by MIKE GREENACRE
Two brothers, Charles and Andrew caught in time’s hands
lifting them out of Depression years and watching them
as children playing marbles down the road
on the footpath and in the drains on either side of High Street,
speeding their Tom Bowlers as tanks rolling down
the drains curves in London’s East End.
They would play cricket against the laneway gate –
the wicket keeper – at the side of their father’s ‘Hosier and
Hatter’s (Men’s Wear) Shop, there was no backyard
so they’d chalk wickets on the gates boards – ‘near misses’
were not allowed, “it was either clean bowled or four byes!”
Andrew smiled and with the bowler the only one to
really see, they’d argue like hell until dinner
called both sides in from the crease.
They’d go to the pictures at the Coronation Theatre on Saturdays
on the corner of High St North, before lunch it was cheap for kids
– the ‘Tuppenny Rush’ they’d call it in the 30’s and 40’s
and kids’d scream the house down and toss
lolly papers as signatures of where they’d been.
Then the war jumped between them ‘Operation Pied Piper’ 1939
evacuating three million people to the safety of country towns:
Charles 13 at Raines School to Camberley and Andrew just 8 years old
at East Ham Grammar to Cornwall – two brothers separated by
several hundred miles, seeing each other once in the six years of war.
At the end of the war, Charles was ‘half grown up’ he’d say and
studied medicine at London Uni before marrying and with four children
shipping their lives to the other side, to West Australian shores
while Andrew built his life as a chartered accountant in London –
two brothers caught again in time’s hands, both in their own way
grieving for the childhood lost, then through letters and
emails in later life, calling time back for more.