Mary's War

This was written by my mother in 1995 shortly before she died.
The first section was dictated on to tape, and the rest is a mixture of what she wrote for the children for their V.E. Day project, and various stories told and retold over the years.

MARY’S WAR

WAR BREAKS OUT

Film has always been very important in my life: the week beginning September 4th 1939, at the Royal Cinema Cleethorpes, it was going to be 'The Barretts of Wimpole Street'. The poster had been up for a long time and I was waiting with great impatience for this. I had seen it before - I saw it a the Palace in Grimsby some considerable time previously - but I very much wanted to see it again.
Anyway WAR BROKE OUT, and - I suppose it was the following day - an edict went out that all places of entertainment were to be closed. And, lo, the cinemas remained shut, the poster got tatty, and I waited with utmost impatience for the day when the would decide (and I knew they would) that the cinemas would open again. Especially as nothing much seemed to be happening where the war was concerned.
The bonus of course was that the schools (although hardly places of public entertainment) didn’t open either. So we had the freedom of September - which was, as everyone knows, a beautiful September - right into October; I should think it must have been pretty well half-term before they actually got the schools ready for the pupils to go back to them. Obviously there was the building of air-raid shelters, which at our school - the school that I was about to go to for the first time, the Cleethorpes Girls’ Grammar School . . . no, let’s be accurate about this: it was a grammar school, but it was called the Cleethorpes Girls’ Secondary School, and there is a subtle distinction for those that know about it . . . the shelters were built under the lower level of the playing field where the three best tennis courts were.
What else they had to do, of course, was to stick miles and miles of sticky brown tape in little squares all over the windows so that if they were blown in by blast they wouldn’t shatter all over the pupils, and fill thousands of sandbags and put them at strategic points, and prepare blackout because the school remained open until quarter-to-four. Curiously enough they didn’t seem to think of just closing the school earlier in the winter; The time went on being quarter-to-four, and during the winter the school would be blacked out every afternoon.

MARY, MARCIA AND THE MOVIES
The blackout caused considerable problems - and not a little adventure - for one pair of young film fans. My best friend, Marcia Raithby, had been at Bursar Street Primary School with me, but for some reason known only to those in authority (for she was a clever girl) she had failed the scholarship and was assigned to Thrunscoe Senior Girls’ Elementary School. I sometimes wonder whether she failed on purpose out of some belief that she should be making a contribution to the family economy as early as possible, or (more likely) it was because of a system whereby people like myself who had passed the scholarship but whose parental income, although modest, as such that they had to pay school fees regardless, nevertheless took up a scholarship place which could not be passed on to the next on the list. Whatever the reason, Marcia and I found ourselves at different schools in the autumn of 1939; usually this is the death knell of any friendship, but ours continued unabated throughout our teens and into adult life.
At the age of fourteen Marcia went to work at Boots. This meant that, although the curfew time imposed on us by our respective parents remained at nine o’clock, we could no longer get to the cinema in time for the five o’clock showing. So we had to develop our own strategy: this involved meeting Marcia from work (having done - or not done - my homework) and catching the bus to whichever cinema at which our chosen film was showing. We would generally arrive half-way through the main feature, and were soon both adept at picking up the plot. We would then see the whole of the second feature before watching the beginning of the film we had come to see. Then we had to rush off in order to be home at the appointed time. I remember one week that we had to sit through an undistinguished little opus starring Dick Powell called Twenty Million Sweethearts three times in order to enjoy the whole of Wuthering Heights.
We used to write to film stars, and I was never content merely to write “Dear Mr. Mason, I think you are wonderful. Please send me a photograph.” I felt it necessary to regale them with a complete critique of their movie career to date with special reference to their latest film. What they made of this I do not know, but most obliged with an autographed photo, and many sent a letter. I have often wondered whether my letter to Philip Friend was the first fan letter he had ever received his reply was so very nice. However Elizabeth Allen was a well established Hollywood star well used to fan letters, and her reply was equally long and pleasant.
If the Air Raid Siren went off all the buses would stop running; if it went off while we were at the cinema it meant that we had to walk home, and, since our cinema going took us al over Grimsby and Cleethorpes and we visited every cinema from the grandest of picture palaces to the most remote (and justifiably names) flea-pits, it sometimes meant a very long walk through the blackout. Mostly, of course, there were no bombs dropping - at least not on Grimsby - so the planes simply went over and our dark walk was merely inconvenient. However, I will never forget one of the most spectacular and horrendous sights of the war as we watched Hull burn from across the river.

SECOND SIGHT
My mother had, to put it at its lowest, an uncanny instinct about things during the war. on one occasion my father came home with torn trousers and bloody knees through having come off his bicycle in the blackout, only to find her waiting with iodine, hot water and bandages. That could have been no more than wifely concern for a husband late in arriving home.
But there was another occasion which truly smacked of second sight. I arrived home from school at lunchtime to find her sitting with tears rolling down her face. “There’s been a terrible naval disaster,” she said; “a great ship has gone down, and there’s just a handful of survivors.” It wasn’t until that evening that the news broke about the sinking of HMS Hood. Strangely enough, though we knew none of them at the time, every one of those survivors crossed our path in the years which followed - just slight acquaintances, friends of friends - but people slightly known to us.
We also - without a shred of proof - attributed second sight to my cat, Mrs. Fourpaws. If she went into the shelter during an air-raid, we did likewise. If she wasn’t bothered, neither were we. A dangerous strategy in hindsight.

CLOTHES
One of the frustrations of the war was the serious lack of clothes. I grew, but my clothes did not. My school blazer’s pockets were sacrificed to extend the sleeves, but even so my school uniform took up most of my coupons and I had very little else to wear. I recall being most annoyed when my grandfather, who was living with us at the time, sent back his unused clothing coupons with a self-righteous little note explaining that he had so many good suits from before the war that he had no need of them. My need was great.
At least my Aunt Mary kept me supplied with large, unfashionable, but good dresses which I could remodel for myself, and I soon became an accomplished needlewoman from sheer necessity.

DIGGING FOR VICTORY
Dad grew vegetables on his two allotments. He grew remarkable marrows and cauliflowers which he gave away to anyone who would have them. So successful was he at producing these giant vegetables that people would hide as he rode by on his bicycle, enormous marrows balanced precariously on the handlebars, for fear that he would bestow yet another upon them.

THE WAR ENDS
My career at the Cleethorpes Girls’ Secondary School coincided almost exactly with the duration of the war. By the time I matriculated in the summer of 1944 the end was in sight. I was perfectly clear about what I wanted to do, and equally clear about what I didn’t. I did want to be an actress. I did not want to stay at school. My parents, not unnaturally, wouldn’t hear of their sixteen year old daughter going to live in London while the war was still on. I would not listen to any suggestions that Higher School Certificate might just be a useful thing to have.
We compromised, and I went to Thornton Hall as nursery governess to Tony Spink and his friends. I used to go daily by train, and then cycle from the station to the hall where I taught my pupils until elevenses when we were joined by three year old Bill Spink. After that we went out for a walk or in the donkey cart which was pulled by the most intractable donkey since Modestine - painfully slow on the way out, she made the return journey at a stretch gallop. I remained for lunch and a little time into the afternoon before taking myself and my bike home on the train.
When the war was properly over I auditioned for and was accepted by RADA. Being a nursery governess was very pleasant in its way, but it confirmed me in my belief that the last think I ever wanted was to be a teacher!

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