The sunshine of most of those previously discussed memories obscures the fact that our playgrounds were bombsites. Under the grass and flowers, behind the facades of the little streets, there was suffering, bereavement, poverty, war work and graves. And fear. A lot of fear. The adults were very calm on the surface, but children are not always fooled by the stiff upper lip; they smell the fear leaking from every pore. A child breathes it in and can be poisoned by it, because the grown-ups are the sturdy earth beneath their feet and if that rocks, nothing is safe.
But because I was a child, I could live in the moment and breathe in the sunshine as well as the fear. There were still raids and alerts when we came back to Swansea. I learned from adult talk over my head that it was all because of a nasty man called Hitler. At night, especially when I had been naughty, I would stare out across the wrinkly sea to the opening of the bay and imagine Hitler was coming.
I do remember one night standing shivering in the bedroom of our little house, 9 St Alban’s Road. I had dreamed I saw Hitler swim across the bay and I knew he was going to walk up the hill, straight past the Patti Pavilion towards our house and was convinced it really happened.
I remember my father coming in and kneeling beside me, with his arm around me, as I sobbed out what I had seen and him telling me it must have been a nightmare.
“Look at that little tiny light,” he said pointing out to the centre of Swansea Bay. “That’s the Lightship. It’s full of brave soldiers. You know, however hard he tries, Hitler can’t get past that; they’ll stop him. Look, it’s your very own little star!”
After that, if I woke in the night, I would watch the little light until sleep would float me back into dreams.
Sometimes my father would go out on blackout duties and sometimes my doctor mother would go out for a mysterious thing called ‘on-call’. At those times, I would have to go to ‘Auntie’ next door after school for a while, or the cleaning lady would stay on.
Auntie was not a blood relative; grown-ups who were a bit special were always aunties and uncles then. I don’t remember if we used her name as well, or what it was. She was in a wheelchair and therefore was home all the time, but I would only be there for short periods. I think someone – a maid, a relative – looked after her, but that is shadowy.
I think I was rather a sickly child, though with nothing serious. I remember having mumps, very very painfully in my right cheek, and waking one morning to find the other side swollen up too. “Mummy,” I shouted, totally outraged by the unfairness of it all, “now it’s gone TO THE OTHER SIDE. Boo hoo hoo!”
Probably I had no more illnesses than most children, but my mother was especially close and caring if we were ill and didn’t seem to go out so much. My father was not very tolerant of unwellness; he got irritable and frightened, so it was sometimes like a little secret between my mother and I.
Mind you, my father had great tolerance at times. I remember many occasions when I was very small, after we came back from Dolacauthi, when I wouldn’t eat. My daddy would sit with me on his knee doing the time-honoured: “This is a car, brrmm brrmm brrmm, open your mouth…this is an aeroplane, wocka wocka wocka wocka… this is is a bicycle, brring brring brring…” and down it would go, spoonful by spoonful.
Our kitchen was the place where we spent most time, as did most families. It was practically filled with a Morrison shelter. I wonder how many people remember having one of those? The fully bomb-proof Anderson shelters were built underground in gardens and you could almost live in them, but many homes just had a big reinforced metal table, named for the Minister for Security, Herbert Morrison. All the family was supposed to climb under it if the siren went off. It was designed to keep you safe when the house caved in. You’d have to wait to be dug out, I suppose.
It took up most of the space and I hated it because the day after I was given a lovely doll for Christmas, I turned round suddenly. Crash! The china head broke into irreconcilable pieces against the horrid metal corner.