1930-A Land Fit For Heroes, just like 2023. Tales from the Green and Pleasant Land. Harry Leslie Smith
Acrimony was ripe for picking during the last few weeks of Mum's pregnancy in September 1930. My parents harvested the bitter fruits of their failed marriage and served my sister and me a daily feast of their loathing for each other. In between berating my dad, Mum wrote desperate begging letters to O'Sullivan that were addressed to his last known residence down south.
My sister and I were charged with posting them. More often than not, Alberta would tear open the letter and read aloud Mum's pleas to her former lover to be a gentleman and take some responsibility for his child soon to be born. They were never answered. Much later, Mum pretended they had been. My mother claimed she couldn't accept the ultimatum contained in his reply. According to Mum, O'Sullivan, "wanted me to run off to Australia with him and our bairn, but I couldn't bear to leave you and your sister behind."
On the 24th of September, my mother went into labour, and Alberta fetched the midwife. I stayed with my mother, who moaned in birthing pain whilst lying on a filthy flock mattress, until the midwife arrived.
During Mum's labour; Dad, Alberta and I were marooned in the kitchen. Dad sat stoned-faced on a stool that faced an empty stove.
Dad only broke his silence once during that day. It was after he grew irritated with me when accidentally during horseplay I hit my sister. "Good men never hit women."
After hours of listening to my mother curse the midwife and the midwife curse my mother back, all of us- finally, heard the screams of a young life arriving into this world.
The midwife yelled for us to come and see the new addition to the family. Dad did not leave his stool. But my sister and I came to our mother and marvelled at our baby brother.
My mother named him Matthew after his biological father, ensuring my dad would reject him outright.
Not long after Matt’s birth, our unhappy family did a midnight flit from Chesham Street because of rent arrears and ended up in a miserable slum called St Andrew's Villas. The new neighbourhood was fraught with itinerant labourers, unemployed mill workers, former soldiers from the Great War and struggling pensioners.
My parents paid a reduced rent under the agreement; we cleaned the common areas, including the outdoor privy, which stank as if it had been in use since the Doomsday Book.
As in Chesum Street, the other doss house neighbours were led to believe our dad was our granddad. It was a necessary deception in my mother's scheme to find another man to provide for us. My dad went along with it reluctantly. But I was shamed not by my dad's surrender to his debasement but my own acceptance to it by calling my father Grandad in public.
St Andrew's Villa had a common room where I became acquainted with the other tenants. They were once all hard workers, but the Great Depression had ground them into factory floor waste. Some were accepting of their fate others angry. Mr Brown was one of the angry ones.
Brown had been a soldier in the Great War, and he was pissed off that the land fit for heroes had turned out to be bollocks. There were a few other veterans of World War One, who lived under our roof, and they looked to Brown for leadership and guidance. He knew what to say when shell shock overcame them. He went to their rooms when they screamed at night, "GAS, GAS,” or cried for a dead comrade blown to nothing from artillery.
Brown was a chain smoker and the brand he smoked advertised itself as World Famous. To prove it, inside each packet of cigarettes, they placed a national flag printed on a silk card from a country that sold their brand.
Each time, Brown opened a fresh packet of cigarettes he'd give me the silk card inside.
At bedtime, while my baby brother cried and my parents quarrelled; I'd stare at the flags on those silk cards and wonder what those countries looked liked and whether kids were as poor there as I was in Bradford.
The selection you just read was from my dad’s The Green and Pleasant Land. It was unfinished at the time of his death. I've been piecing it together from all the written notes, typescript & index cards. The fifth anniversary of Harry Leslie Smith is November 28th, I hope to have the first 50k words of this work ready for you to read.
It's a big ask, I know, but I need your help. I got sick with a mild infection last week, which slowed my scramble to find the cash for rent which was found. But it is always robbing Peter to pay Paul at the moment.
So, if you can subscribe to a paid membership, thank you. I appreciate the loyalty of each subscriber. You have allowed me to build a community that is helping preserve Harry’s Last Stand,
Take care, John
