Under Two Flags: A Memoir

By Ellen Miller Coile

Under Two Flags describes the highlights of Ellen Miller Coiles eight decades. This traces her story from her birth in 1930 in England as the youngest in a family of six children. She was evacuated during the entire length of World War II to Ipswich, Wales and Marlow. As a teenager she pursued work opportunities available to a working class girl from London suburbs, including secretary at Peat Marwick and Mitchell, until marrying Russell Cleven Coile, an American, in 1951. Embarking on a sixty year love affair with Russell, she followed him around the world to France, Japan, Italy, and Brazil, then settled in northern California thirty years ago. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Organizational Behavior from the University of San Francisco. Under Two Flags chronicles not just her achievements in volunteer service to numerous organizations but how she expressed her values of social justice and combating discrimination. Her key priorities include family and friendships, extending beyond her three successful children.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532007941

Ellen Miller Coile

Ellen Miller Coile was born in Sunderland, England, on February 13th, 1930 and was raised in the suburbs of London. During World War II she was evacuated first to Wales and then to Buckinghamshire with her entire class at Beal Grammar School for Girls. After her schooling she apprenticed to a florist and then worked at the accounting firm of Peat, Marwick, and Mitchell, predecessor to KPMG, as an assistant to Mr. Peat. Ellen married Russell Cleven Coile in 1951, and moved to the United States. Following his career around the globe, she moved 23 times in 28 years. However, she always found or created volunteer opportunities wherever she lived, in schools, Quaker Relief organizations, the Democratic Party, and community groups. She excelled at all kinds of craft projects, including needlepoint, knitting, cross-stitch embroidery, crocheting, braiding large rugs, and sewing curtains, upholstery, and clothing. Ellen raised tens of thousands of dollars for everything from AIDS Service organizations to the Arts, by selling handmade items at different public events including her popular “Colonel Coile’s Chutney” and homemade organic catnip toys. She was Toastmaster of the Year for 1993. Ellen received a Bachelor’s Degree in Organizational Behavior from the University of San Francisco in 1986. She was a lifelong gardener, and studied Japanese Ikebana flower arranging in Tokyo, earning three degrees. Ellen was a world traveler, having lived in England, Italy, Japan, and Brazil, and traveled to most of Europe and to China, but her biggest hobby was collecting people. Her friends ranged from four-star Marine Generals to Navy Seaman Apprentices; from PhDs to high-school dropouts. She was quick to strike up a conversation with strangers and her overwhelming generosity quickly built strong friendships with a very diverse group of people who were fortunate to call her their friend. She was a tireless correspondent with her friends around the world. Ellen enjoyed international folk dancing and was a member of a troop that performed in the Festival of Britain. She danced with her husband Russell in Scottish Country Dance groups in Washington, D.C. and Monterey, California and studied dance at St. Andrew’s University in Scotland. She was also noted for her entertaining, from her British “Tea in the Garden” parties every June, with over 120 guests, to her dinner parties such as Burns Night, celebrating her Scottish heritage. In 2006 she published a cookbook, Just a Few Friends: Entertaining Twelve or More People and Making It Look Easy. Her lengthy memoir, Under Two Flags: A Memoir, was in final edit when she died. Ellen was predeceased by her husband of 60 years, Russell Cleven Coile. She is survived by daughter Jennifer Coile and son-in-law John Robrock of Hollister, California; son Jonathan Coile of Annapolis, Maryland; son Andrew Coile of San Jose, California; step-son Chris Coile and daughter-in-law Susan Coile of Sanibel, Florida; daughter-in-law Lori Coile and friend Gary Pearson of Alameda, California; granddaughter Courtney Coile and her husband Henry Roman of Sudbury, Massachusetts; grandson Zachary Coile and his wife Diane Sullivan of Washington, DC; granddaughter Sienna Jane Coile Robrock of San Francisco, California; and four great-grandchildren. She is also survived by her niece Dianne Greening of Wrabness, England and her son Jamie and daughter Kaleigh; nephew Nessly Cleven Craig and his wife Susan Weeks Craig of Elk Ridge, Maryland, and their son Dr. David Craig of Palo Alto. She was predeceased by her parents Wilhelmina and Henry Miller, and her five siblings, as well as two step-sons, Russell Cleven Coile, Jr. and Benjamin Paul Coile. Ellen died after a brief illness on Sunday, November 10th, 2013 at age 83. There was a Quaker Memorial Service in Pacific Grove, CA on Saturday, November 23rd at 2pm. She was interred at Arlington National Cemetery with her husband Russell on February 24th, 2014.

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Copyright © 2017 Ellen Miller Coile.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-0792-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-0793-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-0794-1 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 08/11/2017

For my husband, Russell C. Coile, who gave me my wonderful children and a wonderful, interesting, if exhausting life.

HAIKU FOR ELLEN

Count frogs, not the years.

Tasty food, tea. Happy guests.

Puzzles and birds wait.

~ Love, Judith Bolon and William Murray

A TOAST

Here’s to Russell and Ellen, truly friends forever.

And here’s to their guests, persons of considerable charm.

For it is often said that we are judged by the company we dine with.

So here’s to all of us, and for all we have to be thankful for today.

And lastly, a toast to our two great countries: the United States and Great Britain.

The two most sought after countries in the world that immigrants want to come to.

Now three cheers for Russell and Ellen—

Hip, hip, hurrah!

Hip, hip, hurrah!

Hip, hip, hurrah!

~ James Nero

Thanksgiving

November 23, 2006

EDITORS’ NOTE

WHEN ELLEN MOVED TO THE Monterey Peninsula in 1982, she wanted to find a job, but found that too many positions, for which she was in fact over-qualified by her experience, would not even give her an interview because she lacked a college degree.

The University of San Francisco offered a degree completion program as part of a university Extension program on the Monterey Peninsula. Ellen took courses locally, and also wrote papers and submitted evidence that documented her life experience in different subject areas to justify receiving academic credit for each area (though Ellen’s daughter Jennifer remains miffed that the paper on Children received only three credits – Jennifer felt that she and her siblings were worth at least a full two credits each).

The material that follows was either written by Ellen specifically for this autobiography, was derived from material submitted as part of her Bachelor of Science in Organizational Behavior from the University of San Francisco, or came from her writings in letters, Christmas letters, or Letters to the Editor of different publications.

There is some repetition, because Ellen revisited the same events in different contexts when reviewing her life. There was almost a quarter-century between some of her writings for her B.S. and her writings specifically for this book. As everyone experiences when they grow older, some of the details become a little fuzzy – especially of things that happened 70 years earlier. We beg the readers’ indulgence to overlook the small inconsistencies that may remain….think of it like a tapestry, and while the overall pattern repeats, some of the specific stitching may have minor variations.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter

1        Birth

2        The Early Years

3        The Pre-War Era

4        A Youth Perspective On The War

5        The Crisis Of 1939: Ipswich, Wales, And Beal In Marlow

6        Leaving School

7        Russell

8        Immigration

9        Japan

10      The Gentle Art Of Ikebana

11      Landscaping A School

12      Child Development

13      Becoming Naturalized

14      The Colour Bar

15      Religion

16      Quaker Faith

17      The Quaker Practice

18      Going Native

19      Voluntary Workers In The Social Services

20      Brazil

21      Death And Dying Counseling

22      Languages I Have (Not) Learned

23      A Love Of Sterling

24      Journalism – Writing For Publication

25      Chiropractic Treatment

26      Needlepoint Tapestries

27      The Dream House

28      Making A House A Home

29      The Magic Of An Herb Garden

30      Scottish Country Dancing

31      On Being A Housewife

32      Let Me Entertain You!

33      Owning An Atalanta

34      Gifted Children

35      Political Autobiography

36      The Final Chapter

Appendix A — A Sampling Of Christmas Letters 1987-2012

Appendix B — Letters To Celebrities

Appendix C — Letters To Politicians

Appendix D — Letters To The Editor

Appendix E — Memories Shared At 80Th Birthday Party

About The Author

CHAPTER ONE

BIRTH

I WAS BORN, I HAVE been told, on the 13th of February, 1930, in Sunderland, County Durham, England, in the middle of a snowstorm, just in time for tea.

There was no 21-gun salute, no pink ribbons on the door, and no banner saying It’s a girl. In fact there was no joy or celebration at all. Not every baby comes into this world on a fuzzy pink and blue cloud to an eagerly awaiting loving family. If there was one thing that my family didn’t need, it was another mouth to feed. My mother was 43 years old and already had five children – three boys and then two girls.

My mother had a difficult pregnancy and delivery. I was told I was put at the foot of the bed while the doctor worked to save my mother’s life. I always thought that meant on the bed until I recently saw The Citadel by A.J. Cronin on Masterpiece Theater. This play contained what must have been a reasonable facsimile of my birth as described to me: the baby was put on the floor on newspaper! It was much more important to save my mother; that family certainly didn’t need another mouth to feed.

Once the doctor had stabilized my mother he picked me up and was surprised to find I was alive. This was not good news for my mother. Let’s face it, if she could have had an abortion, she would’ve jumped at it. She told me when I was 16: I never wanted you and I still don’t. That wasn’t exactly news to me. I had always known and replied, I don’t want you either. If I had had a choice, I wouldn’t have picked her. All children have a right to be wanted, not born.

Deciding to have an abortion is a very difficult decision. When I had my third child I almost died and my doctor said I should not have any more babies. When I thought I was pregnant again, I had to decide whether or not to abort. I finally decided it would be better to raise three children than leave four. It turned out to be a false alarm, so I didn’t need an abortion after all. What a relief! But I am totally behind any woman who makes a decision that is best for her and, therefore, for the baby. I don’t know anyone who feels they have a right to dictate whether or not a woman has an abortion. This is a decision that only she can make and concerns no one else, except maybe her husband, and her doctor. It is very simple: if you don’t want an abortion, don’t have one. Every child should be a wanted child.

The anti-abortion crowd often says the woman can have the baby and put it up for adoption. There are two problems with that: 1. Pregnancy isn’t a walk in the park. If men had the babies there would be a lot more only children, and 2. Women die in childbirth. I heard a statistic that somewhere in the world, a woman dies in childbirth every minute. I don’t know how many die in America, it is never mentioned. But it happens. We have three times had an obituary in our local paper that said a young woman died in childbirth. Mostly it is never mentioned. Because of my experience I am totally in favor of abortion and hope it never becomes illegal again.

My father was Joseph Henry Miller. He died when I was four so I know almost nothing about him, other than that he was from Cork in Ireland. I met his mother only once. My sister Violet remembers she promised to give us sixpence (a fortune to us at the time) but didn’t. That taught me to always keep a promise to a child or they will remember your failing, no matter how many good things you do for them. I remember we were instructed to call her Gala, which we were told was Gaelic for Grandma.

image01.jpg

Joseph Henry Miller, my father

Dad had a sister, Poppy. Gala wanted my mother to call me Poppy. Thank goodness she didn’t. I really don’t see myself as a Poppy. Staid Ellen, after my mother’s mother suits me much better.

My mother was Wilhelmena Robson Miller She told us her father wanted a boy and was going to name him William, but named her Wilhelmena instead. She hated the name and was called Minnie by her family, which she hated just as much, if not more so.

image02.jpg

Wilhelmina Robson Miller, my mother

There was no chance we could go to the seaside for a holiday – no money — so my mother would save farthings all year so she could take Violet and me to the seaside for a day. The farthing was one quarter of a penny. We lived about two miles from the coast, so Mum would push me in a pushchair (stroller in the U.S.) and Violet walked. We would have enough money to buy a stick of rock (peppermint candy shaped like a rod with the name of the town all the way through it) and maybe an ice cream cone. We took a picnic lunch so didn’t need to buy food. We had our buckets and spades and were happy building sand castles, burying each other in the sand, and wading in the sea (not too far out) and it really is the sea, not the ocean, as I had to learn when I crossed the pond.

Mum knew we would be tired at the end of the day, so she always kept enough money for bus fares home. When we got home we were tired but happy. I think our one-day vacations gave us as much pleasure as some other people got from a week. We knew every minute was precious, so there were no tears and no cross words and no whining. Just enjoy the moment.

My three brothers were serving apprenticeships: Edward was apprenticed to be a boilermaker. He really wanted to be a foundry pattern maker, but there were no apprenticeships to be had in that trade. As my father was a boilermaker, the union usually tried to get an apprenticeship for the eldest son, at least. Although he became almost deaf from the noise of the factory where he worked, (no ear muffs or ear plugs in those days) he became a highly respected gaffer (master craftsman). After WW2 when engineering students were brought into the factory for a few weeks of practical experience, he was the gaffer they were most often assigned to. He was an example to me of how to make the best of a bad situation. Edward was 19 years older than I, and because my father died when I was four years old, was the father figure in my life.

He came down with rheumatoid arthritis as a young man, and because he went back to work too soon for fear of losing his apprenticeship he was badly crippled the rest of his life. His fingers were curled towards his palms from holding a hammer for hours at a time. His feet were badly malformed from standing on a concrete floor for hours, too soon. He never complained, except when his naturally curly hair would escape from the Brylcreem he used to try to make it straight, and it continued to produce a wave or curl. Violet and I would giggle and point, and he would quickly respond to make it straight again.

Cyril, the next boy, was an industrial blacksmith. He was injured in a work accident during World War II and so had several discs fused and couldn’t bend over. He also lost the use of his right thumb in another accident. The doctors left it on for cosmetic reasons – it was totally useless.

He worked in an aircraft factory during the day and drove an ambulance at night as a volunteer in the St. John’s Ambulance Brigade. I don’t know when he got to sleep, but thousands of men were doing the same thing, serving as plane spotters, air raid wardens, and blackout enforcers at night.

One evening our blackout enforcer knocked on the door and said, You opened your kitchen door and the light poured out. My mother said, That is impossible, you must have miscounted the houses. When he was adamant that this was the house, she invited him in to show how it was impossible. When he opened the kitchen door, the light went out. My brothers had rigged it that way so no one could forget to turn the light out before opening the door. The blackout enforcer had to admit defeat and graciously said he wished more people rigged their door the same way. The reason for the blackout was that even a tiny point of light could be seen from the air, so enemy aircraft would know there were people there and drop their bombs. People who smoked had to cup their hand over the lighted end so it couldn’t be seen from the air.

Alan, my youngest brother, was apprenticed to a builder and decorator as a painter and decorator. My mother had seen too many painters laid off work just before Christmas, which made things very hard on their families, so she wanted the decorating (hanging wallpaper, for example) as well as the painting for her son. People were likely to have their houses redecorated ready for Christmas, so it prolonged the work period, but there was usually a dry spell right after the holidays anyway.

Alan was in the Territorial Army (rather like the reserves in the U.S.), so he signed up for active duty. He was the only one of my brothers who saw active duty. Edward was physically unfit, and anyway was in an exempt occupation, as was Cyril.

Alan saw service in India, then in North Africa, and on to Italy where he was blown up by a landmine. He wasn’t the same person who came back to us as the one that left. His fiancée married an Army officer while he was away and had a son. When Alan came home she asked him to take her back, but he refused. It was many years before he married a widow with two almost grown children. She was a teacher who taught in the same school as Norah.

The Army had trained Alan as a carpenter, which stood him in good stead after the war with all the rebuilding being done. He studied for some exams and earned an accreditation as a master carpenter, and became the head carpenter for a large building company.

Although the three boys were working, as they were apprentices they were no help to the family finances as they were paid only pocket money, which was just about enough to pay their bus fares and other expenses of working. It was not unusual for the apprentice to be fired when he finished his term (seven years) and would have to be paid a man’s wages. So the effect of the apprenticeship program was really indenture – seven years of near slave labor, with nothing at the end of it. (The start of WW2 took care of the unemployment problem.)

Times were really hard. My father was out of work. He was always looking for work, and walked from Sunderland in County Durham (just below the Scottish border) to London. He was not alone. Hundreds of men out of work were making the journey. When they were too tired to walk any further, they would pay a friendly housewife a penny to drape their arms over her clothesline and go to sleep standing up. It was winter and the ground was too cold to lie on. They were also safer in a backyard. The men were so tired from the walking they fell right to sleep. In my youth, people still said, I’m so tired I could sleep on a clothesline.

The move from Sunderland to the south of England occurred when I was nine months old. When Dad found work he sent for the rest of the family, only to have the job disappear shortly afterwards.

Every day Dad would go out looking for work. He was a skilled boilermaker but there was no work available. At noon, when it was obvious there was no work to be had, he would go to the local street market and collect fruit crates to burn to keep us warm, and the fruit and vegetable discards thrown under the stalls. Then he would walk along the railway lines collecting the bits of coal that had fallen off the coal tenders (trains were coal-fired, steam-driven, in those days) to add to the fire.

My father died of cancer of the gullet and tuberculosis, after being hit by a truck while riding his bicycle. I remember a great deal about his death because it was a very slow one, in the home. My sister Violet and I were allowed into his room in late afternoon. We stood just inside the door to say, Hello, I love you Daddy and then had to leave. Then one day in early March we were not allowed in. We were not told why. In those days, things were kept from children. It isn’t so easy these days – word gets around.

My mother told us my father had gone for a holiday on a cloud. We believed her and would look at the clouds, trying to guess which one he was on. We also wondered why he hadn’t taken us with him. It sounded like a nice holiday to our young minds. A neighbor asked Violet where our father was. We told her he had gone for a holiday on a cloud. She said, No, he hasn’t. He’s dead. They put him in a wooden box, they dug a big hole, and buried him. Why would someone be so cruel? I just said, I don’t believe you. But Violet was so unnerved she had a nervous breakdown. After her stint at the convalescent home, she came home, but later had to go back again.

I remember Dad’s funeral quite clearly. My sister and I were sent to a neighbor’s at the end of the street. She let us sit on her front steps. For some reason she gave me a bottle of cheap perfume from Woolworths. The bottle was shaped like a dog. I played with it and the cap came off, so I poured the perfume over my head. When my family came home from the cemetery, they couldn’t think what the stink was. They found it was me, and it gave them a big laugh.

When we saw the horse-drawn hearse outside a house, we went running to see the horses, not realizing that it was outside our house. Motor-driven hearses were just coming in and the rich people had them; now it is the other way around. The mourners traveled in a horse-drawn carriage, something only royalty does these days. I cherish the fact that my father’s hearse was a stately horse-drawn one, even though it was a pauper’s funeral. The horses were black and had black plumes on their heads.

You might think I couldn’t possibly remember my father’s funeral as I was only four at the time. It is said that people don’t remember anything before age six – except for a trauma. Well, having a parent die is pretty traumatic. The same is true for Violet and I next being sent to a convalescent home. I can’t imagine anything more traumatic than wrenching a small child from her home and depositing her with strangers.

Because my father died of tuberculosis, my two sisters and I were TB contacts. The authorities sent us each to a different convalescent home, to make sure we didn’t come down with TB, but we didn’t go for about six months, as there was a waiting list.

My mother had to take me to one of the big railway terminals in London where Ms. Featherpenny met us. I don’t know if that was her real name but she certainly enchanted me. She took me to the convalescent home, which was a grand manor house set in beautiful grounds. There were fields – one had horses in it. All the children were four or five years old, boys and girls.

Leaving home was softened for me because the convalescent home was in the country. I was a town child, but I loved the country. Living in London was pretty good. There were lots of parks where we could find green places to play. Every village in England has a village green which everyone can use. Commoners are not the bottom of the social heap, as some people might think, but a rung up with special privileges to graze their sheep on the Common. There is usually a pond where the little boys can sail their toy boats, and maybe a bigger pond where they could rent a rowboat for a minimal fee. Some big suburban parks even have a swimming pool and a paddling pool for the little ones and there were usually swings, roundabouts, and sometimes tennis courts. The English people love their open spaces and have gone to great lengths to preserve them over the centuries.

We slept two to a bed, one head at the head of the bed and the other at the foot of the bed. One of the children brought lice, so our heads were shampooed in a foul-smelling liquid, and then they used a small-toothed metal comb to get the nits out.

Someone had given the home a fabulous dollhouse. It was in the matron’s sitting room, and we didn’t get to play with it, with one exception. On Sunday, the five-year-olds were taken to church, and another four-year-old girl and I were allowed to play with the dollhouse. It had lights in every room and a switch to turn them on. We could fill the bathtub and flush the toilets – it was enchanting.

There was a wonderful chestnut tree in the hedgerow between two fields. When it was time for me to go home, I was told that I could pick some chestnuts to take home. I covered the whole bottom of my suitcase. We really enjoyed roasting them on the open fire. This was my first experience of being away from home, but not my last.

CHAPTER TWO

THE EARLY YEARS

THINGS SETTLED INTO A ROUTINE. We moved often; my mother always felt she had found a better or cheaper house to rent, and my brothers had to go along with her. My mother refused to stay in the house where my father died. The rest of the family was mad at her, because they felt it was the perfect house for us.

We lived in Ilford, Essex, near Epping Forest, which had been Henry VIII’s hunting grounds. The forest has been protected from development, and is used and enjoyed by all. They are very beautiful.

There is no question that we were poor – but so were all our neighbors, friends and relations. We weren’t at the bottom of the food chain – we didn’t live in a slum. We lived in a working-class neighborhood (blue-collar in America). We were poor but proud, honest, hard-working, and clean (a patch or darn was nothing to be ashamed of, but a hole meant you were lazy).

My mother used to inspect me before I left the house to make sure I was neat, clean, and didn’t have holes that needed mending. I learned to darn at age four and so darned my brothers’ socks: real darns, no cobbling allowed (cobbling is where you pull the edges of the hole together and overstitch it). It could be very painful if in the wrong place.

I remember this time of my life as very calm and peaceful. There was no violence, no gangs, no public drunkenness, no guns, and no one trying to keep up with the Joneses. Just hard-working people trying to survive. This was a time before drugs, so that was another problem we didn’t have to cope with.

image03.jpg

Me and Violet having fun as bathing beauties. When we got too big for one tub, we had one each, and wore our bathing caps as we really thought we would be able to swim.

The houses were brick row houses (called terraced houses in England) – I should say are because most of them are still there. In England, we don’t tear houses down just because they’ve been around a few years. And lots of people grew tomatoes and perhaps a few easy vegetables like carrots, beans, lettuces, etc. We exchanged cuttings of plants and had a compost heap. Everyone helped everyone else. No one could afford to buy plants so this way we all enjoyed a colorful environment. There was no money for fertilizers either, so we all had a compost heap. My mother gave me my first garden of my own, about a yard square, when I was four. She was tired of me helping her; this started me on my lifelong love affair with gardening. I had forget-me-nots and pansies. I also grew radishes, carrots, and peas that I could pick and eat.

No one on our street owned a car. Only the rich people did, and they were not likely to come calling. The only car that was likely to appear on our street belonged to the local family doctor making a house call.

Every other vehicle was horse-drawn. The clip-clop of a horse is soothing compared to the roar of an internal combustion engine. Everything was delivered by horse and cart. The milkman’s horse knew the route, and stopped at the appropriate houses without being coached. One little old lady on our street was always waiting for him with a treat for the horse: an apple or sugar cube. When she died, the horse still stopped at her house, and wouldn’t leave until he had been given a treat, no matter what verbal command the milkman gave her. So in order to get his round completed, he had to bring a treat to give to the horse.

Coal was delivered by horse-power, but there were two horses instead of one and they were larger than the ones used by, say, the milkman, because the load was considerably heavier. There was a rag and bone man who had a pony and cart and walked round the streets shouting Rags and Bones – the first recycler, also a nod to the hawkers who have been shouting their wares for centuries in London. There are even songs about them, e.g. Cherry ripe, cherry ripe, ripe I cry. Full and fair ones come and buy. There were people with a little cart and horse selling fruit and vegetables who would call out their wares and the housewives would come running. They are called costermongers and sometimes they have a barrow they push themselves. You can see them on the streets of London to this day, selling choice fruit.

There was another fringe benefit – the presents the horse left behind. Horse manure is the very best food for roses, and you may know the English are mad about roses. My own mother had as many as she could fit in. It helped that it was relatively easy to grow a rose from a cutting. Violet and I used to get a metal bucket and shovel and go around the streets to collect the horse droppings. The first bucketful went to my mother, and then we would sell the rest to our neighbors for one penny a bucket. We gave good value, patting it down so they got a good bucketful.

Because there was so little traffic on our street, it became our playground. We would play Whip and Top: the Top was made of wood with a round-headed nail in the pointed end, and a smooth flat circle at the other end. We made interesting designs on the flat end with colored chalks that looked pretty as they spun around. The Whip was just a wooden dowel with a cord whip.

We played marbles in the gutters. We drew a hopscotch grid, picked up a pebble, and played to our hearts’ content.

We had a dog named Prince, whom we called the Wonder Dog. Our garden had a six-foot-high fence with broken glass on the top, and Prince could jump that without exerting himself. Violet and I would take him for a walk in Epping Forest, where we could throw a ball for him to chase, and have a good time running around.

image04.jpg

Prince the Wonder Dog with Violet and me

There was always an ice cream cart parked near the entrance – actually there were no fences, but it was a popular spot of entrance. Violet and I never had ice cream money, but one day, a lady bought Prince a cone. He laid down, put the cone between his paws, and licked it like a little kid. This so enchanted the lady that she was there most days when we went. We both hovered over Prince but were never given so much as a lick. We would try to take the cone from the lady to give to Prince (with a chance for a surreptitious lick to stop it dripping), but she always insisted on giving it to him herself.

Nothing else really stands out, so nothing too traumatic could have happened. I do remember one thing, however. My mother went to great lengths not to accept public charity for us, so we wouldn’t feel like paupers, although goodness knows we couldn’t have been much poorer. She wouldn’t let us have the free dinners we were entitled to at school, because the children that got them were singled out in front of the class and made to feel ashamed. Her attitude was that poverty is nothing to be ashamed of and is nothing that having a little money won’t solve. She didn’t want us to get into a poverty state of mind. But, one Christmas someone was giving the orphans a treat. Most people think an orphan has no parents, but the Oxford Concise Dictionary defines orphan as a child bereaved of parent(s), and this is how it was interpreted. We went to a movie and on the way in were given a bag containing apples, oranges, nuts, and candy – a big treat for us. On the way out, the boys went in one line and the girls in another, and we were given a wrapped present. I got a little tin tea set, and I couldn’t have used it more or had more fun with it if it had been Crown Staffordshire china. That was the only time we accepted charity, other than hand-me-down clothes.

I only remember having one book, A.A. Milne’s When I Was Very Young. I read it over and over and memorized many of the poems. We did have a very fine library system and I could walk there, enjoy the peace and quiet, and then take out a book to take home. What a blessing libraries are, for children as well as grown-ups.

We didn’t have a lot of toys. We had five stones (the nearest equivalent in America would be Jacks), a skipping rope, marbles, a whip and top, a ball, and the one big thing: a doll carriage and baby doll named Jane. We never had a teddy bear or other stuffed toys.

One day, Violet and I were playing in the backyard with my doll and baby carriage when Violet said we should give Jane a bath. We got the dishpan and Violet told me to take her clothes off while she went to boil a kettle of water (we didn’t want her to get cold in cold water). We poured in the boiling water and watched in horror as her body melted. We poured out the water, got the doll carriage, put her head on the pillow, arranged her body, put her dress over it, and covered it all with her blanket. We then took her out for a walk.

We knew we would be punished but hoped to delay the evil day. My mother would ask us if we were going to play with Jane and we would say, Yes, we are going to take her for a walk. We then hightailed it out the door and went for a walk around the block. We were pretty sure Mum knew what had happened, and we were sure she knew we knew. It was a horrendous war of nerves.

She finally pulled the blanket off – we looked in horror and terror. We knew we were going to get a good hiding – a beating – although I never thought there was anything good about it. She had a pair of slippers with low heels that were made of wood. She would take our panties down, put us over her knees and flail away. We would have bruises on our bottoms and it hurt to sit down. She would tell us to sit, and we would tell her we preferred to stand. But we had to sit. I didn’t understand why we were so severely punished. Hadn’t we suffered enough losing our precious toy? It isn’t as though we planned to destroy Jane – it was an accident, the result of childish ignorance. I never castigated my children for accidents – for willful destruction yes, but not accidents. We were already devastated enough, and didn’t need further pain.

It was only at this time, right after my father’s death, that my mother was physically abusive, but she never gave up being verbally abusive to me. After I became a widow myself, I realized that she was probably depressed, and dismayed at the circumstances she found herself in. I was in a much better place, but I still found myself depressed from time to time. It didn’t last. Life must go on and life is for the living. It is a great wrench to lose a beloved spouse, and accept the realization that death is so final. I forgave my mother years ago, when I finally got my head straight. But it doesn’t mean I forgot. Never tell a small child they are stupid or ugly or any other negative thing. Hate the deed, but love the doer. Unconditional love – the very best kind.

One day a neighbor asked me to run an errand for her. She gave me a shopping bag, a list, and money, and I went happily on my way. When I took the things back to her, she gave me a penny for going, and asked me to call each day after school to see if she needed me to shop again. So I did. The pennies were stacking up in my secret hiding place. I was afraid they would be discovered and liberated. I then remembered hearing about the penny banks. These were wonderful institutions where anyone, including children, could open an account and deposit as little as one penny. They were designed to teach thrift, especially to children. So one day after school, I took myself to the Yorkshire Penny Bank, and opened an account.

Can I please open an account? I asked the bank teller.

Yes. What is your name?

Ellen Miller.

Don’t you have another name, one in the middle?

No. I didn’t tell her the family story, but my mother only gave her eldest son a middle name. She had a wealthy uncle, Gilmore, who she thought would be flattered and so help us. He wasn’t and didn’t, so she abandoned that tactic.

Are you sure? the teller asked. Isn’t there another name they call you?

Well, they sometimes call me Daisy.

There was much amusement when I went home with a passbook made out to Ellen Daisy Miller.

I actually kept an account with them even when I started work. We were paid weekly, so if I had any money left at the end of the week I would bank it. There usually wasn’t much because I didn’t earn much, and I had to pay my expenses – money to my mother for room and board, train season ticket to get to work, clothes (just basic, nothing fancy), and tickets to the theater.

When I got pregnant with my first child, I opened a savings account in the name of Baby Coile. There were no ultrasounds in those days, so I couldn’t put a name on it. They were very dubious but finally agreed, and then when she was born we changed the name. We started saving for her college education, just small amounts. We did the same thing for Jonathan, but by the time Andrew was born, you could only open an account with a Social Security number, so we had to wait. When they were older, we gave the passbook to the child and encouraged them to add to it. If they got cash at birthday or Christmas, they had to bank half of it. We were trying to instill saving ways in them. When they graduated from high school, they each did something good with it.

I have read that battered children become batterers – they repeat what they have learned. I am happy to report that I didn’t follow that pattern and was determined never to beat my children. I hit one of them only once. My oldest son was on the other side of the room and was fiddling with something, so I asked him to please stop. He did briefly, and then went back to it. I told him to knock it off or – pow – he was going to get it. He looked me right in the eye and did it again. I went to him and gave him a swat on the behind – it was more sound than fury. Then I said, Now look what you made me do! I was obviously distressed. He said, I’m sorry Mumsie, I won’t do it again, and he never did. I realized he was just testing the limits of what he could do. He knew the boundaries kept changing and he needed to know where they were.

Another time I asked Jonathan to do something and he said he couldn’t, because he was the middle child. I said, No, you aren’t. He looked at me as though I was mad. Middle children have too many problems, so I refuse to have one. You are my eldest son. I have a daughter, an eldest son, and a youngest son. See, no middle child. You are my eldest son, and from now on I will call you Ichiro, which is Japanese for Number One Son.

Sometime later, I was in San Francisco when I saw some brass key rings at a souvenir stand with a handsome brass fob with a name on it. They had all the usual names, John, William, David, etc. and then Japanese ones. I found Ichiro and bought it for him. To this day (when he is in his 50s), he still calls me up and says, Hi Mumsie, it’s Ichiro.

Another time he told me he couldn’t do something because his legs were too short. I looked at them and said, They look all right to me. They go all the way down to the ground. If you don’t want to do something, say that. Don’t say I can’t. The White Russians walked across Siberia in the winter. If someone wants to do something, they do it, but they have to want to.

There are other ways to punish children rather than hitting them. We never had a naughty chair. If a child was misbehaving, they were sent to my bedroom, not theirs. I didn’t want their bedroom to be a place of punishment. They had lots of things to amuse them there: phonographs and records, books, puzzles, and toys. My room was pretty sterile by comparison. If they were acting up, I sent them to my room and said they could come out when they felt they could behave in a civilized way. Once when we had friends visiting from England, Jennifer was behaving badly, so I sent her to my room and told her she could come out when she could behave in a civilized manner, and shut the door. I heard one little yelp and then she came out, all smiles: it was no fun protesting to an empty room. One of our guests said she was holding a protest meeting with herself. Another time she was yelling in the house, I told her that was an outdoor voice, so she would have to go outside to use it. She certainly had a right to use it, and I had a right to not hear it, so both our rights would be served if she stepped outside. She had a choice: go outside to yell, or tone it down and stay inside. She usually chose the latter.

CHAPTER THREE

THE PRE-WAR ERA

THE PERIOD BEFORE WAR BROKE out was like the eerie calm before a storm. You knew something momentous was going to happen, and that it was inevitable. It was obvious the government was making plans in case the worst happened. They made plans to evacuate the children from London and other big cities, and arrangements were made with communities to receive them.

They must’ve had barrage balloons staged in strategic places ready to deploy them the minute war was declared, because they appeared all over London, en masse, the same day. I remember when I saw my first barrage balloon in the spring of 1939: we were in the playground playing pig-in-the-middle (dodge ball in the U.S.) when I looked up and saw the big silver balloon and said, Look! Everyone stopped in their tracks, and stared and we then realized it wasn’t a single balloon – the whole sky was full of them, as far as the eye could see, hundreds of them. We couldn’t imagine how they got there and why they didn’t fly away. It was like magic. We soon found out that they were called barrage balloons but had no idea what barrage meant. We also found out that there was no magic involved: they were tethered.

They were huge inflated balloons, rather like Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons, but with less color or character. The only way I can describe them is as oval balloons, tapering slightly at one end, with three fins on the tail – the whole thing made of silver coated fabric. They were so dense so that an enemy plane couldn’t get below them to release their bombs, and couldn’t really see clearly what was under them. I suppose they made us safer.

They also had air raid shelters ready to be delivered to households. Tank traps appeared at strategic locations, especially railway lines. These were large, concrete blocks about six feet square and four feet high, close enough so a tank couldn’t get past them.

They also installed air raid sirens, and tested them. They were high-pitched notes that could not be ignored. The warning was an undulating sound that struck fear into the soul and certainly galvanized one into seeking shelter; the all clear was a steady note, a very calming and welcome sound. I remember the first time I heard one.

My mother didn’t allow her children to chew gum. Before WW2 there were little vending machines around town. Instead of a slot to put the coin in, there was a pullout drawer that had a place to put in the coin. You pushed in the drawer, the coin went into the bowels of the machine, and the candy came out of the chute. I was indulging in the forbidden when I put my penny in the drawer and pushed it in, and at that precise moment the siren went off. I almost jumped out of my skin! I thought I had caused it. I thought it was divine judgment for disobeying my mother. I enjoyed the gum anyway, probably the last I got before the vending machines disappeared, or rather, were no longer stocked.

They also issued gas masks to everyone. We were told to go to a church hall where we were fitted with a gas mask. I remember feeling as though I was suffocating. They had ones that sort of looked like Mickey Mouse for the young children, and a contraption that a whole baby would fit in.

When the fitting was finished, the gas