by Katie King
Roger gave vent to a soft harrumph that Barbara took to be a sign of approval of both his wife’s and Barbara’s comments.
Then Barbara said, ‘In fact, and I don’t know your views on this, but I was thinking that should you not bring Tommy back home right away to Tall Trees? It might be better for all if he were here, don’t you think? And a good idea to make this happen while I am still here, no? After all, at your side is where he belongs, especially when he can be in such a lovely home as this rectory obviously is.’
Roger shot her such a warm look that Barbara could see how he would have built up for himself a very loyal congregation.
‘I think our Tommy has been very, very naughty indeed. Extremely naughty, in fact,’ said Roger, indicating with a wave of his arm that the three of them should sit down around the kitchen table. ‘Hopefully Tommy will have learnt his lesson now, and if he hasn’t, I shall do my very best to make sure he understands, now that everybody has cooled down a little, how he can’t behave like that in the future or treat people as he did. It’s not a, er, er, humane way of going about things. Hopefully, he won’t dare to use that terrible language he said directly to me – if I hadn’t heard it myself, I would never have believed he could be so coarse.’
Barbara thought that Roger had been going to say Christian instead of humane, but had stopped himself in an effort to broaden the meaning of what he was saying.
‘I’m not saying my two were angels either. I do think they must shoulder part of the blame for things going so far,’ admitted Barbara, deliberately using the word angels because of Roger’s faith. She knew the more united she was with Roger and Mabel, the less opportunity there would be for the children to transgress again, not least as they would see all the adults around them being similarly firm on how they should behave.
She added, ‘Both of you should know that I am going to say to my twins that they must recognise that their behaviour led to things going as far as they did. They know that Ted and me are very disappointed in them over this.’
Mabel said that she and Roger had been wondering if perhaps they themselves had been concentrating too much on pouring their energies into things going on outside Tall Trees, and not enough into being parents for their son, and that it was likely to be within the realms of possibility that Tommy, to some degree at least, had been trying to get them to think about him.
Barbara thought this was similar to what she and Peggy had been asking themselves too.
Mabel then said that if this were the case, it also very likely meant that she and Roger hadn’t perhaps been paying enough attention to Connie or Jessie either, although she supposed that they had felt when the evacuees had first arrived that it would be Peggy who’d be keeping an eye out for them.
Barbara agreed that a mistake had been made in the adults not sitting down in the first day or two of them all coming together and working out the best way of doing things, but looking back, it was easy to see how this had occurred as none of them had had any experience with how evacuation worked, and so the Braithwaites and Peggy, and herself and Ted, had tried their best but, understandably, didn’t really have much to go on as to what the pitfalls might be.
There were always so many people wanting Roger’s and her help, Mabel elaborated, and it was very difficult to say no and to turn somebody away from their front door in their hour of need. They just hadn’t got the knack of doing this, although plenty of clergy certainly had, which meant that they had even more to take care of and sort out, as often they were also dealing with people and things that came from outside Roger’s parish.
But this took up a huge amount of time and was very tiring too, and there were times in the evening when she and Roger had been guilty of just wanting to put their feet up while they listened to the news on the BBC and then enjoy a little music on the radio for an hour or two, rather than having to check up in great detail as to what Tommy might have been doing during the day.
Mabel’s voice dipped as she confessed that they could see now that what some people might describe as a lax attitude had been an error of judgement on their part, as Tommy was without a doubt too young not to have more guidance. This had been brought home to them very clearly by the shocking levels of animosity Tommy had shown the London evacuees, and then Roger had been very hurt in the personal sense when Tommy had stood bold as brass directly in front of his father and sworn like a navvy at him, using words that neither Roger nor she would care to repeat.
Roger reached for Mabel’s hand, and she ran her thumb over the top of his hand. They looked very resolute, and as if they were going to work very hard at making sure that in the future things would be much smoother and more thought out, and that they would make their plans bend around Tommy a little.
Barbara reminded the Braithwaites of what she had said earlier. ‘I suggest that Tommy comes home as soon as possible, and I stay for a couple of days after he’s back, and we just watch and wait, to see how the children adjust to one another again. The first sign of trouble and we can think again and take any steps that are necessary. But it could be that everyone is a bit older and wiser now, and that somehow having gone through such a sticky patch will mean that the children can forge a better relationship with one another, and shall be able to muddle along together.’
The children weren’t nearly so excited to see their mother when they saw her standing at the school gate as they had been the day before when the bell rang and they were let out for the day.
What a difference a day makes, Barbara thought, as she watched them what could only be described as amble across the playground loosely in her direction as Connie chatted to some of her friends and Jessie listened in.
Barbara felt much better following the talk with Roger and Mabel. Maybe, of course, the situation between the three children at Tall Trees had gone too far to be resolved easily. But even if it had, it didn’t look like there were too many acrimonious feelings still swirling about, at least amongst the adults involved, and that was most definitely a good thing.
Once Connie and Jessie finally reached Barbara, she told them immediately as they stood in the same spot where the previous day they had been extravagantly hugging each other, that she was expecting them to be extremely grown up as it was probable that Tommy would be coming back to Tall Trees very soon.
The happy expressions on the faces of each twin tightened slightly and their shoulders lifted a little in tension.
Barbara took care to keep her voice as calm as possible. ‘Listen to me closely. I’m not going to tell either of you exactly how to behave when Tommy does come home, as I think you two are old enough to work this out for yourselves, don’t you?’ She smiled at the children until they almost looked like they agreed with her proposition.
Then Barbara spoke more seriously, taking turns to look at them both very meaningfully. ‘But you each might like to think before Tommy arrives back about the meanings of words like “sorry” or “going too far” or “new start”. What, however, I will insist of the behaviour from both of you is that nothing must happen and no words be said between you children that will upset Aunt Peggy, or Angela’s mother, as she is going to be arriving by train later on today, as neither of these two should have any sort of fuss around them just now as Peggy is feeling really tired and Angela’s mother will be very worried about her daughter – and this means that they both need lots of peace and quiet so that they can make themselves as strong as possible. I, along with Roger and Mabel, will see how you children get on with each other, and then we will take a decision as to whether you two can stay on at Tall Trees—’
Barbara’s words were interrupted by Connie and Jessie both asking excitedly if they could come back to Bermondsey with her, queries that Barbara ignored as she continued firmly, ‘. . . or whether I need to find you somewhere else to stay in Harrogate, although if I have to do that, you two will have to get used to Aunt Peggy not being with you, as it is most unlikely I can find anywhere for the three of you. And ac
tually, if you do have to move, it might not even be possible to keep you both billeted together any longer, as I am sure that you will remember how difficult it was for the authorities to find you a place where you could all stay when you first arrived, and so you might have to get used to the idea that you could be parted if you have to move.’
Both Connie and Jessie dropped their gazes to stare down at the ground as they remembered the unpleasant selection process that had taken place in Odd Fellows Hall, and how reluctant Harrogate people had been to take into their home twins of ten years of age who weren’t both of the same sex. It was obvious that the twins didn’t much like the idea of not being billeted together, especially if that witchy-looking old woman still needed to find someone to billet.
Judging by the pensive look on their faces, Barbara didn’t think that for the moment she needed to say anything else on this topic to the twins.
‘Jessie, I hope you’re feeling strong today, as I’ve promised Roger that you will be able to help him sort out the back bedroom where they keep all the junk, as I think they want to put up a bed in there for Angela’s mother tonight, and so you nip off back to Tall Trees and have a bite to eat, and then make yourself very useful.’ Barbara spoke more jauntily as she changed the subject. ‘Gracie will go in the box room to sleep when Tommy comes back, and Connie, you’ll come and sleep with me and Peggy above the stables.’
‘All right, Mummy,’ agreed Connie, as Jessie turned to head to Tall Trees, and then Connie said more enthusiastically as something caught her eye that made her face break into a coy grin, ‘There’s Aiden just going into school – do you want to say hello to him?’
Chapter Twenty-nine
By the time Barbara caught up with Peggy later in the afternoon, she had lots to fill her sister in on as they sat at the table in a deserted kitchen peeling a mound of potatoes ready to boil before mashing them together with some milk and butter as the topping for a gigantic cottage pie. The meat and vegetable filling for the pie was already waiting in a large and somewhat battered metal dish that had obviously seen many years of faithful service that was white with a blue edge around the tip of the rim.
Connie had by this point also been dispatched upstairs to help Roger and Jessie with clearing out the bedroom, which was actually proving quite a mammoth task as junk and general household debris had been collecting in it for years, and there was the muffled sound of bumps and lots of things being humped about punctuating Barbara and Peggy’s conversation.
Roger had taken the gramophone upstairs, though, and this meant that the tidying efforts were also accompanied by some quite loud and jaunty music that had presumably been chosen with the aim of keeping the tidiers’ spirits up.
Judging by the laughs and squeals the sisters could hear, what had started as an arduous task had now evolved into one that had become much more fun, occasionally interrupted by one or other of the children running down in one ridiculous costume or another, as the church hall’s dressing-up box that was used for amateur dramatics had been discovered – Roger saying upon its discovery that everyone in the church’s dramatic society had been asking themselves where on earth that had got to – and now was being freely scavenged by the children.
Peggy and Barbara roared with laughter and begged, ‘No more!’ when the twins entered the kitchen for what had to be the fifth or sixth time, this time as the two parts of a pantomime cow costume, complete with extravagantly sized pink velvet udders for the rear of the costume. The cow’s coordination wasn’t as much as it could have been to judge by the stumbling sounds on the wooden stairs as she plodded back to the bedroom where Roger was.
‘When Roger and Mabel came to speak to me this morning about what had gone on, I decided the softly-softly approach was best, Peg. The reality is that the three children will either find a way to deal with each other, or they won’t – and if they don’t, and they can’t be trusted from then on not to do anything silly between them, then it’s best that Connie and Jessie be moved elsewhere, I suppose,’ said Barbara when they had the kitchen to themselves once more.
‘I think Roger and Mabel need to work out themselves how to deal with Tommy, and whether they need to give him a bit more attention, and they need to see how he settles back in – as personally I think that them sending him off to his granny’s was too much, although I suspect that course of action was taken more because Roger was so shocked at the way he swore at him. Anyway, the Braithwaites didn’t need me putting my two ha’porth in as to how they should be bringing up their son.’
Peggy said that it sounded as if Barbara, and Roger and Mabel, had handled a tricky conversation very well.
Barbara described Connie doing everything she could think of to suggest to poor Aiden that he ask her out to play either after school or at the weekend, but then the bell went and he had to run inside.
Meanwhile Larry was trying to slip out of the school gates behind them without anybody noticing. ‘I made sure I caught his eye so that I could ask him if he was hungry – he really is very thin and undernourished-looking at the moment – and of course he was, and he said when I pressed him that his billet didn’t really make provisions for him to have anything to eat during the day, and so I took the three of us off to lunch. Connie, I am pleased to say, made a bit of an effort with him, once, that is, I’d put my foot on top of hers under the café table to let her know that she should say something,’ said Barbara.
‘I sent Connie off to buy some stamps, saying I’d see her back at Tall Trees later, and in the meantime she had to trot off straight back here with the stamps so that then she could go and help out Roger and Jessie with the tidying. Then I ordered a second cup of tea for me and a glass of milk and a currant bun for Larry, who polished them off in about three seconds flat. After a while he relaxed and began to speak relatively freely – he’s found it very difficult in Harrogate.’
The sisters agreed that Larry must have had a completely miserable time. Not only had he had such a public humiliation at the hands of Tommy, but without any friends to spend time with, and his family far away, even if his father could possibly be a bit fist-happy as Mrs Truelove had hinted, poor Larry could only have felt very abandoned and lonely. Aside from a good bath and haircut, and all his clothes being boiled, he also needed to be taken to a dentist, Barbara thought, now she had had a close look at the tooth that had broken clean off in the fall from the top of the wall.
Later on, after everyone had eaten, Barbara and Peggy headed over to Harrogate station, leaving Mabel overseeing the twins’ practice on the piano. Peggy had learnt from her last time at the station, which was when she’d been waiting for Barbara to arrive just a couple of nights earlier, that if the trains ran late, it was a perishing cold station on which to spend long standing around on a frosty November evening, and so she made them both wrap up very warmly.
Barbara actually felt a bit too warm, and so had to walk along with her coat unbuttoned and with her gloves tucked into her pocket as she had just been giving the carpet sweeper a rather vigorous outing, running it furiously backward and forward across all the upstairs floors and carpets. She had also given the now sorted-out new bedroom – which was so tidy that actually it looked verging on the spartan – a thorough dusting, and then made up the bed with freshly ironed bed linen that had previously been hidden under a positive welter of things. As a final touch Barbara had draped a clean towel over the metal bedframe at the foot of the mattress.
Roger had clearly been bitten by the tidying bug, although not in the kitchen or in the office, as he was now sorting the generously proportioned attic upstairs into some sort of order. It was where in previous generations the servants of the house would have slept, and so the two attic rooms had a good height to them, even though part of each room had a ceiling that sloped in line with the roof immediately above it.
Roger was down on his knees cramming as much as he could of the stuff he had decided was worth keeping into crawl spaces under the eaves of the roof,
vaguely attempting to keep to one side the things that might be needed soonish (the box of costumes for the dramatic society, for instance) so that he could put them in last.
He’d realised that with a lick of paint and a thorough clean of the woodwork, Tall Trees could have another two bedrooms at its disposal.
Earlier Jessie had run up and down the stairs endlessly piling into a heap a selection of things that were destined to be discarded in one of the stables, Roger having said that this pile could be added to some rubbish that had been collecting in the other stable. The next day the plan was that Roger would remove any wood suitable for burning, and anything else that looked as if it could be in any way useful, as that could, with Jessie’s help, then be taken over to the church hall to be stored ready for the next jumble sale.
Guy Fawkes Night was nearly there, and so although they couldn’t have a bonfire at night as this would contravene the blackout, or any fireworks, they could have a blaze in the afternoon to mark the day. Sparklers indoors would be acceptable, provided the blinds were down, and one of the grown-ups could find some sparklers to buy in one of the local shops.
Jessie and Connie were very excited about this, and were looking forward to the occasion, although Barbara told them the celebrations were going to be nothing like they had seen in London, when normally they would stand in an upstairs bedroom window at number five Jubilee Street and watch fireworks that people were letting off from their gardens. Barbara also reminded the twins that there was going to be no making of a guy or hawking it around nearby houses trying to get people to give them pennies.
The sisters hadn’t been standing for more than five minutes at the station after their busy day when the train hove into view, and down from it stepped just a handful of passengers, who were nearly all men. There were a couple of elderly women who got off and several factory girls who looked only to be about twenty, but there was just one woman in her thirties, which made it very easy for them to identify Angela’s mother, who they knew was called Ethel Kennedy, although they didn’t really know anything more about her than that.
