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Chapter 4

Saville's Music Shop

Saturday morning came, and on that warm June day it seemed as if the sun shone brilliantly especially for the excited little girl. The trees in the streets having shed their copious May blooms, the various colours and shapes of the leaves were magnificent; the exuberant reds and various blends of green in all their glory, refreshed by the late April showers, administered a certain neighbourly refinement to this suburban area of London. Mosaics of dead petals were still lying on the pavements and in the gutters, giving the whole area an old world look; conspicuously so in the glowing light of the 'Gas Light' lantern street lights, now run by electricity, scattered at irregular intervals along the pavements. Still lingering, the odd residue of indolent scent of late May blossom wafted from the side streets into Richmond Road.

Mother and daughter rose early and ate a hearty breakfast, although Janet was too preoccupied with her thoughts to think about food. Ivy saw Len off to work for his Saturday morning shift at the Lithographic printing firm in London. Baby Stephen was changed, fed, dressed and secured safely in his pushchair. Then the trio made their way up the tree lined Queen's Road, passing the Churchyard and George Gascoigne School.

The twins elder sister, Valery, was at Gascoigne school in her last year. It was a central school which ranked alongside the Grammar schools in Walthamstow. The central schools concentrated on sciences and mathematics, for which Gascoigne had a good reputation, while the Grammar Schools leant towards literature. As there were insufficient places in the local Grammar Schools owing to the 'baby boom' of 1944 when husbands were beginning to be demobbed, there was talk that a comprehensive system might be brought in and that Gascoigne might be chosen for an experimental trial in mixed ability classes. The brighter pupils helping the less able students.

After George Gascoinge School, they passed Presslands Furniture store where Harry, Janet's paternal Grandfather, worked. Often on a Saturday, she would see her Grandfather outside the shop on the forecourt French polishing and renovating pieces of furniture.

Queen's road was lined on both sides with a mixture of shops, which included a public house and post office, and terrace houses similar to, but a shade larger than Janet's. Further along, was a bridge over the railway line from Hoe Street Station, a cafe and Tisbury's fish Aquarium shop. Passers by stared at the little cerebral palsy girl, wondering at her awkward gait.

Janet and her mother now reached Hoe street where they obtained a threepenny bus ride to Saville's Music shop near the crossroads where the Bell Public House was situated on the far corner. The passengers on the bus looked on as Janet awkwardly entered and took her place amongst them.

"That will be four and a half pence, madam." The clunking of the bus conductor's ticket machine rattled through the bus as, once again, he turned its handle to release a length of ticket containing the price of the fare and date of the journey! These ticket machines seemed ingenious to Janet, and the congenial bus conductor's friendly smile illuminated her day as he handed the "one and half please" ticket to her mother.

The red bus rattled along the road, passing Hoe Street Railway Station and the top of the High Street, toward's the Bell.

"Bell!" The bus conductor called out, making his way toward's the back entrance of his bus to guide his passengers on and off. This route was always a busy one, as it was the main route to Chingford and Hyam's Park which lay straight ahead. Forest Road, which led to Hale End Road, the Waterworks and Woodford, lay at the crossroads to the right.

Mother and daughter stepped off the bus, Ivy being helped with Stephen's push chair by the kindly bus conductor. As they drew near the shop, the little girl's eyes suddenly lit up at the sight of the large neon sign positioned above the shop's front. It said in large letters "Saville's Music Shop". The shop window was well laid out with musical instruments of all kinds, including quite an array of different sized recorders, of both wood or bacalite. Once inside the shop Janet made for the counter with her mother close behind.

"What can I do for you madam?” the kindly shop-keeper said to Ivy whilst looking straight over Janet's head as if the awkward thin, but pretty girl, did not exist. After Ivy explained her purpose, the shop-keeper stared at her daughter, wondering what was wrong with the bright eyed, rather shy, but fidgety girl. Perhaps, he mused to himself, she has St. Vitus Dance!

"Could you recommend some of these and tell me the prices?" Ivy asked pointing to an array of objects in the glass cabinet under the counter, looking the shop-keeper straight in the eye and knowing he must be thinking that a recorder was a useless purchase for a girl like her daughter.

The shop keeper brought out an assortment of descant recorders. The one that caught Janet’s eye, was smart looking and made of pale coloured, probably Cedar, wood. She was not allowed to blow it owing to breathing germs into the mouth piece, but she did hold it, nearly dropping it with her awkward hands. Her right arm and hand felt more paralysed than normal, but all she could think of was learning to play this instrument and gripped it tight. Janet knew she would not have any difficulty with the recorder book that the kind inquisitive looking man now brought out to show her. She never thought of herself as disabled even though it was extremely painful for her to do things, and she could not tolerate people feeling sorry for her. She resolved to take whatever life had to offer her, and was determined to make the most of her predicament. "That pretty girl is going to have a hard time in life, especially when she grows up and want's a family of her own." thought the shopkeeper in Saville's as he handed Ivy sixpence change out of the pound note she had given him.

When Janet became excited and people were watching her, she could not speak any words at all: they just seemed to stick in her throat. What made things worse was that her mother tried to cover her very frail looking legs with trousers she had made by hand. But since Stephen was born, Janet wanted to wear dresses, as she did not want to be like her brother. That time she had seen him bathed the day he had been brought home from Thorpe Coombe Maternity Hospital, she did not like what she saw and felt humiliated that she had ever wanted to be a boy probably to please her father. She was yet to learn that her mother had had a hard time in giving birth to her brother a month early. The surgeon did not even have rubber gloves on at the delivery because he had just taken them off after he finished examining her mother and had wheeled her out into the corridor when she began to give birth. Yes, Stephen had nearly been born in that hospital's corridor! Unfortunately, the afterbirth came away first and broke up and this could have dire consequences for him.

Janet held the recorder close to her all the way home, clutching it tightly, tucking it under her right arm resembling a mother hen. Her mother was fearful her daughter would lose her purchase. It had cost Ivy a week's wage from her cleaning job; she had just started to go out to work two mornings a week, earning half-a-crown (2 shillings and 6 pennies or 2s 6d) an hour doing house-work for a Jewish couple, Mr. and Mrs. Harvey

On arriving home, Janet went straight upstairs to her bedroom which overlooked the back garden and began to study the recorder book. The notes looked plain enough. All she had to do was follow the instructions and remember the fingering.

"No bother, and not too difficult.” thought Janet, until she tried to put the recorder in her mouth. It just would not go. The paralyses at birth had robbed the little girl of any co-ordination of the arms and facial muscles - the same problem she had had with her legs when she first tried to walk at the age of two and a half. Her legs had just crumbled underneath her, and she had fallen many times before she could retain any form of balance. Her father's mother Alice and his sister Violet had persevered with her on a weekend Leonard and Ivy were having a short break from their handicapped daughter. They had put her against the living room wall and let go but she had painfully slumped to the floor. Her aunt and grandmother persevered, propping her up time and time again until she managed a couple of faltering steps. She was nearly two and a half at the time her mother and father bought the house in Richmond Road, Walthamstow, and it was a few months after this that she had made her first successful attempt at walking.

Janet picked up very serious bouts of measles and chickenpox when her mother, Ivy, moved up from Bedford to a one room bedsit in somebody's house situated in Leyton, while Len was still in the Middle East, Egypt. The landlady was very dirty and suffered from St. Vitus Dance. Her young son was frequently seen hovering over her pram in the hallway. She developed very bad abscesses in both ears from the measles and could remember screaming, terrorised by the awful pain, in her cot upstairs. Deafness was to remain with her for the rest of her life. Such were the so called 'fortunes of war' which was fast becoming a truism!

Ivy tried her hardest to get a council house after this, but the council told her that they were giving priority to tuberculosis victims only and that she was lucky to have one room to live in. "Many people do not have that today." They were apparently disinterested in her predicament, even though they could see she had a handicapped child, a bad athetoid spastic, to care for and knew that her husband was virtually on his way to fight the Japanese in Rangoon, the war with Germany now being over. So, as soon as her inheritance from her mother's will had come through, Ivy put a small deposit on their present little three bedroom terraced house, being the first person to put down a holding sum of five pounds.

Her husband, Len's, parents came to live with them eighteen months later, after the Cottage in Bedford was sold and the war well and truly over. The extra income from Harry and Alice came in handy as he did not earn a lot of money, having just finished his apprenticeship the month before. His sister, Vi, and her husband, Earnest, bought a newsagent's shop in Northcote Road, Battersea, South London. They were Janet's God parents. He knew that they both felt protective towards her and were determined to help in her future years.

Vi and Earnest's two children were growing up healthily and strong, although the eldest, Ken, had had a brief brush with childhood eczema as a baby. He was doing very well, having just passed his eleven plus, rating in the top two percent in his borough and now attended the Emanuel School in London. His sister Valerie, two years older than Janet, had just entered her eleven plus and passed with 'honours'. She was due to start at the Grey Coats Hospital Grammar School in London that September.

Janet was learning the notes of the recorder quickly, and by the time Monday morning came she could play simple tunes from the green covered recorder book. The "Vicar of Bray" was fast becoming one of her favourite tunes even though she was struggling to hold the recorder with her right hand curled under the base of the instrument. The left hand was not too bad and, oh!, if only she could control the amount of spittle she was dribbling down the mouthpiece!

The bus arrived at the studious little girl's door that morning at a more reasonable time. Thankfully, Mrs. Redford had decided to treat her with the respect she deserved from now on, owing to the girl's mother's timely intervention; and along with it came self preservation as she needed to keep her job. Mrs. Cattier watched points and being satisfied that the woman had learnt her lesson, was therefore determined not to jeopardise that horrible woman's job. Thus Janet had another reason to be happy when she entered her classroom that day, sporting her new recorder.

That afternoon, the lunch hour rest supervised by Mrs. Redford saw the same bitter woman pick on poor Sandra. She whipped the blanket from off poor girl and told her to stop fidgeting. This was to happen nearly every rest time. The poor girl suffered from a skin complaint and could not help scratching!

After their rest hour - although the actual time spent resting depended on whether a child was asleep or not, because they were not woken up - the children went to their classrooms. The late May afternoon sun blazed through the window of Mrs. Hamilton's classroom, and the teacher observed that one or two girls had brought recorders to school. She then addressed her class:

"Mr. Lyon has managed to get hold of some recorders for those whose parents can't afford to purchase one of their own." She then handed some cheap looking brown recorders, made out of a bakelite type of material, out to various pupils and embarked on the music lesson. She found, to her surprise, that even though Janet had great difficulty holding her instrument she was learning the notes unusually fast, even faster than an average able bodied child. There was only one other cerebral palsy victim in her school, Ronny Eddy, who was muscular and extremely good looking with blond hair, and came from a very good family. He was in Mr. Thompson's class, which was the top class for those who were leaving that year. Ronny was quite fond of Janet, and sometimes rode his large three wheel trike to see her from his home off Palmerston Road, near the Billet end of Blackhorse Road.

After hearing some raucous sounds coming from Janet's direction, and trying unsuccessfully to stop her dribbling down her instrument, Mrs. Hamilton closed the afternoon's lesson. She then instructed the children as to what was going to happen on Wednesday in the main hall when Mr. Lyon visited the school for the second time.

At that moment Mrs. Sangford came from the Big house and rang the hand bell, signalling the end of that day's schooling. Home time meant embarking the school bus once more, with Mrs. Redford ignoring Janet and picking on another new girl.

Once back in the safety of her home, Janet decided to carry on learning her music until she came to the end of the book.

By the Wednesday of Herbert Lyon's second visit, Janet had committed to memory all the notes and positions of the fingering on the recorder. He was amazed at the general initiative of the girl, and realized that his mission in teaching music to the disabled child was about to take off and that it would start inside this school.

Yes, he was being proved right, this very afternoon, in his deductions. He started to think ahead to the time when he might have his own little orchestra formed out of this nucleus of children, who were by now seated in front of him with their recorder books neatly placed on the music stands which he had provided with money that was trickling in from various sources. And, of course, a lot of his own money.

The children sat in groups of three or four, with the dapper little man and the enthusiastic school teacher, Mrs. Hamilton, helping each one. They started with simple tunes, and by the following Wednesday, his third visit to the school but second session in the hall, a whole group was doing rounds which consisted of one recorder player coming in a few bars after another recorder player. The harmonious melodies of "Frere Jacque" and "London's Burning" filled the basement of the Big House which contained the roomy hall, probably the servants quarters in it's heyday. The present 'users' were clearly oblivious to what secrets the large imposing house might contain within it's walls, and to what mysteries concerned it's past owners. On winter mornings, the shrouded mist gave it a ghostly appearance. This often made Janet's 'flesh crawl' when the school bus turned and entered through the large open wrought-iron school gates.

On arriving home that evening, her morale reaching an all time high, Janet decided to play in the street outside her house, fully satisfied with her day's accomplishments. She was fully confident she would now be able to fulfil any of her life's hopes and dreams like any normal child.

"After all, three score years and ten, or eighty years if I am lucky, is still a long while in which to do nothing!" she thought, remembering the quotation from her bible which had been given to her by her father when she first started going to Sunday School. Her mother had also shown her the large family bible which had been given to her by her mother, and she, Janet, had decided to press wild flowers in it! "My life would not be worth living! Why should it be only the able-bodied that have everything fairly easy, anyway easier than me? and have an interesting life?" She made these words the basis of her prayers, which included the Lord's prayer, each night. After all, if there is a God, then surely he would be obliged to help those who ask for it, especially those who really need it - such as her! This was Janet's growing perception of the world around her and was, hopefully, to continue in firing her determination to do her best at everything that was given her to do throughout her life.

She and the other children in her road often played on the bomb damage site next door but one to her house, finding enjoyment seeking out fresh crevasses looking for broken crockery trying to find all the matching bits to make a whole item. This evening, she noticed that a builder's sign had been erected informing the residents that two new semi-detached houses, with garages, were to be built on this site in the spring of next year. Janet began wondering about the people and their children who had lived there before the bomb dropped in the middle of the row of those four missing terraced houses. It certainly must mean less friends now for her to play with. Perhaps these children would have been of her own age. All the children, except one girl, Pamela, who lived in a converted small shop near the top end of Richmond Road, were much younger or older than she.

Janet never saw her playing with the other children. She learnt later that Pam was being taught ball-room dancing and, therefore, must have spent all her spare time on the local dance floor at Sonny Dearden's School of Dancing situated at the Hoe Street end of Sherbourne Road which lay parallel with Walthamstw Highstreet.

Janet and Pam were the same age, and part of the baby boom of 1944, which was now causing a dilemma for the local education authorities. There were not enough schools, and those that existed were poorly equipped. The staff were very strict, having retained the cane of the Victorian era, and the male teachers were ex-army officers who exercised an aura of fearful authority. They all had a frightening way of controlling classes, using the threat of borstal, which hung over the head of every child in Britain. It was this insidious threat, rather than the threat of expulsion from school, which kept many a child from being naughty. Borstal conjured up the most horrendous of correction institutions in the minds of everybody!

Broken out of her daydreaming as she walked passed the bomb damage on her way to Lester's Sweet and Newsagent's shop, situated on the corner of Tennyson road and Queen's Road, she came across a group of about ten under nourished looking and poorly dressed girls on the corner of her road. Standing by the allotment and partially hidden by the corner, they set upon her as she tried to turn left into Queen's Road. She was on her way to the High Street on an errand for her mother but fancied stopping to buy some sweets! Ivy did not like using the local shops, especially the one on the corner of Richmond and Queen's Road because it was a really filthy, selling batteries and paraffin as well as food!

“Spastic! Come on say something! Anything to see the way you talk. Don't you talk funny! Ha! ha! Don't you walk funny!” they chorused over and over again, setting upon poor Janet, pushing and shoving, hitting, and bullying her. "Freaks should not be allowed to walk the streets! Spastic!" Then they laughed and giggled, picking up stones from the gravel in the road throwing them at her. The tormented little girl just turned and ran back to her house.

Mrs. Cattier found her daughter crying on the doorstep. Not wanting to worry her mother, Janet hurried past to her grandmother's living room on the right in the hallway. This annoyed Ivy, who often accused nan of interfering in the upbringing of her daughter. Many an argument between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law was due to the confused little girl confiding only in her grandmother. The other day, Alice had caught her granddaughter taking toffees from the cut glass bowl she kept on the sideboard behind the door. She had angrily told the remorseful girl;

"The devil will come after you if you continue misbehaving. He has horns, a large tail, and keeps hell burning. All naughty children go there." She saw that this had frightened her, and if Ivy had known, it would have caused more friction between the two women. She now felt sorry speaking to her granddaughter in such a cruel manner, especially in view of what she had just told her about those micky taking girls. Janet had also been doing her best to keep the peace between Ivy and herself!

Ivy had often told her to stick up for herself in front of the children who hounded her in the park or elsewhere; “Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me" Ivy had told her daughter to recite.

Later that evening Alice informed Ivy what the matter was with her daughter. What had happened between her granddaughter and those wicked children resulted in a repeat of this little ditty while she was being bathed the next night. Janet recited this rhyme over and over again until it reached a crescendo, the words getting clearer every time, anger seeming to make her speech come out more intelligently. She intended to blurt this rhyme out the next time she met those same children, and this would most likely be in Queen's Road park.

Her mother made her feel even better about herself by pointing out that these children were underprivileged, ignorant, and certainly not as intelligent as she was. Also she told her they were to be pitied. This made her think on a totally different plane.

“Do you remember, my dear, when I used to take you to Great Ormond Street Hospital (for sick children in London), to have you treated for your legs? They bowed inwards and had to be straightened out, so metal insteps had to be put inside your shoes to encourage your legs to bow outwards, thus helping them grow straight. Well, they gave you intelligence tests there and you did really well. Do you remember those tests?” In fact, the insteps had, unfortunately, made Janet walk on the outer corner of her heel and made her shoes wear out quickly.

Janet clearly remembered those intelligence tests. A row of dolls in different costumes had been placed in front of her, and to her right was a box full of hats. She was told to put the hats on the relevant dolls. Although only about three years old, she found it easy to relate the designs of each costume to each hat! One of the hats was a police helmet, and of course she had seen a policeman before. Her grandmother always pointed them out when she had taken her shopping in the pushchair, often adding that if she continued to want her own way and would not stop being naughty in wanting to go in a different direction or want something in a shop they passed, she would go up to him and ask if he would take her away! She remembered that the different costumes had fascinated her, and putting the correct hats on each of the remaining dolls, leaving the most obscure one till last which may have been a servant girl, had exhilarated her. Another puzzle was identifying certain shapes and arranging them in groups. She had no trouble with this one either. Verbal tests, such as identifying certain groups of animals, which she did by pointing, proved no challenge to her. She had seen these in the books that her cousin Veronica had given her. Then she could remember the puzzles getting more difficult. But she had been filled with excitement and had been determined to solve each one, her concentration appearing infinite. Finally Ivy, breaking into her daughter's obvious revery, continued her story telling her what the surprised psychologist had said on the completion of the tests:

“The nice lady who gave you the tests told me afterwards 'Take it away it's a genius!' Therefore, don't you ever feel despondent at those ignorant children calling you names, because you will go a lot further in life, and have many more friends."

With the conclusion of that consoling speech from her mother, Janet again lapsed into deep thought and vowed never to dwell on the topic of her disability. She began to pretend it did not exist. She also began to feel normal, perhaps more so than some able bodied children thought of themselves!

Janet went to bed contented and slept well that night...

Gascoigne was a very old school and had been built with railings along the middle of the grounds separating the girls part of the school from the boys part, as the sexes had not been allowed to mix in school time. It was considered ideal for experimental comprehensive status to accommodate the future influx of pupils. It's headmaster, a staunch Labour supporter, The head master, Mr. Dixon, with an MA in Maths, one of the foremost advocates of the new comprehensive idea, believed that every child should have an equal chance in life. Aspiring pupils were being referred to Gascoigne, and classes were becoming considerably larger, which caused controversy among parents.