Entrenched
My grandmother was entrenched. It was as simple as that. Nobody was going to make her change her views on the subject. You may think nothing unusual in that, we have seen plenty of people entrenched in what they believe in these past few months. It is nothing new in history. But when you see a loved one who refuses to believe what is happening around them, and that refusal could cause them, and others, to be in danger of their lives, it is a difficult situation. This was the dilemma that faced my mother in the summer of 1939.
While everyone else was preparing for what seemed an inevitable war, my grandmother, who lived with us, totally refused to let the war dictate what she did in the later days of her life. She had had her life disrupted more than once by the horrors of war, and she was not going to let it happen again. She was going to play this one by her own rules.
What made matters even worse was that my mother was a women who played life strictly by the rules. And the thought of having been caught out breaking one would have mortified her. She must have had more of her strict Scottish Father's genes in her than those of her mother. I never knew him, but had heard stories of how everyone had to be in the house by 10 at night, and that included my mother and father who had lived with my grandparents in the early days of their marriage.
The first battle with grandmother came over the gas masks. The government had issued 38 million of them that summer so we could be protected in the event of a gas attack. Well, they could have saved themselves the cost of one of them, as grandmother had no intention of trying it on, carrying it around, or acknowledging it even existed. When others were practicing how to put them on, she was probably finding suitable hiding places to loose hers, and mother would have to go on a mask hunt, including looking in the dust bin! But maybe Gran knew something we did not, as thankfully no gas attack came, and we did not have to use them. I think Gran would have liked to get rid of mine as well. The thought that they would put that 'horrible rubber thing' over a child's face was more than she could tolerate? The fact that it was designed to look like Micky Mouse made no impression on her. In fact I became very attached to mine, and only lost it a few years ago when it was accidentally sold with some of my late husband's military collection.
But then the inevitable happened. On the 3rd September war was declared. and we had a party at our house! The later had no relation to the former. The party, not to be confused with the type of party young people have today, was because it was the day of my eldest brother's 19th birthday. A gathering of young people, some refreshments, and a sing-song around the piano, and after a little persuasion my sister playing her accordion. Grandmother totally ignored the main news of the day, and celebrated the birthday, as if bright peaceful future lay ahead of these young people. I don't think my parents shared her thoughts.
Life changed in our household after that day. The 19yr old soon wore the uniform of the Royal Air Force, the other son of the house hold did not wait to be called up, but went and joined the navy. To be joined, as the war rolled on, by the accordion playing sister becoming a wren. The only person who did not seem to know life was changing dramatically was of course Grandmother.
Perhaps these battles with Gran kept my mother from focusing on what could be happening to her family. But getting her mother to conform to the rules of the blackout, was enough to give my mother grey hairs. Being herself a women of rules she was meticulous in seeing no chink of light escaped our windows, so it was with horror that one evening answering a knock on the front door, after all light had been extinguished of course, that she saw an air raid warden standing there.
Without any preamble he informed my mother that a light was showing at the back of the house. Neither was it just a small chink of light, but a whole window shining forth like the Blackpool illuminations. I need not have to tell that it came from Grandmother's window.
Mother apologised most profoundly to the warden, and assured him it would not happen again. She would make sure of that. So determined was she to keep her word that she resorted to removing the light bulb from Grandmother's room. I never knew how Gran found her way to bed.
But that was not the end of the incident. A week or so later the now less than friendly warden was back on our doorstep. This time not just a light, but several lights, that gave the appearance of Christmas decorations flickered from the same window. Gran had been to the shops and bought night light candles, which she had arranged in a row on her window sill. Mother's grey hairs increased.
But possibly the most entrenched, and dangerous, of her ideas was that no one was ever going to get her to take shelter when the air raid siren sounded. In the early days of the war we shared a shelter with the very elderly neighbours at the back of the our house, it was a mutual arrangement, as they had no family, and my Father as a serving police officer, was often away on duty in the London Docks.
At first my mother used to try pleading with her mother to go with her, but nothing would make her change her mind. On one of these occasions, before my sister had left for the wrens, my mother assumed when she finally left the house that my sister had taken me to shelter. While my sister assumed my mother was bringing me as she usually did. When my mother got to the shelter the raid was well under way. But as they realised what had happened it was my sister who rushed pass my mother, and dashed to the house, grabbing me from my high chair, where I was still happily eating!
It may have been that same raid, or another, that ended with the front of our house being blow out. The precious piano from the front room was blow into the railway goods yard opposite our house. Grandmother had been washing up during the raid, and the story goes that she was found on the piano with a tea towel still in her hand. Her injuries were thankfully only slight, but how true it was about her landing on the piano, I have no idea, but it does sound rather like her.
Nothing lasts forever. The hostilities ended. Peace was declared, and street parties were arranged. But grandmother was not at these celebrations. She had died never knowing the ending. But then how could she celebrate the ending of something her entrenched thinking never let her believe was happening.
