Travels with My Nan

By Andrew Chalkley

I ALWAYS WANTED TO ASK MY 94-YEAR-OLD GRANDMOTHER WHAT SHE DID DURING THE WAR…

On a warm spring day in 2012, two elderly sisters; Mabel and Di, sit side by side smiling, as they are about to toast the latter’s one-hundredth birthday. Nobody present could have guessed that over 70 years ago in the early spring of 1940 Mabel’s life hung in the balance, dependant on the actions of her older sister . . .

As an unwilling resident of Templars retirement home, 94-year-old Mabel Hill fills her time stirring up trouble for the unpopular manager Mrs Caunter. These antics are shared only with her favourite grandson, who wants to succeed where the rest of the family have failed, by finding out what she did during the Second World War.

The opportunity never seemed to arise though, until he drives her half way across England to attend her older sister’s birthday celebrations. His quest to unlock the secrets of Nan’s youth is about to begin…

Mabel will not yield her secrets that easily though, and her narrated memories first feature a shy schoolgirl growing up in the small Hertfordshire market town of Baldock in the late 1920s and early 30s. Subsequent outings or ‘travels’ follow, as visits to Mabel’s old haunts bring back the fascinating and gripping exploits that epitomised her war, before one final emotional journey to France reveals a startling secret and the shocking truth…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Sep 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781786937711

Andrew Chalkley

Andrew Chalkley was born in Hertfordshire in 1968. After completing a Geography degree, he trained to be a teacher, and taught for nearly 30 years in schools across Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire. This is his first novel.

Book preview

About the Author

Andrew Chalkley was born in Hertfordshire in 1968. After completing a Geography degree, he trained to be a teacher, and taught for nearly 30 years in schools across Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire. This is his first novel.

Dedication

For my nan,

Mabel Jean Hill (1918–2017)

Copyright Information ©

Andrew Chalkley 2023

The right of Andrew Chalkley to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781786936950 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781786937711 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

A big thank you to Hilary Wood, who provided invaluable advice and guidance along the way.

Synopsis

I always wanted to ask my 94-year-old grandmother what she did during the war…

On a warm spring day in 2012, two elderly sisters; Mabel and Di, sit side by side smiling, as they are about to toast the latter’s one-hundredth birthday. Nobody present could have guessed that over 70 years ago in the early spring of 1940 Mabel’s life hung in the balance, dependant on the actions of her older sister…

As an unwilling resident of Templars retirement home, 94-year-old Mabel Hill fills her time stirring up trouble for the unpopular manager Mrs Caunter. These antics are shared only with her favourite grandson, who wants to succeed where the rest of the family have failed, by finding out what she did during the Second World War.

The opportunity never seemed to arise though, until he drives her half way across England to attend her older sister’s birthday celebrations. His quest to unlock the secrets of Nan’s youth is about to begin…

Mabel will not yield her secrets that easily though, and her narrated memories first feature a shy schoolgirl growing up in the small Hertfordshire market town of Baldock in the late 1920s and early 30s. Subsequent outings or ‘travels’ follow, as visits to Mabel’s old haunts bring back the fascinating and gripping exploits that epitomised her war, before one final emotional journey to France reveals a startling secret and the shocking truth…

Chapter 1

It’s not very often you get invited to a one-hundredth birthday party, so the fact that I was to drive my Nan over 150 miles to celebrate her older sister’s century was not much of a sacrifice to make. This was despite my ever-growing reluctance to venture out onto our increasingly congested and lawless roads. My family had deemed me the most suitable driver to provide Nan with the smoothest journey, allowing for the fact that she was 94 years old and suffering from osteoarthritis.

I couldn’t help recalling the entertaining novel by Graham Greene, one of my favourite authors.

Like his narrator Henry, I was about to embark on my own travels – involving a modest hatchback rather than the Orient Express; a destination somewhat less glamorous than Istanbul or Paraguay (Gloucester); and a female companion even more elderly than Greene’s Aunt Augusta.

This was my 94-year-old grandmother, Mabel. The single most noticeable character change that occurred in Nan as she aged was that she had lost any prior inhibitions about social etiquette, and would speak her mind most freely. Unfortunately, she was deaf in one ear and tended to speak loudly or even shout, so that the person being talked about (and sometimes subjected to barbed remarks) was often all too aware of what she had just said. This caused my mother and her two sisters a good deal of embarrassment, while the rest of the family laughed, and no doubt encouraged her further in her new-found role of retirement home comedienne.

Nan, still fiercely independent, had moved into Templars retirement home in Baldock three months earlier after another fall, her fourth in total. Faced with this option or a nursing home, she had very reluctantly and often ungratefully ceded ground to her three daughters. True to form, she would not let them forget about this and regularly played on their guilt. Nan was still mobile, and would use a walking stick or even a frame when she didn’t think anybody was looking. Her daughters endured her criticism of their joint coercion, safe in the knowledge that anytime she did get into difficulty, help would be on hand from the staff.

At first Nan chose to stay in her room and requested room service at meal times, rather than eat in the communal dining area. However, her natural curiosity soon got the better of her, and more recently she had started eating with the other residents. This seemed to coincide with an upturn in her general health as, not wanting to be wasteful in front of others, she started to eat more.

Her recent falls had been caused by dehydration leading to dizzy spells. Now that she was eating more, she inevitably drank more too, especially since she piled mountains of salt on any food she ate. As someone who was born during World War I, grew up during the Great Depression and endured all the food shortages World War II brought, she was definitely not one for wastefulness. This was an enormous relief for the family, and worth battling Nan’s long and determined resistance against leaving her own home.

I vividly recall helping her leave her house of 34 years, which had definitely become too large and difficult for her to manage. Even packing up Nan’s belongings became a war of attrition, as she actually refused to say which items she wanted to keep and which she wanted to throw away or donate to charity. Therefore, it was a collective effort along with my sister, our mother and her two sisters to sort through nine decades worth of material. I remember thinking how bizarre is the amount of useless objects that we humans buy and collect in our lifetimes. Nan was certainly no exception.

The pile of pointless bric-a-brac was building up into a sizable mountain, with a miasma of styles from across the decades, including several pieces I had bought her for various birthday and Christmas presents. However, we all experienced the awful feeling that you were dismantling someone’s life and merely consigning most of it to half a dozen black bin bags, never to be seen again.

The most interesting items that I sorted through were Nan’s old black and white photos. These were not huge in number; Mum had always said money was tight. The sepia prints and their documentation of how rapidly social history evolved over the past century both intrigued and encouraged me to find out more about the life of Nan’s generation. The photo of my Nan’s wedding day to the one grandparent that I never met was one I had seen before, but I always studied it hard, trying to imagine just what he was like. Families tend not to ask each other about dead relatives, and ours was no exception. It was easy enough to ask who was in the picture, but too many personal questions proved difficult. As I flicked through the rest of the photos I would occasionally pause and ask Mum who certain individuals were.

On one occasion I came across an image of two young girls, which I assumed was my mother and one of her sisters. Mum corrected me when I checked with her, and pointed out that it was in fact Nan with her older sister Di, probably aged eight and 14 years respectively. Both girls had smiles that beamed out from the photograph and prompted me to ask Mum a question:

Were they very close?

I was referring to their childhood, since I knew that they very rarely saw each other these days. Living 150 miles apart prevented regular face-to-face meetings, but even so I could only recall meeting my great auntie Di on a handful of occasions.

No, they barely see each other, Mum replied, not really listening carefully to what I was asking, and continuing to sort Nan’s belongings.

I meant when they were growing up.

I don’t think so, your Nan doesn’t really talk about her. Di moved to Gloucester as soon as she was married.

Di’s late husband came from Gloucester, and the couple had moved there to live with his family shortly after the marriage. Nan would have still been at school then, so I thought it must have been hard on her, effectively to lose a sister in her mid-teens. Assuming that Mum knew very little other information of interest, I put the photograph to one side and persevered with the sorting.

*

The morning of the expedition to Gloucester had arrived, a fine, warm and sunny April day. We travelled in a convoy of two cars from Mum’s house to the retirement home, a trip lasting less than ten minutes. In total there were six of us making the journey, the other four (my parents, my sister and her six-year-old son) would be travelling in one car, while I drove Nan. Mum was always criticising Dad’s driving as being erratic but she never volunteered to drive herself.

Having perhaps expected Nan to be prepared and ready to leave, I found her in the communal lounge looking fairly nonplussed.

Have you forgotten then? I enquired, making sure I was speaking to her left ear, knowing full well that she wouldn’t hear me in the other one.

Nan raised her eyebrows and laughed, Of course I haven’t, I just thought I’d come in here and make some mischief.

I raised my eyebrows and grinned, knowing that her daughter would be here shortly and far from impressed. Before I could chivvy her along, the rest of the family arrived. My sister’s Border terrier Nelson was always a popular visitor, and today proved no exception. While my sister entertained a number of questions from the residents, the rest of us looked on, except for Mum who was asking Nan why she wasn’t ready.

Shortly, Mrs Caunter, the Templars manager entered the room and announced herself to the family. Nan rolled her eyes and made her usual face of contempt towards Mrs Caunter. She didn’t like the woman, but had the good sense not to vent her opinions out loud, as she habitually did with her fellow residents. Vocabulary that Nan had used to describe Mrs Caunter in the past included smarmy, smug, self-important and shallow, which eventually earned her the nickname Mrs Bighead.

Having exchanged pleasantries with the family, Mrs Caunter bent down to stroke Nelson.

Bite her!

Although not as loud as usual, Nan’s words were audible enough to draw a reproachful look from Mum. Fortunately, Mrs Caunter appeared not to have heard or chose not to react. Once Mrs Caunter had left the room, Mum tackled Nan about her behaviour.

She wouldn’t have heard me, Nan laughed quite indignantly.

People do hear what you say. You forget you can’t hear well, so you shout sometimes without even realising it, Mum remonstrated. The rest of us were largely unsupportive, and just grinned and chuckled, which doubtless encouraged Nan to rebel further.

Eventually, after some to and froing from Nan’s room, we were ready to embark on our journey. Despite the relative warmth of the day, an extra jumper and blanket were packed into a holdall for the trip. Nan had a habit of complaining about the cold, even when the temperature was quite the opposite.

This was probably the very first occasion that I had had Nan to myself for any length of time; our family always seemed to visit together. As children and teenagers, we are often too concerned with our own lives to appreciate that older family members might have led a very interesting and different life. It is only when we grow older and more appreciative of the world around us, that we do become more curious.

The very first question I wanted to ask Nan was along the lines of ‘What did you do in the war?’ or ‘What was it like during the war?’ I resisted leaping straight in, since I knew from conversations with my other relatives that many old people who lived through those dark days preferred not to revisit their experiences, and Nan was no exception. Instead, I decided to focus on her childhood and leave the war until another occasion.

1918-1932

Mabel Jean Hill (née Ellis) was born during the final six months of World War I on 10th May 1918. She was an unplanned addition to her family, and the youngest of five children. Her eldest brother had already left home by the time she was born to her then 41-year-old mother. By the time she was eight years old, only her sister Di, who was six years older, remained at the family home.

At the time of her birth, the small Hertfordshire market town of Baldock consisted of fewer than ten streets; today it is an ever-expanding town of nearly 15000 residents. Mabel’s family, like many in the town, lived in a traditional two-up, two-down terrace house with an outside toilet. Mabel, though often a serious and solemn child especially when it came to having her photo taken, was a very obedient young girl who was always eager to please. As an eight-year-old she helped her mother around the house; cleaning, washing and preparing meals.

Her family, although working-class, ate well and had a remarkably well-balanced diet for those times. This was largely as a result of her father’s allotment which supplemented the general stodge of bread and potatoes, commonplace at this time, with an array of freshly grown vegetables, peas and runner beans, his youngest daughter’s favourites. Mabel ate well and enjoyed the odd treat such as her beloved condensed milk on toast, an indulgence she would continue to have for the rest of her life, and one that she later introduced to her own daughters.

Mabel’s father George, like most of the men in Baldock, worked in a brewery. Simpson’s brewery was the largest in the town and employed over 70 people. Mabel wasn’t sure exactly what her father did there, but knew it was something to do with the barrels. Many of the thirty or so pubs in Baldock at that time served Simpson’s fine ales; today no breweries remain open and just 10 pubs survive. The slogan ‘fine ales’ puzzled Mabel as she couldn’t understand why it was called ‘fine’. She thought the taste of the foul brown liquid her father so proudly allowed her to try once was quite disgusting! Simpson’s ‘foul ales’ would have been much more appropriate in her opinion.

Mabel’s mother, Mary, worked on the spinning floor of the Full-Fashioned Hosiery Company