A walk down memory lane to a war time wedding.  

Our memories are rather like the posts seen on Facebook. Sometimes just a single picture; sometimes like a small video clip, but never a full-length movie. Neither are they always in chronological order. Another help we have with memories is being able to talk them over with someone else who shares that time.  Hearing my own adult children discuss their childhood I am amused at how sometimes they can remember an event so differently from one another. So how am I to know the accuracy of the event I am about to recall if I am the only one left who was close to it; and only six and a half years old at the time? But I will plunge back into memory lane rather like going through a time warp, and see what fragments of that time are left to bring back to the present and leave with those living now. 

Our journey down memory lane takes us to 23rd December 1944. We arrive at a house in what was then Essex, but just 9 miles from the centre of London, and has long since become part of outer London. The house stands proudly at the end of row of terraced houses. It is slightly bigger than the others in the row. Whereas the others have only outside toilets this house also has an  inside, upstairs bathroom, which included a toilet. It also has a garage at the bottom of the garden. Behind the gardens runs an alleyway, which was the main thoroughfare to the backs of the houses. 

As we enter the house we see a flurry of activity; food is being prepared in the small kitchen, or the scullery as it was always called.  I see a little girl looking at the biggest cooked bird she has ever seen, she is informed it is a goose, and has been brought all the way from Norfolk. Her hair is wrapped up tight in strips of white rags, to make curls. She looks excited and very happy. I recognise the girl as myself.  I can remember the sensation of that happiness, but I don’t think the fact that Christmas was only two days away had anything to do with it. This was the day my sister was getting married, and I was to be a bridesmaid. 

Sometimes we can choose to be in a memory, or to just look at it from the distance of time, as to enter fully in is too nostalgic. As I choose to step back in time to reclaim these memories before they grow more obscure I find myself doing both. Sometimes I am in the past totally lost to today, and sometimes I am in the present looking back through the distance of time. This is how we will continue to wander through this tunnel of memories. 

I realise that whenever I look at this memory I only see mostly women. I know that not long before my eldest brother had returned to England after 4 yrs in Africa with the R.A.F. War had been declared on his 19th birthday, and it was not so long before he was sailing away from these shores. I was too young to know what was happening being only 14months old when the hostilities began. He became just a figure in a photograph for me, until his rather unexpected, and for me, rather dramatic, return late one evening. Within a day of his return the brother sister bond overcame age, and time, and we were enjoying each other’s company. Now he was a most welcome guest at the wedding, but not in my memory picture only in the the photos tucked away in an old album. 

I can describe what I see but realise I know nothing of the feelings and emotions of these people around me that day. What did my my mother feel having her son back safe after so long, 

and the first of her children getting married? It frustrates me to think I was there with them that day but know nothing other than a child would see. I want to step right into the memory and shout at them “tell me what are you thinking?” Maybe my mother would reply that she was anxious this beautiful goose would not be properly cooked, and was also worrying that there would not be enough food for the guests, due the rationing restrictions, and would I stop worrying her when she was busy! 

But there was someone looking out for me that day. It was the lady who had brought the goose, and had patiently wound my hair in rags the night before, and would later on arrange my hair in beautiful curls. The way she spoke fascinated me.  When we were dressed she said we looked ‘bootiful’. Later I learnt this was how people from Norfolk spoke. I had heard very few regional accents, and it fascinated me. Her husband spoke the same. It was explained to me that they were the bridegroom parents. But like all the other men the father does not feature in my memory pictures of that day. A few years ago I stood at the war memorial in Singapore looking at a name carved in the stone, of a young pilot shot down in the sea in 1941. The eldest son of the lovely lady who curled my hair. I cannot begin to think what her emotions, thoughts, and feelings were that day in my mothers’s kitchen keeping a little girl amused, yet with her own heart so newly broken. 

But what of the bride where was she? A leisurely lie in bed followed by a long soak in a perfumed bath? I can imagined the astonished looks on the faces of our memory people, they would wonder what I was talking about. Even at my own wedding 15yrs later there was none of the pampering we hear of today. Up and doing was the order of the day. All hands to the pump with maybe a quick visit to the hair dressers fitted in between chores. My memory  of my sister that morning  was not what I saw, but heard. Someone must have asked where she was and the reply was that she had gone with our father to collect the flowers! Where were the men? Was my brother keeping the bridegroom calm?

The day moves on but I have no memory of getting dressed in my beautiful lavender bridesmaid’s dress so skilfully made by my mother; an excellent seamstress. My cousin Joan a little older than me was dressed identically. Our outfits were finished off with beautiful bonnets making us look like children from a Jane Austen novel. By the time we arrived at the photographs my cousin had managed to bend the buckram in her bonnet which did not pleased my mother, and was mentioned every time the photos were looked at in future years! Our hands were kept warm with an article that we tucked our hands into and was edged with a white swansdown. I refrain from using it’s correct name, which although the dictionary tells me is still a legitimate word, some of my family were shocked to hear me saying it some time ago, as they now know it as a rude word!

 

My sister looked stunning in a classic white satin dress. Even now when I look at the photos I think it looks timeless, as classy and beautiful as any wedding dress I have seen. The amazing truth was that unlike the thousands of pounds that can be spent on wedding dresses in today’s world this was a borrowed dress. Not borrowed by one bride, but as was the case in those frugal war days, more than one. A few years ago I went to an exhibition of fashion during the war with a daughter-in-law who is a fashion designer. As we strolled around the Imperial 

War Museum she explained to me about the materials that were used, and how they were made, and I told her stories of our clothes at that time. As we stood by the display of the borrowed wedding dresses, we realised that we had drawn a small crowd who were attentively listening to the story of my sister’s wedding dress!

The next picture of the day was in the church.  I recall my sister, father, myself and the other other bridesmaids sitting just inside the church door, on pews opposite one another. My mind tells me that the bridegroom and best man were there as well, but the definition of this memory is not good. Why were we waiting and not walking up the aisle? But definitely I can remember suppressed laughter. It was as if we could not look at one another as it would have released a raucous sound that would have shattered the dignified silence around us. Again I want to shout to my memory people “what was that all about?” But I never did ask and now it is too late as they have all passed on, only I am left with a question mark always hanging over that memory. 

There is not even a blurred memory of the service or even leaving the church. If there ever was it has been ravaged by time, and new memories jostling for space in my now aged over crowded brain.  It seemed I was even oblivious to the air aid warning that sounded during the service. But it was a noise I had lived with nearly all my life until then. Someone would have told me if I was meant to take cover as the teacher did at school when she ushered us into the long green metal huts that stood outside our classroom door. It was only my mother’s comment “ I could have run out of the church and ducked behind a gravestone when that air raid warning sounded”  to another adult as we headed out to have our photographs taken that sealed it in my brain enough to carry down the years. I guess the all clear siren went as well or we would not have all been so relaxed looking in the photos. 

 In the grounds of the church were the historic ruins of an old abbey. Something  the people of the town were very proud of, linking us as it did with the centuries past.  Many a bride and groom had stood proudly on the  sweeping steps that had survived the centuries, their guests rising up behind them. There could not be a more perfect a setting for such a blissful occasion. A moment of joy in a long and tiring war, no wonder we were all smiling. There at last was the bridegroom smiling broadly looking very smart in his naval uniform. The occasion allowed him to replace the navy ribbons on his tunic for white ones, adding to the festive look of the bridal party. But this sailor’s war war had been anything but festive. On more than one occasion he had narrowly missed joining his brother in a watery grave. He bore the scars of his physical wounds, but as with thousands like him they would soon bury the mental scars deep within them,  and slip back into normal life. As I write this it is just days away from the 75th anniversary of VE Day, and maybe only now can I really understand what it means to say ‘they gave their yesterdays for our tomorrow’. Yes, even the ones that came home. 

I guess, after the photos we went back to the reception set up in our large back room to enjoy the goose, and whatever else my mother had been able to gather together, on our limited rations. Later we would have wandered into the front room which was kept for ‘best’ occasions. It was there the piano and gramophone lived side by side. In later years, the piano and  myself developed a hostile relationship, as I blamed this innocent object for the lonely hours of  piano practice which bore little or no fruit! But at that stage of my life I loved that piano, and the sing-songs, the would always be a feature of these special occasions. So they sang, eat and drank and maybe raised a glass to our other brother still at sea. 

So this wonderful day past. I really thought it had been the very best day of my life. But it looked as if I was going to be robbed of a beautiful memory to end with.  As the evening wore on so did  the pain in my ear. It was not an unknown pain to me. Earaches had been a feature of my childhood. I was torn between not wanting to leave the party, and wanting the pain to end. Suddenly my mother who had been so occupied all day was giving me  her undivided attention.  Cotton wool and warm oil were put into the offending orifice. I was whisked off to the cellar (my bedroom until the war ended).  I shared it with the coals that were delivered through a grating by the front door, and the rats that visited the part of the cellar we could only reach through the lounge floorboards.  I must have been given some pain relief, although I have no idea what it would have been for a child back then. Soon my mother had soothed me into a fitful sleep. 

I was woken abruptly by the cellar door opening, and people hurrying down the rickety steps into my bedroom. Mum was soon by my side, and urging me to go back to sleep. assuring me that as soon as the raid was over they would all leave!  As I drifted back to sleep (the pain must have subsided) my last picture of that day was my sister, still in her lovely dress, standing near my bed. That memory is as vivid today as it was when I opened my eyes on that night. As sleep claimed me again and took me to dream of a fairy princess dressed in a beautiful white satin dress,  I knew it would be a day I would never forget. The best day