Orphans of War

by Leah Fleming

  But now Plum was looking to her own life and love for a change. A man like Steve was such an unexpected bonus. She’d follow him to the ends of the earth and back. If only Maddy could find her match then she’d rest content.

  She’d kept all those postcards from the Festival Exhibition, pictures of the Barbara Hepworth sculptures, in particular; those two figurines in harmony called Contrapuntal. She’d never forgotten the impact it had made on her. Life was a balancing act, and she’d finally found her other half in Stephen.

  Maddy must make her own decisions about Brooklyn. It was a relief to be handing it over in one piece. It had felt like a burden for so long. Now, it was Maddy’s turn to sort things out. She would have bags of energy to face this challenge.

  Maddy rode out to the Ridge along the old Green Road, the drovers’ road, and she had gates to open. It was frosty but still safe enough for the horse. She needed to think out everything after the shock of Plum’s coming desertion.

  Christmas was everything she hoped for, but it was tinged round the edges with panic every time she thought of the Armitages setting sail for a new life. Their news had kept her awake until dawn, worrying about how to sort out Brooklyn. She was angry at first, feeling dumped with the responsibility of it all, but she was a grown-up now, not a child. Time to face up to her duties.

  Reluctantly she had discussed it over drinks at The Vicarage with their local solicitor, Barney Andrews, an earnest young man in tweeds, smoking a pipe, who listened intently and suggested they met in his offices over the Yorkshire Penny Bank to discuss it further in the New Year.

  Maddy was in no mood for details. She wanted to shove it all to the back of her head, for her problems to just disappear. There was only one quick, easy solution and that was to sell the property.

  ‘There’s a big demand for gentleman’s residences and Brooklyn’s just the right size. Or we could sell it as a going concern, as a potential hotel or guesthouse. The Old Vic is ripe for development too. The market is buoyant after years of austerity and gloom. You’re a very lucky girl!’

  She’d flashed her steely eyes at him. He was not a year or two older than her. ‘Thank you, young man,’ she replied.

  He’d blushed at the rebuke. ‘You don’t want to sell, do you?’

  ‘Not if I can help it, but I’m not a hotelier and I can’t live there like Lady Muck on my own. It’ll have to earn its keep.’ There had to be a way, but Barney hadn’t come up with anything sensible.

  It was market day in Sowerthwaite and the stalls filled the High Street, selling ironmongery, leather bags, fresh fish, toffees, nighties flapping from poles, fent bolts of cotton and woollen cloth, a watch repairer, fresh vegetables and fruit, shoppers gathering down the aisles, meeting up in cafés for hot tea and gossip. There was a bustle of sheep on their way to the pens, drovers bringing cattle for auction and farmers’ wives setting up booths to sell their butter and cheese. Maddy bought a copy of the local Gazette and the Manchester Guardian and retired to Polly’s Kettle Tearoom to read them in peace.

  The Gazette was full of all the Christmas celebrations and New Year revels, country farming prices, balls, and grumbles about the upkeep of highways and gaslights flickering in the street.

  In contrast, the Guardian was full of accounts of refugees pouring into the country from Europe with harrowing tales of escape. They were filling the displaced persons camps. Tidworth and Cannock, old prisoner-of-war camps, were turned over to hundreds of refugees who had nowhere to stay. The faces of women, looking exhausted and drawn, and holding terrified children, peered at her out of the paper. Here, they were all full of Christmas cheer, cosy, safe, warm in this Yorkshire pocket of peace and tranquillity. It wasn’t right.

  Maddy walked the long way home through the narrow alleyways, skirting the high stone walls until she found the gates to the Old Vic. There was the familiar figure of the beech tree, its arms outstretched, beckoning as it had done so many times when she was a kid.

  She scrambled up the fraying rope ladder with care and plonked herself down on the boards of the tree house; her thinking house, she’d called it. It was one of those crisp winter mornings when the light was clear and chilly. The sky was blue and the smell of coal fires and wood smoke drifted from the houses nearby, the washing lines limp as there was no wind. The air was crisp on her cheeks.

  Down the stone steps lay the Old Vic, empty, shuttered, damp and deserted. Once it had thronged with noisy kids, rows of smalls hanging on the line, Enid hanging out of the window, having a tantrum, and Plum gathering them up in a crocodile line as they walked reluctantly to Sunday school or to see the welfare nurse. Was it is a whole lifetime ago that it welcomed in refugees of war and terror and despair?

  Then it came to her in a flash, and she grinned and clambered down from the tree house. She ran back down to the marketplace, to Barney’s office, to a secretary who looked up startled at her flushed cheeks.

  ‘Can I see him? Has he got another client in?’

  ‘No, it’s time for his coffee and biscuits,’ the secretary said, plonking a tray on the desk.

  ‘Give them to me, Miss Bird. I’ll take it in,’ Maddy offered, pushing her way through the door.

  ‘Barney! It’s Maddy Belfield, and I’ve had a wonderful idea!’

  ‘Darling, you’re not serious! You can’t possibly take on all those people, these strangers, who don’t speak English?’

  Plum had never seen Maddy so excited, bursting with plans to turn the empty Old Vic into a hostel for Hungarian refugees.

  ‘You will need planning permission. It’s a crazy idea.’

  ‘No, it’s not. The camps are bursting at the seams. There’s a local appeal going in Yorkshire. I’ve been on to them. If the Vic was good enough for evacuee children, it’ll do for adults with families, and there’s the Brooklyn too.’

  ‘Oh, no! Maddy, think about it. What does Barney say?’

  ‘He does what he’s told. It’s my money, and my contribution. There will be grants and expenses. It’s about time Sowerthwaite woke up to what’s happening in the world.’

  ‘You’ll need to be careful. There’s bound to be a protest in the High Street. Neighbours don’t like off-comers, strangers on their doorsteps. They don’t understand,’ Plum tried to argue, but it was no use.

  ‘Oh, stuff the neighbours! It can’t be any worse than when the vaccies came to town. People have heard the news and the Churches will give a hand.’ Maddy gave her one of those hard stubborn Belfield glares. There was no shifting her.

  ‘I hope you know what you’re taking on.’

  ‘You sound just like Grandma Pleasance. I bet she gave you a hard time when you took us all on?’

  ‘She did!’ Plum laughed. ‘I must be getting old, as I can only see all the dangers. How appalling of me.’

  ‘You have to admit it’s a great idea.’

  ‘It’s a wonderful, kind, and a generous act, and I’m proud of you…Where’s the buckets then? I suppose you want me to scrub the floor before I leave?’

  ‘Now you’re talking! The Vim is in the cupboard. It’s going to be a busy afternoon.’

  Plum felt proud of Maddy, seeing her so focused, her chin stuck out against all authorities. How she reminded her of her own battle to use the Old Vic all those years ago. Now she could pack with less of a heavy heart, knowing Maddy was occupied with a new challenge, eating like a horse and full of plans. If only she had someone to share it with. Perhaps in time Barney would be her consort. She pictured them going down the aisle and then she paused. Perhaps not…

  ‘I hope you realise just what you’re taking on, Miss Belfield, in offering your property for a hostel. Most of them don’t speak any English. There won’t be much work for them in the district. It’s not good for them to live off charity,’ said the billeting officer from the council, who sat across the mahogany desk, examining Maddy’s application with a sniff.

  ‘I’ve made enquiries. There’s plenty of summer farm work and domestic
work. There’s the paper mill, and cotton and woollen mills close by. I’m sure we can find them all work,’ she replied, waving her own list of arguments towards him.

  ‘These are educated young people, not manual workers on the whole, but students and professionals with children. They’ve had a rough time and many thought they were going to America, not Britain. Have you thought about that?’

  ‘Yes, I am aware of all this, Mr Potter, but we have a tradition of taking in people at the Brooklyn. My aunt, as you may recall, kept evacuees in the Old Vic for the duration of the war. I myself know what it’s like to lose my family and home and be uprooted.’ She gave him the famous Belfield intense glare.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course, Miss Belfield. Your aunt gave us sterling service. It is a pity she’s not available to chaperone this venture, though,’ he countered.

  ‘Why should I need a chaperone? I do have some staff of my own. The vicar will vouch for my respectability.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean to suggest…but you are very young to take this upon yourself.’ Mr Potter flushed, looking at the floor, not at her.

  ‘Look, do you want this offer of accomodation or not?’ Maddy snapped, having no patience with ditherers.

  ‘If there are no local objections, I’m sure we will be able to come to an arrangement.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘We mustn’t rush these matters, Miss Belfield.’

  ‘Tell that to the poor sods who are camped in Butlin’s like POWs!’ she replied, sensing old Potter could be worn down by her persistence.

  In the months that followed Plum’s departure, Maddy had no time to bemoan her decision, but wondered what she’d let herself in for. There was the place to clean out, decorate, and rooms to furnish with cots and beds, which she begged and borrowed from sympathetic parishioners. There was the kitchen to service, the wash house and the copper boiler to set up, the stove to decoking. It was all very shabby, but once the fires were lit the rooms were homely enough.

  The first Hungarian couple who came were Ernst and Elisabetta, with a small boy, Ferenc, who had such wonderful golden curls that he stopped the traffic on market day. Then there were Elsa and Anna, young sisters who crossed the border with just the clothes they stood up in.

  The local authority insisted that they must be found work in mills, factories or domestic service. Every room was filled, and the attic bedrooms bursting with smoke and the chatter of Hungarian late into the night.

  Soon, the Brooklyn piano was used to practice by a music student called Zoltan and his girlfriend, Maria, who sang haunting folk songs that made everyone cry. A man from Skipton came up to teach English and the young children were signed in to school, just like the evacuees had been. There were problems, fights, misunderstandings, complaints, but they soon settled down. Every time there was a theft in town the police were called to the Old Vic as routine, but by the summer of 1957 the Hungarians were no longer a novelty around the town.

  Maddy had learned to be patient, polite and political to get what she needed for her refugees, any way she could. She wrote to Raoul Henry, begging for support, and he sent bales of materials so that her girls were the best dressed in town and sold skirts and dresses to raise funds.

  Some stayed only a week or so, but others stayed for months. Some were so shocked and silent and sullen that she thought she’d never get through the barrier that was round them like a bell jar.

  Working in the old kitchen garden provided an interest. They tried to grow strange crops of peppers and vegetables, for variety and to remind them of home, which flummoxed Mr Hill, who was supervising their efforts. It gave some of the young men a purpose to their days, whilst others took to walking the hills in groups. Some got drunk in the pubs and made a nuisance of themselves, others soon latched on to local girls and started courting, but there was one girl who never mixed with the others and who seemed to go through the motions of living. She snapped at the girls in the kitchen and they left her alone. No one could get through to her, her English was poor, and her silence off-putting.

  Maddy took her to the Brooklyn and away from the chatter of the Old Vic, sensing she needed to be away from the incessant company of the other refugees. On her first visit she stared at the house in disbelief.

  ‘This is for you?’

  Maddy nodded, ushering her through the door. Ava walked around each room, examining the paintings, the books, the photographs, shaking her head. ‘It is not all for you?’

  ‘And you and my friends.’

  The girl went to her room and stayed there until the next morning. It was not going to be easy. Maddy knocked on the door in her jodhpurs and old jumper, encouraging Ava into the kitchen to eat. The girl followed her to the stables, fearful at first until she saw old Monty, his head half out of the door, eager to get some exercise.

  Ava watched as Maddy saddled up and followed her out onto the hill track at a distance. Later, she watched how Monty was groomed and the next day she helped muck out and groom him and finally she smiled. Ava had found a friend.

  There was something between the old horse and the girl that touched Maddy, a kinship and empathy she’d never seen before. Ava kept herself to herself, but with Monty she jabbered away, telling him all her secrets. Maddy was happy to leave him to melt the ice around the girl’s heart.

  There were a few refugees she was glad to see the back of–the ones who sneered at Brooklyn Hall as bourgeois and extravagant, but who wolfed down everything on offer without even a thank you.

  The Gazette came and did a short article on the new occupant of Brooklyn Hall, and the Yorkshire Post picked up the idea and ran a feature on Madeleine, the ex-mannequin who single-handedly restored the hostel. It was all exaggerated nonsense and she hardly dared put her head over the doorstep, being a five-minute celebrity. But she received letters of congratulations with cheques enclosed and encouragement, as well as terrible condemnation and hateful abuse.

  One fateful morning she went into the stable and found Monty in a terrible state, fitting, sweating and in need of emergency treatment. Anxiously she and Ava sat trying to calm the stricken beast, listening for the vet’s wagon on the gravel.

  When he came there was nothing he could do. Monty was suffering. He shook his head, ordered them out and shot the horse.

  It was all so quick, so sudden, so unexpected. Maddy stood shivering but it was Ava who was inconsolable, shaking, screaming, running into the stable. ‘No! No! You…No!’ She threw herself at the startled vet in fury

  But Maddy couldn’t console her or understand. In desperation she called in Zoltan, who could interpret her words. He sat with Ava, trying to translate why she was so distraught.

  ‘She was in Budapest,’ he said. ‘The soldiers take her husband and shot him against the wall. Just like that…into the head, no mercy, no justice. Bang and he is gone.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Maddy sat holding Ava, who was weeping and gesticulating wildly, Zoltan trying to keep up with her.

  ‘She take baby and run away with other students down to the safe border. They walk many miles and her milk go but she find powder, but then baby is sick. There is no doctor and she carried him across into Austria in the woollen shawl but baby didn’t move. It was sick.’ He paused looking up at her, crying.

  ‘I was there. I saw too. There was a little one wrapped in blue woollen shawl. We passed it down the line, one by one with the message he must be buried on Hungarian soil, like his father. But she not know where he is buried…’

  Maddy cried. There were no words to offer comfort. She too had a baby who died that had no known grave. Where was little Dieter?

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ was all she could say. ‘Tell Ava I too have suffered, but not like that.’

  They had all suffered loss because of the war but now this. ‘Thanks for translating, Zoltan. Monty was my friend but he’d had a good life. Poor Ava’s husband never got that chance. Perhaps one day I can teach Ava to ride another horse, but not yet.’

  Ava look
ed up, calmer, and held out her hand. The glass bell jar was shattered; Monty had seen to that. Now Ava could start living again, but this tragedy and loss stirred up all Maddy’s own unexpressed guilt and grief again. She must find out about her own little baby. This mystery had gone on too long. Only when she heard the truth from Gloria would she ever start to live again.

  21

  Gloria was sitting at a breakfast bar trying to think up a present for Greg, when she saw the article in the Yorkshire Post.

  ‘Look at this! You read it…Maddy’s got herself in the news. She’s opened up the Old Vic for refugees…look,’ she said.

  Greg was shoving toast in his mouth, whilst searching for his car keys. ‘No time,’ he said. ‘Can’t stop…must dash. I’ll be late tonight. We’ve got a new site to view…Bye, Bebe!’ He pecked his little daughter on the cheek and rushed out of the back door into the double garage.

  Gloria slammed down the morning paper with a sigh. Once she’d taken Bebe to school, that would be her whole day until hometime. She looked around her kitchen with satisfaction. It had fitted cupboards and Formica surfaces, Marley tiles on the floor and a built-in washing machine, a pantry stocked with tins of meat, fruit and salmon. It was like something out of Ideal Home.

  ‘Come on, Bebe,’ she called to the little girl with a mop of red curls, sitting in her expensive green school uniform. ‘Where’s your panama hat?’ It was lovely to see the child looking so smart.

  ‘I’ve got a tummy ache, Mummy. Do I have to go to school?’

  ‘Again? Have you been to the toilet?’ Gloria ignored Bebe’s usual morning complaints. ‘Hurry up!’

  Gloria was the only wife in Sunnyside Drive to have her own car, a Triumph Herald with an open top, and a double garage. They had the corner plot with an acre of garden, an ornamental pond with a heron statue, a big swing and slide for Bebe, and a huge rockery in the front garden that Mr Taylor, the gardener, kept up to scratch.