by Annie Murray
Mrs Jennings hadn’t noticed Margaret sitting there. Margaret watched as she pulled another chair close to her mother and gently clasped her bony hand.
Alice, lifting her head, managed to speak in between pauses for breath. ‘I had to go to Auntie’s – get summat for the little’uns. I took the blanket . . .’
‘Off your own bed?’ Dora Jennings was even more horrified. ‘And you’ve been all the way down there in your state, carrying it? Why in heaven’s name didn’t you send Margaret?’
Weak as she was, Alice had managed somehow to go out of the yard, make her halting way down the entry and along, leaning against the fronts of the houses every other step, to the pawnshop near the corner. After that she had gone to the bakery, even further along the street.
She was shaking her head. ‘No, I wanted . . .’ Weak sobs shook her body, which was almost too wasted to cry. Margaret saw Mrs Jennings’ face twist with a mixture of pity and horror. She stroked the almost transparent hand. ‘I had to do summat for ’em. Today . . . Be a mom to ’em. I’ll have to send them . . . It’ll be – the last time . . .’
Margaret, with the dream-like perceptions of a five-year-old, had made no sense of this at the time. None of it made sense until years later. She didn’t know that for days the lips of the adult world had been busy with the words ‘war’ and ‘evacuation’. Nor did she know yet that she was going to school today, even though it was Saturday. Her mother’s words made no sense, not then. But she did remember Mrs Jennings getting silently to her feet, tears in her kindly eyes, and going round to her mother, bending to embrace her, with Alice’s pinched face cradled against her chest.
Mom had told her to carry the little bundle with some of the bread in it and a nub of cheese.
‘You know what Tommy’s like,’ Mom whispered. Tommy was seven, big for his age and strong, but erratic. Alice couldn’t stop the tears coursing down her cheeks as she sat, buttoning up Margaret’s coat. ‘He’ll drop it or leave it somewhere. You be a big girl now and look after it. And put Peggy in your pocket. There’s a girl.’
Peggy, Margaret’s doll, was a rough little thing with brown wool hair and clothes made of scraps, sewn over a wooden peg. Her face had been put on with a blotchy fountain pen and was dreadfully smudged, but Margaret adored her.
And that was the last she remembered of her mother, taking the bundle from her that sunny morning, their rations for the journey tied up in a rag. Mrs Jennings appeared, having made them each a stera bottle – which had previously contained sterilized milk – full of sweet tea.
‘Don’t worry about your mother now,’ she told them. ‘I’ll make sure ’er’s all right. And, Tommy, you’re a big boy now. You must look after Margaret.’
Then Tommy was with her and they were at school, gas masks in boxes over their shoulders. The string chafed her and made her shoulder ache. After that came the train, with them all crowded into carriages.
The day was hot and very long, the longest she could ever remember. There was no corridor on the train. Margaret was squeezed in next to the window where the sun streamed in, making her face red and hot. Over the other side was Miss Peters, one of the teachers from the school. She was nervous, but kindly, trying to deal single-handed with a carriage full of thirty or so young children. There was pushing and shoving, teasing. One of the girls was sick and the carriage took on a nasty sour smell.
Now and then Miss Peters thrust her head out of the window to call desperately to the teacher in the next carriage. She got them singing ‘Ten Green Bottles’ and ‘Greensleeves’. The day grew hotter. What had seemed at first like an adventure became exhausting and bewildering.
Margaret dozed against Tommy’s shoulder until he nudged her awake.
‘Let’s ’ave a bit of that bread, Sis.’
Margaret looked up at him, so glad he was there. If Tommy was with her, everything would be all right. He was a big, handsome-looking boy with brown eyes like hers, but darker hair, like the Old Man’s. She knew Tommy would protect her. Tommy was seven and he had become very grown-up today. He’d said he wouldn’t let anyone hurt her. Even though he teased her at home, outside he was her protector, chasing other kids off when they started on about her eye.
They ate some of the bread and drank some tea. Soon an urgent feeling came on low down in Margaret’s body. She hoped it would go away, but it didn’t. She put her lips right up close to her brother’s ear.
‘I need to go, Tommy.’
She screwed up her face in misery as he looked down at her.
‘What: number twos? Yer can’t.’ He looked round wildly for a moment. There were no toilets. ‘You’ll ’ave to hold it in.’
‘I can’t,’ Margaret said, starting to cry.
Then for a few moments it went off and Tommy lost interest in her, assuming the problem was solved. But the feeling came back, more urgently. She waited, holding on until she couldn’t any longer. She felt herself let go into her knickers and then she was sitting on it, like warm pebbles, alien and uncomfortable. She wanted to cry, but she was terrified the other children would notice her.
Letting a few moments pass, she slid from the seat and squatted on the floor, her face pressed against the knee of another child who was standing up. There was so much going on in the crowded carriage that she hoped no one would notice. Slipping her finger into her knickers at the back, she hoped to empty them discreetly onto the floor.
She was almost sure of her success when a voice cried, ‘Phwoor! What’s that pong!’ It was one of the boys. ‘ ’Ere, look, uurgh! Old squiffy-eyes’s shat ’erself!’
Margaret’s mind seemed to have shut out all the details after that, except for the moment when every face in the carriage was turned to stare at her, Tommy’s included, and she knew that she stank and wouldn’t be able to clean her finger for the whole of the rest of the journey, and that of all the children there she was the most polluted. Miss Peters took over. Somehow, with the help of a newspaper, the offending mess was despatched out of the window. Everything settled. But the terrible swelling shame didn’t, or the stench of her finger with its stained nail all that day.
Then it was evening and they were all in a big place somewhere, with a floor of scuffed boards and chairs with sagging seats round the walls and a little stage. A gristly-looking man in a cap came and fetched Tommy, saying that he looked a strong lad. Margaret waited for Tommy to say, ‘My sister’s coming too.’ But Tommy got to his feet without a word and she saw that his face was set, the way it looked when he was trying not to cry. He looked very small next to the man, who led him away holding his shoulder. He glanced back, just for a second, looking frightened. And then he was gone.
The other children were collected in ones and twos. But Margaret was left in the gloomy village hall, cross-legged on the floor, clutching Peggy Doll in her pocket with her clean hand, rubbing her dirty finger round and round in a knot in the wood in front of her.
‘There’s just the little girl with the lazy eye,’ she heard someone say. There were two other teachers with Miss Peters. ‘She’s very young. We must get her a billet tonight somehow.’
A discussion ensued. Then she was walking with Miss Peters, surrounded by the strange smells of the fields and a whiff of wood smoke and soon afterwards, out of the darkness, a door opened, showing a room lit only by a hurricane lamp on the table, and she had her first sight of a yellow-eyed cat and of Mrs Nora Paige.
Eight
‘You’ll sleep down here,’ Mrs Paige said in her grating voice. An exhausted Miss Peters had disappeared off into the darkness after a brief introduction. ‘There’s no room for you upstairs – those rooms are mine and my Ernest’s, so I can’t go putting you up in a bed. Not even for ten and six a week.’
The cottage was a two-up, two-down. They had passed through a dark front parlour into the back room, which was dimly lit by the oil lamp. In the gloom Margaret could make out an iron range in the chimney alcove. A deal table took up much of the room and on it was
a chaos of plates and books around the lamp. At the back, in front of the window, was the stiff, upright piece of furniture to which Mrs Paige was pointing. It had wooden arms, but on the seat lay some very firm-looking oblong cushions covered with dark material.
‘Here’s a blanket. If you need to do your business I’ve left a bucket there by the door. The privy’s outside for the daytime. And Seamus usually sleeps up here, so you won’t have to mind if he gets up with you.’
She eyed the cat, which was standing by a leg of the table, eyeing them back. He didn’t look friendly, Margaret thought. She wasn’t used to cats.
‘Now you lie down. I’m going to my bed.’
With no offer of food, drink or any word of comfort, she left, taking the oil lamp with her. The room melted into darkness. Margaret lay her aching body down on the hard settle with its lumpy horsehair cushions, too tired to care where she slept. She clutched Peggy Doll in one hand and pulled the blanket over her, which was made of a patchwork of knitted squares and gave off an aroma of mothballs.
There was a mix of other smells in the room: the bitter whiff of coal, which she was used to, mixed with a ripe, fruity scent, which she wasn’t. The next morning she saw that it came from a basket of cooking apples on the quarry tiles by the back door, fallers with bruises and wasp holes. Far away outside she heard a shriek, which must have been a bird. Her head was throbbing and her eyes already closing as she settled.
A second later something thumped down on her feet and she leapt up, whimpering with fear. It made a tiny mewing sound. The cat! She couldn’t see anything, but she didn’t like the memory of its staring yellow eyes and the feeling that it could see her when she could see nothing at all. For what seemed an age, she waited. Eventually she heard a rhythmic, purring noise from the cat, which sounded much more friendly and reassuring. She eased her weight down along the settle again until her feet, still in their dirty-white socks, met the creature’s soft body. She snatched her legs away again in a panic, but nothing happened. Drawn by the warmth, she let her feet slide back against the purring cat.
She thought of her mother: not the frail woman clinging to the door that morning, but Mom as she had been before, hard-pressed, but kindly and comforting. Then she thought of Tommy, of seeing him being led away by that rough-looking man – Tommy looking lost and frightened. She began to snuffle and cry.
‘Mom . . . want my mom . . . Want Tommy . . .’ But soon she was overcome by sleep.
Miss Peters came to fetch her the next morning. Margaret burst into tears at the sight of her. Mrs Paige had given her thin salty porridge and kept talking about something called the Other Side, while peeling apples at the table.
‘The border between life and the Other Side is as thin as a chiffon scarf,’ she had said, her hank of tarry hair lolloping from side to side in the hairnet as she moved her head. ‘Not everyone understands that. But the dead are all around us, reaching out, longing for communication, if we would only hear them. Eat up your porridge – you won’t be getting anything else. That teacher’ll be here for you soon.’ Muttering, she added, ‘Interfering harridans, the whole lot of them.’
The rank taste of the food had settled in Margaret’s mouth.
‘Where’s my brother?’ she howled as soon as Miss Peters appeared, seeming like a piece of home because she was at least familiar. ‘I want Tommy. ’E said ’e’d be with me! ’E was s’posed to look after me – our mom said!’
Miss Peters was wearing a navy hat and coat, which made her look rather smart, especially beside Mrs Paige with her baggy beige cardigan and flopping hair. Miss Peters was thin, long-nosed and nervy, but she had a kind heart and a protective sense of responsibility to her charges. Looking upset, she bent down towards Margaret – this poor, unfortunate-looking little girl with her lazy eye and threadbare, cut-down clothes, her dark brown hair cut roughly in the shape of a pudding basin. She was the very youngest of the evacuees and certainly the most wretched-looking.
‘I’m sorry, Margaret dear, we had to let the local people choose who they wanted staying with them, when we arrived. And Tommy was taken to stay on a farm a few miles away because the farmer wants him to help them.’
‘Is ’e coming to school?’ Margaret sobbed.
Unhappily Miss Peters replied, ‘I do hope so, but I’m afraid I really don’t know for sure.’ She rallied herself. ‘Come along now, dear, wipe your face and we’ll go along to the school ourselves and then perhaps we’ll find out?’
She reached out and took Margaret’s hand, nodded coolly at Mrs Paige, who stared back with an air of insolence, and they set off. Margaret looked up at her teacher with adoration. The feel of Miss Peters’ hand was a great comfort that morning as they set off along the lane between the dripping trees.
Days merged in her memory after that. There was no sign of Tommy, though Miss Peters said to Margaret that she would see if they could arrange to visit him on the farm. She and the two other teachers struggled to educate and keep an eye on their charges, who were a variety of ages and were scattered across three villages and the surrounding farms. There was a tiny school in Lowick village, to which Margaret had been sent, which was quickly overwhelmed by the number of evacuees. They had to overspill into a room at the vicarage some days in the week where they sat round a huge table, or into a nearby barn, perched on bales of straw.
After Margaret, the next-youngest evacuee was a little girl called Joan, a few months older. Miss Peters took special care of Margaret, while another of the teachers looked out for Joan, though she was more fortunate, having been billeted with her eight-year-old sister.
On those glowing autumn days the hedges brightened with berries, and at one point on the walk to and from school, orchard branches hung over a wall, dipping down towards the verge and bearing the reddest of apples. Every so often they shed fallers with a little thump and rolled along the grass, which could be munched straight away, so long as you got there before anyone else.
Walking home from school with Miss Peters was always interesting, seeing the carts go past drawn by horses, which seemed gigantic to Margaret; and hens pecking in the road; and the older village children hurrying past, sometimes friendly, sometimes not. Some days an elderly lady sat on a low stool outside her cottage door shelling peas or topping and tailing gooseberries and they would stop for a few words.
One day, as they were walking back to Mrs Paige’s house, an apple fell from a branch with a small thud right in front of them.
‘Look!’ Miss Peters hurried to pick it up. ‘That one’s hardly got a mark on it.’ She polished it on her sleeve and handed it to Margaret. ‘You eat that, dear – it’ll bring the colour to your cheeks.’
Margaret reached out for the shiny red globe in wonder. When she bit ravenously into it, the flesh was a sweet, tangy taste of heaven. She had never had an apple like it. A smile spread over her face.
‘S’nice,’ she announced through her mouthful.
‘Good!’ A smile appeared on her teacher’s tense features as well. ‘Oh, look, and there’s another one come down – we’re in luck today!’
Hand in hand they continued on along the lane, past the church, the last cluster of houses and the old field gate, to where Mrs Paige’s down-at-heel cottage nestled at the fringe of the village. Its whitewashed front was stained green and the roof sagged.
Margaret remembered Miss Peters’ questions as all one conversation, though perhaps it wasn’t.
‘Do you have any other clothes, Margaret? Has Mrs Paige washed them for you? Have you been able to have a wash?’
A shake of the head to all these questions. Words must have passed between the two women after this, as Mrs Paige did start, grumblingly, to pull up water from the well in the garden and heat it to wash Margaret’s clothes occasionally, hanging them on the range to dry overnight. She made Margaret wash out of a bucket. (There was another snatch of conversation that Margaret overheard between the two young teachers one day: ‘The woman doesn’t have the firs
t notion how to care for a child . . .’)
‘Does Mrs Paige have many visitors?’ Miss Peters asked, barely above a whisper.
Margaret shook her head. She had never seen anyone come to the house.
After another pause Miss Peters said, ‘Have you heard from your mother?’
Another shake of the head.
‘Is . . .’ Miss Peters hesitated. ‘Is Mrs Paige treating you well?’
This question brought about a vague, floating feeling in Margaret’s head. It was a question she barely understood. Treating you well? It was not something she knew how to think about. As for finding any words to begin on Mrs Paige, with her strange rooms and her cat pouncing on Margaret’s feet in the dark, and Ernest’s riding crop (which had been pointed out to her more than once, a thin, black leather thing with a loop at the end) hanging on the back of the door. (‘It can lash you,’ Mrs Paige had told her, staring hard at Margaret, ‘so beware. It can lash you badly, that can’) . . .
Miss Peters stopped. ‘Look at me, Margaret. That’s right, dear. Is everything all right? You would tell me if you were worried about anything?’
Having no idea what other answer she might give, Margaret nodded her head.
‘I’m going to show you round,’ Mrs Paige said, the afternoon after Margaret’s arrival. ‘The abode of Mr and Mrs Ernest Paige.’
Her eyes stretched wide for a second, as if they might pop out of her head, then she blinked hard. It was something she did every now and then. ‘You take note, my girl.’
She bent down suddenly and put her face close to Margaret’s. Her breath smelled of old onions. Margaret saw, close up, that the mole on Mrs Paige’s left cheek had dark hairs sprouting out of it and that her skin was like old cheese rind. She was dressed in a sagging combination of wool and tweed.
