How we LIVED then!
Rebecca’s Secrets – Robert Hart’s book gave me a real frisson when I read it. Our local city wasn’t hit as hard by the Luftwaffe as was London – though it was hit quite hard enough, thanks. But here, Hart, writing as `Tommy Angel’, recalls the austere, emergent years that followed WWII. And how they resonate. He recreates the sights, sounds, smells and textures of the wounded landscape that was the East End of the `50s. He conjures up vividly the gap-toothed skyline, the bomb-sites, the childrens’pecking-order and the bullying. He recalls the kids’ complete disregard for `Health and Safety’ that went unquestioned in their bombed-out playgrounds. (And of course the parents were usually resigned to this – after all, their children had brains in their heads, living as they did in the real world and not festering at home with an X-box.) Not having the luxury of a TV set, not yet knowing anything of hi-tech toys, kids got their entertainment by knocking together go-carts from pram wheels and salvaged planks and, quite frankly, by being hooligans. Go-cart races down the Rotherhithe Tunnel, indeed!
Such is Tommy Angel’s world. But who’s to say he is deprived in any real and material sense? Thin and hungry, but not starving, the britches arse might be out of his trousers from time to time, but he has clothes on his back and an enquiring mind. But then, it is his emotional deprivation that is the more tangible, and this forms the core of the book. Tommy’s self-appointed task, therefore, is to unravel the central hidden mystery of his parentage, and thereby set his life in context.
Of course, this isn’t just an account of `Rebecca’s Secrets’. His attempts to solve the mystery of his mother’s identity serves as a hook to draw us in, allowing us to share the secrets of a little boy’s maturing mind. Robert Hart serves us well in evoking how children can negotiate the shoals and rapids of life, and, ultimately, survive.
In style and substance there’s more than a touch of `Magic Realism’ in “Rebecca’s Secrets”, and this is a book that forms a bridge between childhood’s memories and the wisdom of maturity.
Robert hart 