CHAPTER 8
A Growing Family
October 26th 1940 - the baby arrived, another little girl. I had so hoped that it would be a boy and was disappointed a little which wasn't helped when Mother came to visit saying that the baby was just like I had been as a baby, ugly. But she told me not to worry, I had soon improved. Sure enough our little girl with her dark curly hair and dark brown eyes grew up into a beautiful child although very mischievous. We called her Geraldine, Gerry for short. During the war all the iron railings and garden gates had to be melted down for the war effort and Gerry had a field day bringing home bunches of flowers for me picked on her way home from Sunday School. We had a lot of complaints from people in the village although she was well loved by everyone.
When Margaret was just past four years old she started school. Her young Uncle Rowland who was still at the same school used to take her on the crossbar of his bike. There was little traffic on the road at this time. The dog would go with them to school and wait outside the porch until it was time for them to come home.
It was very difficult at this time to get new clothes and there never seemed to be enough monthly clothing coupons. We didn't seem to do too badly though as an old lady called Mrs. Cunningham used to come round with remnants of material. Jean loaned me her sewing machine so that I could make the girls some dresses saving the coupons to buy wool which Jean would then knit up into jumpers and skirts.
When Margaret went to school Gerry had to learn to do Margaret's little jobs. She would have to carry the drinkings down the lane to the men. She didn't seem to get the hang of this too well and one day she never reached her destination stopping off instead at the cornfield, undressed and had a picnic. She always enjoyed taking her clothes off and going around in the nude.
Not long after Margaret started school we had our third baby. I wasn't too well during this pregnancy and a month before the baby was due I had to go into hospital. The family was split up. Margaret went to stay with Leslie's Auntie Hilda for eight weeks. Leslie used to take Gerry into the fields with him whilst he worked and she would usually fall asleep at the end of the field so she too went away to stay with his sister, Gladys.
I was in the hospital for seven weeks. We had no car or telephone so visiting was almost impossible. At least by this time our wage had gone up from the £1-15-0d when we were first married to £2-10-0d each week. This time we had the baby boy I had so wanted. The pain and separation didn't seem so bad now we had our son, John.
Village life in those days seemed much friendlier with neighbours all looking out for each other. Arthur Driffield, son of the local blacksmith, brought the baby and me home from the hospital. As well as being the blacksmith he had a garage. We would take our wireless batteries to him for charging.
The Monday after we returned from the hospital Margaret went back to school to come down with Chicken-Pox only four days later. Gerry caught it first followed by the baby who found it very difficult to swallow. It was a distressing time trying to breast feed him whilst in such a state. There was no National Health Service yet and doctor's fees were very expensive.
We survived although life was very busy with three small children. We were lucky in that they were all very happy babies. John slept such a lot giving me chance to dash around getting all the work done. John always had to be woken up to have his bath. I had always bathed the babies in the morning until they were nine months old. One morning after his bath I put him out in his pram down the garden next to the field gate. A cow came, put her head over the gate and right into the pram and mooed giving the baby a real fright. This probably explains why John grew up being very frightened of cattle.
The war was still going on and our family wasn't the only one to be growing. Leslie's sister, Gladys, had married Henry who was fighting in Tripoli. She moved in with Granny and a year after we had Gerry she had a little girl, Heather. John was the only boy amongst three girls but they all played together well. We made a swing for them out of a cart-rope and a piece of wood hanging from the old apple tree in the back garden.
Not far away, at Ricall, there was a prison camp. Many of the local farmers would pay the authorities so that they could employ the prisoners on their farms. A bus brought them to work each morning and picked them up afterwards. Because it was impossible to employ casual workers as they had either been 'called-up' or gone to work in the munitions factories, it was a great help to have the prisoners. At one time we had eleven working on the farm. Some of the prisoners had been farmers, builders and joiners. They were hard workers and built and altered buildings for us. On the front of one building they engraved the initials
of the family along with the year it had been built. Inside the plaque was inserted a bottle in which they put a paper with all our names written on it, John being the last. He had spent a lot of time with the prisoners. They made him toys out of bits of wood they had collected when they were back at the camp. They had their drinkings out of enamel pint mugs and of course John had to have one too as they all drank cocoa together. They liked it much better than the tea they had at the camp.
One night when Grandad was going to feed the calves, carrying his lantern and buckets, the door was blown back knocking the buckets out of his hand. I was in the house which seemed to shake as if a bomb had accidentally been dropped about a mile away. We only had one or two shocks like this throughout the war.
Occasionally Leslie had to go for weekend training with the Home Guard. Just once he had to go away for a whole week to Beverley and in the middle of one night a bomb fell nearby. All the men had to get into the trenches. One elderly chap from Cliffe was still wearing his night attire which consisted of Combinations, a bit like Long Johns with a top all in one piece. He still had his night-cap on when he got into the trench. When it was all clear he declared that bomb or no bomb he was going home, and he did. All the funny stories that we hear about the Home Guard really did happen. However, Leslie took it all very seriously and got his three stripes.
Time passed quickly and soon Gerry would be starting school and the war would come to an end.
