Now I have two cats and a granddaughter. Epilogue

In July 1939 I came home for school holidays for the last time from Brackenhill. In 1936 my parents had been able to buy a house in North London and I was going to live with them during school holidays. But my father got ill again and it was not until we broke up for the last time from Brackenhill in July 1939 that I was to live with them permanently for the first time in ten years. We fell into the old family pattern of going over to my grandparents for Sunday dinner (midday working class not evening) and returning home in the evening because Mother had to go to work the following morning.1

For the past year my father was the person who met me at Victoria Station at holiday time and I saw more of him after that than I had ever done before. In 1939 Papa came to stay with us in Cricklewood for a couple of weeks while Nanan was in hospital. Mother and Daddy were both working, so I had Papa to myself. A Cockney born and a Victorian to boot, Papa loved the Music Hall. He decided one afternoon to take me to the Kilburn Empire, one of the remaining Music Hall theatres. He loved it. I didn't like it very much because I couldn't understand most of the acts. I remember one called "Almost a Gentleman" by Billie Bennet. It went right over my head, but Papa laughed at all the jokes with all the other audience. Then there was Harry English, who sang a song called "'Enery the Eighth, I am I am" and at least I knew that was about King Henry VIII. That was all. Then came the only bit I really loved. Evelyn Laye was a top musical comedy star and even I knew she had a glorious voice. I had seen her in a Christmas show the year before, so I knew that I would love whatever she sang. That delighted me. She wore a powder blue dress and sang "One day when we were young". I was thrilled to bits. It seemed that Papa liked her too. 2

Papa went home after two weeks and Mother, Daddy and I went to Dunster, near Minehead at the beginning of August. Daddy had to return to work early because of the Crisis. Mother and I stayed for the rest of the holiday and got back in time for me to hear that I had passed the entrance exam. for my new secondary school. The last Sunday in August we went over to Walthamstow as usual. I never saw Papa again. On l September, like hundreds of other London children, I was on a train leaving Paddington Station for what turned out to be Camborne in Cornwall. 3

Papa wrote to me every week as he always did when I was at Brackenhill. Then, at the end of October, he wrote saying that he wouldn't be writing each week because "You won't want to have letters from an old fogey like me any more." I remember writing back pleading for him not to stop writing and hoping for a letter for my birthday in November. I did get one. But there were no more. He knew, I think now, that he was not going to live much longer. Probably he didn't want to go through another war. W.F.(Will)Toynbee died on 6 January 1940 in his 80th year.4

It was a family joke that Papa hated Glauber and Epsom Salts, the medicine Nanan always took him first thing in the morning as an aperient. On 6 January she took him the salts, left them on the bedside table and went downstairs. Well, he never took the salts. When she went up to see what had happened he had not awakened. He had finally managed not to have to take his morning dose of salts.5

Mother had nearly died after a hysterectomy just before Christmas and had been allowed home for the New Year. Apparently Papa had insisted on going out to the nearest telephone box on the evening of 5 January to telephone Mother. He had a cold and Nanan had scolded him for insisting on going out to make that call. Again, I think he knew it might be the last time he spoke to his favourite daughter. Mother was allowed to  attend Papa's funeral provided she took a taxi from North London to Walthamstow and then remained in a wheelchair the rest of the time. Since she couldn't climb the steps up to the front door of 20 Church Hill, Nanan met her at the Church. The family had pleaded with my grandmother not to accuse my mother of causing her father's death. Nanan walked over to Mother in the wheelchair, looked at her and said:"If it hadn't been for going out and telephoning you, your father would still be alive today!" I knew nothing of this until I returned home from evacuation. In 1940 I was hundreds of miles away in Cornwall.6

January 1940 was cold and the phoney war was still on. Most families had said goodbye to their men folk, so that only women, old men and children were still living at home. Nevertheless Marsh Street Congretional 7

Church could not hold the hundreds of people who attended Papa's funeral. There were MPs, Trade Unionists, people from the Brotherhood Movement (religious not Freemasonry) which he had led for some 50 years of his life and even a message from Clem Attlee, the Leader of the Labour Party. The service had to be relayed to the crowd standing around the Church building. Nanan survived him for seven years and a day: she died on 7 January 1947. I was home for that and able to go to her funeral. It didn't make up for not seeing Papa for over four months before he died.8

I did see him once more, however. In July 1947 I was having my lunch in a cafeteria at the top of the Strand in London. I picked up my tray, looked around for somewhere to sit and saw Papa sitting at a table on the other side of the room. I went to join him but when I got to the table he wasn't there. Now nearly 60 years later I can still feel the shock of disappointment as I realised that, of course, he wasn't there. He had died seven years beforehand.  - End.9