by Jane Bailey
The small crowd cheers and putters out a dry clap as she clambers into the back of the cart (‘Sheepcote Dairy: Fresh Every Day’) assisted by two far prettier maids-in-waiting with wild flowers woven in their hair.
At first the horse fails to move and the two lines of children, primed for movement in a forward direction, collide with each other and skip back to their places. A concertina, which has started up, fizzles out. Miss Miller looks unperturbed and rallies them all again, trying to achieve two lines from a clump of giggling children now all practising their own steps on the spot.
As the cart moves off, the children start a ranting step behind it, clattering cymbals and triangles, but soon lapse into running, skipping, and movements all their own. The queen is now revealed in her full splendour, her fat, white-socked feet in brown sandals and her knees squatly apart. It is Betty Chudd. When we all reach the village green Mr Marsh stops the cart and Boxer lifts his tail and does a giant dollop of poo. The dancing children come to a halt and chant, “We come to greet you, O Queen of the May!” and watch as she steps down from the cart, assisted by her two pretty maids. The children skip on to take positions around the maypole, while the queen steps in the horse dung.
“Ah, fuckit!” she cries.
Miss Miller urgently orders some music, and eight children skip around the maypole at a colossal speed to a lone concertina. The pole lists violently to right and left, and the ribbons are woven into an impossible tangle. We all roll about giggling, and even Boss Harry has to cover his face. Babs and I laugh so much we almost cry.
* * *
It is a day when I swell with pride for my little village, and the day when I learn I must leave.
When I get home for dinner (blossom stuck all over the place in my hair and in my cardigan buttonholes), I find Aunty Joyce and Uncle Jack in the back garden, hugging. She is pink-faced with crying, and he seems to be almost in tears too. I catch words like ‘poor thing’ and ‘not fair’ and ‘Burma’. Or else it could be ‘Birmingham’. Burma and Birmingham are pretty interchangeable to me, and it is not until much later that it makes any sense.
When they see me, they hurry in.
“We had a letter today,” says Uncle Jack. “From your mother.”
I notice an opened letter on the green baize tablecloth, and reach out for it. Aunty Joyce snatches it away and puts it high up on the dresser.
“Yes … you’re going home! Your mother’s coming next week – a week tomorrow!” There is a fake breeziness about her tone, and I vainly take this to mean that she doesn’t really want me to go. “Aren’t you pleased?”
The truth is, I’m not sure if I am. After all this longing for it, I’m not sure where home is now. There is only a pile of rubble waiting for us in London. And all my friends are here. All except Tommy.
“Is Dad coming home too?”
Aunty Joyce swallows hard and glances at Uncle Jack. “You’ll have to ask your mother about that, poppet.”
So I’m a poppet, now. I should have guessed something was up.
“How are we going to get there? By train?”
Uncle Jack reaches out his big brown hand and wraps it over mine. “First Class. I’ll make sure of it.”
* * *
Over the next few days everyone starts to save up their sugar rations. There is a feverish excitement about the end of the war. They are saying it down the grocer’s, at knitting group, at school. The war is as good as over. But I’m not sure what to get excited about. I’ve never known life without ‘the war’ so I can’t picture what it will be like. It seems that something huge is about to happen – something like a volcanic eruption or a tornado – but no one can tell me exactly what. The war will be over and there will be jelly to eat and street parties, and we’ll all go back home to live in houses that aren’t there. Babs says the shops will be full of sweets and ladies will wear lace again. But I think she says this to cheer herself up, because, unlike the rest of us, she can’t look forward to seeing her parents again. Lots of the evacuees say they don’t want to go home. You can see a sort of panic in some of them at the thought that lives they had grown used to will suddenly be turned upside down. All over again.
There is an air of holiday about school on Monday. Outside the smell of baking and warm sugar fills the air. Girls and boys have replaced their shoelaces with red, white and blue tape; anything remotely like a Union Jack has been hung from the ceilings; Boss Harry announces every hour that the news of victory is due in the next hour. We are still waiting when we go home, clutching our hastily drawn paper flags down by our sides.
In the evening the wireless tells us that the Germans have surrendered to the Allies, but that it will not officially be VE day until tomorrow. By pub closing time it is clear that a group of soldiers and airmen stationed nearby have decided to celebrate anyway. A couple of home-made explosives go off. A few rowdy whoops and shouts can be heard right up the lane well into the early hours. But most of us wait until Tuesday, when the cakes have cooled down, the toffee is rock hard and the jellies are well and truly set.
We wake up to the sound of a bugle – Mr Tugwell again, competing with the dawn chorus. By breakfast time the streets are already buzzing, and Aunty Joyce and I add an urgency to our colouring as we finish some home-made bunting. Even then, we wait until eleven when Uncle Jack finishes his shift.
We are standing by the front door, the three of us laden with baked goodies, when Uncle Jack turns to Aunty Joyce and says, “Go and put your best dress on – the one with the pink flowers.”
She looks at him quizzically.
“G’won!” he says, without smiling. “Quick though.”
She looks like a schoolgirl who has just won a prize, and she scampers upstairs to change.
The street party must be like millions all over the country: makeshift tables all along the green outside the pub; all the WVS women running about with more cakes and sweet stuff than any of us could dream of; men who should be working bringing booze out of the pub; servicemen still drunk from the night before; someone hammering out all the sentimental tunes they can think of on the pub piano with half the village joining in.
At three o’clock a portable wireless is brought out and turned up very loud, so that we all hear the official announcement. Then all hell breaks loose. Someone starts up a human chain that snakes around the tables, someone else wheels the piano out of the pub and starts to play ‘Roll Out the Barrel’, moving seamlessly into ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’ and ‘Tipperary’.
The entire village seems to have joined in. I’m clutching on to Babs (who’s dressed as Maid Marian for a fancy dress competition) and she’s clutching on to Neville Adlard (who’s miraculously dressed as Robin Hood – so she’s happy). Behind me a Norwegian refugee is holding my waist and singing at the top of his voice. Will Capper climbs on to the last war memorial and waves a flag and a bottle of beer. Then everyone starts linking arms and swaying back and forth to ‘Bless ’Em All.’
I notice Uncle Jack standing with his arms folded, looking on disapprovingly. Aunty Joyce is trying to tidy the mess on the tables, and is pushing chairs in so that no one will fall over.
Suddenly a jeep full of land girls arrives, all dressed in their civvies.The piano changes to ‘In the Mood’, a couple of trumpets join in, and every girl is grabbed by a man as soon as she sets foot on the road.
Then the music stops mid-tune.
First the piano, then the wind section, which has grown to the size of a small rhythm band. Everyone looks about. Through the noises of bewilderment some shouting penetrates.
“Stop! Stop! Stop!” It is Uncle Jack. “This is a disgrace! Listen to yourselves!” People go quiet to listen. I shrink into my dance chain. For a moment I can’t bear anyone to know that he is in any way connected to me. “There are plenty of people in this village who have lost loved ones – some only recently – and here you all are making a rowdy mockery of their suffering. This is meant to be a thanksgiving for victory, not a ri
ot! Have you no shame? Have you no respect? You might as well dance on their graves!”
There is a split second of total confusion, and then Mrs Marsh pipes up: “I’ve lost two sons in this war, Mr Shepherd – and maybe three! I respect what you’re saying, and it’s very good of you to think of us, but I say, let’s thank God no more of our young men will be killed now! Let’s have a bit of joy for once! All these young people fought the same war as my sons and they deserve it! We all deserve it!” She turns to the piano. “Come on! Get playing!”
Well! He doesn’t know which way to turn. I wriggle out of my dance chain and go to him. Aunty Joyce is there too, looking awkward. I feel suddenly sorry for Uncle Jack. I’m sure it was people like Mrs Marsh he was trying to protect, and now he feels a right Charlie. I take his hand and oddly he looks down at me as if he might cry.
“Go on,” I say, putting his hand on Aunty Joyce’s pink-flowered waist, “you heard what she said!”
I start to push them around to the music, which is now ‘When April Showers …’, and they begrudgingly shuffle around with me holding on. A couple of bystanders cheer, and when it comes to “It isn’t raining rain, you know …” I look directly at Aunty Joyce, and she smiles, and we both sing “It’s raining violets!” and everyone else shouts it out too.
I fondly imagine that the little red rings around Uncle Jack’s eyes are on account of how moved he is that I have fixed things for him and Aunty Joyce, and I feel dead pleased with myself. Are those tears glistening in the lower lids? – Yes, they are. He is looking at me as if he is about to burst with love, and it is all because of me.
Then I leave them, and watch them holding on to each other, swaying gently in an afternoon that reeks of beer and spring and new beginnings.
Wish me luck as you wave
me goodbye
Aunty Joyce is in such a flap, tearing through the rooms and rebuking herself for not having packed everything earlier.
“Just look at all this I’ve got to do! They’ll be here straight after dinner and it’s nearly eleven now! It’s all my fault – I should’ve sorted this out last week!”
I try to point out that then I wouldn’t have had anything to wear, but she is intent on bearing the full burden of guilt for it and nothing will stop her. Since I came without a bag or suitcase, I do not have one to leave with. But my belongings seem to have multiplied tenfold. Aunty Joyce wraps all my woollens in brown paper and string, and marks the parcel “Kitty Green, Paddington station”. Since there are only soft cardigans to support the paper, her pencil goes right through and she starts to fret even more. “Now I’ve broken the ruddy paper! What am I going to do now?”
Uncle Jack comes through the door after his night shift and does not even tell her off for bad language. Instead he clonks around upstairs for a bit and comes down with a dusty old brown suitcase.
“There!” he says, putting it on the table. “We never go anywhere.”
“Oh, thank you!” says Aunty Joyce, as if giving away their only suitcase were a gift from the gods. “Now we can really get things going.”
I suddenly take a notion to fling myself at Aunty Joyce and give her a great long hug. “I’m going to miss you two so much!”
She’s a little taken aback, but holds me too.
Uncle Jack chuckles when I go and give him a hug too. “What were we then?”
I look at him quizzically.
“You know … Miss Lavish, never been ravished, Mrs Marsh with the small moustache … what were we?”
I shrug. “I never had one for you.”
“Go on!”
“I didn’t.”
“Well, if you had to, then …”
“Hmm. Aunty Joyce without a voice. Uncle Jack … with God on his back!”
“Am I like that?” she asks. “Don’t I speak?”
“I just made it up – off the top of my head. It’s only because it rhymes.”
At about that moment there is a knock on the door. I go to answer it, and a telegraph boy holds out a small brown envelope.
“Miss Kitty Green?”
“That’s me.”
He hands it to me, and waits while I read it, in case I need to reply. It is typed, and brief, so I don’t take long to work it out:
“The captain of HMT Alexandrina regrets to inform you that Thomas Stuart Glover was drowned at sea.”
My first thought is that they must have got it wrong. Perhaps there is another Tommy Glover who calls himself Thomas, or perhaps he just decided to swim ashore. Then I see the telegraph boy’s face: the sad, sympathetic squeeze of the eyebrows. “Bad news, eh?”
I feel a great rush and everything starts to gallop inside me.
“Any reply, miss?”
I must have shaken my head, for he walks to the front gate and throws his leg over his bicycle, and I loathe him for having the audacity to ride up here, bold as brass – whistling probably – and hand me his skinny little envelope from his efficient little bag and turn my world upside down.
I put the telegram on the kitchen table next to the open suitcase.
“It’s my fault,” I whisper, as Uncle Jack picks it up and reads it silently, handing it ashen-faced to Aunty Joyce. “It must be a punishment. What have I done wrong?” I’m shouting now. I lift my red face to them both and implore them: “Tell me! TELL ME!”
Uncle Jack perches on the wooden arm of the fireside chair and covers his face with his hands. Then he reaches out a hand to my trembling shoulder.
“This isn’t a punishment, littl’un.” He stops and swallows hard, as if searching desperately through the Bible in his head for an answer. “God is a kind God … it may be hard to see it now, but this is a challenge, not a punishment. Through it you will gain a strength you never knew, an understanding and – ”
I run to the bottom of the stairs. I already have a bone to pick with God and he’s not going to be wheeled out now to piss me off. I harness all my anger and fling it at the pair of them.
“If that’s true, then why can’t you see it as well? Why can’t you see that Rosemary’s death wasn’t a punishment, and stop blaming each other! Stop it! STOP IT!” I am screaming now, my face aching, prepared to deliver any cruelty in the reckless hope that it might soothe my pain.
Uncle Jack and Aunty Joyce look across at me from the table like two lost children, but I just keep going. “Her death wasn’t a punishment – it was a fackin’ challenge!” My fury knows no bounds. I ignore their pathetic, beseeching faces. “And just look at you! You’ve fackin’ failed it, haven’t you? Just look what you’ve done to each other!”
I can’t shout any louder, and my whole head is aching. I stomp off upstairs and slam the door to my room. A corn dolly falls off the wall. Jesus stays resolutely in place, looking intently over my shoulder from underneath his halo. Then I lie face down and wail out my hot anguish to the bed springs, raising my head only to lob contempt at the one available face. “And you can stop looking at me like that!” I scream. I thwack Jesus of Nazareth with a flying copy of Farmer and Stockbreeder and he falls face down off the wall.
They have both come up the stairs to speak to me, and when they open the door, I dash past them and down to the back door. I run up the garden path sending the hens chuckling in all directions, and I scale the low back wall into the field. I run and run and don’t stop until I get to the oak tree. I kick the old furrowed bark and wail and wail and it does not mind. But I can’t sit down, can’t stop. I run towards the farm, down the lane, across the road and over the five bar gate. I run and run and don’t stop until I reach the buttercup field, and Boomer’s grave, and all the valley spread out before me, which Tommy said one day would be ours. I let out what is meant to be a huge scream, but it comes out as a whimper. I sit down on the spot where Tommy once told me, in his coy way, that I was his idea of heaven. I rip up handfuls of buttercups. Rip, rip, rip. I pummel the ground with my fists and send up wafts of wretched sweet grass, and I sink into it, spread-eagled tumm
y down, and let the anger give way to tears, and I hold the earth like a mother and cry and cry until my face stings with tears and snot.
* * *
It is Uncle Jack who finds me eventually. He picks me up and carries me home, saying nothing but “Poor lamb” from time to time. I find it comforting to be carried, and to hear him justify my behaviour with his soft words, and I nuzzle into that old blue jacket and smell the coal smoke of a thousand train journeys and the vanilla of his tobacco for the last time.
My mother arrives at three o’clock, although she said she would arrive at two. She rolls up in a Ford motor car with her own driver. She is dolled up to the nines, with stockings and lipstick and a hat with a feather in it matching her dress. All beams, she is, as she comes up the path, walking two little toddlers in their Sunday best.
“This is Maurice!” she says valiantly, before she reaches the door, “Maurice Trigg. He’s my foreman where I work and he’s kindly offered me a lift and he’s going to drive us to the station. Isn’t that kind, Kitty?”
Maurice, all teeth and moustache behind her, tips his hat at us.
“He’s dead!” I mutter, from the doorway. Uncle Jack and Aunty Joyce are poised in the hallway to shake hands, but now they hold back.
My mother stops in her tracks and looks at me, shocked.
“I just got a telegram,” I say tearfully.
She lets go of Shirley and Peter and rushes at me with her arms outstretched. “Oh, my darlin’!” she says, kneeling down to my height at the front door. “Oh, my poor darlin’! I didn’t know you’d had a telegram! I thought … Listen! It only says ‘missing in action’, you never know … he might still be alive … you never know …”
