by Katie King
It’s all been very unpleasant and difficult, and for a couple of nights I thought Roger and Mabel would be blaming Connie and Jessie (and me too, very likely) for all that’s gone wrong, and that they might expect all of us to move to a different billet, although Gracie kept saying a lad called Aiden Kell was sure to be at the bottom of it – she doesn’t like him for some reason – but Connie got really angry when she heard that, and now she won’t speak to Gracie.
I’m so sorry once again that I couldn’t find it in myself to tell you immediately. I’m not myself these days.
Very best wishes and love,
Peggy
Within three hours of reading this letter, a tight-lipped and extremely concerned-looking Barbara was at King’s Cross station, looking for the platform on which she should board the train to Yorkshire.
Chapter Twenty-three
It was too late for Barbara to speak to the children by the time she finally got to Tall Trees late that evening – they were both sound asleep when she arrived, as early nights were the order of the day since the scrumping debacle, which they didn’t dare argue about – and when she peeped into their rooms they appeared angelic, with their knitted toys Petunia and Neville tucked in cosily beside them. They looked almost as if they could never be naughty.
Gracie had offered to sleep in the other bunk bed in Jessie’s room so that the sisters could have some privacy, but she made sure Jessie was soundly off and away in the land of nod before she crept up the ladder and into Tommy’s top bunk, as she didn’t want him to wonder why she was going to bed down up there rather than in the bedroom above the stables, Gracie having to smother a bout of giggles as she heaved unceremoniously her now large belly as silently as she could – which wasn’t very silently – from the wooden ladder and over into the top bunk.
Mabel and Roger were nicely welcoming to Barbara, though, which Peggy was relieved about when she brought her sister into the warm kitchen.
Peggy had spent a very chilly twenty minutes walking up and down as she waited for the train on which her sister was travelling to arrive, her breath coming in little chill puffs as she paced along an extremely draughty autumnal Harrogate station, watching little glints of one of the first frosts of the winter form icy patterns at the edge of puddles on the tarmac of the platforms where they were exposed to the elements.
Although she hadn’t eaten since a snatched and rather dry cheese sandwich she’d bought from a hole in the wall at King’s Cross station at midday, Barbara was too anxious about her children to be hungry on her arrival, although she did manage a little bread and cheese, remembering to compliment Mabel fully on the quality of the bread, which was no trouble at all to do as it really was delicious, with Mabel proving herself to Barbara as an excellent baker.
Barbara gave Roger and Mabel four linen napkins from the haberdasher’s, which she had embroidered prettily, as a thank you to them for allowing her to stay at Tall Trees.
Mabel seemed very touched and said that Barbara really needn’t have, but Barbara insisted it was her pleasure and that she was more grateful than words could say that the reverend and his wife were providing a safe haven in these troubled times for her children and sister.
Roger held her hands and said, ‘May God bless you, and them,’ with a nod of his eyes upwards that Barbara assumed was towards the bedrooms upstairs where Jessie and Connie were sleeping, and then Mabel eased the atmosphere by saying she’d just got a tray of parkin out of the oven and that she very much hoped that Barbara would treat herself to a slice.
Barbara clearly had no idea what parkin was (and actually she was sporting a slightly suspicious look on her face as she was clearly remembering, Peggy could see, Roger and Mabel’s fondness for tripe that Peggy had complained about in her letters not long after she had arrived in Harrogate), and so Peggy jumped in quickly to tell her sister that parkin was delicious and that Barbara would love it, as it was like a mix of ginger cake and soft, treacly oatmeal biscuits. Thus reassured, Barbara gave a weary smile of thanks.
As the sound of an ambulance’s bell cut shrilly through the night air as it raced by to an emergency several streets away, Roger carried a tray with a teapot and a jug of milk and two cups and saucers, and a side plate with slices of the warm parkin, across the backyard and then up the steep stairs to the room above the stables. He had the two sisters trailing along in his wake, with Barbara carrying her travelling bag and Peggy her big tummy, and they were going to the room above the stables in order – at Mabel’s kind suggestion – that the sisters could have a proper catch-up with the benefit of Peggy being able to lie in bed as they spoke.
Roger deposited the tray on the small table under one of the windows and then made sure he had turned the lamps on only after the blackout curtains were securely draped as they should be. Peggy was very touched to see that somebody – she didn’t know who – had laid a small fire in the grate that Roger now knelt down to light. This was the first time there had been any heating in this room since Peggy had arrived, and it felt like luxury beyond compare.
Roger toddled off back to the main house (Mabel having been very insistent about him needing to do something with the proving mixture that she had explained to the children not long after they had arrived was a living organism, even though it looked like something disgusting and frothy – it was possible it had a not very distant relationship to tripe, Peggy had thought. It was divided carefully every day and then half of it used in the morning’s batch of bread production as the raising agent).
At last Barbara could turn her attention properly to her sister for the first time since she had arrived in Harrogate, and she was more than a little shocked to see the shadows under Peggy’s eyes and how under the weather she looked generally. Pregnancy really didn’t seem to be agreeing with her at all.
Barbara appreciated that Peggy had been exceptionally worried about Jessie and Connie, but this was the stage of her pregnancy when she should now be looking at her best – or at least it was the period when Barbara had felt really well and full of beans, before she got just that bit too big to be able to dash about with her usual nimbleness. But Peggy seemed peaky and not at all comfortable, either when she stood or sat or lay down, although Peggy insisted this was because she’d got a bit cold while waiting in the open air at Harrogate station.
Barbara was pleased to see Peggy liven up after thirty minutes under her pink paisley-patterned feather eider-down, and so she felt bad that Peggy had allowed herself to get so frozen at the station, when she herself would have been able to find her way to Tall Trees without too much trouble, Barbara was sure.
They talked for ages, though, Peggy absolutely refusing to admit to any feelings of drowsiness, and as they chatted they drank such a huge amount of tea that the chamber pot was well used, with the sisters teasing each other that the last time they had had to see each other spend a penny was when they were kiddies.
The sisters enjoyed reminiscing then on the japes they had got up to on the streets of Bermondsey when they had been children – which mainly consisted of knocking on doors and running away when the householder answered.
Later, they reminded themselves of the ghost stories, very tame now but simply terrifying when they were small girls, that their father had told them when they were little and sitting by the open fire grate drying off after some vigorous apple bobbing, which was a family favourite on special occasions, as they toasted marshmallows impaled on the prongs of the fork with the long handle from the set of matching brass implements for dealing with log or coal fires that Ted and Barbara’s parents had been given as a wedding present, with the lamps dimmed or, thrillingly, even turned off. Their father had been very good at producing a variety of spooky voices and in doing sharp, hidden raps on the wooden floor to signify the knock of Jack O’ Lantern on Halloween.
‘It’s probably a good thing in some ways that Connie and Jessie are in disgrace, and that Tommy is over in Leeds,’ said Peggy. ‘I overheard Roger and Mabe
l wondering whether your two would expect to go out “eening”, and Roger rather hoped not as he didn’t think it very Christian, and in view of the apple fiasco I don’t think just at the moment we should advertise that we have any affinity for a good old pagan tradition.’
‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right,’ said Barbara, ‘although I don’t suppose we do anyway.’
‘I did hear Connie saying to Jessie that Aiden had told her that a group of them were going a-larking – which is what they say here for playing – for Nutcrack Night, but she said to Aiden that she and Jessie wouldn’t be allowed, and just now she thought it was better if she didn’t even ask if they could go.’
‘Thank goodness for that,’ said Barbara. ‘Maybe Connie is getting a little sense in her head, after all.’
Chapter Twenty-four
The next morning everyone, including Peggy, kept out of the kitchen so that Barbara could have a good half an hour alone with the children before she walked them over to school.
‘Mummy!’ Connie yelled when she saw Barbara.
In excitement, Jessie almost fell down the stairs as he scurried towards the kitchen, such was his hurry to see his mother after he had heard Connie’s scream of delight.
The children fairly galloped across the room to Barbara and clutched her tightly round the waist, as if they were never going to let her go, and she clasped them back just as enthusiastically.
Then she patted them and said it was time for their breakfast, and that after school she would be wanting to hear everything about the escapade to do with the orchard, but right now they were to concentrate on getting some food inside them, after which they could tell her about school and how their schoolwork was going. She added that she was very much looking forward to hearing too what they thought about Yorkshire, and all the things they had noticed that were different from their old home in Bermondsey.
‘How long are you here for?’ said Jessie, daring to lay voice to what he and Connie had really been thinking about from the very moment they had seen their mother.
‘Is Daddy here too?’ asked his sister. ‘And are we going to go home with you? Back to Jubilee Street? Please, Mummy, are we? Are we?’
‘Yes, Mummy, are you taking us home with you? Please say that you are. Mummy?’ echoed Jessie.
For a moment, thought Barbara as she gazed down at the round cheeks and shining eyes of her beloved children, it felt quite like old times, despite the anguished-sounding appeals of her children. Happier times. Safer times, perhaps.
And for just a little while that was quite enough for all of them, surely. The world wasn’t safe, and nor was it happy just now.
She didn’t want for the minute to think either too closely of how much Jessie and Connie seemed to have been missing her and Ted, or how much she and Ted had been missing them in return, or how much the children yearned to be back in Bermondsey.
She didn’t want to look too closely into their imploring eyes, or answer their pleas in the negative way she was steeling herself for when she would have to speak with them as to whether they would all be catching the train back to London together.
Tricky discussions on the incident to do with the apples, or Barbara leaving them behind when she caught the train back the next day, could wait for a few hours, she decided.
‘Come on, you two, it’s time for breakfast!’ Barbara said as brightly as she could as she nodded towards the kitchen table where their breakfast was waiting.
Once the children had had their fill and Gracie had bustled in and offered to wash up the pots so that they could all get off, Peggy walked alongside Barbara and the children over to Cold Bath Road Elementary School, it being an early week for the London children.
As they got to the school at five and twenty to eight (Connie saying they had never been so early, and that they would be bound to be the first children there, which in fact they weren’t by quite a long way, and so goodness knows what time those kiddies had had to get up, Barbara commented), it meant that she was able to take a quick peek into the classrooms and the assembly hall, the cloakroom and the lavatories.
She was shown by the twins as well the two playgrounds that were fore and aft of the main school building, not that these days the reduced timetable of lessons and teaching allowed much use by the school pupils of either spot for running around during the day to let off a bit of steam.
It was a well-equipped school, Barbara acknowledged with a nod of approval, very solid and with everything seeming to be there that one could possibly want, either from a pupil’s or from a teacher’s point of view.
Peggy smiled at her sister; there was a slight slant of relief about her grin, as she hated to think of what might have happened or been said had Barbara not liked anything she had seen or heard. Her sister was naturally a feisty person, even at the best of times, and it had always been easy to guess from where Connie had got her bolshy side. Right now it was a good thing that Barbara didn’t want to kick up a storm about anything that she’d seen at Cold Bath Road Elementary.
Jessie and Connie were keen to show their mother where they sat in their lessons on the days when St Mark’s got the proper classrooms to use as their own, as well as how, on the other days, the various class forms from London would share the assembly hall as happened when the sets of pupils from both schools came in on Mondays and Tuesdays, the Bermondsey teachers sitting in various corners of the large room and their pupils sitting cross-legged on the floor fanned out into a semi-circle in front of their teacher.
Barbara asked her children whether they found it disturbing or distracting when several different lessons were being taught simultaneously in the same space, but Jessie said nonchalantly, ‘Don’t worry as we’re used to it now. We’ve been told there’s going to be a prize of a day out at Christmas round here somewhere if we are all as good at the end of this term as we would have been if we were still at St Mark’s.’
Connie’s expression was less reassuring to Barbara. She looked like she was very probably always more interested in what one of the other forms was up to when they were grouped together in the assembly hall than in what she should have been paying attention to in her own lesson.
‘Connie, I hope very much that you are doing your best too. Ted and me are wanting you to work really hard at your school books to hold up the good family name of the Rosses, as we don’t want anyone up here to think that number five Jubilee Street can only turn out nincompoops, even if we can’t be with you every day to chase you up. You are a big girl now, remember, and so we have to rely on you being sensible,’ her mother said seriously.
Barbara didn’t expect her words to make much difference – similar conversations in the past had never had much of an effect – but she said them anyway, just in case.
Connie’s expression didn’t really change. And Barbara pretended not to notice.
Then Jessie and Connie wanted to show their mother how much their writing was coming on – well, how Jessie’s was at least, as Barbara couldn’t in all honesty detect the slightest improvement in Connie’s unique and almost illegible scrawl, although she made sure she voiced plenty of encouraging words to her occasionally wayward daughter.
As they chatted, Barbara saw from the corner of her eye that Larry had slunk into the classroom behind them and slid down into a chair at the furthest edge of the back row, taking care not to catch anybody’s eye and making sure he wasn’t looking directly at anybody either.
Although she had had her run-ins with Larry in the past, when she had seen or even managed to catch him being unspeakably mean to Jessie, Barbara was taken aback now by how grimy and generally unkempt he appeared.
Larry’s hair didn’t seem to have been cut since he had arrived in Yorkshire and it was obviously filthy, while dirt appeared to be embedded into the skin of his knuckles and his knees and around his fingernails, to the point that these areas looked now to be almost elephant grey in colour and as if his underlying skin were very dry and flaky. There was a dirt-enc
rusted scrap of bandage splinting two fingers together.
Barbara didn’t think any of Larry’s clothes looked to have been washed recently either. She peered more closely, and she would have bet a pound to a penny then that his garments very probably hadn’t been washed at all since he had arrived in Yorkshire, the grime was so heavily ingrained. One of his front teeth was badly chipped, she could see, and all in all he looked very neglected and, as he stretched an arm down to scratch about his ankle, extremely skinny too as his wrists poked out angularly of his threadbare shirtsleeves, and the forearm he’d extended towards his ankle was pipe-cleaner thin. If all of that wasn’t bad enough, to add insult to injury there was a fetid odour wafting across the room in her direction that was most definitely emanating from poor Larry.
None of this was Larry’s fault in the slightest, Barbara knew. He was only of primary school age and, as boys (and the girls too, she had to admit to herself) sometimes did need to be chivvied towards soap and hot water, the truth of it was that he should have somebody looking after him and making sure he was properly presented to the world.
She felt a rising tide of anger on Larry’s behalf; this wasn’t the proper way to treat a youngster.
Larry might not be an easy boy to look after, that much would be true, and he might not be a particularly likeable boy to have around either. But this looked like nothing less than an obvious case of downright neglect, and for a moment Barbara wondered if Larry’s mother wouldn’t after all be doing the right thing if she did decide to bring him back to London, and thus allow him to take his chances against the German bombers when they launched their aerial offensive, which they most surely would.
