The Evacuee Christmas

by Katie King

  After the adults had shaken hands and introduced themselves (although with neither side being able to make out exactly what it was that the other was saying, it seemed to Peggy), then after one last headcount to make sure that none of the children were missing, everybody was escorted quite smartly from the station as it was too nippy for everyone, even the infants of five years old, not to stride out.

  Fortunately they didn’t have to go very far, although some muffled childish screams and laughter followed by the reverberating sound of quickly running feet, and quite a lot of curtain-twitching in the windows they passed, suggested that more than a few local people and children were sneaking a surreptitious look at the new arrivals and then quickly scooting off to share what they had seen with friends, or else were turning to have a word with someone in the room behind.

  The group from St Mark’s were taken to a small building with its name proudly displayed above the entrance door: Odd Fellows Hall. This caused a few comments from teachers and pupils alike who made up the London party, and then it was explained that Odd Fellows was a charitable society from Victorian times aimed at helping the ‘unfortunates of the world’.

  Or at least that’s what Peggy thought was being said, as there was distinctly room for doubt.

  The Yorkshire accents their hosts spoke with seemed very strong and hard to navigate, although to judge by the confused expression on the faces of those in the welcoming committee, it seemed that the St Mark’s cockney voices were just as impenetrable to the welcoming committee as they were finding theirs.

  Peggy also thought she spied their hosts looking down their noses rather snootily at the garb of the teachers and children, but she wasn’t sure if she was mainly tired and grumpy, and was really only ready therefore to find fault rather than look for the positive things in their situation. If she was, she doubted she would be alone in this feeling.

  However, any snooty or disapproving looks seemed more understandable, Peggy realised, when she herself turned to consider more closely the now creased and rumpled outfits of herself and her travelling companions. Taken as one, they really did look like a dastardly bunch of individuals, but she supposed that a whole day getting to where they were going, and having yet to be allocated their billets, would inevitably result in most of them looking bedraggled and a bit raggle-taggle by this stage of the day, with the result that they all appeared to be distinctly ‘unfortunate’ and as such probably the epitome of the type of person who should walk through the door to Odd Fellows Hall.

  In addition, virtually all of the children sported expressions that managed to combine a tinge of something hangdog with extremely wary, but again this was only to be expected, Peggy concluded, and she hoped fervently that it wouldn’t put any of the host families off when it came to them choosing which children they would be inviting into their own homes.

  While tea was poured into green china cups from a giant urn waiting on a side table for those who wanted it, the alternative being small glasses of icy, slightly brackish water, and everyone who needed to go to the lavatory was given the opportunity to head off to the cloakroom to spend a quick penny, the reception committee explained that in ten minutes or so people with spare beds would arrive to choose their evacuees.

  All the teachers were going to be billeted together, and it had already been decided where they would stay (which was in a guest house, apparently, that was called Dunroamin), although Peggy was slightly taken aback when she learnt that these plans for the St Mark’s teachers didn’t include her. It also became clear that the reason headmaster Mr Jones wasn’t going to stay up in Harrogate was because he’d been told that he wasn’t needed, rather than that he’d chosen to go back to London as he’d allowed some of the adults connected with St Mark’s to think up until then, and this seemed to unsettle several of the Bermondsey teachers, who were now looking about themselves anxiously, as if checking to see if they were also for the chop.

  As Susanne Pinkly had already intimated to Peggy, there simply wasn’t need for two headmasters at the school St Mark’s would be sharing, and so once everyone had had a day or two to settle in, off Mr Jones would go back to London.

  Peggy wasn’t quite sure what she felt about not being bunked up with the other teachers. While not technically a teacher just at the moment, she realised she’d been assuming she almost certainly would be rooming wherever they were, or at the very least some sort of provision would have been made that she would stay somewhere very close to them. She had been happy to help with the evacuation, and for no pay, after all.

  In a way, though, she didn’t particularly mind having to strike out off her own bat, as now that Susanne wasn’t part of the troop, none of the teachers were close friends or had much – if indeed any – fun. But still they were familiar faces, and it did feel peculiar for Peggy to realise that in only a matter of minutes she would be very alone as far as any adult company or support went.

  Peggy supposed that this feeling of having been cast adrift from the others was exacerbated by the reminder that the St Mark’s headmaster would be returning south very imminently. She had never been a huge fan of Mr Jones, but the fact he ran a fair and tight ship was undeniable.

  Pupils from St Mark’s tended to do well at the eleven-plus examination and regularly won places to go on to the local grammar school for the primary school’s catchment area, and thereafter the school pupils from St Mark’s tended to secure a range of better jobs than pupils from other schools in Bermondsey often did.

  Peggy hoped the children wouldn’t find themselves in a radically different regime, or one with lax academic standards, as lost time in their schooling was always very difficult to make up when the majority of the school children would be joining the working world at age fourteen.

  To judge by the very little she had seen of Harrogate, it looked to be a moneyed area full of people wearing good-quality clothing and smart shoes, and some might say that people like these might not need to be able to look out for themselves in quite the way the poor families of south-east London had to scrabble around for every single penny in order to do the best they could. How keen they might be on education in lieu of this was anybody’s guess, she decided.

  Peggy was a tremendous believer in the value of education and she hoped that when the war was over she would still feel similarly.

  Right now, as Peggy looked about her, to judge by the haughty look on the faces of some of the reception committee, it seemed as if the general attitude of their Yorkshire hosts intimated that they believed they had everything to offer, and that there wasn’t much possibility that the people from London had anything to teach them.

  Peggy wondered if that was true – surely there would be good things on both sides that the others could learn from?

  At last the children were asked to line up, and Connie and Jessie made sure to stand next to one another holding hands, and then Angela pushed in on Connie’s other side, while Jessie, rather to his horror, found himself standing beside Larry, although neither of the boys gave the slightest hint they had noticed each other.

  Peggy meanwhile noted the surreptitious looks some of the reception committee were casting at her, and she understood that they didn’t know whether to ask her to line up alongside the children or not. And then she realised that she didn’t very much care either way. Right now, if it meant she couldn’t be found lodging, she would head back to Bermondsey with Mr Jones quite happily.

  With a sigh she wearily took her place in the line-up, standing right beside Angela. Peggy glanced at Jessie and Connie and saw both children sporting determined and slightly defiant expressions that almost seemed to be daring any adults to suggest that they be split up.

  As Peggy had feared, the billeting process turned out to be quite nightmarish.

  The largest pupils, both boys and girls, were the first to be picked, with Larry being the very first child to be chosen. As he walked off beside a stern-faced man, Larry looked as if he didn’t know whether to be p
leased or upset he had been picked so early. Some of the Harrogate hosts who had just come in looked as if they were farmers, not least as they were saying they wanted strong lads who could help them out on the land, while other hosts, all women, although clearly from a variety of backgrounds, chose the bigger girls, saying they were going to be helping with housework and so forth.

  Once a list of addresses had been made of where all those who had already been chosen were staying, the next wave of local folk came in, and generally the more handsome and prettier children, both boys and girls, were chosen by this batch of billets. Angela was one of these children, and as she was chivvied from the hall by a rather flurried woman Connie risked calling goodbye, to which Angela waved cheerily enough, although her face remained worried.

  There was a shabby and straggly-haired woman at the billeting hall who looked so strange that everybody hoped that they weren’t going to be picked by her. After all manner of people – big and small, old and young – had walked along the line of children who had been waiting for their billets, with few even looking towards where Jessie and Connie stood, this strange-looking person marched down the line only to stop abruptly in front of the twins.

  She stuck her face forward to peer into theirs, blasting them with a whiff of rapidly expelled rancid breath, the force of which made a long and solitary grey whisker on her chin quiver nastily.

  The woman snatched at Jessie’s hand and he felt what could only be described as a claw clutch at him, the callouses on her hands were so thick. The woman reached for Connie’s hand, but she and Jessie shrank away from her, their shoulders touching and lending each other strength, while their eyes, unblinking in horror, looked black as their pupils had become so large in their fear.

  Then, with a tut that frothed spittle into the corners of her thin lips, the crone flung Jessie’s hand away from her as if it were boiling hot, and then she shuffled on her way down the line, leaving Connie and Jessie behind. The twins looked at each other, unable to prevent their mirrored shudders of disgust, to leave unaccompanied by anybody. There was a palpable sigh of relief throughout the hall.

  Eventually it got down to about six children who were left, including Jessie and Connie, their refusal to be separated being more of an issue than anyone had expected, seeing that they were a boy and a girl, as some hosts turned out to be worried about sleeping arrangements as they weren’t sure about mixing the sexes in bedrooms, especially if they already had children at home.

  It didn’t help that Jessie was looking sickly by then as it had been such a long day and so he kept sniffing, while Connie had made her new dress quite grubby en route.

  Peggy was feeling increasingly uncomfortable as most people avoided looking at her altogether, and those that did would smile at her and then catch sight of her belly and, with the smile dropping from their faces, move quickly on.

  At last another three of the children had been allocated, which left Connie and Jessie, and a little girl called Maggie whose clothes were filthy and the holes in her shoes clearly obvious for anyone to see, as were her nits; and she’d had polio as a baby, so she had a leg in a bulky, squeaky calliper.

  Peggy was taken aback to find that, without waiting to see what would happen to the billeting of the stragglers, the teachers from St Mark’s headed off to their guest house as their landlady arrived to say she couldn’t hold their food any longer. The Dunroamin landlady looked a right battleaxe, and so Peggy decided they deserved each other, as she thought that if she knew where she was going to be staying, she would have made sure that a pregnant former colleague was sorted before heading off to the lure of supper.

  A tight-lipped and grumpy woman from the WVS seemed to be losing patience, and Peggy felt close to saying something snappish to her as she wasn’t feeling at all patient herself by this point.

  Fortunately things took a distinct turn for the better when a rather rich-looking woman arrived who had a massive fox fur draped over her new-looking astrakhan coat, and Peggy thought that she would choose Connie and then Jessie will be upset. But to everyone’s surprise, she didn’t seem to mind the nits or the calliper that Maggie had, despite the WVS woman pointing them out very rudely, and so she marched Maggie away, saying she was going to dunk her straight into a hot bath and then dress Maggie in some of her daughter’s old play clothes.

  Nobody came in for a while, and the twins and Peggy were just starting to look anxiously at each other, when a kindly-looking man in a dog collar and his jolly wife arrived.

  After he had apologised for being late (which was something to do with a crisis with one of his parishioners, apparently) the man in the dog collar said, ‘How wonderful. I see that they’ve saved the best till last.’

  And with that he invited Peggy and the twins to his home, although not before his wife had shaken Peggy’s hand just as if she really were delighted to see them all, dishevelled and messy as they were, and then this jolly-looking woman gave each of the twins a quick hug.

  Peggy could have cried simply because somebody was being kind, and as the children each snuck a hand into each of hers as they began down the road with their new billets, Peggy thought the twins probably felt just as emotional as she did.

  Chapter Eleven

  Nothing could describe how strange all of the three London evacuees felt as Roger and Mabel Braithwaite escorted them to Tall Trees, which Roger described as a rectory.

  Peggy and the twins looked at each other – they had no idea what he meant, although they could see that he was obviously a clergyman.

  Then Roger added, ‘We don’t stand on ceremony at Tall Trees. You must all call me Roger, and’ – he pointed to his wife – ‘this is Mabel. She’s the one in charge. You’ll see!’

  Roger and Mabel began to laugh as if Roger had just told an amazing joke, but again the evacuees all just stared at one another, and then looked back to their hosts.

  It seemed extraordinary that the rector was suggesting they use his Christian name to address him. Even Peggy had never heard the like before, and she couldn’t think what to say. Jessie thought, along with his aunt, that Barbara would have something to say about this – his and Connie’s mother prided herself that, although she was poor, that hadn’t stopped her being as proper as the next person at the Women’s Institute.

  As they walked, Jessie and Connie discovered their hearts still beat uncomfortably fast if they thought about the lucky escape they had had from the witchy-looking woman.

  Roger and Mabel kept up a cheerful prattle, but Peggy and the twins found themselves bone-weary and terribly homesick for the narrow streets of Bermondsey, with its cheek-by-jowl homes jostling beside each other, and the sounds of carousing coming from the bar of one or other of the several public houses nearby. Here it was very quiet, and they weren’t used to this at all.

  Soon Roger halted and then stood to one side, indicating that they should turn in at the propped-open white-painted gate he was standing next to. Their feet hit shingle, which made a crunchy noise as they walked up to the rectory.

  It was a very imposing house, they could see in the moonlight, and there was a large building beside it. It was obvious immediately how the house had got its name as there were some tall evergreen trees to one side of the garden, and the Londoners could hear the swish of the wind rustling through the trees’ branches.

  ‘We’re at t’side,’ said Mabel, as she led the way round the house to a door that opened into a small stone-flagged courtyard.

  She turned the handle to the door with a flourish, and shepherded everyone into a warm and inviting kitchen, where a giant wooden table already had plates set out, and knives and forks sparkling in the light.

  Mabel pushed the door to, and immediately had to open it again as a large black and white cat insisted on coming into the kitchen, although when he saw how many people were inside already, he promptly demanded to go out with what sounded very much like a yowl of disapproval.

  Jessie and Connie didn’t share the cat�
�s opinion. After they had all too clearly imagined what the home of the woman with the hair on her chin might be like (not good by any stretch of the imagination), this homely kitchen was a very welcoming sight, especially with its tempting smells of hot food that were wafting about.

  Then they noticed, once everyone had taken off their coats and washed their hands, that it was a much less tidy place than they were used to at number five Jubilee Street, as everyone had to move things off their chairs before they could sit down. Mabel seemed quite oblivious to this, and so after they’d held whatever had been on their seat for a while, they all just plonked it down on another chair.

  Peggy’s wooden seat was hidden under a whole bunch of old woollies where somebody had started to unpick seams and wind the wool into balls, presumably for knitting into something else, while Connie’s had a pile of hymn books with broken spines that presumably were waiting to be repaired.

  Jessie’s hid a wallet and some spectacles that were camouflaged the same colour as the dark wood, the sight of which in Jessie’s small hands prompted Roger to say with delight, ‘Excellent find – I’ve been searching all day, and you managed to do in a minute what I couldn’t. Well done, young man.’ Jessie went quite pink, but Connie didn’t feel like teasing him as she might have another time.

  Jacket potatoes were produced, and some creamy butter, and salt and pepper, and some crumbly cheese that Mabel simply called Lancashire, and a big bowl of steamed cabbage with a giant knob of butter softly melting into it.

  A ravenous Peggy didn’t think she’d ever eaten anything so delicious. And then everyone was offered a second potato, which felt like a luxury beyond compare.

  Once everyone had eaten as much as they were able, they were shown to their rooms.

  Jessie gave his lopsided smile when he saw he’d be sleeping in a large room, in a bunk bed. The room was untidy, with clothes and books scattered about, all obviously belonging to a boy, although Roger said he wasn’t back yet. Neither Roger nor Mabel seemed particularly concerned about this, although Barbara thought as it was dark, it was late for a youngster still to be outside, and especially on a school night.