by Katie King
Mabel picked up that things weren’t going too well and, obviously used to children, helpfully she made herself scarce after removing from the oven her latest batch of bread which she and Gracie made every day for needy families. Having placed the loaves to cool on a metal rack, she whisked Gracie away upstairs with her to do ‘something in the airing cupboard’. Fortunately there wasn’t any sign yet in the kitchen of either Roger or Tommy.
‘Are you missing Mummy and Daddy?’ Peggy gently asked Connie and Jessie as she sat opposite them at the kitchen table, a cup of tea before her, and plates with untouched slices of toast before the twins.
There was a poignant silence as Jessie pushed his plate away and then stared down at his lap and didn’t say anything, while Connie turned towards her aunt with mournful eyes and a slightly wobbly bottom lip.
They both looked a shadow of the lively children who had been singing so loudly and dancing with such abandon only the previous evening.
‘I’ve an idea,’ said Peggy gently, breaking the silence that had started to stretch between them. ‘How about I telephone Barbara at Mrs Truelove’s haberdashery later this morning? Would you like that? Perhaps I can either get a message for you both from Mummy or maybe, if we are very lucky, I can make an arrangement that after school and later on this afternoon we can ring again, and you can speak to her yourselves. How does that sound?’
The words were no sooner out of her mouth than Peggy realised that she probably should have checked with Roger first that she would be allowed to use the telephone at Tall Trees in this way before promising such an extravagant treat to the children.
She really hoped he wouldn’t mind; it was so damned difficult knowing what one could and couldn’t do in somebody else’s home without causing offence or irritation, and Peggy was anxious not to cause umbrage as Roger and Mabel had gone out of their way to be obliging.
But Peggy thought then that her reckless gesture would probably be all right, whatever Roger’s first inclination might be, as she would of course immediately offer to pay for the calls and also to make a donation to the church’s collection box, as fortunately she had the money that Ted had given her to make sure the children were well provided for. And if this wasn’t an example of an ideal way to spend some of what her brother-in-law had given her to take care of them, then she wasn’t sure what would be.
She saw Jessie wipe under his eyelashes but drop his shoulders a notch so that they looked a little less anxious, while Connie flashed her aunt a slightly watery-looking expression of gratitude.
Peggy tried to grin back reassuringly and in a manner that let the children know that although they might be a long way away from Ted and Barbara right at that very moment, they were a wonderful niece and nephew – and daughter and son – who most surely would not have been forgotten for even a single second by their parents.
With that there was the sound of the letter box opening and then a bundle of post tumbled onto the mat inside the front door at the end of the hall at Tall Trees, close to where the muddy boots were piled haphazardly, and it wasn’t too long before Mabel came in with a letter for each of the children from Barbara. For the first time that day Jessie and Connie’s faces broke into what looked like genuine smiles of happiness.
There wasn’t an envelope of any description for Peggy, though, and for a moment she felt a real flash of irritation at him as surely Bill knew how much she wanted to hear from him, although experience had taught her too that for Bill, out of sight also meant out of mind, although she didn’t care to probe too deeply into these murky waters.
She felt at sea for a little while, and then suddenly she experienced a real pang of homesickness too.
She was missing Bill and his funny ways, there was no doubt about it, she decided, and then she thought of Fishy and Fishy’s loud purrs and comforting paddy-padding with her paws as Peggy tickled the puss under the chin, and the tiny terraced house they’d all shared, and the sound of their London neighbours with whom they lived cheek by jowl, and the smell of the River Thames…
She was unprepared for what she felt next, which was a moment of what she could only describe as sheer and overwhelming panic, as if all of a sudden she couldn’t remember any of those deeply loved people and things very clearly at all, and then it seemed to her incontrovertibly that the old familiar Peggy was slipping away from her and what was left behind was merely a dried-out husk that approximated someone who in reality was masquerading as Peggy Delbert and who was only just a little bit like her.
Her whirl of emotions escalated, the result being that Peggy felt an overwhelming stab of fear at the thought that she or one of her loved ones or – worst of all – the forthcoming baby might not live to resume their old life back in Bermondsey.
The many casualties of the Great War, and the terrible outbreak of influenza immediately after it that had claimed just as many, had shown with unbending callousness to Peggy and all of her generation that life was tenuous and precious, and that futures most certainly couldn’t be counted on.
Suddenly it seemed too terrible that they had all been reduced to this, and the very declaration of war and the unsettling process of evacuation seemed at the bottom of this feeling of terror, both being indescribably horrible and cruel, and what no ordinary person could want, whether they be British or German.
Pleasant and comfortably homely as the kitchen at Tall Trees undoubtedly was, swathed in the delicious smell of freshly baked bread, in a trice it appeared unbearably claustrophobic and much too hot.
Peggy felt as if the walls were rapidly closing in around her as if all too ready to squeeze her very life out, and she had to rise quickly and head to the scullery where she found sitting in the stone sink, a pail of chill and cleanish-looking water (goodness knows what it had been used for) into which she plunged her hands well past her wrists until she felt a little cooler.
Whatever was the matter with her? She told herself again and again in a sort of frenzied mantra that she needed to be strong, for herself and Bill and their baby, and also for Connie and Jessie too. She was so tense and shaky that she could feel her hair tremble violently about her face and her cheeks seemed to be on fire. But despite her instructions to herself, deep down she remained swamped by feelings of being terrified and utterly alone.
Try as she might to prevent them, Peggy couldn’t stop the tears welling up viciously, and she held onto the rim of the pail tightly as her shoulders shook and she gave into wave after wave of desolation that coursed through every atom of her mind and body.
After a little while Gracie patted her arm and said very quietly, ‘Yer go an’ lie back down fer twenty minutes. I’ll git t’little ’uns where they need to be. ’Ave a drink of water too. Yuill feel better, ah promise.’
Peggy hadn’t heard the younger woman approach but she nodded, although she kept her eyes shut as tears began to drip desolately down her cheeks.
Then, without being able to say a word, she slipped past Gracie with her head down and shoulders hunched, and scurried away back across the yard, anxious to shut herself into the sanctuary of her and Gracie’s room where she could give in to all manner of shuddering sobs.
‘I bet yer each a penny to a pound that yer can’t remember t’way t’school,’ Gracie was saying cheerfully to Jessie and Connie, her strong Northern accent sounding a little less strange these days. That was the last thing Peggy heard as Gracie pulled the back door closed across the bit it usually stuck at, making sure not to draw the attention of the children to Peggy’s swift exit.
‘Where’s Auntie Peggy?’ Connie asked as Gracie shepherded her and Jessie down the road a little while later.
‘T’Reveren’ ’ad a sudden job fer ’er t’do,’ Gracie said, rather surprising herself with a previously unknown propensity for stretching the truth, ‘an’ so I sed t’er I’d step in ter mek sure thee get t’skul.’
The children were still buoyed up by having received the short notes from Barbara that, extravagantly, she h
ad stamped and sent separately to each of them, and so they accepted what Gracie said without further comment or indeed much, if any, further thought.
Then Gracie distracted them further by saying that she had been a pupil at the same school in Cold Bath Road they were just about to join, and she made the children laugh when she told them about the nicknames she and her pals had given some of the teachers in their senior year there, adding that some of those teachers might well still be teaching there, and so Connie and Jessie should keep an eye out for them and report back to Gracie if they had remained appropriate nicknames. She added that on Fridays the children must remember to take a couple of pennies into school with them as there was a tuck shop, and they would be able to buy a sweetie or two, the two-for-a-penny giant gobstoppers being in the past the best value, although they wouldn’t be allowed to eat them at school.
As they turned into Cold Bath Road, the tall, red-headed boy that Connie had noticed from the day before was standing on the other side of the street with an empty newspaper bag slung across his shoulder, presumably having just finished his paper round. He was holding the handlebars of an ancient boneshaker of a bicycle, and he was very obviously watching Connie intently.
Gracie looked at him and then she glanced over at the children. Jessie had clearly noticed the boy on the other side of the road as he was busy pretending to be intensely occupied looking for something in the pocket of his school shorts that meant he had to ferret around with his eyes cast down and a hand delving in first one pocket and then another.
But Connie had an unnecessarily casual, butter-wouldn’t-melt expression on her face and was studiously and very palpably strolling along, swinging her pretty blue dress from side to side, also very consciously not looking in the direction of the boy and his bicycle. Nothing could have signalled her interest in the red-headed lad quite so clearly.
They walked a little further along the street, and then Gracie bumped Connie’s shoulder softly with her arm, saying out of the side of her mouth closest to Connie, ‘See you’ve caught t’eye o’ Aiden Kell. Nobbut bt trubble, ’e be, ’as t’be sed.’
Connie found that she could understand Gracie perfectly well even though she hadn’t yet been in Harrogate two full days.
She also discovered an insouciance beyond her years as she replied, ‘That’s as may be. Still, the cat’s pyjamas, wouldn’t you say?’ Deliberately provocative as Connie’s words were, she didn’t dare to quite look up at Gracie as she said them.
‘An’ I were took fer bein’ forward,’ Gracie muttered to herself as a moment later she watched Connie march purposefully across the playground at the school, with Jessie trying to follow inconspicuously in her wake. ‘Nobbut ten year ol’. T’chilren of to’day, tsk!’
Chapter Nineteen
The days passed, until it was Saturday morning.
After breakfast everybody from Bermondsey wrote letters to Ted and Barbara back in Jubilee Street.
Dear parints,
Schul is not as good as at home. Vikker and wife nice but not as good as home. I miss it. But they say yoy kan visut. Wether stil sunnie. you can sleep in the room where Jessie sleeps but he will be not there. I can call panda Pettonea Pettuneya Petunia.
Connie
Peggy thought Connie’s scribble home to be pretty feeble, but Connie always had been reluctant to do much with a pencil and paper, having driven Barbara to distraction by proving to be nothing more or less than murder to get to sit still for long enough to practise her letters as a youngster. Susanne Pinkly had said to Peggy on more than one occasion that Connie was a conundrum, as she was as bright as a button, and so it seemed so odd that she lagged far behind fellow pupils in setting anything down on paper. Helping her spell Petunia for the letter had been quite a struggle, Peggy mused, and Connie hadn’t taken it at all well when Peggy had suggested that maybe the panda be named something easier to spell, such as Ann or Pandy.
Peggy hadn’t said anything in admonishment, though, at the paucity of words and/or information in the letter, or tried to point out Connie’s obvious mistakes, as she was still feeling so out of sorts she didn’t really trust herself not to cry or to sound grumpier than she meant to be. Sometimes she thought her sharp and intense pangs of homesickness were worse than what the twins felt – or, rather, she hoped this to be the case.
Jessie’s letter was longer, and Peggy hoped Barbara and Ted would be better pleased with their son’s attempt.
Dear Mother and Father,
It is now saturday morning and as Miss Crab says we have worked hard this week as she asked us to do we do not have lessuns today although we mite next saturday if we dont keep up the good work. I don’t like the school or the pupils in it much but the lessuns dont seem any harder than we usually do and I dont no the yorkshire lads yet. Tommy and I get on all rite tho. He is qite nortie but nobody seems to see that – he is a choir boy and has the sort of face to go with that but rilly he is up to miss chiff. Will you come and see us? What is going on at home?
Your affectionate son,
Jessie Ross
PS Thank you for my bear. It was a nice surprise. I like the sweets. I am very pleased to have him – I have called him Neville as that is the prime minister’s name. Tommy has a bear but his is brown and not nitted as he has fur and he is called Chocky as he is the same colour as chockolate.
Peggy put both of the children’s letters into the envelope she had already addressed to Ted and Barbara, and stamped, and then she began to write her own, taking care to keep her writing small so that she wouldn’t have to spend too much on postage.
15th September 1939
Dear Barbara and Ted,
Well, the good news is that the children seem to be settling down. In fact, you would both be very proud of them. I think they miss home, but they are being good children and are trying to make the best of a bad situation.
They loved talking to you on the telephone on Wednesday afternoon, and so please thank Mrs Truelove from me for allowing you a few moments to speak to them. It really did make all the difference to them as they had been feeling very sorry for themselves earlier in the morning.
As you’d expect, Connie seems to be finding her feet first, although she came back with a muddy dress yesterday that I had the devil of a job getting the stains out of when I came to wash it last night as there’d been a pretty brutal game of ‘catch’ after school.
I think Jessie is finding it harder but actually he doesn’t seem too bad, or at least not as bad as I had expected. He seems to be getting on reasonably nicely with Tommy, the boy who lives here.
I think everyone is wondering how it will go once the two schools have their first lessons together on Monday and Tuesday – apparently there has been a bad atmosphere and a fair bit of animosity between the pupils from the different schools on the changeovers in the middle of the day this week, which has meant that after the first day the headmaster from Harrogate, Mr Walton, decided that morning school would have its close shifted forward to earlier in the morning so that it is now at twelve fifteen, and the afternoon school would begin at twelve forty-five, with again only the ten-minute break. The morning children have to leave the school premises immediately they are finished, and one or two of the teachers patrol the streets nearby to try ‘to stop any shenanigans’.
Personally, I’m not sure all this separation is the best way to handle any prospective tiffs. If it had been left up to me, I think I’d have organised two days of games in the parks, forgoing all lessons and putting the children into teams made up of both schools in order to let them get used to one another while running about and letting off steam. But there you go, I’m not the one in charge!
To be honest, I’m feeling very out of sorts since I got here – I think the moving and closing up of the dear little house that Bill and I had, where we enjoyed such happy times (most of the while), and then the long journey took more out of me than I expected. My ankles are up and I’ve had some bad sickness and a bout o
f crying I just couldn’t stop, although the children don’t know this.
One good thing, though, is that I think I might have made one friend – or at least I think she will (or could) be in time – a very nice lady called June Blenkinsop, who owns a tea shop that serves a very good toasted teacake.
Do think about coming to visit. I know the train will be expensive and that you will have to change carriages at least once, and so it will undoubtedly be an effort. But Roger and Mabel say they would be very happy to have you here, and naturally the children would love it too.
I take it Bill’s not written to me via yours yet? He is hopeless! I know he hates to write as he finds it difficult. I’ve written to give him my address but there’s not been anything back, although I suppose he has only been gone just over a week, and of course he’s not too good with his letters, unless – as we know – it’s sorting through the runners and riders in the Racing Post!
I’ve been listening to the wireless every day – in fact, we all try to listen to the BBC news of an evening – and it all sounds eerily quiet in London at the moment as regards any German activity. I’m so pleased as I think of you both virtually all the time.
Everyone here has sorted out their windows with the taping, and the first people have been fined for not having got their blackout curtains or car headlights done properly. But somebody was killed by a car they didn’t see coming and the driver didn’t see them in the dark as the car’s lights were dim and the person’s clothes were dark, and so yesterday’s paper said that men are advised to walk in the dark with their shirt tails dangling down behind their posteriors, which is all very well in a warm September, but goodness knows how that’s going to work when the cold weather sets in!
