Lizzie May – Chapter 10

Percy

‘Sopwith Triplane’ by Steve Fendt

Autumn 1976

So, Pauly, you’d like to hear more about your grandfather. Well, where to begin?

Percy Edward Bullen was a charming man – and knew it. He traded on that charm. He was cheeky and liked to bend the rules.

No, that’s not quite right. He thought that rules were often silly, and claimed the right to ignore ones that didn’t make sense to him. If other people were foolish enough to follow them blindly, well that was their problem.

He wasn’t a big man. Five foot six, but broad-chested, with black hair and brown eyes. Always well dressed, and aware of his appearance. He was gregarious and loved going out – the opposite of me, really, who could never be bothered with people that much. He was the sort of man who exuded confidence in any situation.

Deary me, he sounds quite obnoxious, doesn’t he?

But he wasn’t arrogant, not a bit of it. He was kind and generous and, in his odd way, quite humble. Hopeless with money and often irresponsible – but such fun to be around! You couldn’t help but be infected by his optimism. He just couldn’t take life seriously, I think.

I’ve always been one of life’s worriers – but not Percy.

He came from a lower middle-class family, skilled artisans who’d got poorer over the generations and were now just one stroke of bad luck away from real poverty. Their grandparents had been famous violin makers, hatters and tailors. They themselves were shop assistants and junior clerks. It was all that was left of the family pie, you see. That was what happened when Victorian parents had huge families, expecting half to die as children, and instead they all lived to adulthood.

Also, fashions had changed. Hardly anyone wanted a beautiful, handmade musical instrument anymore, and there weren’t many who could afford a bespoke tailored shirt or three-piece suit. Cheap, mass-produced clothes were what most people wore now, and for entertainment they listened to the gramophone.

He told me about his childhood in Islington, crammed in a tenement with two other families. His parents’ household was an extended family of nine, including his grandmother, his uncle and a boarder they somehow squeezed in to help with the rent. Neither of his parents lived to sixty.

Before the War, he’d been a solicitor’s clerk: a sort of legal assistant, one who does research, prepares files and draws up documents for the solicitor. It was specialised work, and well paid. When 1914 came, Percy was a young man going places. He was twenty-six years old and managing the day-to-day running of his father-in-law’s legal practice.

Yes, that’s right. Percy was married. We’ll get back to that later.

Your grandfather was in no rush to join up, unlike my brother Ernie and the other young hotheads. But when 1916 and general conscription came, he accepted the inevitable with good grace.

‘If I had to go, old girl, I was going to have the most interesting war I could bally well manage.’

That’s what he told me, much later of course.

He might have been an office worker, a ‘pen pusher’ as he called it, but your grandfather had a practical side. He excelled at woodwork and anything mechanical. He had a motorbike as soon as he could afford one on his clerk’s wages, and was fascinated by cars – and aeroplanes, which were the latest thing.

They put him in the Navy, but not on a warship. He was in the RNAS – the Royal Naval Air Service. There was no RAF yet, you see. The Navy had its air force and the Army had its own – the Royal Flying Corps.

Typically for your grandfather, he lied to the recruiting officer.

‘Word went around that they were looking for craftsmen for the air force. So, when he asked me my occupation, quick as a flash I said “Carpenter.” They weren’t going to let a solicitor’s clerk mess around with their precious aircraft, were they?’

Percy’s first year of war was spent at HMS President and Daedalus – these weren’t ships as you might think from the names, but training schools. The first was at Crystal Palace, the second at Cranwell in Lincolnshire. After completing his training, he was a Leading Aircraftman, working on planes that would be sent to France and the Near East.

Then, in early 1918, the RFC and the RNAS merged to become the new Royal Air Force. He applied to sit the exam to become a Petty Officer, and while he was at it, had his military record corrected. He’d come to think that his clerical experience might be of use to him in the RAF after all, you see.

‘Sir, I’ve no idea how it happened, but the recruiting officer put me down as a carpenter. I was actually the managing clerk for a solicitor …’

For the rest of the war he worked on the staff at RAF Cranwell. No, sorry to disappoint you, Pauly: your grandfather wasn’t a pilot.

The truth is less glamorous than you probably imagined – but that, young man, may be why you’re here today. The life expectancy of a pilot on the Western Front was about six weeks. One in five didn’t even survive training. If Percy had died in the Great War, there’d be no Pauly now.

---

Now, I didn’t know any of this about Percy, on that rainy Tuesday in June 1926 when our paths first crossed. In fact, I had no interest in getting to know him at all.

But he decided to get to know me. From that first concert on, I saw him regularly at St Martin’s. He’d be somewhere up the front, looking around, and he’d give me a little wave when he saw me.

There’d usually be a free space next to him. Soon the penny dropped – he was saving me a seat! I wasn’t going to take it, though. I was no pushover.

Then one day, it must have been months later, I was late getting out of work, the church was full, and I thought, ‘Well, why not?’

We just had time for introductions before the concert started. We exchanged a few words at the end, about the music or the weather, then went our separate ways.

From that day on, though, we sat together.

It just became something we did, and before long I was looking forward to it. It was quite romantic but also cosy, sitting next to this mysterious man, as if we were old friends, but knowing almost nothing about him. If he wasn’t there, I’d be disappointed.

No, he never lit his pipe in church again, not after I told him off that first time.

And no, I didn’t know he was married. Not yet.

This went on for more than a year. If it hadn’t been for the Thames flood, in the cold, bitter winter of 1928, nothing further might have come of it.

---

Coming up:

This Friday in Tales from the Wood: Pauly decides to cultivate a ‘hard man’ image. This goes about as well as might be expected. (Paid subscriptions.)

Next Tuesday in Lizzy May: Lizzy May finds herself homeless. Percy uses his connections.