Summy Lu

By Kev Richardson

An uneducated woman's motherly instincts overcome wartime hardships and poverty.

Sheltering her own and fostering other bairns in need are Estelle's drives in life.

She builds her 'grand life' as she calls it, to a comfortable one, surrounded by those grown to realise their good fortune.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wings ePress, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9781613092958

Book preview

Prologue

WITHIN THE VAST AND mysterious world of Womanhood, Motherhood seems to follow different patterns.

History has illustrated that as each century passed, gifts developed in every animal’s mind from the day of its birth, yet different environments influenced different patterns. As every new experience glued itself in each creature’s mind, the pace of natural awareness broadened. As formal education developed in humans, it turned these into instincts as vastly varied as a mind might imagine.

Estelle Adams grew up in a frightening world, her childhood influenced by the World War and her teen years influenced by, on the one hand, a Britain trying to claw its way out of virtual bankruptcy and, on the other, a people trying to change lifestyle into a generation of ‘letting go’ in terms of social convention. That very trauma clearly saw British women taking to the streets, demanding the same rights as men, especially the right to vote. They brazenly claimed recognition for their parts played in winning the war as nurses on the fields of battle and alongside menfolk working in factories to free more men to take up arms in the trenches.

Despite family poverty, Estelle was witness to all this development.

Her father was denied the responsibility of taking up arms, for he was a tin miner in Cornwall’s Truro, an essential skill in delivering tons of tin for the war effort. Yet, because he was a drunken miner, husband and father, the family was poor.

Estelle realised that her mother’s major problem with his drinking was not only the risk of him losing a wage but that it influenced her entire outlook on life on the negative side. The family struggled from day to day in a world of hardship.

But Mama is a cautious woman, Estelle tucked into her mind. Pa keeps her belly full of babies without any thought to her helplessness, yet she copes. I just so admire her stamina and bravery.

Her mother became what Estelle considered an ideal woman to emulate.

As the eldest child, considerable responsibility leaned heavily on her shoulders and mind. A major influence was missing out on an education. Most children began school at age five, yet with her father’s imbibing, pennies for food were rare. Her mother turned their home into a boarding house which called for Estelle’s persistent support in cleaning and cooking, not to mention laundry for the filthy mining clothes of their boarders. The luxury of formal education was denied her.

County Cornwall was dotted with tin mines, Truro plumb in the centre of that noisy industry. Incessant pounding of tin-bearing stone was part of every denizen’s life. Bertie was the son of a leading counsellor on tin mining, yet his younger brother was he who heeded his father’s advice to consequently live a more secure life.

Bertie became the brunt of his father’s accusations of laziness and irresponsibility.

Which makes me the unlucky one of the two, Bertie kept telling himself. Why should a man make a sweat of his life when his father is a wealthy man who just finds fault in everything I do?

There came the day when his father, also the mine manager, threatened him with discharge if he didn’t approach his obligations at work and at home more responsibly.

All in the family were kept aware of this, for Bertie would regularly, at family dinner, quote his father’s wrath.

Estelle’s mama would later try explaining this away to the children, as their father’s way of seeking sympathy.

You must all try making allowance for that, she would insist.

Estelle also wondered if her pa was hoping some or all of the children might make appeals to her grandfather.

Darling Grandpapa already helps Mama along with shillings for food, she would muse, but he is a businessman who has seniors looking over his shoulder in turn so cannot be seen to favour any one miner more than another.

Or that was the way her mother tried explaining it.

On her eighth birthday, her mother took her aside and declared, Estelle my love, I bore you, then Meryl and Elaine, without undue stress, and you know that after that, I had two miscarriages. I keep well enough now, however, that you three could take some hours each week for schooling. I’ve talked with the headmistress explaining our situation, so on four days in each week you will take classes until four p.m. After school each day, and all day on Fridays and Saturdays, you will aid me with marketing, cooking and laundry.

Meryl and Elaine were assigned to household cleaning.

Estelle, you will help me with cooking and laundry. Your father has promised to use his Sundays to tending the kitchen herb gardens, so that will save me some time.

By then, Estelle could read many of her mother’s unexpressed words, and the appropriate ones in that instance were, yet you know how your father’s good intentions usually end up.

She was aware that her mother had been the third of seventeen children and found herself in much the same sort of situation in helping with chores. In that case, however, rather than turning to liquor, her father had been a hard-working publican who expected his family to provide considerable labour.

So Estelle began part-time school.

Fate, however, was to intervene just two years later.

After yet another miscarriage, her ma was informed by the doctor that her new pregnancy hinted of twins. Her mother’s strength began waning, and her father informed Estelle, You quit this stupid schooling, girl! It’s a fantasy of your ma’s that girls need education, and she now needs full-time help.

So Estelle’s short spell of formal education, the ‘all’ she was ever to experience, came to an end. Cooking breakfast and dinner and cutting lunches for her father and ten miners, apart from cooking for her younger siblings, all added up to a full-time job for a ten-year-old, even without the laundry.

Estelle insisted, however, that Meryl and Elaine stay in school, yet urged them into hurrying home to help with her daily responsibilities.

When twins Bertie junior and Elsie were but eighteen months old, Estelle helped deliver another sister, Jenny.

Sheesh! I’m now the eldest of six in but twelve years. Poor Mama near died with this last one. Oh God, if you are really there, please don’t let her fall again?

He wasn’t to hear her. Stanley was to follow.

HARDSHIPS OF ANOTHER kind were to cast all souls, meagre and well-to-do, into fear and trembling.

Europe had ever been a continent plagued by wars, which each time called for the remaking of boundaries. By 1914, mighty Austria-Hungary, Europe’s largest nation, seethed with discontent. When heir to its throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated during a visit to neighbouring Serbia, the world turned upside down. It failed to recognize that Emperor Franz Josef himself saw it in one way, a blessing, as did millions of the country’s people. The Archduke was far from popular. The emperor had been largely concerned at what might happen to his reign after his death and saw the assassination as, possibly, fortunate.

Yet warmongers grasped the opportunity to cry foul, their voices echoing around the world. Two months later, the affluent Ottoman Empire, headed by Turkey, signed an alliance with Germany.

Russia already had an alliance treaty with Serbia.

Germany already had a treaty with Austria-Hungary.

Within twenty-four hours of signing its pact with Turkey, Germany took advantage of the turmoil by declaring war on both Russia and France, the latter with whom it had ever had border arguments. Easier and greater access into France could be gained by invading through Belgium, so Germany took that course.

It failed to recognise that Great Britain had alliances with both France and Belgium, so to keep faith with its allies, Britain declared war on Germany, bringing British Empire nations—Australia, Canada, Egypt, the Sudan, India, Burma, Malaya, New Zealand, Rhodesia and South Africa—into the fray.

Japan honoured its alliance with Britain so also declared war on Germany.

In support of Germany, Austria-Hungary declared war on Japan.

What had been at first recognised as a likely skirmish between Austria-Hungary and Serbia quickly mushroomed into a war to cost nine million lives and leave fifteen million maimed.

The United States, desperately trying to refrain from entering it, by 1917, however, was so pressured by U-boat attacks on its merchant navy shipping supplies to the Allies that it entered the war against Germany and its allies.

Britain had been stumbling over the stalemate of the trench war in Flanders, but US land and air forces joining them in 1917 proved enough to tip the scales in the Allies’ favour.

With many farmers called up for military duty, hardship for the British people had been severe. When a women’s corps was instituted as ‘land army,’ Estelle wished she were older than her fourteen years so she could join.

I would fret at having deserted my family yet would find helping all those poor soldiers just so rewarding!

When both twins started calling her Mama, which quickly upset Estelle’s mother, of course, Estelle began schooling them on calling her, simply, Es.

COME 1918, HOWEVER, two major things happened in Estelle’s life.

Oh, when Mama whispered to me that she was again expecting, I nearly died, not only over how her body might stand up to another birthing after a five year lapse, but the sickness she might go through for the entire time, like with Jenny.

And then there will yet be another mouth to feed?

In Europe, a series of back-downs by the Bosch began, and in mid-October Turkey signed a withdrawal. Austria-Hungary followed suit early in November as the Allied push towards the German border was giving more heart to every Allied breast. Internally, Germany faced more problems than those on the field of battle.

The German fleet stationed in Kiel mutinied, and immediate unrest shook the entire country. All citizens had had enough of war. On November 9, the Kaiser abdicated, leaving Germany leaderless. An armistice was signed with the Allied command at 5:00 a.m. on 11th November, with 11:00 a.m. agreed for the ceasefire... eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month!

Food shortages, however, continued everywhere in Britain, at least among the poor. The wealthy could afford black-market prices for stolen food, but the less fortunate remained hungry; rationing was introduced and would continue for two years.

In all factors, Britain continued stumbling over its recovery... it no longer ruled the waves, for its navy was in tatters and its flags could no longer wave as proudly in all four corners of the known world, and every dependency was seeking recompense for the aid it had given Britain during the war.

ESTELLE WAS NOT SURE if it was good news or bad news when one day her father arrived home early from the mine to announce, I’ve been given the sack because soldiers returning from the war need jobs. There is no other work here for a man without a reference, so we are to move to London. I can find work there in real estate, and we can run a bigger boarding house.

Oh, he seems to indicate he will behave better, but is he really strong enough to say no to as many whiskies as he’s been drinking every day?

Estelle

One

Estelle’s London, 1920

Sally was to prove a godsend.

The little row house all we Adams family had moved into in London’s Islington was extremely cramped.

Largest of the three upstairs bedrooms held Ma and Pa in our only double bed. Next to it, Meryl and I shared a single bed against one wall while Elaine and Elsie shared another. A table squeezed between them served as dressing table for all four; we tossed for turns at its mirror. Clothing not hooked on nails in the walls was folded on shelves suspended from the ceiling by ropes. In the next room along the hallway, Jenny and tiny Stanley shared a single bed... the rest of the space given over to storage of whatever couldn’t fit elsewhere in the house. Bertie had what had beforehand been called the box-room, a cramped little attic room on the third floor.

I found the evenings, while waiting for sleep, ideal occasions for the four elder sisters to air family problems. On the first night I recall saying, Thank the Lord the doctor told Ma after Stanley’s birth that she could never have another.

Pa also rented the house next door and furnished the upstairs rooms with three single beds in the front room and two in each of the others. What had been the downstairs living room of that house also had three single beds. So in total we had ten boarders. What was designated ‘dining room’ in that house served as sitting room for all ten.

Pa found himself a job with an estate agent. The base salary was very low, but the commission on ‘letting’ properties was generous and that on ‘selling’ very generous.

Your pa realises, Ma explained to us all, that he must prove good at this job if he is to earn enough to keep us all and repay what we borrowed to furnish next door. He has promised to turn over a new leaf.

We must all try to make him realise how proud of him we are, I told my sisters.

Pa stuck to his promise. Even on Sundays he took as many as wanted to go on bus trips around London and to generally sightsee. For the next year he proved that he was taking his family responsibilities more seriously, and while he didn’t give up his tippling, he kept it under control.

And, I mused as our first year in London drew to a close, Ma is finding it a bonus that whilst we pay a higher rent for our smaller houses in London, the ‘boarding’ rate is considerably higher than back in Truro... and with now ten boarders, we are all eating better.

Yet a major change was in store.

One night over dinner, Pa announced that after the dishes were washed, dried and put away, he wanted privacy at the dining table for an announcement to both Meryl and me.

And I see Ma is smiling, so she is already in the know, and the news must be good.

With your ma fit again and past having another child, he declared, and Elaine old enough to take care of the littlies, you two can go out to work.

He sat back with arms folded across his chest and waited for the gasps we gave.

There’s jobs galore offering live-in cleaners in wealthy homes, he added. "I want each of you girls to choose one.

This is not a summons, he added. It is opportunity for each of you to do something meaningful and get paid for it.

I looked at Meryl, who displayed a beaming smile. I returned one.

It’s a milestone in life, dear sister, I told her.

We let our parents see our glee at the prospect.

Pa handed over a page torn from the day’s Times, pointing at two columns of Help Wanted ads. Ma handed me a pair of scissors so I could separate them.

As I tried keeping the scissors in a straight line, Meryl already held out a hand ready to take one of the pair.

Take your time, girls, Pa told us.

After considerable humming and hawing, we made our choices.

I shall answer this one, I said, marking it with a pencil. Are there buses to Wanstead?

Ma fussed. I’ll look up the bus routes. Maybe there’s a train.

Meryl put her hand out for the pencil.

As I passed it, I declared, I’m going up to run the bath. I shall telephone my choice first thing in the morning.

Good luck, Sis, and keep your bath water for me, Meryl chimed. And tomorrow, I’ll walk with you to the phone box.

It turned out that after a short bus ride to Bethnal Green, each could take a train.

I had only one good dress but had developed a hairdo that whilst not too unconventional seemed to attract eyes away from what clothes I might be wearing.

But hopefully, wherever I can get a job, I might soon be able to afford another dress.

I was very conscious, too, of trying not to let my lack of schooling show itself.

Maybe I can quickly afford, too, buying a magazine on social etiquette?

I realised that there would be many areas where I must do some close studies.

Next morning, Meryl and I had two chairs before our dressing-table mirror, making up our faces and taking turns with lipstick, powder and rouge. Each was conscious of using very little make-up, rather than plenty.

You don’t want to look like whores, we had been told by Mama.

We held hands walking to the phone and then, each with an address noted, took a bus to Bethnal Green. From there, I trained north and Meryl, south.

I had spoken only to a maid at the other end of my phone call, and she sounded friendly, asking my age, which seemed to satisfy her, and informing that I should bring all references with me. Well, I certainly wasn’t going to tell her I had no references so just answered, Yes.

That truth can wait until I’m with the lady of the house. I just have to make sure I first explain thoroughly the work I’ve done in boarding houses both in Truro and here in London.

I kept fingers crossed during much of my journey, although with the other hand held a kerchief to my nose because children had the window open; smoke just poured in. I needed comfort to rehearse answers to questions like Where have you worked in the past, and such.

Fortunately, for it was quite a walk from the train, the weather was kind.

But it certainly is a nice area... Oh, such big, fine houses on big allotments...

It all added fuel to the nerves I kept trying to settle.

The house number led me to a commanding residence with a motor garage big enough for two cars. The garage doors were open with one side empty. The other had a small black Morris sedan facing outwards.

Oh, I’m sure it must be difficult putting a car in backwards. How can drivers see what’s behind?

I had ridden in a motor car only twice, each time in the back, and been told on both occasions to remain quiet so the driver could concentrate. I had wondered if that were to give me confidence, rather than a regimental safety hint.

Past the garage, the path wound to an impressive front porch. Three steps led up between tall columns, and all windows in the two-storeyed house were lead-paned, some with wooden shutters. All the latter, however, on such a fine day, were fastened back to the wall.

Shivers ran all the way down my back and legs as I tugged on the bell-cord.

A little chime resounded, even though the door was closed.

It was opened by a cleaning girl about my own age, wearing a loosely fastened apron and a tied headband covering her hair, betraying her calling.

The feather duster under her armpit is just the dot on the ‘I,’ my alter ego whispered.

She welcomed me with a beaming smile.

You come to see Mrs. Hetherington about the position?

Yes. The housecleaning job.

It was you who rang earlier?

Yes. It was you who answered the phone?

Yes, she answered. My name is Sally.

Oh, does this ad mean Sally is leaving? She seems quite a likeable kind.

Sally stood back, holding the door while I entered, then closed it gently.

Maybe we’ll be partners in crime here, she whispered with a deep-throated giggle as she led me across a large vestibule. My partner had to give up work to have a baby. She worked almost up to her time.

Sally led me past a formal sitting room into a broad hallway and knocked on a door.

Miss Adams is here, ma’am, Sally announced, holding the door while I almost sneaked past her.

As a smartly dressed middle-aged woman rose from her desk, I heard the door close behind me.

Oh, she is an extremely elegant lady. Could she have a title?

For a dreadful moment I realised I’d have no way of knowing how to address her.

But, oh, what a delightful smile she has.

My name is Beatrix Hetherington, she explained in a quiet voice. Estelle Adams, I am told?

Yes, ma’am. Oh, I hope that just copying Sally’s ‘ma‘am’ is not seeming rude.

Sally introduced herself? Mrs. H waited but a moment, not really expecting a reply, it seemed, as she returned to the seat behind her desk.

She meanwhile ushered me to one of the two chairs facing her.

My household comprises my husband and me, two grown sons, all three out at work six days in the week, a cook, and her husband does gardening and acts as chauffer when any of us ladies wishes to go out alone, even as far as the station. All live in. I have just lost the service of a charming young lady who is bearing a child. She has no husband but intends raising the mite in any case. She lives with her widowed mother nearby. I am sad at her leaving but hope I can find as worthwhile a replacement. Your references?

She held out her hand.

Ah!

Oh, ah... Then my ego-elf, as I call him, came to my rescue, whispering, Stay composed and simply explain your situation...

I have never worked, ma’am. Away from home, that is. I am eldest child in a large family so have needed to mother the young ones in turn, including twins, to help Mama, who was sometimes very ill during her pregnancies. My father was a tin miner in Truro until the end of the war, where we ran a boarding house for miners. That was my early experience.

Oh, and a very trying one by the sound of things. When and why did your family come to London? Or are they still in Cornwall?

Oh, no. When the war finished, my father was stood down to give employment to returning servicemen. We came here and he is a salesman, with an estate agent in Spitalfields.

Where do you live in London, Estelle? And for how long?

Islington, ma’am, for two years. My father considers it time I began looking after my own life; my nearest sister too. I have had little chance for schooling, but plenty of experience in housekeeping.

She smiled.

Having met Sally, do you feel you could compatibly share a room with her? I pay one pound twelve and sixpence per week and provide full board over the seven days. You have one day a week off. You may choose your day after agreeing it with Sally, who will teach you your duties. They are not arduous. We have two dogs. Will you be happy to share this house with us for a week’s trial? We are quite a happy family.

Oh, so many things...

Oh, Sally. Yes, she seems very friendly. And yes, that salary sounds quite satisfactory. And I love dogs.

Oh, just as well she cannot see my fingers crossed behind my back!

The lie was a white one, because the Adams family had never had a dog.

I quickly, however, brought both hands together in my lap, wondering what would follow.

Oh, one other thing, Estelle, Mrs. Hetherington added. If you wish to attend church on a Sunday, that is alright with me. What religion are you? I ask only because of walking distances to and from, if you are not Anglican.

Anglican, ma’am. But I’m afraid I never had time to attend church, Ma’am.

She smiled. We too are Anglican, and the entire household, barring the dogs, of course, attends service Sunday mornings. We use our two motorcars if needed, and you are welcome to join us or stay home. Will you please excuse me for a moment?

I stood as she did, but she waved me back into the chair.

I shall be just a moment.

She was as good as her word, for Sally must have been right outside the door, for she straightway followed her mistress into the room. The same hand