The Move to Bexleyheath

My second little girl, Julia, was born in April, 1954. We had moved to three rooms instead of two, and had moved in with a couple called the Smiths. It was a very bad experience. We had had a lot of opposition from Harry’s family because we had become Christians. The Ellis’ had told us how nice the Smith’s were. Mr. Smith had been a prisoner of war in Germany and was a real tough and hard man, we found out later. We had one large room downstairs, two small ones upstairs. We all slept in one room and used the smaller one to store things. I had use of the kitchen with my own stove. I had to put the food on a ledge that had a sliding door. When we first moved in I was seven months pregnant with Julia. They let me go through their family room to the hallway to get my food and take it to my living room. Once I had Julia, they locked their door and I had to go out into the back-yard to get to my living room, and to the hallway. When I got there, I found their dog was eating our dinner. It was terribly hard. Harry was still at night school three nights a week, so I was really alone and afraid with two little babies. We didn’t have electricity, only gas lights and they would flicker and be so dark.

I had Julia at home with a midwife. I was told that the lady would help me. When I told her I was in labor, she just ignored me and went to bed. They were Christians, but to a young couple just saved it was a terrible experience and almost broke our hearts.

My mother, who had been a widow for eleven years, started to go out with a nice man she had known for years. His wife had died two years earlier. She said she would help us leave the Smith’s so she gave us the down payment on a house. We found a really nice semi-detached house with a long backyard full of flowers and fruit trees. It was in Bexleyheath. Julia was six months old. It was so wonderful.

It had three bedrooms, a kitchen, family room, living room, plus a bathroom. The lady who owned it before us was a member of the horticultural society, and she had designed the garden so that when one plant died another would come into bloom. I had wonderful hours in the garden, so did the children. Harry was now working for an agency in London. He had become an author (writer). So it was three buses and a train ride there and back. We worked very hard on the house, painting, etc. I grew most of my vegetables. My mother would come twice a week and bring stuff and clothes for the girls, but would go home with bags of vegetables and apples and fruit.

 

We found it hard to go to a church. We didn’t have a car then. We sometimes went back to Charlton on the bus. I didn’t have a washing machine but did have a vacuum cleaner. I had a nice little stove in the kitchen which would heat the water and the kitchen. I would hang my clothes out to dry.