The Sugar Girls - Lilian’s Story: Tales of Hardship, Love and Happiness in Tate & Lyle’s East End

Despite their poverty, Edith Tull was extremely house-proud. Every morning she could be seen on her hands and knees, scrubbing and whitening the doorstep until it glowed. Next, the shared toilet in the back yard was swilled down with hot water and new squares of newspaper were threaded onto the rusty nail that served as a loo-paper dispenser. Then the coconut matting came up and the place was swept and dusted vigorously until lunchtime. Monday was wash day, when Edith would rub the family’s dirty linen on her washboard until her arms were covered in angry red blisters. Friday was the day for baths, with water heated in the copper by burning old shoes and boots if there was no money for fuel.

Before her husband returned from work each evening, Edith got a fresh piece of newspaper for a tablecloth and carefully laid out the mismatched cutlery and crockery she had got from the rag-and-bone man. Harry would come home and nod in approval. A strict, Victorian-style father, he regarded family teatime as sacred, and tapped his children with his knife if they weren’t sitting up straight. The children themselves were too scared to speak at the table for fear of their father’s disapproval, so mealtimes generally passed in silence. Secretly, they all looked forward to the weeks when he was on the late shift and their more soft-hearted mother allowed them to stay up past their bedtime.

Death seemed to hover over the Tull household. Baby boys Bernard and George came into the world and departed it the same day. When Lilian was six, her grandfather passed away suddenly, and not long afterwards her three-year-old brother Charlie died from unknown causes.

The latest death shook the normally restrained Harry Tull to the core. ‘There’s a curse on this family,’ he cried bitterly.

Harry’s greatest shame was that, since there was no money for a private burial, Charlie would have to be laid to rest in a communal grave at West Ham Cemetery, without a headstone. ‘No son of mine’s going to be buried in an unmarked grave,’ he said, storming out to the back yard.

Lilian went to follow him, but Edith put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Leave him be, love,’ she said. ‘Leave him be.’

Several hours later, Harry was still outside. ‘What’s Daddy doing?’ Lilian asked her mother.

‘Don’t you worry about that,’ came the reply.

Finally, Harry came back into the house, a look of silent suffering on his face. In his hand was a wooden cross he had made himself, the words ‘RIP CHARLIE’ lovingly carved into it.

‘It’s beautiful, Harry,’ Edith said. Lilian saw that her eyes were filling with tears, and felt her own well up, too.

As was the custom, Charlie was laid out in his little coffin in the front room, for family and neighbours to pay their respects. Lilian watched the people come and go, wondering who they all were and why they wanted to stare at her brother.

As night fell the visitors no longer came and Edith told the children it was time for bed. ‘What about Charlie?’ Lilian asked.

There was nowhere else to put him, so the family bedded down in the same room as the coffin. ‘Don’t worry, love, he’ll be sleeping too,’ Lilian’s mother reassured her, gently stroking her blonde hair.

Lilian lay awake all night, thinking about her dead brother lying just feet away from her and wondering if he was going to wake up in the morning.

When Charlie was buried the whole family laid flowers on the grave and Harry hammered the little cross into the earth. Out in the open it looked smaller and more delicate than it had in the house, flimsy in comparison with the real headstones elsewhere in the cemetery.

Harry shook his head. ‘It ain’t right,’ he muttered to Edith.

When they got back to Conway Street, Harry sat with his head in his hands for a long time. Then, suddenly, he got up and marched over to the family’s rickety old marble-topped washstand – virtually the only piece of furniture in the otherwise barren room – and began dismantling it.

‘Harry – what on earth are you doing?’ Edith cried, rushing over to him.

‘If I can’t afford to buy a headstone, then I’ll just have to give this to Charlie,’ he said, yanking the marble away from the wood.

Edith and the children watched open-mouthed as their father heaved the large slab under his arm and walked out of the door.

That Sunday, the children went with their parents to lay flowers at the cemetery. Lilian looked for the little wooden cross but couldn’t find it. ‘Where’s Charlie’s cross gone?’ she asked her mother anxiously.

‘Charlie doesn’t need it any more, sweetheart,’ Edith told her. ‘Look.’

There in the earth was a marble heart, carved out of the washstand, with the name ‘CHARLIE’ engraved upon it.

When Lilian was 12 the Tulls were rehoused in a block of flats near West Ham station. The local fruit and veg seller lent them his horse and cart, and Harry and Edith piled into it what few possessions they had, followed by their children. ‘I’m not sorry to see the back of that place,’ said Edith, as they set off.

The Tulls couldn’t believe their luck when they saw their new home. There were three bedrooms, which meant that Harry and Edith could sleep alone for the first time in more than a decade, and the boys and girls now had separate rooms, even if they did still have to share beds. ‘Look, Harry!’ said Edith in delight. ‘There’s a bathroom!’

Edith’s enthusiasm for vertical living quickly waned, however. Their flat was on the top floor, and with no lifts in the building, climbing the stairs loaded with her shopping from Rathbone Market in Canning Town left her utterly exhausted. She had never been a robust woman, but now she had less energy than ever.

For Lilian, a shy, awkward child, the move to the flats brought her first true friend – a girl by the name of Lily Middleditch. The two soon became thick as thieves.

As the children grew older, Harry consoled himself over the loss of three sons by putting all his hopes into his eldest child, Harry Jnr, who was proving to be something of a brainbox at school. When he passed his exams, his father, glowing with pride, took Harry Jnr to work with him and got him a job in the offices at ICI. He himself might still be chopping soda, but now he went to work with his head held high, knowing his son was working ‘upstairs’.

Lilian, meanwhile, was increasingly feeling like the school dunce. She was persistently coming bottom of the class and becoming shyer and shyer as a result. When she left school at 14, she and Lily Middleditch got themselves jobs at the RC Mills bakery in Hermit Road. For Lilian the bakery was a haven, where, unlike at school, she found something she enjoyed and that didn’t make her feel stupid. She loved to help the baker make his fairy cakes and breathe in the sweet smells seeping from the ovens as they rose. The fresh ones went to the shop at the front, but the stale ones Lilian collected to sell off at the back door for a penny each to the long queues of hungry people who waited there each day.

Lilian was accident prone, however, and one day she burned her hand badly. ‘Someone take that girl to the hospital,’ shouted the baker, horrified, and Lily Middleditch quickly ran over, wrapped the wound in a tea towel and led Lilian away. The accident scarred her for life, but she refused to give up her job in the bakery.

Lilian was 16 when war broke out, and when the Blitz began a year later her mother and the younger children were evacuated to Oxfordshire. Since Lilian and Harry Jnr were in work and the family needed the money, they stayed in London with their father. Her brother had tried to volunteer for the Air Force but had failed the medical on account of an irregular heartbeat.

One Saturday, Lilian and Lily Middleditch had planned a trip to Green Street to look around the market. They worked the morning in the bakery as usual, then dusted the flour off their clothes and headed to West Ham station, arm in arm, to get the train.

The girls entered the station, bought their tickets and went up the stairs to the platform. As they waited for the train, they chatted excitedly about what they were going to buy. After a few minutes, they heard the mournful whine of an air-raid siren. ‘Oh God,’ said Lily Middleditch. ‘It had to be on our afternoon off, didn’t it?’

‘Lily, look,’ said Lilian, in a shaky voice, her eyes fixed on the sky over her head. Lily followed her gaze. There in the near distance was a line of tiny black planes, growing closer by the second. Lilian could already hear the distant grind of the engines, pulsing insistently. It was clear there was no time to get to a shelter and the station wasn’t underground. She felt a sickening dread wash over her.

People began running along the platform towards the exit. Lily set off, but Lilian was still rooted to the spot, staring at the planes as if mesmerised by them.

Lily ran back and yanked at her arm. ‘What are you doing? Come on!’ she yelled, pulling Lilian behind her.

They made it to the top of the stairs and had just begun to hurry down them when they heard the first bombs drop. People started to panic, missing their footing and stumbling as they ran down the steps. A little girl screamed in her mother’s arms. At the bottom a knot of confused people bumped into each other. ‘Where do we go? Where do we go?’ they asked frantically.

‘Get down, everyone,’ a man shouted. All around him the crowd obediently dropped to the floor. Lilian and Lily lay as flat as they could, their hands over their heads. No one said a word. They heard another explosion, then another. Lilian was shaking, and Lily reached out and held her hand, squeezing it hard.

Just then there was an almighty blast and a terrible crashing sound. The whole station seemed to shake and a hot wind rushed over Lilian’s body, almost blowing her over. It was followed by the sensation of something soft raining down on her head and back. Lilian realised she had been holding her breath and now desperately needed to breathe, but as she gasped she seemed to be drawing not air into her lungs but thick, bitter powder, causing her to splutter and retch.

Beside her she could hear coughing, which soon gave way to screams. There was a horrible crunching sound and she could feel something heavier now dropping onto her back, as if she was being pelted with pebbles.

This is it, she thought, the station’s collapsing. I’m going to die.

Lilian tried to tuck her head even closer into her body, protecting her neck from the onslaught as well. She had lost Lily’s hand but didn’t dare reach out for it again. After a while she couldn’t feel the debris hitting her body directly any more, but the mass on top of her grew heavier and heavier. Her mouth was on the arm of her cardigan and she tried to suck air through it to avoid breathing in more dust. Time seemed to stand still, and in her mind Lilian could see her parents’ faces, dropping in despair as they were told they had lost another child, while behind them someone cried ‘Lilian … Lilian … Lilian.’

Suddenly the faces disappeared and the sound of her name being called rushed to the fore. It wasn’t in her head now but above her, and it was accompanied by a raking sound. She felt hands reaching through the debris and encircling her upper body, and she was lifted out of the rubble, dust and stones streaming off her. Lily Middleditch was there, and Lilian realised it was her voice she had heard. She grabbed her friend’s hand and they followed the other people, stumbling and gasping, out into the sunlight.

Although she was outside, Lilian found it was still impossible to breathe through her nose because her nostrils were completely blocked with dirt and dust. It was in her ears too, and in her eyes, which were itchy and sore. Her fair hair was coated in grey, and everyone’s faces and clothes were grey too, as if the colour had been drained out of them.

She and Lily hugged each other and then without a word began to run down Manor Road back towards her block of flats. All around lay the wreckage of other buildings destroyed in the raid, and dirty, bloodied people were everywhere, some of them desperately pulling at piles of bricks, others simply standing around in shock. But Lilian didn’t have time to think about anyone else. All she wanted to know was whether her brother and father – who would have finished his Saturday shift around the same time as her – were all right.

As they turned the corner, Lilian’s heart sank. The block of flats had been hit and her mother’s beloved apartment, with its bathroom and separate bedrooms, had been blown to smithereens.

Panic-stricken, she ran towards the remains of the building shouting, ‘Dad! Harry!’ Her throat was so dry from breathing in the dust that it came out as a rasping noise.

She had lost Lily Middleditch in the chaos but as she scoured the scene her eyes landed on a familiar face – that of their neighbour, Mrs Draycock. Seeing Lilian distressed and dirty she hurried over.

‘Lil, don’t worry, there was nobody in,’ she said. ‘You all right?’

‘Yes, I’m – all covered in dust,’ Lilian blurted out. For the first time, she realised she was shaking.