Sleeping Under the High Notes

Chapter 2, Sleeping under the high notes 
Part 1 – mainly about people

Staying with Gran – Mum’s mum during the war we slept under the grand piano to save us from the bombs. We often wondered if a bomb did hit the house whether the piano would go sliding away across the lino, leaving us exposed. We used to argue when I was made to sleep under the high notes because my feet stuck out in the air, and I thought they would get squashed when the ceiling fell in. (Ceilings did that rather a lot in those days) Often we could smell burning as neighbouring houses were set on fire. And then Gran would start cooking the breakfast and the smell would be of burnt toast.

She was a lovely Grandmother – round and cuddly, with a big bum, piano legs and long plaits wound around her head that she would let us unpin and comb out. The unplaited hair was crinkly and very very long, so that we could try out exotic arrangements, turning her into a fairy princess. She never minded what we did with it. When she was a girl she had had beautiful thick auburn hair, and was often asked to be a model for the hairdresser next door to where she worked in Hanover Square, for a very posh French lingerie shop. She would sometimes talk a bit of French to us, though I know she’d left school when she was 10.

The kitchen at Gran’s was a magical place to us – as soon as we arrived on a visit we would make straight for the green dresser to get out a big box of coloured pencils and scraps of paper saved from smoothed-out wrapping or envelopes and settle down at the plush-covered table, greeting Teddy Tail with caution -Gran’s predatory black and white cat.  I don’t know how she managed it, but my grandmother was able to produce gargantuan meals even during the worst of the rationing on an antiquated gas stove which you could smell when you came in the house. No modern equipment – no fridge,  antique gas cooker, and the washing was done in an enamel bowl and then taken outside to be put through the mangle. It was a treat to be allowed to turn the handle, pulling the flattened clothes out, learning the hard way to avoid squashed fingers.

Grandad was usually a very quiet, shy person, very deaf by the time I really knew him. A small, dapper figure in black jacket and striped trousers for ‘business’ in an insurance company, or flannel bags, collarless shirt and braces in his wonderful garden, he would work away all weekend producing all the vegetables for the family. He was particularly fond of phlox, and grew many varieties. Until very recently I have always had a descendent of some of them in my gardens.  He never earned more than £3 a week in his entire life, yet he kept his wife and five children in reasonably comfortable respectability, owing nothing to anyone.On family occasions he would come out of his shell, singing with gusto songs bordering on the bawdy. His favourite was the cheeky ‘Johnny with his Cam-ar-ah,’ who photographed the goings on of people high and low. I wish I could remember the words now.

Another unexpected side to his character was his gambling. A shilling a week was devoted to football pools. Absolute hush was demanded each Saturday night while Len Murray read the football results on the radio with deliberate rise and fall: ‘West Bromwich Albion one,’ deep and low, ‘Tottenham Hotspur Three, on a rising note.’ He would also have the occasional flutter on the horses, and from his successes would come the money to buy some quite valuable jewellery for my Grandmother, hence the snake bracelet with its matching ruby ring which I eventually inherited, along with other good pieces now dispersed around the family. I also inherited the tea set for 12, white with pink rosebuds, which had been my Great Grandmother’s pride and joy. It had been bought by Grandad for his mother with his first wages. A very generous man.