A House in Brixton
I first visited the house in Brixton in the summer of 1945. It was a Victorian terrace house, owned by Herbert Davidson and his wife Katherine. Katherine was my grandmother’s half-sister, but she was Aunty Kitty to Patricia and I who were her great-nieces.
I was sixteen in 1945 and this was my first visit to London, or indeed any other place more than a few miles from home. During the war, that had ended only a few months earlier, traveling anywhere was difficult and London in war time, was a place only entered of necessity.
I was thrilled to be boarding the famous Mallard at Newcastle Central. But, that morning, when it arrived from Edinburgh , the old steam train was at least, three-quarters full with passengers. I was lucky to get a seat beside a Scottish soldier who made room for me.
Many of the passengers were servicemen and women. They crammed into any space they could find until the corridors were packed with people standing beside their luggage. Whenever the train braked or moved over the points they jostled one another and it wasn’t long before suitcases were being pressed into use as seats.
As the journey continued, the heat generated by so many bodies, intensified. Cramped conditions made the removal of outer clothing impossible and letting the window down allowed sooty emissions to drift in from the locomotive. Blue-tinged fingers of cigarette-smoke curled into the compartments polluting the air even more and irritating the backs of throats. People coughed and I shared my ration of boiled sweets with the soldier next to me.
It was evening when the train pulled in to Kings Cross Station. Uncle Jim and Aunty Amy met me on the platform. Jim took my suitcase and led the way to the bus stop. Soon we were aboard the aged omnibus as it trundled slowly through darkening streets. It was then I realized the wretchedness of London in the aftermath of war.
Through the window I saw sprawling rubble where dwelling houses had once stood. Here and there a wall remained, like a decayed tooth that had escaped extraction after the rest had been removed. I was shocked at the sight of half-demolished houses with some walls erect and windows intact, after the rest of the house had been blown away. It felt like an invasion of privacy to look at scraps of wallpaper and tattered curtain that were all the walls had left to cover their shame. I had to turn away from the intimacy of bedrooms and bathrooms that were exposed like scenery on a stage, as if waiting for actors to make their entrance. I closed my eyes.
I was alerted by a change of engine tone as the bus laboured up a steep rise. At the same time Uncle Jim nudged me.
‘Wake up, girl and look out of the window, ’ he said. ‘See those tall houses. We’re going up Brixton Hill.’
In the twilight the houses looked black and bleak. Behind a straggle of long gardens they stood shoulder to shoulder like overgrown, neglected monoliths. Lights glimmered behind drawn curtains and I wondered about the people who lived there. Those who’d survived.
The bus stopped in the centre of Brixton where a stone railway bridge jutted insolently from behind rooftops. It straddled the road, dividing the town.
‘Look under the bridge,’ Jim said. ‘See that road leading off to the left?’
I nodded.
‘Well, that’s where Aunty Kitty lives and you are invited there on Sunday for lunch.’
On Sunday morning Patricia and I travelled to Brixton by bus. My cousin and I were good friends, Late in the war when flying bombs were destroying all they could in Southern England, Pat came to live with us in the relative safety of the North.
Strolling through sunny Brixton streets, looking into the windows of big shops that were closed for the Sabbath, our friendship was renewed.
‘I was born here, in 1932,’ Pat said, ‘in Aunty Kitty’s house. We moved to Norbury when I was two. Mum and Dad thought Brixton wasn’t the best place to bring up a little girl. Like others, they moved out to the leafy suburbs.’
We turned into a street where many small shops were open and people going about their business. Some, dressed in their Sunday best, might have been going to or returning from church.
It was a new experience for a girl from the North. The place and the people were not what I expected.
The great influx of immigrants from the Caribbean was not to take place for a few more years, but the mode of dress, the colour of complexions and snatches of conversation heard made me think that here were people whose origins might be from some place in the world other than England. There was an excitement about the atmosphere of Brixton in 1945 that interested me.
We came to a street of houses that must have once been elegant dwellings. The road curved to a distant vanishing point and the few remaining trees gave evidence to a once tree lined avenue.
It was Myrtle Grove and only one side of it remained intact. The right-hand side was almost completely demolished. In the Sunday morning sunshine children played in the ruins.
Aunty Kitty’s house was on a corner. It was taller than its neighbours. Four storeys high if you counted the basement below street level—five if you noticed the attic windows in the roof.
We climbed stone steps to the front door and pushed it open to a lobby where a stained glass door guarded the living quarters. That door was unlocked too and we entered a spacious, darkly decorated, hall.
Pat directed me up the stairs and I felt the polished mahogany rail beneath my fingers. I stopped on the landing of the first floor where there were four closed doors.
‘No.’ She waved me on, upwards. ‘Mr and Mrs Goldstein live there. This morning they’ll be at their antique shop in Atlantic Avenue.’
There were three doors on the second floor with a pram on the landing. Obviously, our relatives didn’t live there. The next staircase was narrow with a painted wood hand rail. There were four doors on that landing too and one of them opened to another staircase that was narrow and twisting.
‘Come on, not far to go now,’ Pat said.
As we climbed I smelled the aroma of roast beef. At the top a door, open wide, framed the Pickwickian figure of Uncle Herbert. He wore a striped apron over an immaculate white shirt and grey-striped trousers—his sparse silvery hair was carefully combed over a shining pate. ‘Come along Patricia, bring your cousin in. I am so pleased to see you, my darlings.’
Behind him, the room was flooded with sunshine and goodwill. Aunty Kitty, pretty in a pink silk blouse and tailored skirt, hugged us warmly. ‘Have a seat while I see to our meal. It won’t be long.’
I looked around the living room. It was sumptuous. Expensive Indian rugs covered the polished wood floor. Silk and velvet cushions littered the chairs and sofa. A plate-rack at picture rail height ran around the entire room. It held blue Delph dishes of all shapes and sizes and there were more on a dresser against the wall. From the picture rail hung a collection of oil paintings and below them smaller water-colour prints were arranged in groups. There was a black and white cartoon of Uncle Herbert playing cricket. It was signed by a cartoonist who had once been famous.
The kitchen range, alongside a white sink with hot and cold taps, stood in a wide alcove on the wall next the door. In the centre of the room, a table was set for four with a white cloth, silver cutlery and crystal glass. It was the most luxurious of attics.
After a delicious meal, Uncle Herbert stacked the dishes in the sink and covered them with cold water. I offered to wash-up.
‘Thank you, dear,’ Aunty Kitty said, ‘but Herbert likes to do them himself.’
In her attic bedroom she showed me the view from the window. The city was spread out in front of us like a tapestry.
‘We never went down to the air-raid shelter,’ she said. ‘Herbert and I stood at this window and watched London burn.’
Back in the living room she made herself comfortable in an armchair.
‘Now, my dears, we two always have a little sleep after lunch so you girls can sit by the window and read magazines until we wake.’
Pat and I sat on the window seat and looked down into the courtyard. The window was open, letting in cool air. We heard someone below, practicing scales and snatches of tune on a clarinet. The music, augmented with gentle snores from the sleepers, flowed up through the warm air.
It was magic