When I got home Charlie Robinson was in the Navy. He was two years older than Harry. Harry came around to see me – he was still at school. He was almost 17. He went to a good school, the Woolwich Polytechnic. He was very handsome, a nice build with very black hair and blue eyes. He was also very shy. It was love at first sight. We used to go for walks. He took me to his house. He had a twin sister, Joyce, and another, Peggy, the oldest, and a brother Reggie who was real cheeky, and then a little sister about eight years old called Phyllis.
To me it seemed a house full. They had uncles living there, and an old aunt. Harry’s father was still in the Navy. His mother was tall, with big, dark brown eyes. In May the war ended, and there were street parties everywhere. I was back to work, but at a different store, on Church Lane. It was May the 8th – they sounded the all-clear, and it was over. It was so strange to think that no more would we be up half the night with bombing raids. It was about lunchtime. All the girls joined hands and were dancing with the customers. They shut the shop and let us all go home.
The streets were full of people letting off fireworks. People went up to London to see Buckingham Palace. The King and Queen and Winston Churchill were out on the balcony. People danced in the fountains – they were all wet, but they were so happy they didn’t care. It didn’t seem to settle down for about a month. Harry and I got more serious about each other and his sister Peggy used to give him money so we could go to the pictures now and then. Peggy was about 19 and she married very young. Her husband had heart trouble and her father didn’t want her to marry him. She had one little girl, Linda. They lived with Harry’s mother. Eventually they got their own flat, but when Linda was two her father died. It was very sad. She moved back in with her mother.
Princess Elizabeth with Queen Elizabeth, Winston Churchill, King George VI and Princess Margaret on the balcony of Buckingham Palace on VE Day, 1945
When Harry was almost 18 he got his calling-up papers. We knew it was coming. So, in September, 1946, he went into the Royal Air Force. He hardly had any money or food. I used to try and save two pounds for his railway fare. It was a long way for a weekend, but worth every minute of it. We used to write almost every day. Once my mother went to visit her middle sister in Bournemouth and I stayed at Harry’s house and shared with his sister Joyce. Joyce was a wonderful needle worker. She made clothes for the Queen. Bill, her boyfriend, who was in the Army, was in the Coldstream Guards and was at the gate on Buckingham Palace. So both of them indirectly had worked for the King and Queen. Harry’s mother used to have parties at her house. There was no TV then, but everyone sang around the piano. It was quite different for me as an only child that lived alone with her mother. I found it so noisy. But it was fun, especially when they played “Teapot” and “Sardines.”
Harry’s twin sister Joyce and her boyfriend Bill used to do things with Harry and I. Once when they were both on leave (probably 1947), we went to Southend, a seaside town. We went on all the rides and on the way home in the train Bill unscrewed the light bulb in the small compartment, not realizing all the lights in that section went out. Also, Harry sat with his bottom outside the window. Joyce and I were screaming at him and were pulling him inside. It was quite a day. Another thing, when we went to the movies: after we came out, Harry would always act out the part of the lover or the part of the murderer all the way home.
