Here is the story of the past seventy years of my life as I remember it:
In 1941, in the coastal village of Dalkey, 8 miles south of Dublin, Mary Catherine Edwards and 2 girl friends made the decision to answer the cry from the English government for the Irish to help the war effort by working in the English factories. She was 22, well educated, and had just failed the entrance exam into the Irish civil service because she had not mastered the Gaelic language.
They crossed the Irish Sea from Dun Laoghaire to Hollyhead by zig-zagging to avoid German submarines, and after disembarking at the Welsh port were sadly seperated, with Mary Edwards being despatched to Leicester. Her friends were sent north, none of them to see each other again.
This was the height of the second world war with the German luftwaffe trying to destroy every factory in England. Food shortages abound, and the government orders potatoes to be sold at a penny so people will eat more of them. Clothes rationing begins as does the rationing of coal.
Working at the Parmeko factory in Leicester Mary Edwards meets George Burgess, and they married sometime in 1943. The following year in April, at the age of 28, he died of Tuberculosis, and three months later on Saturday morning, 29th July, 1944, at 25 Windley Road, Leicester, Mary Burgess gave birth to me.
My memory is poor concerning my childhood. I remember my mother and I were living in the Council house in Windley Road with my blind grandmother (my father's mother). My mother was never there during the day, having to go to work. I would play in the Anderson air raid shelter in the back yard or under the privet hedge in the front garden where I had made a den.
In the street the games we played were simple and enjoyable. Rolling a hoop with a stick or if you were very lucky a bicycle wheel. We had small wooden spinning tops that you kept spinning by whipping itb with a string tied to a stick. I had friends in the street of my age, and my grandmother would call me in mid-afternoon, when I would have to lay next to her on the couch (while she dozed) listening to Mrs Dale's Diary on the wireless. Nobody had a television then.
I'm not sure how may lived in our house, but my aunts Nora, Ethel and Joyce, always seemed to be there in the evenings. I remember the house being homely, and I would play with my grandfather when he was there. For some reason there was never a light on the landing, and I was frightened to go upstairs in the dark either to the lavatory or to bed. At the side of my bed there was a lit candle, but I would lay there in fear of who might be hiding under my bed and because there was so much talk about Hitler, I expected this evil man to creep into my room at any moment. We all had pee pots under our beds, but I was afraid to use it in case someone under there grabbed my hand - so I would wet the bed.
I must have eventually gone to a nursery during the day. I remember a very large room full of camp beds and all us children went to bed in the afternoon with a cuddly toy. Mine was a pot Cocker Spaniel which belonged in the window above my bed.
Around this time my mother met a man whom she said was a Polish Count named Stan, living in London and probably exiled from Poland because of the German occupation of Poland during the war. I remember receiving parcels of books from him, and in 1949 my mother and I stayed in London but I don't remember for how long. We were certainly seeing Stan, because I remember them taking me to a toy shop and he bought me a cowboy suit and two revolvers with holsters. The trousers had rabbit fur on the front of the legs. They took me to London zoo where I remember teazing a chimpanzee with a banana and he grabbed me by my hair, through the bars of his cage and took the banana from me; I do remember it hurt.
Memories of my mother during this time were good, she only being in her twenties, but I saw more of my aunts than her. I remember starting school proper; the smells, the compulsory bottle of milk each morning, the cloakrooms and the hustle and bustle of it all. There was a lot of bomb damage from the recent war, with areas covered by rubble from bombed houses. These areas occupied most of my time when walking to and from school, for I could find wonderful things if I searched hard enough.
When I was six or seven, there was a big row at home about my mother inviting the parish priest there. My mother was Roman Catholic and the others were not. My mother and I left the house that evening and walked to my aunt Nora's house, where we stayed sharing a room.
It was during our stay with aunt Nora that I was kidnapped. I'm not sure if this really happened, but I've remembered it all my life. Towards the end of my mother's life I mentioned it, and she said it never happened. But this is what I remember:
In a corner house not far from my home lived an old lady that couldn't walk. I was kept in her house and she fed me bread and marmalade, and I remember her crawling along the hallway to the front door - she may not have had legs. I remember standing in her window in the front room watching people in the street.
When this 'kidnap' was brought to an end, she was taken to the psychiatric hospital at Carlton Hayes Narborough. Everyone called it the asylum. I do wonder if my mother chose to believe this never happened, because there was more to it than I remember; we will never know.
Between the ages of five and sixteen I was sent to eleven different schools, because my mother kept moving addresses. It was difficult to make a friend. I remember being too frightened to ask to go to the toilet, so I was always soiling myself, and when I got home my aunt Ethel would stand me in the sink and wash me.
to be continued....
