by Jane Bailey
By now, the dissected liver – whose name was enough to put me off in the first place – is sprouting little tubes, which fill me with such revulsion I move on to the potatoes.
“Well, have you made any friends at school?” he asks me with his mouth full of liver.
“No, not yet. Well – there’s a bigger boy called Tommy. He’s my friend.”
They exchange glances. Aunty Joyce puts down her cutlery and I swear she flares her nostrils at Uncle Jack. He, in turn, points his fork at me: “Don’t go messing with Tommy. Do you hear me? Keep well away from that boy.”
“But why? He was kind to me. I –”
“There are no buts. You do as I say or you’ll find yourself in Queer Street!”
I never do find out where Queer Street is, but in my dreams it is always a bit like Weaver’s Terrace in Sheepcote.
They move on quickly to another topic and, although they occasionally lob me a question or fill me in on local information, most of the time I am able to assume my knitting club pose, and make myself completely disappear.
It seems there is a Lady Elmsleigh they do not approve of because her father would have done things differently, she doesn’t go to church and she smokes. She is a ‘naytheiss’ and worst of all she is a ‘soashliss’. Then there is a man called Mr Fairly who looks after the boys’ home, and he is a good, God-fearing man and a ‘lay’ preacher. Apparently Uncle Jack is going to become a ‘lay’ preacher at the church too (I imagine him brooding on a pile of hymn books), although before he married Aunty Joyce he used to be a ‘methodiss’. I am not sure if it was a downwards move marrying her or not, but he is now Church of England, because his family wouldn’t let him be a methodiss any more. Whenever things go a bit wrong or whenever someone gets upset, Uncle Jack towers up and quotes things Jesus would say in this situation.
One thing I soon learn about Uncle Jack anyhow is that he seems to know God really well. Sometimes he says things like “God wouldn’t turn his nose up at your liver and onion, even if it has gone cold now! No! God would have no qualms about cabbage!” or sometimes, if he is offered a flagon of cider by a neighbour, “God isn’t a prude! Oh no! God is a kind, friendly God, who’d enjoy a good pint along with the next man, as long as it wasn’t on a Sunday!”
Indeed, God and Jesus are ever present in the Shepherd household and seem to pop up in every room on a regular basis. And although I labour hard at Sunday school to work out the difference between the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, God and Jesus seem remarkably interchangeable at Weaver’s Cottage. Usually, if he can’t find a good quote from Jesus on any particular subject, Uncle Jack will attribute it to God.Thus God likes rice pudding, God enjoys sums, God does not think it a good idea for thirteen-year olds and eight-year olds to play together. God likes clean nails and God did not waste his time going to the pictures to see Betty Grable.
But the things that God finds most abhorrent are ‘the sins of the flesh’. They are talked about an awful lot by Uncle Jack, and for me they recall only the limp pink meat wrapped in bloodied paper for a ridiculous number of ration points.
Uncle Jack is really quite a jolly man, I conclude, after a week or so. He has a reassuring certainty about him. He is whatever he is with absolute conviction. He blunders his way through biblical references with such cheerful evangelism that he could convince even the most cynical eight-year-old. Most of all, he is a tonic after the dour, uncertain world that Aunty Joyce seems to inhabit.
Nonetheless, neither of them is quite ready for me. When the liver is cleared away (I help take the plates to the sink) they have ‘afters’. I can hardly believe my eyes when a giant wedge of cake is put on my plate.
“Facky Nell!” I say.
“What?”
“Facky Nell,” I repeat, a little more cautiously.
Uncle Jack is momentarily lost for words. Aunty Joyce stops cutting the cake mid-movement. I look from one to the other. Uncle Jack swallows hard.
“We do not,” (his voice starts as a whisper and gets louder – very loud) “I repeat not, use language like that in this house.”
“Like –?” I begin.
“Go to your room!”
I look wistfully at the wedge of cake, my eyes filling with tears and my firmly closed lips beginning to move this way and that on their own.
In my room I see the cupboard door in the corner and think I might hide in it, but it is locked. It was locked the last time I tried it too. I am so shut out of everything and utterly lost. I sink on to the cold bed and cry and cry until my face is sore with tears. Then I fall asleep under the moth-spattered walls.
You like tomaytoes
On Sunday morning I awake to the sound of church bells. I am in the single bed alone, despite having crept in with Aunty Joyce again last night.
The church seems very small to me, and very old. I sit between Aunty Joyce and Uncle Jack in the pews and copy their every move, although I can hardly take my eyes off the timber-beamed roof and the pretty-coloured glass in the windows. I kneel when they do, mouth prayers when they do, and open my mouth to sing, just like them. Red and violet are the colours that intrigue me most as they fall in chunks of light across the pews.They come from Jesus in the window: he is wearing a crown of thorns and rolling his eyes up to the sky. I must admit I feel a bit sorry for him, but frankly, it’s not what you want to see on a Sunday morning, is it? It could be a bit more cheerful. In the front pews are the boys from Heaven House and Mr Fairly with his wife. We sit directly behind Mr Fairly, because Uncle Jack insists we are as far forward as possible. Tommy turns round and smiles at me and I smile back. He turns round quickly. I’m sure Aunty Joyce sees, and I am very, very smug. At least she can see that someone likes me.
But Aunty Joyce seems to be smiling a lot more than usual, and even takes my hand as we walk down the aisle on the way out. The vicar, a thin unhealthy-looking man with brown teeth, greets everyone as they come out of church with utter indifference.
“Well done, Jack; well done, Joyce. I’m glad to see you managed to take one. Well done. We must all do our bit.” And he smiles at me, but half-heartedly, as though he really would rather be down the pub.
After matins and dinner comes Sunday school. This is a group of seventy or eighty children led by Miss Didbury at one end of the village hall. I notice Miss Didbury is the same buzzard-eyed lady as the billeting officer. It is strange to return to the hall where I waited to be chosen and where I have knitted for England.
We kick off with more hymns I don’t know, because I don’t know any hymns. Then we sing “… Praise from the great and jelly ghost …” I will get the hang of that one. It’s a laugh.
We’re divided into groups, each taught by an assistant: an older girl or boy recently graduated from Sunday school. I am with Violet. We listen to stories about Jesus and Violet shows pictures of him. He had pale brown hair, a brown beard and blue eyes. He wore satin robes and sometimes rode a donkey. Jesus came from another country. Does anyone know where Jews came from, wonders Violet? I do. I know people in London who are Jews. They come from Whitechapel and they go to a synagogue. None of the ones I know have blue eyes, so I tell them. Everyone laughs because of my accent. I laugh too because I think maybe I’m being funny.
Violet smiles nervously. “You don’t go to a synagogue, do you, Kitty?”
“No.”
“You go to church, then?”
“Nope.”
More laughs.
“She’s a vacuee, Violet. She don’t know what church is, do ya?”
“They all got nits in London, so don’t sit too close!”
“They don’t speak proper up there.”
“They don’t read nor nothink.”
My eyes begin to sting and I fold my lips to stop them from wobbling. Violet hushes the children firmly and finds an excuse to give me a picture of a donkey to stick into my Life of Our Lord book. Then we all draw pictures of what God gives us each day, sing another round of ‘Jelly Ghost’ with Miss Didbury,
and go home or to ‘cadets’.
On the way back I see Tommy waiting by the church gate. I put my hand to my mouth, because I forgot to get him my shrapnel. As I approach he takes his hands out of his pockets and moves towards me.
“Yes?”
“I was wondering … I’m going up Lady Elmsleigh’s after tea to see the Americans.They got tents everywhere and lorries up there an’ all. Wanna come?”
“Okay,” I say.
“Meet me at the end of the path – to Heaven House.”
“Righto!”
I march on homewards, pleased as punch and just a little bit smug again.
Running down the lane I can hardly believe Tommy is there, waiting for me like he said. He is so grown-up and handsome I can’t help thinking he’s waiting for someone else.
“Hi there!” he smiles as I come panting up to him.
“Hi!”
I am overwhelmed by his sad brown eyes and his earnest face. I hand him a small canvas sack, and when he has looked inside he places a loud exaggerated kiss on the top of my hair ribbon.
“I never seen so much shrapnel!”
“It’s everywhere in London.” I try to be cool, but I’m reeling from the kiss. “Our home got blown to bits.”
“Never!”
“It did. We had to go an’ live with our Aunty Vi, but then Mum had twins and Aunty Vi had a … nerviss breakdown, so Mum went to work in a munitions factory in Somerset only they don’t take children only children under two in the crèche … so … I had to come here.”
I pretend to look at the hedgerows as we walk along, but really I am taking in his manly brow and jaw, and his trumpet ears and downy soft cheeks which are still those of a child. His hair is thick and dark and too long on top, and he has a few freckles on his nose that I haven’t noticed before.
“You didn’t tell no one you were meeting me, did you?” he asks.
“No – why?”
“Best not to, that’s all.”
I don’t want to upset him, but I want to know what’s going on.
“Don’t they like you, then, Aunty Joyce and Uncle Jack?”
“Not much.”
I frown, and say the first stupid thing that comes into my head.
“Not because you’re from the boys’ home, is it?”
He gives a breath of a laugh.
“No. No, far from it. They’d love to show their merciful charity to a poor orphan. Looks good in church.”
I hate these mysteries.
“So –”
“Soon as I get out of school I’m joining the RAF and then you won’t have no more bombing in London, you mark my words.”
“You can’t, you won’t be old enough.” He has changed the subject and taken me with him.
“I can lie about my age. I’m fourteen in March, an’ I’m leaving school then. Any road, I’ve got a way in.”
“How do you mean?”
“Jonathan Crocker, right, he went to school here an’ he’s a fighter pilot. He come back last year for a visit an’ he told me he’d take me up in his plane next time he comes. Jonathan Crocker. He’s going to get me in.”
“Oh!” I’m fairly certain Tommy can look after himself, but I’ve seen planes collide. “I hope you don’t get shot down.”
“I won’t,” he says very seriously. “Though I don’t s’pose anyone’d care if I did.”
“I would.”
He beams. He has lovely teeth. “You’re the only person who’s ever said that,” and he puts his hand on my shoulder like a big brother. Or a sweetheart, perhaps. Well, I can dream.
Lady Elmsleigh’s big house has become the focus of attention this week. Not long before my arrival some thirty tanks and twenty lorries parked up around her estate and tents were put up in the grounds. Young American soldiers hang about in twos and threes, roaming the fields aimlessly, starting up their lorry engines, turning them off. They offer us rides, give us Lucky Strikes and gum and chocolate, and all for the pleasure of our company. They seem bored and homesick, and perhaps because of this they seem more approachable than our own soldiers, who we hardly ever see except on leave.
They seem less formal even than the Home Guard, who take everything a bit seriously. These Americans play cards with us, wrestle with the boys, and take the clips from their pistols so we can play with them. It’s the closest any of us has been to an army of soldiers, and we love it.
Some of the kids become errand runners for them, and we’re all happy as Larry to bring them fresh bread or eggs in exchange for the glamour of their company. We start to loiter after school, listening to stories of faraway places called Maine and Utah told in film-star voices. The stories are rarely about themselves, and are based on whatever we want to hear: cowboys, Indians, Hollywood. When we do ask them about themselves they turn out to be mostly from farms and miss their mothers. A few of them have girlfriends, and I love to ply them with questions about their romances. The girls have names like Loretta and Dolores that conjure up such beauties I hardly dare look at the solid, dumpy girls they show me in their pocket photos.
Aunty Joyce and Uncle Jack often guess I’m up there with the other kids, but I don’t let on I’m with Tommy. They’re so busy getting huffy about Lady Elmsleigh that it doesn’t dawn on them.
Aunty Joyce is big in the WVS, you see. She spearheaded working lunches for land girls and prisoners of war, organizing mobile soup kitchens from local milk carts. She was the driving force (believe it or not) behind the weekly ‘knit for victory’ sessions at the village hall.
The leader of the WVS, however, is Lady Elmsleigh, herself a local champion of ways to support the war effort. There is a curious relationship between Lady Elmsleigh and Aunty Joyce, because of course Lady Elmsleigh does not believe in God. Uncle Jack is intensely suspicious of her, certain that she is a bad influence on the village. She is a ‘soashliss’ and a ‘naytheeiss’ and she smokes cigarettes.
When her father Lord Elmsleigh was alive, the whole village voted along with the government because he was a Tory MP. Now the whole village seems soashliss. That’s how it is and that’s how you always choose your party here. Fair enough. But there is talk that one of her brothers died fighting for the ‘communiss’ in Spain. Uncle Jack finds this all highly dodgy.
There is widespread sympathy for her, though, because her husband died in the Great War, her eldest son was shot down over Germany, and her second son is missing, presumed dead. What’s more she holds regular fêtes for the whole village and parties for evacuees, orphans and war-workers, where she lets children trample freely on her flower beds and grown-ups gawp at her posh rugs and blue-patterned porcelain lavatory bowls. It is also rumoured – although no one can know for sure except the grocer, and he is sworn to secrecy – that it is she who has anonymously paid off all the outstanding debts ‘on tab’ of the poorest families in Sheepcote. It is the anonymity of her kindness that clinched it for her with most of the villagers. For everyone knows that if they had performed such a generous act they would have wanted to bask in its glory, although Uncle Jack proclaims it “only what you’d expect from the gentry”.
As for smoking, he tries to muster up some moral indignation on the subject, but the truth is he loves his pipe and it is a tricky one for him. Nonetheless, cigarettes are a sign of decadence and gluttony in these times. It simply isn’t right and proper that any woman should be seen smoking when our boys on the front line are going short of vital supplies. Everyone knows you should leave cigarettes for the men.
What he doesn’t know is that the vicar and his wife are addicted to tobacco, and that their entire black market supply comes from Lady Elmsleigh. I heard it at knitting group. Uncle Jack thinks the frantic expressions exchanged between the Reverend Mr Harrison and Lady Elmsleigh are caused by heated debates about the existence of God, and not the surreptitious delivery of Players cork-tipped to the holy pocket.
As for Americans, they are just bad news all round as far as Uncle Jack’s concerned.
I don’t know what he bases this on, but I’ve heard a few interesting things whilst turning out socks and mittens. Baggie Aggie reckons some poor girls are so hard up they’re selling themselves to the Americans at the air base down the road, although they talk in such funny nods and whispers sometimes at the Sheepcote Women’s Voluntary Service that I never do work out who exactly bought them and where they put them. One thing is certain, the Americans up at Lady Elmsleigh’s have not bought any. They’re too busy mooching over their dumpy girlfriends, their mums’ meat pies or their ol’ farm dogs.
At any rate, when Uncle Jack and Aunty Joyce ask where I’ve been they are so bent on grunting over Lady Elmsleigh and Americans they forget to ask who I went with.
Then one day, in early June, they all disappear: the Americans, the tanks, the lorries, the tents. We go to see them after school and they have gone, leaving only a debris of tin cans, bald grass and tyre marks. We never see any of them again, although one or two of them leave behind more enduring mementoes which we discover only later.They quite literally put life into the village, then they go and lose theirs in two feet of sea water on a foreign beach.
Shagging
People say there’s another huge wave of evacuees leaving London, and I’m lucky to have a place already. But at home with the Shepherds I still don’t feel very at home. Aunty Joyce seems to scrub everything in my path with carbolic soap and makes me wash my hands so many times a day that calluses are beginning to appear on my knuckles. In fairness, Aunty Joyce also seems to wash herself a lot. An awful lot, as a matter of fact.
Another thing that’s odd is that there seems to be an intruder in the house, and it’s not me. I’ve got used to saying my prayers and saying grace, but I can’t stand God following me about everywhere. Uncle Jack goes on and on about him like he’s an old mate, but an old mate that I will never get to meet, so there. Everything that happens is an opportunity for a little extract from the Bible. I’ve never read the Bible, but I can’t see what all the fuss is about. They all live in places with funny names where they drink wine instead of beer and wear sandals and go about on donkeys and camels saying ‘thee’ and ‘thou art’ to each other for no earthly reason. And there are no pictures in it. Not even black and white. I can’t see the point. It makes Uncle Jack feel important, though. (I’m sure he can’t have read it all because he sometimes has trouble with words in the Gloucestershire Echo.) He seems to be in some kind of competition with Mr Fairly Himself, who is also big on biblical references.
