When Daddy Came Home by Barry Turner

Author:Barry Turner [Barry Turner and Tony Rennell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2014-07-17T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

‘An Immeasurable Effect On Married Happiness’

War – according to the Denning Report on divorce law

I was in the land army in 1945, stationed just outside Grimsby in Lincolnshire where my mother and family were living at that time. I returned to my home for a weekend leave, a few weeks before the end of the war, to be told that my mother had left home and that my brother and sisters were at my aunt’s house awaiting collection. I was to take them home as soon as possible.

AS THE OLDEST of six children and with a father serving in Italy, Dorothy Skipp bore the full force of her family crisis.

I was devastated and vividly remember walking to the Post Office, sobbing, with people staring at me. The clerk counted the words on my telegram to my father and, seeing how distressed I was, tried to comfort me with kind words. I have never forgotten him. Obviously, I had to return to my billet to request leave and my aunt agreed to have the children while I arranged this. My father’s telegram reply came after a couple of days and said that he was trying to bring his demobilisation forward. Meanwhile, he asked that I try and keep the children together and pay the rent and insurances until he arrived home. This I did with the few pounds I had saved.

On his arrival home, my father’s first task was to make friends with the youngest children who did not remember him at all. We then all sat around the table and discussed how we should handle things without our mother there to supervise us. We decided that my father should return to Barking, in Essex, where we had lived previously, to try to obtain a house for us. I was to be in charge during his absence and the various household chores would be shared between us all. Even my youngest sister, who was only four years old, had to take her turn to do the shopping.

During this difficult time, my mother decided to take my 14-year-old sister away. She did this by meeting her at the school gates one afternoon. My father was furious and was determined to get her back, to keep the family together. He did not know where to start looking as we had no idea where my mother had gone. We found a piece of blotting paper in the house that my mother had used, and by holding it up to a mirror we were able to decipher her address in Coventry. This was a pure piece of luck! My father duly brought my sister back after some unpleasant and difficult scenes with my mother.

We eventually obtained a house in Barking, but prior to this move we were temporarily split up. My youngest sister and I went to an uncle, one sister went to my grandmother, and my father and remaining three children stayed with an aunt. Once we were all together again we continued our routine of keeping house collectively.

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