by Lesley Parr
‘Follow me, boys,’ she says. ‘You can carry your gas masks.’
We follow. Outside, I look up at those mountains again – they make me feel smaller than Ronnie.
‘Well, you already know I’m Mrs Thomas but you must call me Gwen. Aunty Gwen if you like.’ She swaps the cases around in her hands. I don’t offer to take one – and I’m not calling her ‘Aunty’ either. ‘Turn right here, boys, up the hill.’
Another flipping hill.
‘And what are your names then?’ she asks.
‘Ronnie,’ Ronnie says. ‘And my big brother is Jimmy.’
She smiles and looks right at me, like she’s taking me in. I put my head down and keep walking, the backs of my knees tightening with every step. It’s no bother for Mrs Thomas though; she’s hardly out of breath, even with the cases. Rows of terraced houses lead off the hill on both sides. Each street looks the same and each house has a front step that meets the pavement.
‘It isn’t just me, mind, there’s my husband as well,’ she says. ‘Alun. But you won’t see him today; he’s over in Aberbeeg building a shelter for my cousin Jean. He’s a collier so you’ll have to be quiet when he’s on nights. He sleeps in the day then. And if you can’t manage that then you can go out to play. But don’t go far. And always tell me where you’ll be.’
Play where? All I can see are houses and fields stuck on the side of a mountain.
‘What’s a collier?’ Ronnie asks.
‘Oh, of course!’ Even her laugh has a Welsh accent. ‘You boys wouldn’t know, would you? A collier is another name for a miner. Most of the families round here are mining families.’
After three more streets with names I can’t pronounce, we turn right again. The sign says Heol Mabon; I think I might be able to manage that. Almost every door is open as women, old people and children watch us move along the pavement. Some are smiling, but others, like the woman in the purple hat at the institute, frown. Mrs Thomas says hello to them all. Some try to talk to her but she says she has to get us home; we’ve had a long journey.
‘Home’ isn’t the word I’d use.
We stop outside a dark blue front door. ‘This is us,’ Mrs Thomas says. ‘Number twenty-one.’ Someone opens an upstairs window of the house next door. A tiny, thousand-year-old woman with grey hair up in a bun waves a duster at us. Her eyes and nose are really small but her mouth is wide in her wrinkly face. She looks like a tortoise.
‘Got two, have you, Gwen?’ she calls. ‘Thought you were only going for one. How will you manage?’
I already feel like a parcel, wrapped up, labelled and sent far away. The tortoise is making it worse. Mrs Thomas whispers to us, ‘Take no notice of Mrs Maddock, we’ve got room.’
To the old woman she says, in a much tighter voice, ‘We’ll manage fine, Menna.’
I’m sure Mrs Thomas adds ‘nosy old bat’ under her breath as she goes inside, which makes me want to like her but I don’t know if I should. Ronnie follows but I hang back. The passage is dark but not gloomy; there’s a closed door to the right – probably the parlour – and stairs ahead. Mrs Thomas and Ronnie go through another door further down.
I walk after them, through a living room into the kitchen that smells of Lux soap. It’s got a stove at one end with washing hanging over it, just like Nan’s washday back home. I swallow down the lump in my throat. From the window above the sink, I can see a small yard that looks like it leads round to the back garden. Mrs Thomas points to a table and chairs and tells us to sit down. Without even asking if we’re hungry, she starts cutting bread, then gives us each a slice with margarine on. ‘That’ll do you till tea. I’m going to take your things upstairs; you stay here and eat up. Oh! Before I do …’ She opens a drawer, pulls out a pair of scissors and snips off our name tags. ‘Now that’s better. Shows you belong here, see.’
I don’t know where we belong any more but it’s not here.
‘Have you got any boys or girls?’ Ronnie asks, watching Mrs Thomas over the top of his slice. ‘Or are they big now?’
She pauses and her smile doesn’t look completely real.
‘Don’t you ever listen?’ I say. ‘She said it was just her and Mr Thomas, cloth ears!’
‘It’s all right, Jimmy.’ She turns to him. ‘No we don’t, Ronnie – but it means we have room for you. That’s nice, isn’t it?’
She leaves. Ronnie watches her go.
‘I like Aunty Gwen,’ he says. ‘When she talks it sounds like she’s singing.’ He smiles and licks some margarine off his bread.
‘Stop licking your food,’ I say. ‘You’re not a blooming kitten – and don’t call her Aunty.’
‘Can if I like, she said so.’
‘Well, I’m saying not to. I’m your family, not her.’
He looks right at me, his big green eyes searching mine. Just like she did. Then he miaows and licks his bread again and I laugh.
After ten minutes, Mrs Thomas calls us up to the bedroom. It’s small and narrow with a window to the left. She’s standing in front of a chest of drawers. Our empty cases lie open on top of a candlewick bedspread.
One bed.
‘Your things are here,’ she says, opening and closing the drawers one at a time to show us.
‘I could’ve done that,’ I say quickly.
‘You could have carried your case too, but you didn’t.’
It feels like she’s scolding me but I’m not sure because she’s smiling. Ronnie steps closer to the bed and looks in the cases, then his eyes dart around the room. He goes over to the drawers and pulls them open. I can see the panic building in him and I know what he’s looking for. The trouble is, I can’t see it either.
‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ Mrs Thomas is staring at him.
‘He’s looking for his Dinky van,’ I say. ‘It’s yellow.’
‘Oh my goodness, it’s here!’ She pulls the little metal toy out of her skirt pocket. ‘I’m so sorry, Ronnie. It fell out of your pyjamas and I picked it up and slipped it in here.’
He takes it off her and clutches it tight to him.
‘He loves it,’ I explain. ‘And he had to pack it with his clothes in case he lost it on the journey.’
‘Nan made me,’ he mutters grumpily.
‘He isn’t usually allowed to take it out of the house any more,’ I say. ‘Not since he lost it in the sand on holiday, but Nan said he could bring it here because he can’t sleep without it.’
Other little boys sleep with teddies or bunnies, but not my brother.
‘She said we might be here for lots of weeks,’ Ronnie says.
‘But we won’t,’ I say.
Mrs Thomas looks at me like she’s a bit sorry for me, like I don’t know anything about the war because I’m twelve. But she smiles at Ronnie. ‘Then we’ll take extra-special care of it here, won’t we?’
He nods.
She points at the single bed. ‘It’ll be a bit of a squeeze. There’s just this at the moment but you can bunk up, can’t you? The bedspread’s lovely and soft and we’ll get another mattress as soon as we can.’
‘We don’t mind, do we, Jimmy?’ Ronnie says, sitting on the bed. ‘As long as we’re together. That was my brother’s worst worry, that we’d be split up.’
I don’t know why he had to tell her that. It’s none of her business.
Mrs Thomas puts the cases on top of the wardrobe. ‘You boys get settled, then come down when you’re ready.’ She closes the door behind her.
‘I wonder what she sounds like when she really sings,’ Ronnie says. ‘Lillian Baker said Wales people sing all the time.’
‘Welsh people.’
‘What?’
‘They’re Welsh, not Wales. Wales is the country.’
‘Oh.’
From the window, I can see the back garden. It’s long, bigger than ours, and slopes up to a hedge that meets another garden. It looks a bit like the allotment Grandad used to have with its rows of vegetables and sticks that make a wigwam
for runner beans. But Grandad’s allotment was flat. Nothing in Llanbryn is flat. Next to their air-raid shelter is a pen with a little wooden hut in it. Up above the rows of rooftops are the mountains. They overlap each other, making it impossible to see what’s behind them. I suppose it’s more mountains. Like there’s no way out.
So this is it. The countryside. Evacuation. No more getting covered in oil in the garage with Dad. No more Nan telling us off for it. Just other people’s biscuits and houses and a single bed. None of it’s ours.
I turn to Ronnie. He’s running his fingers over the candlewick bedspread, tracing patterns in and out of the flowers and leaves. I know he’s itching to tug out the fluffy bits; Nan’s always telling him off for it.
I look around properly. We share at home but our bedroom’s much bigger, big enough to play a really good game of cowboys. Dad let us have it after Mum left – said he preferred to be cosy – but I think he just didn’t like it in there without her.
Ronnie pulls at the bedspread.
‘No!’ I yell.
He jumps and I feel bad. I sit next to him and put my arm around his shoulders.
‘I’m sorry for shouting,’ I say, ‘but you can’t do that, especially not here. Remember what Nan said?’
‘To behave like we do at home.’
‘Better. She said we have to behave better so we don’t show her up. You don’t want to show her up, do you?’
He shakes his head.
I fluff up the candlewick so the gaps don’t show. Mrs Thomas was right; it is soft. ‘This isn’t our home, Ronnie, this isn’t your bed.’
This isn’t our home. Saying it out loud makes it even worse. I dig my fist into the pillow. Ronnie kneels up on the bed, both of his arms stretched around me.
‘We’ll be all right, Jimmy,’ he says. ‘You can have the bed if you like. I’ll sleep on the floor. I don’t mind.’
I have to smile. He thinks I’m upset about the bed. He doesn’t get it. He never really gets it; Mum leaving, evacuation, the war. It must be nice to be six and daft.
CHAPTER FOUR
A BRICK OUTHOUSE
Tea is tomato soup, but not the Heinz one from a can we have at home. This is proper soup. Mrs Thomas made it from the tomatoes in the garden. She made the bread too. She asks us loads of questions and Ronnie chatters away about all sorts of nonsense. She tells us about living in Llanbryn but I don’t listen much. I just dip my bread in my soup and wonder if bombs are falling on our house. When we’ve finished, Ronnie shows me up by sticking his face in the bowl, trying to lick it. Mrs Thomas tells him to mind his manners and he doesn’t miaow this time.
She says we don’t have to wash and dry on our first night so she gives us a board game. But snakes and ladders with Ronnie isn’t much fun because he keeps landing on the wrong squares – although most of them are ladders, so I start to wonder if he’s faking it.
There’s a loud knock on the front door.
‘Oh!’ Mrs Thomas says from the kitchen. ‘Who can that be?’ She takes off her pinny and tosses it on the back of a chair on her way through the living room.
A voice booms down the passage.
‘Mr Bevan!’ Ronnie jumps up and follows her, looking thrilled to bits. I get up and watch from the living-room doorway.
‘Well, look here,’ Mr Bevan says, grinning at Ronnie. ‘It’s our little adventurer, isn’t it?’
Ronnie nods, beaming up at him.
‘And how do you like it in the Valleys?’
‘It’s nice. We had soup.’
‘What kind?’
‘Not from a can.’
‘Ahh, that’s the best flavour for soup, that is.’ Mr Bevan turns to Mrs Thomas. ‘How are you, Gwen? Margaret said Alun was away for the night …’
‘Yes,’ she says, ‘he’s doing a shelter for Jean and Ted. No buses back now till the morning. What can we do for you?’
Another voice comes from outside. ‘Err … hello! Can you hurry up in there, like? My arms are dropping off – we aren’t all built like a brick outhouse!’
‘Righto, Dai.’ Mr Bevan steps out for a second, then backs into the passage with one end of a mattress. ‘Margaret sent us with this. It’s from our spare room, she thought you’d need one with you taking both boys.’
‘Oh my goodness!’ Mrs Thomas gasps. ‘That’s so kind.’
‘Back bedroom, Gwen?’ Mr Bevan says, looking like he could carry the mattress under one arm.
She nods and they go up. Ronnie follows, telling them all that this will be his mattress.
I go into the living room and pack up the game.
*
I shine my torch on the alarm clock, then flick it off again. Ten past one and I haven’t slept a wink. Ronnie fell asleep straight away, holding his Dinky van. I don’t know how he can do it, in a new and strange place. A new and strange country. I bash my pillow a few times and try to get comfortable. Ronnie mumbles and turns over. It’s too dark to see him but I know he looks like an angel. That’s what Dad always says.
I’ve just shut my eyes when Ronnie starts to moan and whimper. I throw back the bedspread and sit up. He grunts, opens his eyes and starts shouting. I slip down on to the mattress and hold him tight until his breaths are normal again. His hot tears wet my pyjama sleeve.
There’s a tapping sound. ‘Are you boys all right in there?’ Light makes a line under the door. It’s Mrs Thomas.
‘We’re fine,’ I whisper-shout. The door handle turns and I call out, ‘Don’t come in!’
She does anyway.
Worry shows on her face in the light from the landing. She steps towards us. ‘Oh, Ronnie, bach.’
‘He’s all right,’ I say, squeezing him tighter into me.
Her hand twitches as if she wants to comfort him.
‘Honestly, Mrs Thomas, I’m used to this,’ I say. ‘We’ll be fine by ourselves.’
Her voice comes out small and unsure. ‘Well … all right.’ She watches us for a few seconds, then says, ‘Tomorrow I’ll show you where the park is. You’ll like the swings, Ronnie, and Jimmy can push you. That’ll be nice, won’t it?’
He pulls away from me and nods.
‘Night then,’ she says. ‘Don’t be afraid to knock if you need me.’
‘We won’t need you.’
She raises her eyebrows.
‘But thanks,’ I say quickly.
Mrs Thomas goes out, closes the door and pads away along the landing. I have to sneaky-read Ronnie a whole story before he drops off again. I know how to look after him.
CHAPTER FIVE
A LAD CALLED IRON
Today is Sunday and that means Sunday school, but first we write a postcard home. Miss Goodhew gave us all one with our address and a stamp on before we left Islington so all we have to do is think of something to say. Ronnie wants to tell them about the soup.
‘They won’t care about that,’ I say. ‘They’ll just want to know we’re safe.’
‘Tell them we’re on a mountain,’ Ronnie says.
‘All right.’ I start to write, shoving him out of the way because he’s pressing so close I can hardly see.
‘Say that I slept on a mattress on the floor.’
Mrs Thomas looks across from the sink where she’s peeling carrots. ‘Oh no, they’ll think we aren’t looking after you properly!’
‘Don’t put that, then,’ Ronnie says. ‘I feel very looked after. Write that instead.’
‘Just let me do it, Ronnie! Then you can put your name at the end.’
I write about the mountain and that we’re in Wales and we miss them. I also write about the mattress. He won’t know because he can’t read well enough yet.
After breakfast and a push on the swings for Ronnie, Mrs Thomas walks us down ‘the Bryn’ towards the train station. She says that’s the name of the hill we walked up yesterday. It already feels like a thousand years ago.
A thousand years since we saw Dad and Nan.
If there was a train on the platform
I could grab Ronnie and jump on it and go back home and forget we ever came to this stupid green valley. Even though I know we could never really do it, I’m still looking for the steam.
But we don’t get as far as the station. Instead we stop across the road from the institute, on the pavement in front of a huge square building with a pointed roof but no steeple. The words Tabernacle 1873 are carved into the stone above its tall arched windows. It’s shaped more like a house than a chapel, and the windows and doors look almost like a face – not a smiley one but not a bad one either.
Mrs Thomas squats down next to Ronnie and points through the railings at a smaller, plainer building on the left. ‘That’s the Sunday School Hall.’ She straightens his collar. ‘The teacher is Miss Williams, she’ll look after you. I’ll come back in an hour when you’re more holy.’
She winks at me. I look away.
‘Aren’t you coming in, Aunty Gwen?’ Ronnie asks. I shoot him a don’t call her that look but his eyes are on her.
‘No, I’m going home to get our dinner ready,’ she says. ‘Alun will be back soon.’
‘Are you holy enough then?’ Ronnie says, playing with the button on her coat.
I nudge him but Mrs Thomas laughs and says, ‘Oh, don’t you worry about me, I’ll come back for the evening service. You go in now, Miss Williams is waiting.’ And off she goes, back up the hill.
We walk along the pavement and up the path with two others. One’s a lad of about fourteen, with dark hair sticking out from under his cap. He smiles at me but I don’t feel like smiling back. The other is a fair girl with wavy hair who looks more my age. She pats her blue ribbon and doesn’t look at me. She’s probably stuck-up.
Halfway along the path, Ronnie pulls his hand from mine to wave and shout up the road. ‘Goodbye, Aunty Gwen!’ Then he runs into the hall.
The lad raises his eyebrows. ‘That your little brother?’
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘and he’ll cop it later.’
The hall is plain, with benches in rows like pews, an aisle down the middle and a big cross at the front. Ronnie’s just inside the door looking half pleased with himself and half jumpy – the way he always does when he’s done something he shouldn’t. I grab his sleeve and pull him over to a bench at the back.
