Martyn with Zillah at 4 Tyne Court, Sutton Coldfield
In this one-to-one conversation Zillah is open and honest. Nothing she says is unkind or sounds unfair, but she probably wouldn’t have wanted those concerned to hear it.
The recording starts with me speculating about recording as many descendants of Joseph and Florence Deasington as possible; including perhaps Aunts Ada and Gertie. I’m evidently working with a drawing I made of a family tree. At 4 minutes in we discuss Frank’s children. At 5 minutes 40 approximately we talk about Pam, who must have been going through a period of depression at the time. And then once again, the subject of Bernard’s health problems and him becoming a solicitor how difficult that was in those days without family money. Then it is about how her own parents lived within their means but never had any extra money. After she became a widow Nana gave up her home then lost all her sense of security. On the other hand, Zillah concedes that she couldn’t have lived on her own: she had never done it and wouldn’t have been able to cope with the loneliness.
The conversation segues into evacuation in wartime to the village of Bayton in Shropshire. Ted organised it and mother shared a farmhouse with Connie and Kath. David was about nine months old then. Connie had Sheila and Kath had Monica. But Nana got depressed back home in Sutton Coldfield so Pop told Henry to tell Zillah to come home and keep her company. This was at the height of the raids. In fact Zillah was glad of an excuse to come home. She didn’t much like the countryside in winter, when there was nothing much to do. The irony was that they hadn’t been in Bayton long when a bomb fell there nearby killing a cow. She talks about the bombing of Coventry, which was in November 1940. She talks about how her mother was fearless during the raids. A bomb fell near their house, which cracked their ceiling. Then she remembers a virus that Kath and Connie brought back from the countryside when they returned to Sutton from Bayton. Evidently most of the Highfields had left by the time of the war: Aunt Ada’s husband Joe had died and she had moved to Rotten Park Road near Nana. Len Highfield was working in Birmingham by then.
Rene had married a headmaster and moved to Bridgnorth. Anyway, Connie and Kath moved back in with their mother (Nana) and they all got this virus and were delirious. Zillah’s account is interesting on the moving about that was going on during that period. Alec was away so Kath moved in with Nana after a short period when mother and father moved in with Kath in Clarence Rd. Kath hadn’t long had Monica and she was rather neurotic. Only Winnie the farmer’s wife was left in Bayton. Zillah says that she and her sisters spent up to 12 months in Bayton. Then we get the story of the Bidmeads in Bayton and the near falling out that took place. Doris was very friendly with the people at the farm and she was good at entertaining them. Bid had to go back to Birmingham and was for a time living with father at number 127 Green Lanes also with another man called Dudie. There’s a lot more detail about Doris’s relationship with her and with her sisters.
I ask about relationships within the Deasington family, whether there were ever any major rifts with her siblings. Curiously, there were not, in spite of all the complications with spouses. But she does mention one or two rows with Connie, who seems to have been the more volatile personality amongst the sisters. “We tolerate each other’s faults,” she says. She is interesting on how when they were young they paired up within the family, for example, she and Kath spent a lot of time together. They both enjoyed the high life, while Connie and Betty were much more staid. She’s funny on how Betty used to cook for Fred at the Deasington family home when she and Fred were courting, “using all mother’s things” and would then take the meal to Fred’s parents’ home. Betty and Fred later went to live up north near Whitley Bay. Fred was always the one who dictated what was going to happen.
Mother then tells the story of being at a pub on Lichfield Road with her cousin. Possibly the Bull at Shenstone, now the Highwayman.
Fire! Get the horses out! Get the baby out!
She and her cousin were upstairs at the time and Zillah, who was only 16, wasn’t worried about her safety, but the possible headlines in the newspaper: SCHOOLGIRL CAUGHT IN PUB FIRE and her father finding out about it.
She recalls how once Nana chased her upstairs with her violin because she was “’going out with a man old enough to be your father!’ It was strange because she wasn’t a violent woman.” She recalls music lessons that she had as a child. She also remembers an awful row she had with Betty who made a cutting remark about her going out with a much older man. She ran off at night time down Wylde Green Road. Pop went searching for her and even went to Henry’s house to see if she was there (I wonder what address that was). When she eventually came back, shivering with the cold, May was standing at the top of the stairs in tears and said “Come to bed, Zillah.” She reflects that it probably made her all the keener on Henry. In fact, Pop liked Henry very much “but not as a husband for me”.
The tape ends abruptly at 47 minutes 23 seconds.