Ellie (8 page)

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.

*

‘Morning, sunshine!’

Her father’s warm greeting made Bonny turn in her seat to smile at him. Although she often felt irritated by her mother, she had no such feelings about him.

‘Why aren’t you going to work?’ she asked innocently.

‘Because I want to be with my princess,’ he said, kissing her cheek.

‘Bristles!’ Bonny rubbed her cheek indignantly. He hadn’t washed or shaved yet, his braces over his vest. It wasn’t often she saw him in such a state – her mother always insisted on the proprieties of at least a shirt, and usually a tie too.

He sat down at the kitchen table. Doris put the sausage in the pan, then turned to pour her husband’s tea. Once again, Bonny felt the tension between them.

‘Are you taking me to dancing this morning?’ she asked her father.

Dancing classes had been halted for a while when war first broke out and some of the pupils were evacuated, but they’d been back to normal for some time because the expected air raids hadn’t come.

‘You won’t be going today,’ Arnold said, stirring his tea with more force than was necessary. His smile was strained, accentuating the deep lines on his face, and his blue eyes were washed out and weary. ‘We have something to tell you, princess.’

As her father gently explained about Miss Wynter and her cottage in Sussex, unaware that his daughter had heard it all before, Bonny found herself taking in all the familiar details of the kitchen which for so long she’d taken for granted.

The glossy cream walls, the wooden draining-board, scrubbed white by her mother. The copper in the corner, the white enamel bread bin on top, the copper stick, scrubbing board and wooden tongs hanging on hooks beside it. Her father’s shaving mug next to his mirror on the window sill, a Reckitt’s blue bag resting on a tin lid ready for the next wash. The kitchen cabinet had its flap down, half a loaf sitting on it. All at once these so-familiar things seemed very dear to her.

‘Are you listening?’

Bonny blinked and looked back at her father. ‘Yes, Daddy,’ she said, shocked to see his eyes were glistening with tears. She had often wished her father was younger: she disliked his scraggy neck and his baldness and bad teeth embarrassed her. But she didn’t notice those failings now, remembering only that he always had time to talk and play with her. Everything he’d told her sounded like a fairy-tale. To live with a dancing teacher in a beautiful house in the country and have private lessons! She wanted to go, and yet …

‘But when will it be?’ she asked him.

Arnold gazed at his daughter, mentally cursing the Germans for forcing such a dilemma upon him. He didn’t think he could stand one day without a kiss from those rosy soft lips. The house would be as silent as a tomb without Bonny’s chatter, and Doris would be unbearable with nothing to occupy her.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said, his voice cracking. ‘We’ll take you there on the train.’