"Only our Jim and me were left at home. Alfred had volunteered for the Navy. Dad had died after a month and us boys struggling to stop him getting out of bed – at 92 – to go and hove the allotment. He be fit up to that last month. He talked a bit wayward at the end. He couldn’t place our mam, his Mary Ann, but he know we old boys. Thomas Horton made dad‘s coffin in his old workshop adjoining the churchyard at Enstone. The old pump is still there in the yard. Thomas made dad‘s coffin of polished brass furniture in real brass, pillow lined, he dug the grave extra deep so mum could join dad one day, tolled the bell, paid the Vicar all in 1940, for the princely sum of £7. I still have the receipt.
My mam went to pieces after dad had gone, cooking tatters for him in the kettle, making roly-poly at all hours for her boys coming in from the fields, washing sandwiches to get rid of the germs, and holding enough parish’s food to feed the parish. Poor mum. Her who had struggled to be provider as nurse maid to so many for so long, it were no wonder, at 80, her could no longer be held responsible. Jim and me tried to cope, popping home from work at all hours to check on her, never knowing what state she and the house would be in when we came inside, hungry from working on the land. We stuck it for 12 months. The neighbours tried to help but in the end it was too much for all of us. Mrs Jennings and Mrs Paxford tried to keep her interested in talk about the WI. Mum had been so keen on the WI. Mrs Paxford called one evening. “I’m sorry” I said. I’d have offered thee a cup of tea, but there aren’t enough cups in the place. Mam smashed a lot. Mrs Paxford went straight home and came back with 4 cups and saucers. “They’re not Wedgwood”, she said, “but holds a cup of tea”. I’ve still got two of Mrs Paxfords cups and saucers. They survived daily used for 45 years. I reckon they’ll rank as Wedgewood at the finish.
Dora took her to live with her at Whitney. Mam only stopped two nights. She kept running away, couldn’t place our Dora, wouldn’t let her do anything for her, and kept asking when a Horace was coming to fetch her home. Our Horace worked at Chippy (Chipping Norton). He was supervisor at the workout house. Mam, in her right censored had a mortal dread of ending up in the house ever since Horsce, the breadwinner for 13, had saved us all from it. I felt awful the day we took her there, even though I know nothing about it, happily telling total strangers should be going to live with our Horace. Her seven boys each had to pay half a crown a week to keep her. Our Horace and his wife and children were very good to her. I used to go and see her every week, but she never knew me again. She lingered until she died at 84, then Thomas did for her what she had helped him many a time to do for others, prepared her for burial with dignity and respect, and brought her home to Enstone to lie at rest with our dad in the churchyard.
By then the war had been on for four years, and I was a labourer in these well and truly tough years. The call up were extended to men of 50 years but our Jim and me was exempt, being on the land. Everybody was digging for victory, scratching old England on the back, and her were giving of her upmost, with grand lawns ploughed up for the crops, every spare patch turned over for allotments, the cottage gardeners ablaze with cabbages and tatters." From Lifting The Latch by Sheila Stewart.
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