The Camberwell Raid
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Authors: Mary Jane Staples
There was a double wedding planned in Walworth. Sally Brown was marrying Horace Cooper, and her brother, Freddy, was at last getting hitched to his childhood sweetheart, Cassie Ford. But the wedding wasn’t the only thing being planned, for Ginger Carstairs and Dusty Miller were working out a bank robbery and, unbeknown to the inhabitants of Walworth and Denmark Hill, both Freddy Brown and the Adams family were to be deeply involved and put in considerable danger.
It took much ingenuity on Boots’s part to come up with a scheme that would foil the plans of the raiders. And all this was happening at a time when Boots had other worries in his life, and when the unity of his own little family was being threatened.
THE CAMBERWELL RAID
Mary Jane Staples
BUNNY
, a dear friend,
and with treasured memories of Ted.
DURING THE FIRST
two months of 1935, up to the time when blustery March blew in, the Press and the wireless of Britain had supplied the people with the usual mixture of national and international news.
Among other items of interest, it was noted that the aged Field-Marshal Hindenburg, in dying the previous year, had given Adolf Hitler the opportunity to make himself virtual dictator of Germany. Hitler, accordingly, was flexing his muscles and threatening not only his neighbours but also fellow Germans who didn’t agree with him and his Nazis. He kept talking about Germany’s need for ‘living room’, and the necessity of dealing ruthlessly with all political opponents. And he was also making it clear he didn’t feel Germany’s Jewish people were an asset to the country. Mrs Susie Adams of Denmark Hill, Camberwell, asked her husband, Mr Sammy Adams, what he thought about Hitler. Off his German chump, said Sammy, or he wouldn’t wear a Charlie Chaplin moustache.
There was also news of an incredibly fascinating addition to the media, called television. It was so far advanced that in February pictures had been broadcast from Crystal Palace to a selected audience. The selected audience was so spellbound that it might have been lost for words had it not been made up of the kind of people who never were.
Then the BBC banned radio artistes from making jokes about fat people, cross-eyed people, coloured people, marital infidelity and men who were effeminate. Twelve-year-old Emma Somers asked her mother, Mrs Lizzy Somers, what the latter meant. It means, well, that they’re a bit delicate, said Lizzy. Emma, who thought that meant they caught colds easily, said oh, poor things, what a shame.
The Hon. Unity Mitford, who had a crush on Adolf Hitler, had also been in the news. She’d written to a Nazi newspaper to boldly declare that along with her beloved Fuhrer she hated Jews. Shocks went through the British people that one of their own could make such a spectacle of herself. A fifth form pupil of West Square Girls School asked teacher Miss Polly Simms what she thought of that. Miss Simms said every country had its quota of idiots, but it was frightfully bad luck for Britain to have one as ghastly as the Hon. Unity.
There had been speculation in some newspapers about whether or not debutantes would be allowed to wear muffs when presented at Court. That was a question that made hard-up people spit, especially those short of boots and shoes, but it was reported all the same.
The BMA announced that its recommended minimum weekly intake of food for one person, including a Sunday roast, costed out at five shillings and tenpence ha’penny. The Government thought anything over four shillings and sixpence was lashing out a bit, and accordingly unpatriotic in view of the economic need to tighten one’s belt.
Something that hadn’t been mentioned either by the Press or the wireless was the fact that there
was
going to be a double wedding at St John’s Church, Walworth, on Easter Saturday. The vicar was keeping calm about it, the brides-to-be, Miss Sally Brown and Miss Cassie Ford, were beginning to feel slightly fluttery, and the would-be bridegrooms, Horace Cooper and Freddy Brown respectively, were doing what they could to think up witty speeches that wouldn’t fall apart.
Meanwhile, a couple of downright unpleasant characters, Dusty Miller and Ginger Carstairs, were planning a bank robbery which, if successful, would take them off to the fleshpots of South America via France.
‘BLIMEY, SNOW!’ CRIED
gleeful kids of Walworth on a morning in late March, noses pressed to cold window panes.
‘Bother that,’ said a great many Walworth mums.
‘I ain’t rapturous, either,’ said a dad or two.
Some indignant people with a few coppers to spare used two to ring up the wireless people from public phone boxes and complain that the wireless weathermen hadn’t said anything about snow last night. The wireless people said so sorry, it was a sudden and unexpected chilly front after a spell of unseasonal warmth that did it. A likely story, said several people, and just when some of us had started to leave off our winter vests and all.
Nineteen-year-old Cassie Ford spoke to her widower dad when he came down for breakfast.
‘Dad, have you seen outside?’
‘That I ’ave, Cassie,’ said Mr Ford, known as the Gaffer. ‘Looks like Christmas.’
‘Blow that,’ said Cassie, ladling out steaming hot porridge, ‘it’s my weddin’ next month. Suppose it’s snowing then? I’ll freeze. Freddy won’t think much of a frozen bride.’
‘Don’t you worry yerself, pet,’ said the Gaffer, sprinkling sugar over his porridge, ‘I daresay you’ll still be a nice blushin’ bride when you get to the altar.’
‘Not if I’m frozen stiff I won’t,’ said Cassie.
‘Well, that’s what Freddy’ll expect, yer know, Cassie, a blushin’ bride,’ said the Gaffer, a twinkle in his eye.
‘Dad, you daft ha’porth,’ said Cassie, ‘blushin’ brides only happen in books.’
‘Well, do yer best,’ said the Gaffer. ‘Freddy’ll be a mite disappointed if you ain’t blushin’ a fair bit.’
‘If the weather’s like this,’ said Cassie, ‘I’ll just have a pink nose. I’ll die if I ’ave to say me vows with a pink nose.’
‘Yer pink nose won’t notice if you can manage a few nice blushes, pet,’ said the Gaffer.
‘Dad, I’ll hit you in a minute,’ said Cassie.
‘Serve me right for pullin’ yer leg, eh, Cassie?’ said the Gaffer, and Cassie smiled. She loved her affectionate old dad and all his bluff ways. She served him two thick slices of toast when he’d finished his porridge, and was pleased when he helped himself liberally to the marmalade, because she’d made it herself with Seville oranges bought cheaply from the East Street market. He was going to lodge with her and Freddy in the house they’d contracted to rent in Wansey Street. Mind, Freddy’s brother-in-law, Sammy Adams, had advised them not to get permanently attached to renting. It might keep a roof over your heads, he said, but that roofs never going to be yours, it’ll always be your landlord’s. Buying even a little two-up, two-down place would be a better bet, he said. Cassie said she didn’t think they’d be able to afford the mortgage. Well, said Sammy, don’t let that stop you looking, and as soon as you spot a suitable place, come and see me, and I just might finance you. Oh, said Cassie, would you really loan
us
, Mister Sammy? At affordable repayments, said Sammy. Freddy’s as good as part of the family, he said, and so will you be, Cassie, when you’re Mrs Freddy. Cassie was so touched she gave him a kiss.
Sammy charged her tuppence for it.
‘Well now,’ said the Gaffer, when he’d finished his breakfast, ‘I’d best get off to the railway, Cassie. There’ll be a few frozen points this mornin’, I shouldn’t wonder. Glad I wasn’t on early shift.’
‘Dad, you got all your winter woollies on?’ asked Cassie.
‘You bet I ’ave,’ said the Gaffer, taking his overcoat off the peg on the kitchen door.
‘All of them, Dad?’
‘The lot, startin’ with me winter combinations,’ said the Gaffer. ‘I wasn’t born yesterday, yer know.’
‘Where’s your woollen scarf?’ asked Cassie.
‘In me coat pocket,’ said the Gaffer. He fished it out and wrapped it around his neck. ‘So long, love, see yer this evening.’
‘Dad, would you like a nice hot meat stew for supper, with suet dumplings?’ asked Cassie.
‘Be a treat and a half, that would, me pet,’ said the Gaffer, who knew suet put body and flavour into dumplings. He kissed her and left.
Cassie washed up the breakfast things, closed off the kitchen fire with the damper so that it would burn slowly all day, put on her winter coat and hat, and went off to her own job, to a florist’s shop in Kennington, her feet and legs snug in Russian boots. Such footwear was popular in winter, and had not yet come to be called Wellingtons.
Just a few more weeks, she thought, as she walked through the snow to the Walworth Road. Just a few,
that
was all, before she gladly gave up her poorly paid job in a cold shop to become a housewife. The prospect was an exciting one. Well, it was Freddy to whom she was going to be a housewife, and she’d have her dad to care for as well. Sewing, darning, cooking, baking and housework would be all of a full-time job, and she’d make sure the kitchen would always be warm and cosy. And on Saturday evenings, she and Freddy would go to the pictures. And then there’d be their marital relationship, which Freddy said he was looking forward to as he hadn’t had one so far – oh, help, his grin had got wicked lately.