Rising Summer Read online

  About the Book

  Tim Parkes was three when his parents were killed in a train crash and he went to live with his Aunt May, first in New Cross, and then to Walworth where the living was cheaper. They managed splendidly – and then came the war. Tim Parkes became Gunner Parkes and Aunt May spent most of her nights in the Walworth air raid shelters with Tim keeping an eye on her whenever he was able.

  When he got posted to Suffolk he wasn’t too pleased – Suffolk was Country, not like London at all. But in fact there were a lot of things about Sheldham that reminded him of home – the Walworth evacuees for a start. Those of them that weren’t creating havoc in the Suffolk village were creating havoc in Tim’s life. Minnie Beavers – ex-Camberwell – was fifteen, pert, pretty, and wildly in love with Tim. She was determined to inveigle him into marriage the minute she was old enough. Tim was equally determined to escape and choose his own girl.

  By the time Tim had gone away to fight the war, and Minnie had joined the WAAF, a great many things had changed in both their lives.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  About the Author

  Also by Mary Jane Staples

  Copyright

  RISING SUMMER

  Mary Jane Staples

  To Kate

  CHAPTER ONE

  ON MY WAY out of Battery Headquarters to begin my seven days leave, I called in on Bombardier Jones who was in charge of the ration stores.

  ‘Any chance?’ I asked.

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Well, I’ve got some eggs for my week’s leave.’

  ‘Nicked ’em off some chickens, did you?’ said Bombardier Jones.

  ‘No, present from a friend. All I need now is something to go with ’em.’

  ‘You’ve got a hope,’ he said, but if he was in charge of the rations, I was in charge of the leave roster. ‘All right, slip the conniver six rashers, Parkes.’ Gunner Parkes was one of his two assistants.

  ‘Don’t be like that,’ I said, ‘there’s me Aunt May as well. I can’t go home with six rashers all to myself and none for her. She’s close to wartime starvation as it is.’

  ‘Poor old lady, ruddy hard luck,’ said Bombardier Jones.

  ‘’Ere y’ar, Tim,’ said Gunner Parkes, and he wrapped up a wodge of rashers in greaseproof paper and handed the packet to me. ‘Enjoy yer leave, mate. When you got me down for?’

  ‘In a fortnight.’

  ‘Good on yer,’ said Parkes.

  ‘Who’s in charge here?’ asked Bombardier Jones. NCOs were always asking daft questions like that.

  ‘You’re a good old bomb,’ I said, ‘so long.’

  I caught my train to Liverpool Street from our local station in Suffolk and had the packet of rashers tucked inside my battledress blouse when I came off the train. There were always redcaps prowling about at main stations and if they caught you in possession of what you weren’t entitled to, you could look forward to a spell in the Aldershot glasshouse.

  It was the second week in April, 1943. London was bright with sunshine but a bit knocked about. Evidence of the Blitz still caught the eye. So did a profusion of Yanks. GIs were everywhere. I took the tube to Waterloo and a bus from there. The clippie goggled at me.

  ‘Well, strike me pink,’ she said, ‘if it ain’t me one and only.’ She rang the bell and the bus moved off.

  ‘Watcher, Nellie,’ I said. Nell Saunders was a Walworth neighbour, married to Bert Saunders. They were both characters. Bert was in the Navy, so Nell had taken a job as a clippie. ‘How you doing, lovey?’

  ‘Oh, up an’ down, in and out, ’ere an’ there,’ said Nell, a sturdy young woman with a hearty laugh. ‘Clip yer a tuppenny one for luck?’

  ‘All right, give us a ticket,’ I said, ‘and a kiss as well.’

  Nell gave me a smacker. Passengers inside the bus let go a cheer.

  ‘Got one for me, love?’ asked an old bloke.

  ‘I’ll kiss yer goodbye when you get off, Grandpa,’ said Nell and clipped me a ticket. ‘Got some leave, Tim?’

  ‘Seven days.’

  ‘That’s the stuff,’ she said. ‘See yer down the pub one evenin’. Give me love to yer Aunt May.’

  ‘Bless you too,’ I said and took a seat.

  Aunt May was priceless, a mother to me, having fostered me since my infant days. My parents had been killed in a train crash when I was three years old. My dad’s sister, Aunt May, a single woman, took me over, brought me up and gave me so much motherly affection that I never missed my natural mum. She’d been born in New Cross where her parents had a newsagents shop. We lived over the shop with her parents. She lost her mother when she was twenty-eight and I was nine. Her dad carried on with the shop and then he died seven years later, just after I’d left school at sixteen. Aunt May sold the shop and moved to Walworth, where living was cheaper: furthermore, its cockneys were her favourite kind of people. Investing the money from the sale of the shop, she had an income of about a pound a week and I contributed from what I earned in my job with an insurance company. So we managed fairly well, the rent of the house being only twelve shillings a week.

  My parents were buried in Lewisham Cemetery and Aunt May and I always went once a year and took flowers. She told me that my mum and dad had been a lovely couple and were worth remembering. If I grew up to be like my dad, she said once, the world wouldn’t complain about me.

  The bus trundled down the Walworth Road. In the April sunshine the old place looked quite bright and cheerful. South London had taken its share of German bombs in 1940 and 1941, but it had been tidied up a bit and there were Saturday morning shoppers out and about. The war had taken a turn for the better when Montgomery knocked Rommel for six in the Western Desert, and Walworth, accordingly, had a perky look.

  I alighted at the East Street market stop. Nell saw me off the bus with a smile and a wink. There were always more winks in Walworth than anywhere else. I entered the market. It was crowded. There were wartime shortages and market stalls no longer had a fully laden look, but people were always hoping that what they couldn’t get in shops they could get in markets.

  I knew East Street market as well as I knew my own home. I also knew Charlie Chipper who ran a fish stall and sold kippers among other things. Edging my way into the crowds I heard a greengrocery stallholder call.

  ‘Watcher, Tim, see you got yer khaki duds on, matey. Smart, ain’t we?’

  ‘Not as smart as you and your scales, Fred.’

  The pots and pans stallholder spotted me next. Not a bit shy about all the people around, he sang his greeting in a voice full of Walworth gravel:

  ‘’Ere comes a treat, walkin’ down the street,

  ’Obnail boots on ’is plates o’ meat,

  What d’yer think of that, then, Tim’s gorn barmy,

  Look at what he’s done now, he’s in the bleedin’ Army.’

  ‘Same to you, Eddie,�
�� I called. Shoppers were laughing. I went on, making for the fish stall, hoping.

  ‘Hello, Charlie,’ I said as I reached it.

  ‘Well, well, and ’ow’s yerself, cocky?’ said Charlie Chipper. He wore a striped apron and a straw boater.

  ‘On leave,’ I said and waited until he’d finished serving a customer or two. Then I asked him if he’d got any kippers. Aunt May had a partiality for kippers. Not for breakfast, for tea. And I liked them myself. Walworth people were notable kipper-eaters and knew exactly how to separate the juicy flesh from the many bones. But fish was as short as other foods. The country’s fishermen forever had U-boats on their tails.

  ‘Well, me young cockalorum, I tell yer no lie, I ain’t got none,’ said Charlie, whose stall no longer swam with all kinds of fish and conger eels. His offerings were sparse, although there was a crate half-full of mussels. ‘I mean, I asks yer, kippers! Yes, lady?’

  ‘I’ll take me ’addock,’ said the new customer, a lovely plump old dear.

  ‘’Addock, what ’addock?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘What you promised me yesterday an’ you’d better ’ave it or me old man’ll come an’ do things to yer cockles.’

  ‘’Ere, yesterday’s been an’ gorn, yer know, missus.’

  ‘Well, course it ’as, yer silly man, it’s today now and I’d like me promised ’addock.’

  ‘I don’t see no ’addock,’ said Charlie.

  ‘No smoked ’addock?’ said the old dear.

  ‘Ah, now, well now,’ said Charlie, ‘yer didn’t say smoked, did yer? There’s smoked an’ fresh, yer know. ’Ere, was it you wearin’ a brown ’at with feathers that come and asked me yesterday?’

  ‘Don’t come the old acid with me, Charlie Chipper, yer know it was and I’m wearing the ’at now, ain’t I?’

  ‘I like it,’ said Charlie, ‘that’s what I call a cheerful titfer and I got yer ’addock, Queenie. Smoked.’ He produced it, already wrapped, from a hiding-place under his stall. This was the age of under-the-counter stuff. ‘One an’ tuppence.’

  ‘Gawd ’elp us, you’ll ’ave the camisole off me back if you keep chargin’ prices like that,’ said the old dear, but dug into her purse and paid up.

  ‘It’s the war, yer know,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Course I know,’ she said, ‘I been bombed out twice.’

  ‘All right, me old darling,’ said Charlie, ‘see yer up the park on Sunday. Wear yer best frillies.’

  ‘I’ll give you frillies, yer saucy bugger,’ said the old dear and went on her way with her smoked haddock and a twinkle in her eye.

  ‘Now, about the kippers,’ I said.

  ‘Now, Tim, me young mate, I got me reg’lars to think about.’

  ‘My Aunt May’s a regular.’

  ‘So she is and yer been a soldier for a couple of years or so, Tim.’

  ‘So how about a couple of kippers before I die for my country and your smoked haddock?’

  ‘Fancy some mackerel?’ suggested Charlie.

  ‘Fancy getting your stall blown up?’ I countered. Kippers were like gold dust, of course, but there was always a way of getting a favour out of Charlie and that was to carry on a palaver with him. And I had a feeling some kippers were hiding themselves under the stall. I was after treating Aunt May.

  ‘Yer twistin’ me arm,’ said Charlie. ‘Still, if yer’d like to say a few kind words about me to yer Aunt May, I might be able to oblige yer.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll tell her to be up the park on Sunday wearing her best frillies,’ I said.

  ‘Now yer talkin’,’ said Charlie and he gave in with a grin. He ducked under his stall with a sheet of newspaper in his hand and came up a moment later with the newspaper wrapped round something just as three more customers arrived, all hard-working Walworth women.

  ‘There y’ar, soldier, pound of fresh Cornish pilchards,’ he said, in case the new customers got ideas. ‘One an’ four.’

  ‘Ruddy robbery,’ I said, paying up. ‘Still, ta, Charlie love.’

  ‘Give ’im a cuddle as well, soldier,’ said one woman. ‘’E’d like that, wouldn’t yer, Charlie? And I’ll ’ave some of them pilchards.’

  I left Charlie to explain he’d just run out of pilchards and walked down King and Queen Street. It was no surprise to me to see a GI arm in arm with a girl. They stopped at the door of one of the flat-fronted houses. The girl opened the door by pulling on a latchcord and took her GI in. It was a fact, GIs were everywhere, they’d even found King and Queen Street in the heart of Walworth.

  I crossed Browning Street and turned into Walcorde Avenue, where the small terraced houses were fronted by iron railings. Walcorde Avenue was considered fairly posh. Well, there weren’t too many streets called avenues in Walworth. This one led directly to St John’s Church by a little paved pathway. It was a cul-de-sac as far as traffic was concerned and it always looked neat and respectable. Aunt May, like most women, was in favour of respectability, although she wasn’t fanatical about it, being broad-minded.

  These days there were very few street urchins or ragamuffins. Nobody was very rich but most families were a little better off than in pre-war years. The war had created full employment and kids went about in fairly decent clothes and without a hungry look. Actually, there was a bit of a dearth of kids. Thousands of them had been evacuated. There were a few in the village of Sheldham, the Suffolk village a mile from Battery Headquarters. So far, they’d only managed to burn down one barn. Accidentally, of course.

  I let myself in, and went through to the kitchen.

  ‘Here we are, old girl,’ I called, putting my small travelling valise down on a chair. The valise was one that had fallen off the back of an army lorry.

  ‘Who’s that, as if I don’t know,’ said Aunt May, coming in from the scullery. ‘Well, bless us, look at you. Lanky lamp-posts and all.’ She smiled. She was a nice-looking woman of forty-one, invariably bright and unflappable. She had a good figure, brown hair and brown eyes. She was wearing a pretty patterned apron with pockets and there was always a hankie in each pocket, as if she still needed to be ready to wipe my nose. My nose, when I was a kid, went runny if I had a cold.

  ‘How’s things, old darling?’ I asked.

  ‘All the better for seeing you,’ she said and gave me a kiss and a cuddle. She was given to handing out kisses and cuddles. I asked her once if the milkman ever got any, he being a sad-looking bloke who seemed in need of some. Aunt May said what a question, you saucy devil, what would the neighbours say if they saw me kissing and cuddling the milkman on my own doorstep? When I said she could treat the bloke on someone else’s doorstep or behind the parlour curtain, Aunt May fell about laughing. She was given to laughing as much as to kisses and cuddles. I’d never known her to have moody moments, although all through my school years there’d been times when she’d been strict and corrective. She didn’t mind boisterousness or natural larkiness, but she did care about the right kind of behaviour. She said the right kind of behaviour mattered, never mind whether you were poor or rich. There were Walworth people who sang outside the pubs on Saturday nights and did the knees-up until bobbies on the beat arrived and told them to go home. And mostly they went home. That was the right kind of behaviour to Aunt May. It was civilized, she said, to go home when told to.

  She was a bit superior for Walworth on the whole, but never acted as if she regarded herself so. When both her parents had gone she simply decided to get out of the flat she’d lived in all her life. She wanted elbow room, she said, she wanted a house with an affordable rent. She’d been here six years, she knew everybody in the immediate vicinity and got on so well with them that anyone would have thought she was Walworth born and bred. She liked the fact that cockneys were a resilient lot and probably the most cheerful people in England. Right from the start she’d sallied forth into the heart of things, with a smile and a hullo for everybody. She was charitable towards all, even towards Alf Cook who, when the worse for drink, chased his kids up and down Bro
wning Street, roaring at them and brandishing his leather belt. But since Aunt May’s tolerance couldn’t last for ever and since she could be very forthright, she’d stopped him once, when we were on our way to the Walworth Road. She’d planted herself in front of him and he’d had to stop. He’d have trampled her to death otherwise, being a burly council navvy.

  ‘Gidoudavit, yer dozy female!’ he bawled.

  ‘Now, Mr Cook, behave yourself,’ said Aunt May. ‘All this shouting and hollering on a nice Saturday afternoon won’t do the neighbourhood much good, nor you, either. I knew a man like you in New Cross once—’

  ‘Oh, yer did, did yer?’ said Alf. ‘Well, sod off back to ’im.’

  ‘Really, Mr Cook, shame on you,’ she said. ‘I wish you’d listen, I’m trying to tell you that this man, just like you, went about bawling and bellowing whenever he was one over the eight. And what happened to him, yes, what? He went and fractured his larynx.’

  ‘Well, bleedin’ ’ard luck!’ bawled Alf, red in the face. ‘’E shouldn’t ’ave ’ad a larinch! I ain’t got one.’

  ‘Of course you have,’ said Aunt May, ‘we all have, it’s where our voices come from. This man fractured his with too much hollering and he can’t even talk now, let alone holler.’

  ‘Gawd blimey O’Reilly, what do I care?’ roared Alf. ‘You goin’ to stop standin’ in me way or ain’t yer?’ He brandished his belt threateningly, but I didn’t think Aunt May was going to need any protection, I was sure she could handle him.

  She said, ‘Mr Cook, your trousers are coming down.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Your trousers are coming down,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘so you’d better stop waving that belt about and put it on. Just look at your trousers. Whatever would Mrs Cook say if she came to know they’d come down in front of everyone in Browning Street? You don’t want to be a disgrace to your own wife, do you?’

  Alf Cook, in his shirt sleeves, looked down at his navvy’s corduroys. They were sagging dangerously. ‘Oh, dearie me, fancy that, beg yer pardon, I’m sure,’ he said in growling sarcasm and he hiked his trousers up.