Down Our Street

by Lena Kennedy

Genres: Sagas

Synopsis

'A real East-End tale . . . brilliant!' - 5-STAR reader review Golden-haired, sunny-natured Amy, youngest and dearest of Annie Flanagan's lively brood of thirteen, is the apple of her mother's eye. But with the outbreak of World War II, the Flanagan family is torn apart, shaken from their crowded nest in London's East End. While the young ones are evacuated from the war-torn capital - the girls to Devon and the boys to a school in the Midlands - Joe is soon made a sergeant, fighting in France. Billy volunteers for the Army Transport, and young Dan fulfils his dreams and joins the RAF. The war brings tragedy - even the old home is in ruins, bombed and shell-splintered. It's Amy, with her fierce courage and determination, who must pull the family back together. But when a man full of wicked charm and Cockney banter walks into her life and wins her heart, more turbulent years are sure to follow . . . **************** What readers are saying about DOWN OUR STREET 'What a wonderful story from beginning to end' - 5 STARS 'I could not put the book down' - 5 STARS 'A fabulous read' - 5 STARS 'I will tell all my friends to read it' - 5 STARS 'I really enjoyed this book from start to finish' - 5 STARS

Release date: April 25, 2013

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 256

Sample

1

Hopping

The Flanagans lived in a typical small back street of London’s East End and theirs was the biggest family in the street.

‘Twelve times Annie Flanagan’s been in child bed,’ old Gran, the midwife, remarked the last time. ‘Annie’s no bother. They just pops out on their own by now, they does.’

Indeed, childbearing was no trouble to Annie. After each child was born she would be up the next day and off to her job around the corner in the coal yard after handing the new baby to one of her daughters. Nowadays it was Sheila, who was thirteen and had not yet left school. She would often be seen parading up and down the street with a large cumbersome old pram in which two children sat at one end and the new baby was tucked in at the other. Around Sheila’s skirt, several little ones hung on as she walked along the pavement, this tall, thin, ungainly girl who took on her responsibilities without a grumble. It was quite a burden for a girl of her age but she had had to take care of her little brothers and sisters since her elder sister Emily had started work in a blouse factory.

Sheila accepted her role with good will and cheerfulness. And while her daughter took charge of the brood, Annie Flanagan would be hard at work. With her mop of black curly hair swept up in a bun and her face so blackened by coal dust that only her bright blue eyes were visible, Annie would shovel lumps of coal onto a large set of scales to weigh them for her customers. These customers of hers were mostly young children. Coal was very necessary but extremely expensive so it was only bought at the yard in small amounts. Annie would dole it out into shopping bags – seven pounds or fourteen pounds at a time – and then it would take all the strength of two skinny little kids to lug it home.

Annie Flanagan was always bright and cheerful as she set about her work, for this was her livelihood and she enjoyed it. Her boss was a man called Jack Davies. He owned the business and was usually out all day with his horse and cart delivering coal to those better-off customers who could afford a whole sackful. He would roam around the streets yelling, ‘Coal! Coal!’ in a loud voice which echoed around the neighbourhoods. Sitting with him in the cart would be one of the Flanagan boys ready to help with a delivery or hold the horse’s head to stop it bolting.

If one Flanagan boy left the job on Jack Davies’ cart for a better job elsewhere there was always another Flanagan boy ready to take over. It was much the same with the wood chopping after school. One small Flanagan lad would sit on the cold stone floor of the back yard chopping wood up into thin sticks. After tying the sticks into bundles, he would take them to the local shop to sell for firewood.

When it came to part-time jobs – big or small – the Flanagans had a monopoly. No one else got a look in. And inevitably that caused some resentment in the street and harsh words were often muttered. ‘Money-grabbing buggers, those Flanagans,’ someone would say, and others would nod their heads in agreement.

But the Flanagans didn’t care. Like most big families they clung together and looked after each other. Their small two-roomed house was the same size as all the others in the street and it was a wonder how they all managed to sleep in there, let alone eat. But that was always a secret, for outsiders were not encouraged into Annie’s house. Every little Flanagan was up early in the morning and off to some kind of work before school or after school. Each one had his or her part to play; and every year Annie produced another little worker to add to this family workforce of hers.

Her husband, Dan Flanagan, worked at the docks. His was not a regular job but he had good luck as a casual worker and seldom missed a day. Every day the casual labourers went down to the dock and waited in a gang to sign on as the ships came in for unloading. Dan was a big man with a red face and a thick bull neck, and he always managed to push his way past the other fellows when it came to getting a day’s work. Then in the evenings he would arrive home to be greeted by his mob of kids. The sides of his coat would bulge out from the loot he had managed to scrounge that day and secrete away in hidden pockets. If anyone had suggested to Dan that he was not honest they would have got a bunch of fives. What he had in his pockets was considered by him to be genuine perks of the job. Bottles of spirits were swapped with the butcher for legs of lamb; the grocer’s bill at Appleby’s was paid for with a couple of large tins of bully beef and there was always at least one little Flanagan urchin knocking at the neighbours’ doors trying to flog some article of clothing or other.

Such was the Flanagans’ way of survival. Theirs was a big untidy nest but it was a cosy one too, and kept warm and dry by the business spirit of all the members of the family.

When Annie began to carry her thirteenth child, nobody was surprised. Nor were they amazed that Annie shovelled up and weighed out the coal almost to the last day of her pregnancy, singing in her strong Irish voice or returning the jibes in her humorous way. ‘Ah well, ’tis the grace of God,’ she’d say. ‘I’ll hope for another girl this time. Got eight boys, so I might be lucky.’

Once a year when the coal yard was slack, Annie took her whole family for a holiday to the hop fields for three weeks.

‘Gives the kids a bit of a holiday,’ she always remarked, and some might have whispered that it helped her to save a few pounds as well.

So every August the Flanagan family made a general exodus from our street. They all went, except those who had to work – Dan and the two older boys, Joe and young Dan and, this year, Emily. But Sheila, Nancy, Letty and the other six little brothers all went off early one morning with Annie, wide with her pregnancy. Letty pushed the big pram full of toddlers while Sheila pushed another pram full of luggage and household equipment. The street folk would get up early on these occasions to peer out between the curtains to watch the Flanagans go. Each little child carried a packed bag and they all laughed and chatted and waved goodbye as if they were going on a world cruise. The smiles on their faces showed that they could not have been happier. On they marched, through the pale morning mist, all the way to London Bridge Station to board the train, the ‘hopper special’ bound for Kent, where the Flanagans had a regular pitch down at the hop fields.

It was a long train journey to Kent, taking five hours from London Bridge, but invariably the Flanagan family would arrive at the little Kentish station in good spirits ready to pile into the farmer’s cart which was waiting ready to transport them all off to the hop fields.

Like the rest of the hop pickers they were given an old tin hut to live in for their stay. While the small kids shrieked with wonder and excitement as they ran through the farm’s green meadows and pointed and yelled at the cows and sheep, Annie and her older girls would set about making their hut as comfortable as possible. There was an old wood stove in one corner but otherwise no furniture at all. In no time the mattress covers were pulled out of the suitcase and stuffed with sweet-smelling hay collected from the farmer. The old stove was packed with wood and lit so that soon it was hot enough for the kettle to be put on to boil. For their essential privacy, old lace curtains were hung up at the window, and the larder was well stocked with their provisions – tea, sugar and plenty of tinned milk.

After a supper of mackerel brought with them from London, the Flanagans would go to say hello to their neighbours in the other huts around. Every August it was the same. Many people came every year, so there were plenty of old friends to see and memories to recall. Someone lit a camp fire and the adults sat around it sharing bottles of beer while the children played outside until bedtime.

The next morning it was an early start for everyone to get a good pitch to work from sun up to sun down, stripping down the hops from their vines and dropping them into the hop bins. Everyone joined in. Whole families worked together each getting paid for the quota of hops they picked. Whatever the weather in wind, rain, heat or cold they all worked with a will and a lively spirit. Cockney songs passed along the lines of pickers; rude jokes were shared during the midday meal which was eaten hurriedly beside the hop bins. Lavatory facilities were provided at the edge of the field but they were rarely used. Most people went behind the heaps of empty vines so as not to lose precious time from the pulling and the picking of the hops.

The very small children all played together. These little mobs of London kids would go off scrumping apples and picking berries wherever they liked, leaving gates open and tramping over crops and becoming a general nuisance to the farmers. But the kids didn’t care; this was their annual holiday from which they returned suntanned, healthy and happy, though occasionally a little lousy, since the washing facilities were not particularly good.

Typically, Annie who had been hopping for the past ten years, had it all well organized. A big tin bath was hidden under the hut. Every Friday night it was pulled out, placed beside the camp fire, and filled with water. In it, protesting loudly, the small kids were washed and scrubbed until their skin shone, and then their hair was denitted with a small-tooth comb. Annie’s children were always immaculatly clean by the end of it.

On Sundays no one worked. This was the time to wander in the woods and stop and paddle in the cool streams. It was the time to take in the strange countryside that was so different from their usual world, to look at the birds and the deer, the fish in the stream and to listen to the wind as it raced through the trees, rustling the leaves and causing great trunks to sway. Everyone always liked it in Kent but no one was ever sorry to return to the grime of the city they loved. For they felt more at home in London than in the Kent countryside.

Annie Flanagan and her brood were well known to be the hardest workers on the farm and they had always made plenty of money by the time the three weeks were up. When it was time to return to the smoke, Annie was always happy to be going back with her fine healthy brood and the pram packed with huge hopping apples and the toddlers perched on top.

Fond farewells were exchanged amongst the hop pickers. ‘See you next year,’ they all called to each other. Some seemed a little sad but at least they knew they could look forward to seeing their new and old friends the next summer.

This year Annie was very heavy and her footsteps slow as they walked to the country station. The farmer’s cart that had collected them did not take them back to the station.

‘Reckon yer’ll make it, Annie?’ someone asked with great concern.

‘Yus,’ Annie replied confidently. ‘I’ll get ’ome in time.’

But back at London Bridge Station she said wearily, ‘Come on, girls, let’s get the bus. The boys can walk it and push the prams ’ome.’

So with her three daughters, Sheila, Nancy and Letty, Annie boarded the bus and made tracks for their East End home. She sat on the seat moving restlessly, and then she gave a big yell and clutched her belly.

‘Stop the bus!’ cried someone. ‘This woman’s having a baby!’

All the other astonished passengers got off to catch another bus and the kids were turfed off while a kind woman who knew what she was doing went to Annie’s aid.

The ambulance arrived much too late. By the time it came, Annie was sitting up nursing her baby, but the ambulance men still insisted on taking them both to Bart’s Hospital.

Sheila, Nancy and Letty trekked home together. ‘Muvver had our baby on the bleedin’ bus,’ cried Sheila to a neighbour in the street.

‘Oh, my Gawd!’ the neighbour cried. ‘What she have?’

‘A girl,’ said Letty. ‘Goin’ to call her Amy, after Amy Johnson.’

‘Well, I never,’ said the neighbour, and Annie Flanagan giving birth on a bus was the talk of the district for days. The Star and the Standard newsboys ran around yelling: ‘Late night final. Baby born on London bus.’ And the Flanagans even made it into the Sunday papers with a picture of the whole family standing outside their small house with Annie seated on a chair with the new baby on her lap. And the baby, Amy, was from then on known as ‘our Amy, the one who got herself in the newspapers’.

Later, Annie said to Gran, the old midwife, ‘Sorry, gel, I never made it for yer. I was so showed up with all them people looking on. I swear I’ll have no more kids. I don’t care where old Dan sticks it but it won’t be up me.’

And Annie kept her word, for this little girl was the last of her brood. The baby of the family she remained and our Amy was generally spoilt by everyone. Not only had her arrival into the world brought a little notoriety to our street, but she was also a beautiful, pleasant baby with lots of golden curls, so who could not dote on her?

Annie went back to her job in the coal yard and did not fall pregnant again. As her large family grew up extra money was brought into the household. They now had lino in the passage and all the way up the stairs, and a pair of pretty new curtains in the front room. Emily, now courting, would sit in that front room on Sundays, kissing and cuddling with a nice young man, while her little brothers and the other street urchins would peer in through the window giggling and nudging each other as they spied on the young lovers.

And so life went on down our street much as it always had, even when times were hard for most people. The huge Flanagan family weathered the storm of the Depression and survived quite well in comparison to other poor families in the street. Perhaps it was their flair for enterprise and their unity that protected them.

In two years Annie was three times made a grandmother. First, Emily, who was now married and lived just round the corner, gave birth, and her baby was first to inherit Amy’s pram. Then Annie’s second son, young Dan, who now lived on the south side of London, became a father when his wife had produced one child and then another in quick succession. Nothing disturbed or bothered Annie. The kids left home, married and produced children; it was all in the way of life. No one got a posh wedding and very little time was taken off work for any sort of celebration. In 1938 her eldest son, Joe, joined up for the army.

Annie was quite stout now that she had finished childbearing and would puff out her cheeks as she lifted the huge coal shovel to fill the scales. But on Saturday nights, she scrubbed the coal dust from between the lines on her face, put on a white blouse and went to meet her husband Dan in the pub on the corner. Sometimes they would come home shouting and quarrelling and the whole street would listen. And sometimes they just sang uproariously and in harmony all the cheery Cockney songs, adding to the general belief that the Flanagans were one great big happy family. Perhaps some were aware that war was in the air but none had a clue that it would change the pattern of life down our street and everywhere else, for that matter.

When Joe came home on leave from the army one day, Annie was pleased that he looked very smart and had two stripes. But Joe was not concerned with his appearance.

‘Mother,’ he said, ‘you should think seriously of moving this lot out of London, because when the war comes it will be London that will get it.’

‘What bleedin’ war?’ asked Annie in surprise. ‘I never ’eard o’ no war.’

Dan said, ‘’Ush yer mouff, boy. Don’t come ’ome ’ere scarin’ yer muvver and the kids.’

And Joe could see that there was little point in saying more.

Amy was now five and skipped and jumped along beside the pram and played ball in the road with the other kids. There was no problem with parked cars because it was a dead-end street, and so mobs of children played out in the road in perfect safety. At the other end was the Regent’s Canal where the boys swam during the school holidays or fished for tiddlers.

One night big Dan came down the road looking a trifle weary. Half way down the street, he suddenly fell face downwards. All the kids milled around him not knowing what to do, until Charlie, the knock-up man, rushed out of his house and picked Dan up by the arms. Then he supported Dan’s head which had lolled forward. Dan’s face was bluish.

Little Amy took one look at her dad and then ran crying for Annie.

No one could revive Dan. He was taken to the local hospital in an ambulance but the bad news came back that Dan’s heart had just given out. He was forty-five years old.

There followed the sad days of mourning and then the funeral. All the little girls wore homemade black-and-white checked dresses, and the boys wore black ties and had black squares sewn on their jackets. The neighbours were very kind; it was a shame to see this big Flanagan family so subdued. Yet the very next day after the funeral Annie went to the coal yard, and Siddy joined Jack Davies on the coal cart, Billy ran the paper stand, and Wally chopped the wood. So life went on. Annie’s brood learned to survive the hard way. Only Amy was fussed and spoilt more than ever before. With her lovely blonde hair and her fat little legs, she would skip, jump and run, gathering compliments wherever she went. She was a charming, lively child, and well-loved by all.

That August the neighbours asked, ‘Will you still go ’oppin’, Annie?’

‘Course I will,’ replied Annie who yearned for the smell of the wood smoke and the happy company of the other hop-pickers. And indeed they went down to Kent, but that year they had travelled in style. Billy had learned to drive and had bought an old van which he used to do part-time removal jobs. So this year at the beginning of August they all piled in the van and off they went to the Kent hopfields. Thus Annie, her children and her grandchildren headed down to the old familiar hopping hut amid the glories of rural Kent, to the camp fire, the booze, the happy campers and hard work. Annie still wore a black dress but that was the only sign of her widowhood. The lines on her face had deepened but still the bright blue eyes looked out shrewdly onto the world, as amid her brood she began to pick the heavy, sweet-smelling hops at a terrific rate never ceasing to work until the sun went down.

Amy was not one for working hard and she spent most of the day playing with a tiny mongrel puppy that Wally had obtained for her. The dog was black and white and known as Spot because of the black patch over one eye.

No one in the hop field cared about what was going on away from it – that the world was in turmoil, and that Chamberlain was visiting Hitler. No one was bothered. There was always peace and beauty down there in Kent. The huge ripe apples dropped from the trees and the children played in the sweet meadowlands. Life could not have been pleasanter.

But one rather chilly evening just before dark, a light mist rose from the road. A large car came down those country lanes rather too speedily. It was driven by a lady, a member of the local gentry, who had drunk rather too many sherries at a neighbour’s drink’s party. She was in a hurry to get home before her husband started getting angry. He did not like to attend these social occasions she loved so much and he tolerated his wife’s attendance at them on the understanding that his own timetable was never put out. He liked to eat at 7.30 sharp every night.

This lady drove on, deep in thought and not paying attention enough to be able to brake as a little black-and-white dog rushed out from the hedgerow and ran across the road. She put her foot on the brake then but as the car went into a skid, she heard a great thud and saw a small figure, a child, being flung into the air.

The car had hit a tree and stopped. The woman was dazed and sat bewildered in her seat as blurred figures stood around the car, shouting and shaking their fists at her. Above their curses, she thought she could hear a child crying and gasping for help. Then as she was pulled from the car, she realized that the child was trapped between the wheels.

It was only when the fire brigade came that they were able to cut the young girl free. Then little Amy, unconscious, and badly injured, was placed with tender care in the ambulance and with her mother beside her, was taken to the Maidstone Hospital. . . .