Page 36 - My Story (final)

especially when I discovered he was painting the hall lilac and not lavender, as I had wanted, but we went
and spent an excruciating week at my parents while I tried, unsuccessfully, to not let the baby’s cries
waken them at night! My poor mother was in mourning for her beloved elder sister, Auntie Fanny who
had died in the night just before Helen was born. She had bravely come onto the hospital to see us after
her vigil and we were all very sad, but I did not want to give her more anguish.

Anyway, we survived and were soon home and getting into a routine. I enjoyed shopping days
when I would wheel Helen in the pram to the local shops and everyone would peer in and admire my
beautiful baby. We left babies in their prams outside shops in those days with never a thought that they
might be stolen. Maybe some were but we never heard about it.

Peter had now moved from office management to sales, at his request, and was traveling around
Europe meeting his European counterparts. Hans Bach managed the German office and entertained Peter
in his home and introduced him to his family of wife, Lisa and four children, Ute, Gudrun, Elke and Lutz.
The girls were all in their teens and Hans asked whether Gudrun might come and stay with us for a few
months, help with the baby and thus improve her English. And thus started an amazing relationship with
the Bach family. Gudrun arrived, a tall, slender girl with bad English and immediately took over the baby.
She fed her and changed her and wheeled her out in her pram. Helen started crawling at six months so
needed some watching. It was very funny watching this fat baby with lower lip thrust forward in
concentration, striving to get places. Peter insisted she looked like Winston Churchill. We took Gudrun
out and about – showed her the sites of London and taught her English. But she was also quite happy at
home, did some dress making, flirted with the boy next door and took Helen into Dulwich to feed the
ducks. We also started having Lesley, now aged two, a couple of days a week as Jackie was working a part
time job, so we were quite busy. Lesley had her own vocabulary – I seem to remember that “tousies”
were corn flakes – but we managed to understand each other, and she loved baby Helen.

Helen in 1960

The neighbours at Thurlow Hill were nice. I seem to remember a young family next door – as
Helen got older the little boys used to shout “Helen the melon” through the fence. Next door to them
was a lovely lady, Mrs. Arscot, who was the local school secretary and she had two boys of about sixteen
and eighteen. The younger one, David went to work as an office junior with Peter later. Their mother
was a wonderful lady who loved children, would come in for a chat after school and was always good at
solving problems or finding the right people to do a job. On the other side was Basil and Jeanne with two
small daughters. We rigged up a complicated baby alarm between the two houses – probably a death
trap to anyone walking in the dark as we had wires running along the ground – so that we could get
together for a glass of wine and game of scrabble occasionally in the evenings. We could none of us afford
baby sitters in those days.

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