(PG. 6) WHERE ARE YOU, GRACIE PURVIS?

Chapter 2 continued - Mother has a story too

Scene 1 - Mother greets Father with a bang

Setting - Grandmother Catton’s house, Tidey Street, Norwich. December 24, 1941

Narrator: My mother ran out the door, wet hair, curlers and all, and down the snowy sidewalk.

Ida Catton (standing at the front door): Edith! Come and put your coat on!

Narrator: Edith turns, pulls a face, waves to her mother, but as she says herself, kept right on going.

Edith: Doug Harrison! It is you. I’m so glad it’s you.

Narrator: Father is about to speak as Mother gets to the end of  the sidewalk, but as the two meet she gets a bump on the fore-head and he gets a bang on his nose. 

Edith: Oh, I’m so sorry.

Doug (he turns away, clutching his nose): Ow, ow, ow. 

Narrator: Mother writes, his nose used to bleed easily, and there he was, nose bleeding, trying to find a handkerchief, trying to hang on to his gas-mask, one arm around me.

Doug (laughing): Well this is a great way to welcome me home!

Edith: Here’s another hankie. Let me help.

Doug: It’s okay. I’ll be alright now that I’m back home in Norwich. 

Narrator: They manage to get into the house, where father sits down at one end of a dining table, and together with Ida’s help, find more handkerchiefs and mop him up. 

Edith (from her perch on Doug’s lap): There, one more dab and you’ll be as good as new.

Doug (finally at ease): The house looks lovely, Mrs. Catton. Edith, how about a cup of tea?

["How about a cup of tea?"]

Narrator: Edith makes him the tea and then, after she puts on her make-up and combs her hair, they walk together to Spring Street in the west end of town and spend the rest of the day with Doug’s mother, Alice Harrison. It is Mother who concludes the story entitled ‘Recalling a Wartime Christmas’.

Edith (before exitting stage left): I don’t remember Christmas Day that year; whenever I think of that Christmas time, I just recall that strange outfit, the recognition, the rush through the snow, and the words, “This is a great way to welcome me home!”

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I’m happy to have a copy of such a rare story, rare not only because it’s a war time story to which both my mother and father contributed but because it is connected - at least in my mind - to stories about father’s relationship with Gracie Purvis, a WAAF Corporal from Croydon, County Surrey, England.

In the fall of 1941 my father, age 21, and mother, age 18, were boyfriend and girlfriend to one another, somewhere between being very close friends and getting serious.

I say ‘getting serious’ for two reasons. The Christmas present, the one unfortunately stolen, and mentioned at the very start of Mother’s half of the Christmastime story, was a wristwatch purchased for father by, as mother writes, “his mother and I... We then packed a box with the watch, socks and cigarettes, and a few other small items, and sent it off to Halifax.”

Not only that, but in 1941, after greeting one another outside my Grandmother Catton’s house on Tidey Street, bloodying a nose in the process, and having tea, the young couple spent the rest of the day together with my Grandmother Harrison at her house on Spring Street, Norwich.

["Grandmother and Doug Harrison"]

From my point of view then, my parents were more than acquaintances at the time, and of this I am certain.

Does the story change somewhat in 1942, when father spends time before Christmas with Gracie Purvis, shares a tearful parting with her on a train platform in Blackpool after a weekend of restaurant meals, dancing, and intimate walks along the North Pier?

[Blackpool, North Pier; from oldukphotos.com]

Yes, the story changes, but by how much remains to be seen. And what my mother would make of it I will never fully know.

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More to follow.

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Please click here to read (PG. 5) WHERE ARE YOU, GRACIE PURVIS?