demeanour.

  They married two years later, in 1909, and set up home in the same tenement in Bethnal Green where Doris’s parents lived. Dr Freeman gave them a bone china tea-set as fine as anything he had in his house and the housekeeper, Mrs Oakes, gave them a set of linen sheets. They had such high hopes then. The two-room flat was only temporary; soon they would have a house of their own and children.

  But their dreams were not to be. Doris’s first child was still-born. Arnold was called up in the First War, went to France, and returned a different man, haunted by images of the trenches, his teeth rotting and his hair falling out. But they still counted their blessings. Arnold had survived, when so many of his friends had been killed. They had one another and, even if their home was grim, things would get better. A few years later, once Arnold was settled as a fitter in a factory, finally putting the war behind him, Doris became pregnant again. But when their little boy died, at just a few weeks old, they were both so crushed by grief that they gave up struggling to improve themselves.

  A glimpse into their home as the New Year bells rang out for 1928 would have shown a forlorn couple, who had nothing more from twenty years of marriage and hard work than a few pieces of shabby furniture. The bone china tea-set Dr Freeman had given them as a wedding present was put away, wrapped in newspaper because they knew now they’d never have use for it. The linen sheets were threadbare. Their wedding photograph on the sideboard was fading, just like their dreams.

  They were old beyond their years. Doris’s once clear complexion was muddy, her blue eyes weary, her body like a sagging bolster. Arnold was stooped, almost bald, racked by coughing fits he’d suffered from since the war, made worse by the damp flat. That year they hadn’t even bothered to put up Christmas decorations, or to go out and join in the New Year celebrations. They’d long since accepted that there was nothing to look forward to: Doris too old at forty even to hope for a child, both sets of parents dead, brothers and sisters scattered. Life was just one long, dreary road which appeared to lead nowhere.

  It was just a few days into the new year when they received a letter telling them that the tenement was to be pulled down as part of slum clearance and offering them a council house in Dagenham. After a lifetime of disappointments their delight was tempered with a suspicion that there might be a catch in the offer, but they agreed to see the house anyway.

  In later years Doris was to count February 1st, 1928, the day they saw 88 Flamstead Road for the first time, as important an anniversary as her wedding day and every bit as joyful. It was bitterly cold and thick snow had fallen overnight but that made it all the more beautiful and memorable.

  It was enough to be given a new start in a three-bedroomed house with back and front gardens, electric light and an inside lavatory. But Flamstead Road overlooked a school surrounded by playing fields. As they looked out of the bedroom window, rosy-cheeked children were playing in the snow, and the air was fresh and clean. All the sadness and disillusionment of the past just faded away.

  Their happiness mounted in the next few months. First Arnold got taken on at Ford’s Motor Company with better wages than he’d previously earned, and then, unbelievably, Doris found she was pregnant.

  That summer and autumn were blissful. Back in the tenement they had shared a lavatory with six other families, and cooked on an open fire. If they dared to hang washing outside on the communal lines, there was a good chance of it being stolen. Rats, mice, bugs in the walls, were all part of life in Bethnal Green, as were drunken fights, noisy neighbours and the stink of drains and uncleared rubbish.

  Now they had a gas cooker and a copper to wash their clothes and heat water for the bath. When they opened the windows they weren’t subjected to noise and gritty dust, just fresh, clean air. To sit on their own clean lavatory for as long as they liked,
knowing no one would bang on the door and ask them to hurry up, or to wallow in a real bath, then just pull out the plug without the burden or mess of emptying it, was heaven.

  Arnold’s health improved as he tended the garden in his spare time. Doris sewed and knitted for the baby. Each strong kick reassured her nothing could go wrong this time and as each day passed Doris seemed to regain the youth and vitality that had drained away in Bethnal Green.

  Their baby was born in April 1929, a small, but healthy, six-pound girl, and although they had intended to name her Hilda after her maternal grandmother, Doris took it into her head to call her Bonny, a name she’d seen in a film magazine.

  A great many people suggested that Bonny was pretty because she had been awaited for so long. Behind Doris’s back they often spitefully added that her looks wouldn’t last, that she’d soon be as ordinary as her middle-aged parents. But Bonny confounded them all by not only retaining her looks, but becoming prettier with each passing year.

  Moving to Dagenham and all at once finding their dreams fulfilled had a profound effect on the Phillipses. Doris became house-proud, checking to see her windows were the cleanest in the street, her baby’s nappies the whitest. Gradually Arnold was affected by it too, making sure his roses were bigger and the lawn neater than his neighbours’. Doris would walk proudly to the shops with Bonny sitting up in her pram in a sparkling white dress and starched sun bonnet, and even though she observed the effect the Depression was having on some of her neighbours, instead of feeling sympathy for those who had lost their jobs, she began to feel she and Arnold were just a cut above others.

  Arnold was fortunate that as well as being a diligent worker, he was liked by his superiors. Although other men were laid off at Ford’s, he not only kept his job but was promoted, becoming foreman of his section, and this in turn increased their feelings of superiority. If Arnold sometimes felt saddened that he was no longer ‘one of the lads’, he kept it to himself and put his energies into working overtime to buy the little luxuries he and Doris had always dreamed of.

  Bit by bit, the old shabby furniture in their living-room was replaced by a brown Rexine three-piece suite, an oak gateleg table with matching chairs, an Axminster red carpet with gold scrolls and an elegant standard lamp. They had two sets of curtains – heavy red ones for the winter and flowery cotton ones for the summer – but Doris’s pride and joy was a walnut, glass-fronted china cabinet where she could display the tea-set given to them by Dr Freeman and a set of glasses which looked like real crystal.

  But Bonny was the axis Doris and Arnold’s world spun on. Everything they did was with her in mind. Arnold never had a pint in the pub on the way home because he had to get back to read Bonny a bedtime story. Doris would stop anything she was doing if Bonny wanted her. Every fine Sunday they took her out for picnics; on summer evenings they took her to the park together; if she was fretful she slept between her parents; if she was naughty they blamed themselves.

  By the time Bonny was five and starting school across the road, Doris was already looking ahead, sure that Dagenham didn’t have enough to offer their precious daughter. She cringed when she saw how other children played in the streets and saw danger lurking behind every bush and tree.

  Without Bonny at home during the day, Doris had so much more free time. When she heard that a woman’s group based in Romford were looking for new members to expand their charity work, it seemed the perfect way to break into what she called ‘polite society’.

  In a year of helping out in soup kitchens for the unemployed, sewing circles, hospital visiting and fund-raising, Doris learned a great deal. She managed to modulate her cockney accent and to dress with a little more style, but above all she discovered that middle-class people gave their daughters dancing lessons.

  Arnold was hard to convince. He saw it as a waste of good money to take his daughter to Romford every Saturday morning and pay a shilling a lesson, not to mention buying a uniform and special shoes. But Doris was adamant. Bonny was going to dance.

  From the first moment that Bonny put on her ballet shoes and her short, pink tunic, it was clear she was made to dance. Doris would have believed this even if her pretty daughter had thundered about like an elephant, but Miss Estelle the dancing teacher made it quite plain that Bonny Phillips was talented.

  One lesson a week turned to two, then three. Doris bought cheaper cuts of meat, only did charity work when she could walk there and made do with her old clothes to find the extra money needed. Once Arnold saw his daughter in her first show, wearing a pink tutu and with flowers in her hair, he wiped away a few proud tears and said no more about the expense.

  ‘Look, Doris, Dagenham’s bound to be bombed, it’s a sitting target so close to the docks,’ Arnold said. ‘We kept Bonny home when all the other kids were evacuated because we didn’t know where she’d end up. But this is different.’

  Bonny sat on the stairs in the dark, her heart pounding with excitement rather than fear.

  ‘But nothing’s happened,’ Doris said tearfully. ‘Most of the children have come back. Mrs Ellis said the woman her boys were billeted with had a stick taken to their backs. Iris Osbourne’s girls never got enough to eat.’

  ‘This war won’t be phoney much longer,’ Arnold said firmly, sucking on his pipe. ‘The Germans are advancing all the time. I hear things at work. How would we feel if our little Bonny got hurt? The shelter won’t stand up to a direct hit. Miss Wynter won’t beat her, or starve her – she wants Bonny to live with her. Be fair, Doris, she’s a real lady!’

  Bonny frowned, thinking hard. The name Miss Wynter rang a bell, but she couldn’t think why.

  ‘But Sussex is such a long way,’ Doris sobbed. ‘We wouldn’t be able to see her very often. She might get in with some rough children.’

  ‘Can you imagine any rough children living in a place like Amberley?’ her father snorted. ‘And don’t you think a dancing teacher knows how to control children? Be sensible, Doris, if we turn Miss Wynter down now, she’ll take another child and then if the government insists the children evacuate again, we’ll have no say in anything.’

  All at once Bonny remembered who Miss Wynter was. She was Miss Estelle’s sister. She’d been staying in London at Christmas and come to see the show. A tall, elegant woman in a fur coat, another dancing teacher.

  ‘I don’t want porridge.’ Bonny’s lip curled petulantly as her mother put the steaming bowl in front of her. ‘I want a boiled egg and toast.’

  ‘I couldn’t get any eggs,’ Doris said patiently. ‘I queued for two hours yesterday and they’d all gone by the time I was served. Now be a good girl and eat your porridge.’

  ‘No.’ Bonny pouted, shaking her head so violently that one lone rag came loose on her head and a springy ringlet tumbled out. ‘I hate porridge.’

  Doris sighed. Hardly a day went past when her daughter didn’t make a scene about something. If it wasn’t about her breakfast it would be about the colour of her hair ribbons, or which dress she was to wear. Common sense told her to eat the porridge herself and let her daughter go hungry to teach her a lesson. But Doris couldn’t do that.

  Deep down, Doris knew that her daughter had some undesirable traits, but she couldn’t admit it, not even to herself. When Bonny’s teacher complained that she led other children into trouble, Doris and Arnold believed she’d got it round the wrong way. Bonny’s many tall stories weren’t lies, but signs of ‘a vivid imagination’. When she refused food they never saw it as a ploy to gain attention, but as a reminder that she was ‘delicate’.

  ‘What about a sausage?’ Doris asked, sure Bonny sensed something was going on behind the scenes. ‘I had one put aside for Daddy, because he’s got the day off, but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind you having it.’

  Bonny hesitated before replying. Her father always worked on Saturdays; if he had today off it had to be because of what they were talking about last night. Under the circumstances, it might be better to be more amenable.


  ‘I don’t want Daddy’s breakfast.’ Bonny made this sound rather noble. ‘I’ll eat the porridge.’

  If Bonny were to be asked why she was so contrary with her mother, it was doubtful she’d be able to come up with any sensible answer. She knew she was loved, that she had everything any child could reasonably want, far more than most children on the Becontree estate had. Yet Bonny resented her parents. They didn’t allow her to play in the street or the park with other children. Her mother even met her outside the school gates at home time, despite living opposite. In the evenings she could hear other kids playing rounders on the school field until it was dark, but she had to be content with playing Snakes and Ladders with her mother or reading a book. These same kids teased her and called her ‘mummy’s girl’, and imitated the way Mrs Phillips tried to speak posh.

  At the same time, Bonny was getting glimpses of another world through her dancing lessons, and it seemed she was excluded from this one too. The girls at dancing had posh voices, their fathers collected them in smart cars, they spoke of ponies, parties and going to Brownie camp. Bonny had seen them look down their narrow noses at her mother’s worn coat and on more than one occasion she’d been asked what it was like to live on a council estate.

  Bonny didn’t fit in either world. She didn’t want to be shabbily dressed with a snail trail under her nose and give up dancing so she could belong in Dagenham. Neither did she want to be like the prim goody-goodies of Romford with their swanky manners. But she hated being a misfit.

  Today, though, Bonny’s behaviour was based on uncertainty. Although being sent away from home sounded exciting, she was frightened of the unknown.