Chapter 1 Hat Check Girl

Gertrude Elizabeth Thornton was born 5 June 1929 in Edmonton North London but she moved to Limehouse in Tower Hamlets when she was about four years old. For the first seventeen years of her life she lived with her parents Daniel and Dorothy Thornton. Dan was a boiler maker in the railway industry by trade and housewife Dotty worked part-time cooking lunches from Tuesday to Saturday at the local secondary school and during the holidays in a fish and chip shop, once Gertie started school at four years and three months old, one of the youngest of the new intake.

Gertie had two older brothers, Dan Junior, often called Danny, and Eric, who were eight and six years older than Gertie. They both remained in London with their parents in 1939 when the younger children were evacuated until they were called up by the War Office, to join the Royal Navy and British Army respectively.

When she was 10, in September 1939, Gertie was evacuated to Guildford in Surrey, an old market town that was all hills, due to the expected bombing of London after the declaration of war with Germany and her allies. She stayed in the Vicarage with a rather dour Scottish minister and his wife and, being a bright and lively girl, was required to sit and be seen and not heard. She was unhappy living there and was delighted when, during the Phoney War period shortly after the war began, her parents came and brought her back home to Limehouse again.

When the bombing started in earnest in late 1940, Gertie was evacuated once again, this time to a farm, really no more than a smallholding, in the western county of Devon, near the coast, to live with a young but childless couple, Nathaniel and Betty Twist. She had a wonderful time for four years there and she made life-long friends with the loving couple.

Gertie returned home to Limehouse in the late summer of 1944 as a fifteen year old. She worked in a factory stitching silk parachutes for a short while but, when the theatres opened up after the war, one of her school friends Agnes Holbrough, who already worked in a theatre bar, recommended her to her employers and Gertie started working in a theatre as a cloakroom hat-check girl. Her bright and outgoing personality, her quick mind and calm, efficient attention to detail, she made herself indispensable in her minor role and made many friends high and low in the theatre in just a few short months.

Of course, she won admirers among the theatre customers and was constantly being hit on, mostly by older men, at the theatre, but she was consistently polite in insistently fending off their unwanted advances.

Of all the customers who handed over their coats and hats to her charge and collected them after the show, she did feel an attraction to a tall slim young man, though clearly much older than her. He held himself erect in his bearing, his face was open and honest, with a clean shaven chin and thin pencil moustache, Gertie thought he looked handsome, and welcomed his gentle and courteous manners. He was a keen theatre goer, she noticed and, although he often wore an Army Captain’s uniform, of late he more usually wore evening dress at the theatre. Whatever he was wearing, he always looked smart and rather dashing, she thought.

One cold, wet night, when the theatre was full to capacity as usual, and her coat racks were overflowing with raincoats and damp overcoats, she had a spot of bother with a customer who was a little the worse for wear after overstaying his welcome at the interval bar, having found the theatre doors already securely closed to the third act.

He came to collect his overcoat and homburg but he couldn’t find his numbered ticket in his pockets. Gertie turned her back to look through the most likely place for his coat as she often stacked groups of people’s coats together and lone theatregoers separately to one side, when the customer suddenly opened the counter flap and came up behind her.

He grabbed a strong hold on her, covered her mouth with one of his hands and tried to grope her small breasts with the other. She managed to run the sharp back of her broad heel down his shin and stamp on his toes, and then she screamed the moment the assailant’s hand uncovered her mouth. She turned and slapped the scoundrel. Before she could run away though, the man slapped her hard on the left cheek with a blow from his right hand and the slightly-built girl went flying, hit a pile of coats hanging on a rack and landed on the floor in a daze, half covered with dislodged coats.

The next moment, a couple of theatre staff members, the barman Dick and doorman Bert, ran up and they roughly bundled the drunk out of the cloakroom and away down the corridor, no doubt to eject him minus his coat and hat into the wet weather outside.

“Are you all right, Miss?” Gertie heard herself being addressed and looked up in both shock and embarrassment at the predicament she had found herself in. To add to her pain, it was the very ex-Captain, who she had admitted to herself that she admired, looking down at her sitting on the floor, and he was holding out a hand to her help her rise.

Instinctively, she grabbed his hand and allowed him to pull her up and she tried to brush whatever imagined dust was on her smart blue theatre uniform with lemon yellow piping around the edges.

“Er, yes, sir, thank you sir,” Gertie replied, looking embarrassed to find herself in this position. “It was just a slap, sir, but it came out of the blue and I wasn’t expecting it, sir. Just give me a moment, sir and I will fetch your coat and—”

“Come on, Miss, don’t worry about hats and coats. Let’s get you down to Mr Whittaker’s office so you can sit down and get back your equilibrium.”

Mr Whittaker was the theatre manager. She had never been to his office before and Gertie was worried that she might be blamed and sacked for the incident as she was sure that the customer was rarely regarded as being in the wrong.

“I er, can’t go with you sir, I have my work to do in a few minutes when the act ends ... and ... and well, I don’t really know you, sir.”

“I’m Johnnie,” he said, with a disarming smile, “and your nameplate says you’re Gertrude, so now we know each other’s names, so we sort of know each other. I can hear Whittaker coming now. He has already been made aware of what’s happened and he’s probably called the Police.”

‘Oh, no,’ groaned Gertie to herself, ‘now I’m for it, I’m bound to be sacked for sure and I’ve really enjoyed this job, dressed in my little uniform, it was ever so much nicer than working in the garment factory.’

Johnnie continued to hold her hand in his.

“Gertie,” she said, returning his smile, as he gently took her arm and led her towards the manager’s office, “they had the badge made up from me application form before I was able to tell anyone that no-one ever uses me full name.”

Just then, the Manager Mr Whittaker turned up with Bert the doorman, after just finishing hearing the doorman’s explanation of what happened.

“Aree you all right?” Mr Whittaker asked.

“She was struck in the face by the blunder,” Johnnie said curtly, “I was taking her to your office to recover.”

“But the hats and coats, sir,” Gertie almost wailed, “the audience’ll be out in a few minutes and when I fell, I think I pulled some of the coats to the floor, they may be soiled or damaged, oh dear, I’m so sorry, sir.”

“Don’t worry about the coats, Miss Gertie,” Johnnie soothed, ‘I’m sure Mr Whittaker can smooth over any ruffled feathers, right Mr Whittaker?”

“Yes, of course, sir,” Mr Whittaker said, “Come along to my office Miss Thornton, Bert’s gone to order you a nice cup of tea from the kitchen, in fact he’s fetching a pot so we can all enjoy a cup while you recover from your ordeal. And Dick’s now off fetching Marjorie from the Stalls, she looked after the cloakroom for a couple of years before you, so I am sure she can pick up from where you’ve left off. I’ll wait here until she arrives and we’ll check the coats out for you.”

“Thank you, Mr Whittaker, I do appreciate your kindness,” Gertie said quietly, thinking the worst.

“Nonsense, my girl, you get off and sit in the quiet in my office, I’ll be along shortly once I’ve got Marjorie settled.”

Johnny helped her to the manager’s office and sat her in a chair, held her hand and comforted her while an ice pack was summoned from the kitchen through the girl who brought the tea things on a tray.

“Shall I be mother?” grinned the handsome Johnnie when he stirred the tea and replaced the pot lid and before handing the ice pack to Gertie which had just arrived.

“I really should do that,” Gertie said, weakly attempting to rise, but her wobbly legs didn’t seem to work properly.

“No, you won’t,” he insisted, “I’ve got this and you’ve had an awful shock from a beastly attack by that frightful man.”

She lifted the hand that Johnnie wasn’t still holding to her burning cheek and touched it gingerly.

Johnnie released her right hand and stood as he attended to the tea.

“Your cheek may be a little sore for a day or two,” he remarked, “but he doesn’t seem to have cut the skin, so the discolouration should fade fairly soon. Keep the ice on it, it will help to reduce the swelling.”

He lifted the pot lid and stirred the tea one more time with a teaspoon and judged it brewed and ready. He turned two of the three cups over, that had lain upside down in their saucers, and lifted the milk jug. He turned to her and asked, “Do you take milk?”

“Please, yes, er, I like it quite milky,” she quietly replied, chewing her lip.

Gertie was thinking to herself, wondering how she should behave. ‘I’m always so careful to keep my place,’ she said to herself, ‘Here is a gentleman, clearly a gentleman, who is serving me with tea. I am the servant here, and I am supposed to be the one doing the serving. Yet he was so insistent and yet seems to know the gentlemanly bounds of behaviour. He has been kind and sympathetic and held my hand for comfort and carefully steered me using my arm. But here I am alone with a man in a closed office. I should be concerned and, I suppose in a way that I am, but only about his reputation, not mine. I matter very little, well, nothing at all in fact, but ... oh dear, what do I do here in this situation?’

Johnnie smiled at her again, “Sugar?”

“Please, two lumps if it’s not too much bother.”

“Of course, it is no bother.” He poured the tea, carefully using the perforated strainer to contain the leaves that hadn’t settled after his vigorous stirring. He used the tongs on the tray to put two sugar cubes in her tea and then three, she counted, went in the other o-en cup, his cup.

Just as he handed the cup and saucer with teaspoon into her hand, and sat next to her with his tea, the door opened and Mr Whittaker walked in.

Gertie noticed that he was carrying her raincoat and scarf and wondered if he was also going to give her her cards as well, perhaps not while the gentleman was here but shortly after he left.

“Oh, tea, splendid, the kitchen came through for you,” Whittaker said, “Now, Marjorie has got everything under control in the cloakroom, so once you’ve had your tea, Miss Thornton, and you feel up to going home, I’ve got your coat that Marjorie located for me. Now, rest up at home and take a couple of days off.”

“Oh, I can’t possibly—” Gertie started to protest, the cup rattling in her saucer.

“Of course you can, my dear,” Johnnie said, interjecting before completing her protest, “I’m sure what Mr Whittaker meant was, because this incident was not your fault in any way whatsoever, you should have those couple or three days off with full pay, including an estimate of your tips, isn’t that right Mr Whittaker?”

“Absolutely, my dear Miss Thornton, a most regrettable incident that was not anything at all of your own making,” Mr Whittaker insisted, “the theatre cannot allow this sort of behaviour from customers, our staff must be protected and allowed time to recover before resuming their essential duties.”

Gertie was surprised to see him smiling at her, and Mr Whittaker never smiled at the staff, ever.