Owen Family
1 primary work • 3 total works
Book 2
Set in wartime London, this is a sequel to Cockney Waif . Patsy now has a husband and four children, and as the fateful events of September 1939 unfold, London will be shaken by air raids and food shortages, children will be evacuated, and men called up. Patsy wonders if her family can survive.
Patsy Kent is just fourteen when her beloved mother Ellen dies of consumption in November 1918. The pregant but unmarries Ellen had fled her respectable family and landed up in Tooting, desperate to find somewhere to live and a place to work. Thus she found Florrie Holmes' place in Strathmore Street. Patsy, born there, has grown up surrounded by loving people who more than compensate for the lack of a family. On her mother's death Patsy gets a job in the same market where Ellen had worked. At sixteen she is pretty and innocent, so that when she meets the gipsy Johnny Jackson at a fair she is bowled over. Hop-picking in Kent with the Jackson clan tarnishes her illusions but then Patsy becomes pregnant and the ill-suited pair marry. Divorce isn't on for people like her; when she really falls in love, with kindle Eddie Owevm it looks as if she must stay shackled to the feckless Johnny.
Patsy is now living a comfortable life - Eddie's little chain of hotels is thriving, but two of her four children have problems in their marriages - can Patsy help them out? Ellen's husband is physically abusing her. She finally leaves him, spends some time in a mental hospital, then slowly recovers at home and eventually meets Peter - a much more gentle and charming man. David is married to the restless, attention-seeking, beautiful Valerie who is having one of her more serious affairs and decides to leave him. Stepson Tim is old enough to leave home himself but is disturbed by his mother's actions. The novel ends with Patsy having managed to keep the family together - and the birth of her first great- grandchild.