![]() In a sense, my mother gave both of them to me. ![]() ![]() ![]() The man was Tom Oakley, a reclusive and ill-tempered widower in his sixties. I knew that the man who lived at the end of the graveyard where I had seen William standing would take him in. My parents’ generation made it possible for poor people to have free medical care, free dental care, free spectacles and for young people to remain at school beyond the age of fourteen When I asked someone what a house was doing at the end of a graveyard, I was told: “That’s where the man who looks after the graves lives.” When we reached the graveyard on the day of her funeral, I was surprised to see not only trees and squirrels but a small house. I instantly knew that the boy in my head – William Beech, an evacuee sent from the city to live in the countryside to escape Nazi bombs – came from that background.Īnd then suddenly my mother died. The mothers would also line the inside of their children’s underwear with newspapers to keep them warm. ![]() This was common for families who lived in the slums. ![]()
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