A Childs War Read Free Page A

next nine months nor for that matter for the next thirteen years. By the end of that time hope of having grandchildren had overridden his earlier misgivings about his son’s marriage. Nevertheless, the doubts of George’s mother still lingered and erupted into unpleasant scenes from time to time when she and Edna met, which did not happen very often.
    George and Edna themselves had become used to their lack of diminutive dependants and forgot the risk involved in their contentment with each other one barmy night towards the end of 1935. Alex was born after a difficult pregnancy and a horribly long time in labour, which precluded the possibility of other children, as Edna would tell anyone who would listen for many years to come. Although George was thrilled to have his son and heir, as he incessantly called him to his friends, Edna found the joys of motherhood overrated. She was ashamed to remember the occasion, before the war started, over eighteen months ago, when Alex had not only been singing while she wanted to sleep after lunch on a fairly cold day, but had also been playing with his wooden bricks, causing clicking sounds. She had threatened to throw his bricks on the fire if he continued. He did not stop and being a woman of her word, she threw three of the offending bricks into the flames. This neither facilitated her sleeping process nor provided the hoped for silence from her son. Time had to be spent in quenching his rage as his bricks burned in the grate, despite her remorseful attempts to rake them out of the fire. As Edna saw things, in her generation, parents were not required to apologise to their children - so she had not done so.
    When the little so-and-so fell over and split his chin, something gave way in her. Relations had been strained between them for some time because he would still sing his tuneless songs while he played after lunch at the side of her chair when she wanted to have her five minutes’ sleep and in recent days her internal clock had failed after all the sleepless nights caused by the air raids. She considered that even Tommy Handley could not have seen the funny side of what she was going through. George considered that she laughed more loudly than was justified by his ‘It’s That Man Again’ programme on the wireless because of a desperate need to be cheerful when she was far from being so. Historians say that revolutions are caused by the agitation of those who have something to lose. George saw the corollary of that argument. Having worked hard, after many years of disappointment, he had become a conformist in order to keep what he had eventually gained. He had been born in 1900. In July 1917, after being embarrassed for several months by girls in the street looking at his tall, rugby-playing frame and wondering why he was still a civilian, George had volunteered for the Navy as he had long intended to do in any case. He was glad to become what was called a ‘boy tiffy’ at H.M.S. Fisgard in Portsmouth because of his dread of ever being placed in the special care of his father who had a responsible post at the Naval Detention Barracks in Chatham. He had gained his promotions in the engine room of a destroyer and then of a light cruiser. He suffered a fall on board ship, which resulted in a hernia. This was confirmed in medical language as a right inguinal bubonocele on account of which he was granted a hurt certificate in April 1927. It was graciously conceded on the document that he was sober at the time. However, George refused to submit to surgery. He was transferred to a shore establishment where he was discovered to be in need of glasses for his recently developed short sight, which he discovered when he was drilling a party of sailors who found it difficult to accept his order to march straight through a wall. The final entry on his certificate of service in the Royal Navy said that his character was very good and his ability as an Engine Room