‘No. I’ll follow on with Ellis,’ she said. For a moment after Trish had left she remained silent. Then, sighing, she made up her mind.
‘All right, then, Miss Hoare. I’ll take two children as long as they’re of an age to look after themselves. They must be over eleven. I don’t know where they’ll go to school but it’s bound to be a long walk from here, and no one in the household will be free to take them every day. Besides, I don’t know anything about bringing up young children.’
‘Your daughter must have been young once.’
‘She’s my stepdaughter. I had nothing to do with her in her infancy. I can only accept older children.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t promise that. It’s an elementary school that’s been allocated to this area. We’ve found classroom premises for them in Headington Quarry.’ The billeting officer considered for a moment. ‘Would you be prepared to take a mother as well, Mrs Faraday? Most people don’t fancy the idea of having a stranger in their kitchen, and in a small house that’s understandable. But in a place like this, you could probably make arrangements for them to have their own cooking facilities. It would mean a woman with a small child, and probably two other older children as well. But although there’d be more of them, they’d probably keep out of your way better.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Let me know then.’ The woman stood up. ‘For the moment I’ll put you down for two, as old as possible.’ For the first time in the interview, she smiled. ‘I know I’m not the most popular visitor in the county at the moment, Mrs Faraday. But just imagine … The London docks are bound to be a target when the war starts, and not every bomb will hit the bull’s-eye. Just imagine the effect if one demolishes a school in the East End, or a street in which children play. We have to get them away. And although you may feel it’s going to be an upheaval for you, think how it will seem to the children! They won’t understand why they’re being taken away from their mothers and brought to a strange place. I can only make the arrangements. We have to rely on people like you to provide a genuine welcome.’
It seemed ironic to Grace, who had decided twenty years earlier that she did not want to have children of her own, that at the age of forty-two she should now be expected to love someone else’s. But she had managed it with Trish; and all her doubts were selfish ones. Greystones, she reminded herself, had been designed as a family house, the home of six children. She could not reasonably argue that it was unsuitable. In the next few days there was bound to be a good deal of talk about patriotic duty and this, without doubt, was hers. As they shook hands in parting, she managed to smile back.
‘I’ll do my best,’ she promised.
Chapter Three
‘Grace! Grace, where are you? It’s time we went.’
It was half past two on Friday, 1 September 1939, and all hostesses had been requested to collect their evacuees from the village hall before three o’clock. Trish had harnessed Brown Bess to the pony cart in case the family allotted to them had too much luggage to carry. But Grace, who was supposed to join her outside the stable yard, had not appeared.
Perhaps she had gone to her studio, meaning to do only some small job but quickly becoming absorbed and oblivious of the passage of time: that was something which frequently happened. Trish went inside the house and began to search it, calling her stepmother’s name as she opened each door. Only after the third summons did Grace come running down the stairs, her face creased with worry.
‘Hush, dear. Don’t shout. Philip’s not well.’
‘Oh, sorry. I didn’t know. What’s wrong?’
‘That stupid man who came this morning. Making us all put our gas masks on to show that we knew how to do it! Just the sight of the mask is enough to remind Philip of that awful day … I found it claustrophobic enough myself. And trying to breathe through it with lungs as badly damaged as his … He’s collapsed in his bedroom and I can’t get him to open his eyes. It frightens me, to see him so upset and struggling for breath. I’ve sent for the doctor. You’d better go down to the hall, Trish, so that they know we haven’t simply forgotten. But explain that it’s impossible … An invalid in the house … I can’t possibly take responsibility for a family of strangers under these circumstances.’
‘But then they won’t have anywhere to go.’
‘There must be someone else who could take them.’ Grace sat down on one of the lower stairs and buried her head in her hands for a moment. After a little while she looked up again, sighing, and held out her hand to pull Trish down beside her.
‘I know you think that all of us are being too gloomy about this. And not wanting to pull our weight. It’s because it’s the second time, you see. Philip is remembering how terrible it was to be fighting, and Mother and I are remembering how terrible it was to wait at home, wondering. The days when the telegrams came … People we loved, dead or wounded.’ Trish could see that there were tears in her eyes. ‘But at least, when it was all over, we thought it was finished for ever. The war to end wars, that’s what they said. And now …’
‘Ellis believes that it’s going to be like Barcelona, but worse.’ Trish’s reason for mentioning her father’s graphic description of the air raid in which so many civilians had died and he himself had been injured was not to increase her stepmother’s gloom but to remind her of the reason for the present upheaval in the household. ‘No one’s likely to drop a bomb on a hill in the middle of Oxfordshire. But the family we’re supposed to be taking will have come from somewhere near the docks. If they have to go back there and a bomb drops tonight, it will be all our fault.’
‘We’re not actually at war yet. Nothing will happen tonight.’
‘All the same – to send them back home when they’ll have to make the journey all over again to another billet is a bit mean, isn’t it? Mrs Barrett and I will settle them in. And then we’ll make sure that they keep to their own rooms.’
Mrs Barrett, who had joined the Hardies as a housekeeper, did not see it as part of her duties to wait on a family of evacuees, but she had willingly co-operated in the task of converting a scullery into a separate kitchen for them and the old servants’ hall into their sitting room.
‘Well, do what you think best. For a day or two I suppose we can manage, to give Miss Hoare time to find somewhere else. But tell her today that it can be only temporary.’
Trish hurried away, anxious not to be late. Flicking the reins to start Brown Bess on her way down the hill, she considered with approval that phrase ‘Do what you think best.’
Ever since her thirteenth birthday ten weeks earlier she had been considering how to make it clear that she was an adult member of the family now. The problem was that in a sense she had always been treated as an adult. Her lack of a mother meant that Ellis had never talked over her head in the usual grown-up manner, but even when she was quite small had discussed everything seriously with her and asked her opinion.
As for Grace, she had made it clear from the beginning that she knew nothing about children and found it easier to welcome her stepdaughter into the household on more or less equal terms. True, in the studio their relationship was one of teacher and pupil, but that was a matter of skill rather than age. True again, Grace was willing to play games – either seriously in front of the fire, or dashing about high-spiritedly in the open air; but these were occasions on which she seemed to become a child herself rather than condescending to someone who happened to be nearly thirty years her junior.
So there were no great issues on which to take a stand: no grounds for rebellion. On the day after her birthday Trish had taken a book into the drawing room, determined to share in the after-supper conversation of the adults instead of retreating to the desk in her bedroom to do her homework – only to find herself alone there, with the others having returned to their separate pursuits. Nobody ever told her that she must go to bed at a certain time, or stop reading and turn out the light. There was no question of anyone having to force her to eat up
her meals, because they were always delicious. She was expected to do her share of work in the house and garden, but that in itself was a kind of recognition that she was strong enough and sensible enough to be useful.
Even Rupert, who was twelve years older than she was, treated her almost as though she were a lady. When he called her by her full name or held doors open for her or asked her opinion on some question to do with Castlemere his voice was often teasing, but it was possible to hope that the teasing was itself a tease and that really he was behaving towards her as he thought she deserved.
Perhaps that was wishful thinking. Rupert was the most handsome man she had ever known, and the best companion, except for her father. All the other girls at school had pashes on one of the prefects or teachers, but Trish was in love with Rupert. No doubt that was just a pash as well: but whatever it was, it was powerful enough to make her blush and feel hot all over whenever he said something nice to her without putting the tease in his voice. But he was twenty-five. How could she expect him to wait for another four or five years without falling in love and getting married to someone else? And yet it did sometimes seem that he smiled at her as though she were seventeen already.
The only person who had ever treated her as a little girl when she was a little girl was Mrs Hardie, who found it easier than Grace to kiss and cuddle. But it had been Mrs Hardie who several months before her thirteenth birthday had told her that very soon now she would find that she was old enough to start having babies, although of course she mustn’t dream of doing so for a long time yet and until she was married. And when, not long afterwards, the first sign of adulthood arrived, it was Mrs Hardie who showed her, as woman to woman, how to cope with it. So even to her step-grandmother she was not a child any longer.
Grace had told her to do what she thought best. It was a message of trust, which must be taken seriously. And as Brown Bess turned out of the lodge gates and into The Riding, Trish came to the first truly adult decision of her life.
She had asked to go to boarding school. For all the wrong reasons, because she thought it would be fun. She knew that the request had been taken seriously, because when her father returned from photographing Castlemere, she had heard Grace telling him about the man who wanted to buy her Pregnant Woman statue. It had not occurred to Trish that she ought not to be eavesdropping – because she knew about the statue already – until her stepmother had gone on to say that she thought boarding school fees could be afforded if they were really wanted. And someone must have written off or made enquiries amongst friends, for the past week had seen the arrival of three large envelopes which were carried away from the breakfast table unopened;
It would not be fair to bring a family of evacuees back to Greystones and then disappear somewhere else herself. It was not at all clear to Trish what the war was going to mean, but if her father was going to be in France and if Philip was going to be ill and Grace and Mrs Hardie both worried, then she must stay at home to help. And perhaps after all she had not really wanted to go, but only to find out whether her wish would be properly considered or merely brushed aside.
This train of thought carried her to the hall, which was crowded with villagers and the children they had come to collect. Miss Hoare stood in the middle of the crush, clutching a sheaf of papers as she called out names and marked them off.
Trish made her way through the crowd to announce her arrival and be given her family; but another woman claimed Miss Hoare’s attention first.
‘I can’t be doing with this,’ she said indignantly. ‘Saving a little English kiddie from Hitler’s bombs, that’s one thing, but taking a nigger into my own home, that’s quite another.’
‘Not so loud,’ said Miss Hoare, flustered. ‘They’ll hear you.’
‘He knows what he is. I’ll take one of them like I promised. The white one. But not the other.’
‘They’re brothers.’ Miss Hoare spoke more firmly. ‘It would be quite wrong to separate them.’
‘Brothers! If those two are brothers, all I can say is that their mother’s no better than she ought to be.’
‘That may be so, but it’s not the children’s fault. Please keep your voice down, Mrs Goodwin.’
Trish looked with interest at the two boys who were the subject of this discussion, and who had certainly heard every word of it. It was true that nobody would take them for brothers. They were identically dressed, wearing long mackintoshes, with their gas masks, in cardboard boxes, slung across their chests by string. But the elder of the two was thin and sharp-featured. Beneath his straight brown hair, his face was long and unhealthily pale. The six-year-old who stood beside him, clutching his hand anxiously, was stockily built, with black curly hair. It was not fair, thought Trish, to call him a nigger, but it could not be denied that his skin was khaki. At any moment, she could tell, he was going to burst into tears.
There was no time to feel sorry for him, though, for Miss Hoare, looking round for some escape from the indignant Mrs Goodwin, had caught her eye. Trish announced her name and address and was led to the end of the hall, where two women in green uniforms were pouring cups of tea for the Londoners.
‘Here you are. The family for Greystones. Mrs Jackson and Jimmy and Florrie.’
A stout woman with a runny-nosed two-year-old on her knee set down her cup and looked Trish up and down.
‘About bleeding time,’ she said.
Trish, who had intended to say something welcoming, was taken aback and had to make an effort to be polite.
‘Can I carry some of your luggage?’ she asked.
Mrs Jackson pointed at two brown carrier bags.
‘Is that all?’ said Trish.
‘What d’you expect? Couple of bleeding cabin trunks?’ She began to lead the way out of the hall. Bending to pick up the bags as they passed, Trish became aware of a strong smell. She looked at the billeting officer in dismay.
‘It’ll be all right,’ said Miss Hoare hastily. ‘It’s bound to be an upheaval on both sides, but –’
‘They smell,’ said Trish.
‘Yes, I know, dear, but – Look, if you take young children out of their homes at half past six in the morning and move them half way across London and then put them on a train with no corridor there are bound to be one or two accidents.’
‘It’s her more than them.’
‘Just do your best to be sympathetic for the first day or two, there’s a good girl, and I’m sure you’ll settle down nicely together. Tell your mother –’
‘My mother’s got sickness in the house,’ said Trish. She had not meant to pass on the warning that any arrangement must be considered only temporary, but was realizing fast that Grace had seen the snags of the proposed arrangement better than she had. ‘She’ll be wanting a word with you in a day or two. But she didn’t want to let you down now.’
She turned to hurry after the Jacksons, who were standing outside and looking up and down the village street in bewilderment.
‘Where are the bleeding shops?’ demanded Mrs Jackson.
‘The village shop’s just round the corner there.’
‘Proper shops, I mean. Woolies, that sort of thing. And the cinema. Where’s that?’
‘In Oxford.’
‘That where we got off the train? That’s miles away.’
‘That makes it more of a treat. Here we are.’ She smiled at the two children in as friendly a way as she could manage. ‘Would you like to pat the pony on her nose? She’s called Brown Bess.’
The little boy backed away nervously, whilst Florrie buried her face in her mother’s skirt. As for Mrs Jackson, she was silenced for a moment by incredulity.
‘You’re expecting us to ride in a bleeding cart!’ she exclaimed at last.
‘You don’t have to,’ said Trish. ‘I brought it to carry your luggage and because I thought the children might like it. It’s got proper seats. But you can walk if you’d rather.’
‘Aren’t there any buses?’
‘Not
from the village to our house, no.’
With much effort and complaint the family was loaded aboard. More slowly than on the outward journey, Brown Bess began to plod uphill. As they turned in through the lodge gates, Trish pointed proudly. ‘That’s Greystones.’
The reaction was not what she had hoped for.
‘My Gawd! Miles from anywhere! What am I expected to do with myself all day in a place like that?’
‘Well, I suppose the same as you’d do anywhere, looking after children,’ said Trish, her patience wearing thin. ‘Cooking and cleaning and washing and mending, that sort of thing. You can help in the garden if you want to.’ She realized the unlikelihood of this. ‘But even if you don’t, we’ll give you fresh vegetables every day.’
‘Jimmy won’t eat no greens. Where’s the chip shop?’
‘I don’t know. We grow all our own potatoes. They’re much nicer than anything from a shop.’
‘I’m not stopping here,” said Mrs Jackson. ‘Turn this thing round and take me back.’
‘But you can’t –’
‘I can do what I bloody well like. I’d rather take my chance with Mr Hitler than be buried alive out here. Get us back there while there’s still time to get on a train.’
Just for a moment Trish hesitated. But Grace would be relieved and Miss Hoare would not care as long as she was not expected to find another billet for the family. ‘Come on then, Bess,’ she said, and pulled on the rein to turn round.
‘It wasn’t our fault,’ she said to Miss Hoare twenty minutes later. ‘We’d gone to ever such a lot of trouble. Making them a kitchen and somewhere to sit. And we were going to have a lovely supper. We killed a chicken specially, because we knew she wouldn’t want to start cooking straight after arriving. But all they want to eat is chips.’
The Hardie Inheritance Page 15
