Vol 3. Chapter 4 - The shoes now leaving from platform 1

Eventually mum and dad married on 13^th September 1948. They married at the same Registry Office mum and Nobby had used 5 years previously. There is a certain irony that dad gave mum a second hand wedding ring.

Dad's brother Eddy, Nan, Dad, Mum, Auntie EIleen & Cousin Peter

Granddad Napper, Cousin Melville, Mum, Dad & Nan

(Notice the change of costume from Registry Office to Nan’s back garden. 

Notice also the shoes)

After Dad had been demobbed in 1947 he returned to his pre-war job in the Booking Office at Waterloo Railway Station. As a teenager in the late 1930s he had held the job with pride and maybe with a slightly inflated ego. He would usually take advantage of concessionary rail travel to go home for lunch, getting out at Vauxhall railway station. On one occasion, he fell asleep and woke up a few stops further down the line at Clapham Junction. Getting out of the train there, he railed at the train driver insisting that the train reverse back to Vauxhall, after all, “He was a clerk in the Booking Office”.

Dad took full advantage of his cheap rail travel on his honeymoon and bought three tickets.

Being a trained tailor enabled mum to achieve her ambition of out-dressing everyone. Even into her 90s she was constantly worried about what people thought of her. She always had to be well dressed, no more so than on her wedding day and honeymoon. She made her own wedding outfits and going away clothes.

The honeymoon was very much a family affair with my grandfather Napper going along for the ride. 

The newly-weds were to spend the first part of their honeymoon in Crewkerne, Somerset, near Ilminster where granddad Napper was born and where his sister, “Aunt Jane” lived.

The “Menage a Trois”, spent the evening together getting drunk. So drunk that my father fell into a coma and had to be put to bed and my mother had to walk my drunken grandad back to Aunt Jane’s.  Perhaps not the most romantic start to wedded bliss that a bride expects. But then dad was never a romantic, as she kept reminding him throughout their married life.  My mother spent her first night as Mrs Napper dressed up to the nines and sitting alone in a pub bar.

The next stage of their honeymoon was to be spent with some of dad’s friends in Bristol.  The Station Approach which led up to the main Rail Station is quite steep. Dad hurried on ahead leaving mum to struggle in her smart tight skirt and platform shoes. 

Dad was by nature a “Passive Aggressive”: anger showed itself in silence.

When she asked him to slow down, he simply gave her some money (a ten shilling note), told her to make her own way back to London and walked away.

Mum didn’t see or hear from him for another three weeks.  She went to live at their new home alone: ground floor flat, 1 Dorset Road, South Lambeth.  He went back to live with his father, 56 Luscomb Street.  Besides the humiliation and the rejection, was it also a case of Deja Vu?

I wonder how she explained the situation to her family and the other people she shared 1 Dorset Road with: John & Gladys O'Leary and family & James & Alice Reece and their family.

Married life eventually began in October and I was born the following year: July 1949.  My mother registered my birth, conveniently omitting that she had once been Mrs Nobby Clarke.  In those 9 short months my parents have moved from the ground floor flat to the upstairs flat at 1 Dorset Road. And so began my mother’s lifelong love of moving house. I lived in 7 different places before I was 7.

After I was born my mother’s Compulsive Obsessive Disorder became more evident.  She would dress me up in as many as 4 different outfits in one day. (Including dressing me up like a sailor). Mum didn’t take too kindly to my grandmother’s suggestion that this might be a bit too excessive. In later years her Compulsive Obsessive Disorder made drinking her tea impossible, because she’d soaked the cups and teapot in bleach. In fact she soaked everything in bleach.

August 1949 at Auntie Queenie's. Devises Wiltshire