Excerpt: Working title: 'Ambone or From Snags to Glitches

Chapter One (Word count 1755)

Working title: 'Ambone. © by Grumps 1/11/2009

"Don't ever think of publishing any of what I'm about to tell you while I'm still alive, or else..."

So said 'Ambone on our very first meeting. The look in his eyes left no doubt as to the threat behind his words, but this story is too big, and too important, to keep under wraps.

We'll start at the beginning to show how he started out in life, then how he progressed, and finally what he ended up like... . Of course, 'Ambone is not his real name, but it will do for the time being.

On a bitter cold and frosty February morning, his mother, nine months pregnant and wearing only a thin cotton dress covered by a tie-string apron, turned the highly-resistant wheel that drove the heavy mechanism of the then-equivalent to a spin-drier, a mangle, and squeezed the still-soapy water from the weekly wash. That was the moment that 'Ambone chose to leave the safety of the womb and enter the uncertain world. The Second World War occupied most people's minds at that particular time, especially the minds of the women whose fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons were away battling for peace and stability. But 'Ambone's father was not one of those brave unfortunates. For one thing, he was considered too old to fight at the age of 50. For another, he had an important job in the local railway engineering works, maintaining the rail stock, in order to keep the vital supplies, troop-carriers, and munition trains running. The war in Europe drained all natural resources, and many of the basics had to be put on ration. Families struggled. Life was hard. However, the community spirit pulled people closer together.

It was into this environment that ''Ambone arrived, more or less on schedule, albeit before his mother had finished the mangling. The first sign, perhaps, of his complete disregard for other people. His actual arrival was somewhat delayed, because, at first, his mother did not realise her water had broken. She mistakenly thought it was just water being squeezed out of the wet clothes by the two wooden rollers of the mangle. Labour was not a prolonged affair, and half an hour or so later, 'Ambone lay wrapped in a warm blanket, separated from his umbilical cord. Due to the food shortages, his mother's milk didn't have the necessary ingredients to maintain his healthy growth. For that, he had to be dependent on powdered baby milk and rose-hip syrup; then, months later, on other dried food supplements, like powdered egg. His mother obtained coupons for small bottles of concentrated orange juice, along with big jars of cod liver oil and malt. Scarce surprise then, that he grew slowly; a thin, weedy boy, so deplete of vitamins and calcium that his bones were unable to support his frail frame, and he became bow-legged. His doting mother made this condition worse by insisting on carrying him everywhere whenever they left the home environment.

At the first sound of the banshee-like wail of the sirens, signifying an imminent air raid, 'Ambone's mother would gather him up in her arms and rush to the brick built air raid shelter in the street outside, completely disregarding the fact that the single-brick construction of the shelter would offer less protection than the terraced house from which she ran. A surprising oversight from a woman who, despite leaving school at the age of 13 to look after her brothers and sisters, had a high degree of intelligence. Perhaps she thought the barrage balloon flying high above the end of the street where the lopped-off pyramid-shaped concrete tank traps blocked the road were a guarentee of safety. Maybe she was right, too, because no bombs fell in that street at any time during the five-year span of warfare. Maybe her prayers were answered.

Little Eva, the family called her. Little Eva; born just after the turn-of-the-century in a small Southern English village from which, in all her 86 years, she rarely strayed more than just a few miles. What great strength of character she possessed. Her father, or rather, the man she thought was her father, had three wives in succession, life expectancy in those days, being far less than it is today. From a very early age, she was warned to keep away from a man called Mister Rogers because he was a drunkard. She often saw him walking through the village, with three children in tow; and, being an obedient child, she remembered the warning and always gave him a wide berth. It wasn't until she was 60 years old that the full truth was revealed during a visit by a brother she hadn't seen for over 30 years.

The First World War, lasting four years, came and went. Little Eva's mother died young, leaving five children; and, although Little Eva at 13 years old was not the eldest, being the girl, she was expected to leave school and look after the rest of the children. Her supposed father showed little concern for Little Eva having to cope like a grown-up. He remarried, and over the next few years, the number of children grew to 14, all crowded into a tiny three bedroomed thatched cottage with no electric light, and water having to be drawn from a well in the garden. Tragedy struck when the second wife died in childbirth, and the baby died in Little Eva's arms. Eva had begun working in service, as it was called in those days. In other words she was a maid, performing menial tasks for very little pay, in the grander households of the day. In her spare time, of which there was very little, she still had to do most of the jobs around the family cottage, including walking several miles with laundry bundles or to collect bags of seed to feed her father's chickens, a valuable source of fresh eggs.

It wasn't long before the third wife entered the household. She was two years younger than Eva, and proceeded to boss Eva about at every opportunity, making her life unbearable. Not content with that, the wicked stepmother even took Eva's meagre wages from her and spent them on herself. She was a tyrant. The total number of children in the family increased to 21, and Eva's chores and responsibilities grew with them. Eva's so-called father did not stand up for her. He was a weak man. This state of affairs continued for some time, until Eva's employer, upon hearing of this disgusting and distressing situation, insisted that Eva's wages would stay with the employer, so that Eva would have access to them, while keeping them out of reach of the wicked stepmother's greedy grasp. The stepmother was not happy about this and badgered Eva more than ever. Eva started looking for live-in employment, and in the process encountered a couple of dubious and unscrupulous male employers, who thought that a maid's duties included more than household chores. Eva did not stay in their employ for very long.

Just when life seemed at its bleakest, and Eva was living in a caravan as temporary accommodation, she was introduced to a man 18 years her senior. A quiet, well-mannered man who'd never married, and in fact, had very little experience of women and matters of courtship, probably due, in part, to his occupation at the time of lorry driver. Harry and Eva became friends; friendship developed into romance; romance led to marriage; and marriage led to happiness and freedom for Eva. Freedom from her tyrannical stepmother and her so-called father, a pathetic man too weak to stand up for his family against his lazy slut of a wife, still little more than a mere slip of a girl. It would be 40 years before Eva learned the full story about her so-called father.

Newlyweds Harry and Eva lived in lodgings until such time as they could afford to rent a house of their own. Harry's parents and family had moved down South from London when the railway companies were expanding their networks. 'Ambone tells one story of when his parents, Harry and Eva, cycled all the way from Southampton to London, a distance of 75 miles, to visit some of Harry's relatives. While there, Harry went off for a quick visit somewhere, leaving Eva alone with an uncle. Apparently, the uncle had similar ideas to the scoundrels who expected more than household duties from their maids. Eva made her escape and went to find Harry, but never told him about the ginger-haired black sheep of the family. Nothing more is known of his uncle, but during a modern-day family-tree search, a distant relative mentioned a ginger haired member of the family who is never spoken of. No one else in the family is known to have ginger hair.

Cycling back to Southampton from London, and only a few miles from home, Harry became very tired and decided to rest under a railway bridge. He told Eva to go on ahead and he'd catch her up in a little while. She got home, had a cup of tea, pottered about getting a meal prepared, and half an hour later Harry joined her. But then he discovered he'd lost his silver pocket watch, a treasured possession given him by his late grandfather. It must have fallen out of his pocket when he fell asleep under the bridge. He had to cycle all the way back to the bridge, where, lo and behold, he found his pocket watch nestling in the grass alongside where he'd sat. It's no surprise that when he finally got home, he was completely worn out. He'd cycled a total of around 160 miles that day, and all on a heavy-framed bone-shaker of a bicycle on rough tarmac road surfaces.

Harry got a job in the engineering works at the railway, enabling him and Eva to move into a three-bedroom rented house. They couldn't have been in much of a hurry to fill those empty bedrooms, because it was six years after their first baby was born in1928 before their second arrived on the scene; and another six before the third turned up. That third baby was 'Ambone, and his birth brings our story, full circle back near the beginning...