Kisses on a Postcard

by Terence Frisby

  A cherished memory of Mum (of so many) is of her standing in the kitchen in Welling with Jack and me sitting at the table, the radio on, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov or Stravinsky or Ravel or Debussy or Tchaikovsky playing; she holding a cooking implement, waving her arms and hands about, a faraway smile on her face. She would undulate in her version of a harem-type dance, saying, ‘Listen, boys, listen. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? See? The Russians and the Romantics and the Moderns. Aren’t they lovely? Just listen.’ And I have, ever since.

  The day before the Second World War started (it was a Saturday) Dad shovelled Mum, Jack and me off to safety in Portslade, near Brighton, to stay with Mum’s sister and family in another 1930s house similar to our own. Great-aunt Molly probably paid the deposit on that one too, treating the sisters equally. Safety? We would have been right in the path of any invading Germans. Auntie Esme (a former cellist who had sailed to South Africa and back, scraping away) was married to Uncle Walter; they were a very happy pair; their children were our cousins, David, Audrey and Maureen.

  I listened to the famous declaration-of-war broadcast by Neville Chamberlain at 11 a.m. on that first Sunday in September 1939 with Mum, Auntie Esme and Maureen. Something like panic reigned. Dad, Uncle Walter, Jack, David and tomboy Audrey had gone out for a walk on the foreshore (you could scarcely call the undistinguished bit of coastline at Portslade a beach). Would they be back before the Germans landed? Was our fear for them or for ourselves, left undefended at home? Maureen and I scuttered anxiously up and down the street looking for them, told to venture no further by Mum and Auntie Esme, who were peering out of the front door as all the church bells in the land tolled out their dreadful warnings. I saw the four of them some way off, strolling towards me in animated conversation, and ran anxiously up to them yelling, ‘Did you see any Germans?’ I was greeted with bafflement, then derision.

  During the autumn of the Phoney War we cousins privately started the real thing between ourselves. We brawled incessantly. Auntie Esme and Mum, who were very close and loved their reunion, tried to ignore us, while Uncle Walter, tall, gangling, gentle Uncle Walter, decided to bring us all together with a cooperative project. Under his leadership we all embarked on the doomed attempt to build an air-raid shelter in the back garden. This trench, dug with so much effort into the solid clay that was under the garden, was always half full of water and was a glorious place to fight with our cousins and produce quantities of mud that horrified even our hardened mothers. Uncle Walter lived above the squalls and skirmishing in a quiet world of his own from which he tried, with no success, occasionally to remonstrate with an errant child. Dad was absent from Monday to Friday: ‘essential war work’ on the railway in London was the hushed, reverent explanation.

  I remember one dispute that left me with a sense of the injustice of life. We were at table for a meal. Maureen, our youngest cousin, picked up a spoon and whacked me over the head with it. I could find nothing else to hand except a knife, so I picked it up and whacked her back, being careful even at my tender years to hit her with the flat and not the blade. It made no difference; Maureen yelled and retribution clattered about my ears as Mum and Auntie Esme joined forces to bombard me with outrage for using a knife on my little cousin. She got away with her attack scot-free – and cut-free too because of my unappreciated care.

  One result of us children being herded together at bedtime was that I got my introduction to sex. Jack and I, having no sister, must have seemed pretty naive to our mixed cousins. One night we played the ‘I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours’ game. I cannot remember who suggested it but it certainly wasn’t me and I do not believe Jack would have dared to do such a thing. Anyway, we shyly pulled down our pyjama trousers and solemnly gazed at each other. Maureen, aged five, said, ‘Look,’ reversed herself, bent over, head upside down between her knees, eyes looking up at us through her legs, and gave us a grandstand view of her back bottom. Jack and I stared, fascinated as much by the gesture as by the sight before us. ‘Oh Maureen,’ said Audrey wearily, as though this happened frequently, but I felt a rebuke was out of place; Maureen’s action was daring, generous and stylish; she offered more than she was getting. Perhaps she was just being exhibitionist but I don’t think so. She became my favourite cousin.

  We were – as was promised to the soldiers of the previous world war – home by Christmas. It was a relief to all of us, each family being mightily relieved to be rid of the other, though Mum and Auntie Esme were sorry to be parted again.

  Back in Welling the Phoney War continued, a few months of a sort of pre-war existence, except that now there were shortages of everything that had been available even in a Britain barely emerging from the Great Depression. In anticipation of air raids barrage balloons hung above us over Shooters Hill golf course, great useless bags of gas that were supposed to deter low-level attacks and did absolutely nothing as far as anyone can remember. Occasionally one broke free and sailed away on the wind, trailing its cables, which hit the odd pylon or overhead electrical wire and created havoc and power cuts. The balloons always came down in the most inconvenient places, giving photo-opportunities to enterprising local reporters and the chance of a great deal of comedy business to the soldiers who were sent to retrieve them. Where possible the troops attached them to lorries and towed them back, followed by packs of cheering, jeering boys on bicycles.

  Up in Oxleas Wood, a few hundred yards from our house, anti-aircraft guns, searchlights and rockets were hidden in the trees. The long menacing shapes of the barrels of the ack-ack guns poked up through the leaves and branches. The beams of the searchlights waved about hitting the underside of clouds or continuing to infinity as the Observer Corps trained on them at night. But when the rockets were fired the shattering whooshes and roars seemed to open the doors of hell. We cowered in our beds, aghast, our stomachs turning to water, even though we knew they were on our side, and pitied any Germans who would dare to come near. To have close looks at these alien, thrilling objects we children invaded those parts of the woods that were fenced off and marked ‘Private’ only to be good-naturedly driven off by the soldiers and chased with less amiability by the park keepers.

  One of them caught us one day and gave us a severe lecture. ‘Before you kids came here nightingales sang in these woods. Where are they now, eh?’ I went home and reported this to Mum. Her mouth set in a hard line. Never one to take on authority directly, she put on her coat, went and found the keeper and harangued him on the subject of how much disturbance he thought regiments of soldiers created as they erected campsites and tested their guns in comparison to a few kids trying to creep about and not be caught. I don’t know what the keeper said in answer, if anything, but he still went on chasing us. It wasn’t long before those guns and rockets were in nightly use. No nightingales have since sung in Oxleas Wood to my knowledge.

  Then in May 1940, the Second World War broke out in earnest as far as Britain was concerned: the Germans attacked; their panzer divisions swept through the Low Countries and France; the British and French armies were brushed aside; the disaster-cum-deliverance of Dunkirk happened, and what I call my ‘other childhood’ began. Jack, aged eleven, and I, aged seven, became evacuees – vackies – and were carried off to another world.

  Chapter Two

  We were all up early that morning, 13 June 1940. Two little brown cases were already packed, sandwiches and pop at the top for easy access. Dad was first to leave, off to work. I don’t remember him hugging or kissing us; men didn’t go in for that in those days. He may have shaken our hands. What he did do, to demonstrate his authority and reassure us, was to tell us that he knew where we were going, but he could not tell us because it was a war secret – a heavy wink accompanied this – and we would like it there. It would be in the country, fun; perhaps even – dare we hope it? – the seaside. No, he wasn’t going to tell: wait and see. We were to be sure to look out on the left just after Wandsworth Road station as our train would go over his office,
which was in the arches under the railway there, and he would wave. We knew then that we would be on a train that would leave Welling and cross south London, on to the Western Section, not a scheduled route of our Eastern Section suburban services to Waterloo, Charing Cross and Cannon Street. We knew our train would be special. We were railway children and proud of it and of our privileged knowledge. And if Dad knew we were taking that route he must be privy to the whole secret evacuation plan.

  ‘It’ll be a steam engine.’ Another clue that we were going well out of our electrified world, an impressively long journey. We knew the exact stations where electrification terminated in all directions.

  ‘Cor, what? A namer? What?’ we asked, excited. ‘Schools-class?’

  ‘Don’t think it’ll be a schools class,’ he said. ‘Not big enough for your journey: only a 4-4-0.’ He dismissed an engine which pulled the Dover boat trains and we loved, a compact modern design sitting on its four driving wheels and four bogies. We often saw them on trips up to Charing Cross on our Eastern Section of the railway, cosier than the bigger Western Section locomotives used for the longest routes out of Waterloo. ‘Could be a King Arthur.’ This was a 4-6-0 express with three drivers a side. ‘Maybe even a Lord Nelson.’ Another 4-6-0, the biggest engine on the Southern Railway, only used for the West of England runs. We digested this with a sense of importance as he went off to work.

  Mum had a tie-on label in her hand with my name and address on it in block capitals. ‘Here, let me put this on you,’ she said.

  ‘Ah, no. I know who I am.’

  ‘That’s in case the Germans capture you,’ said my knowing brother.

  ‘Honest?’ I was fascinated.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Jack. Come here.’ Mum was sharp. She had another label for him.

  ‘I haven’t got to wear one too, have I?’ Jack was disgusted.

  ‘Yes, both of you.’

  The two labels also had our school, class and teacher on the reverse side. I was being evacuated with Jack’s school, Westwood, a large secondary school over a mile away, although I was still at Eastcote Road Primary, right opposite our house. Whoever had devised the evacuation scheme had the good sense to try to keep younger brothers and sisters with their older siblings.

  While we objected, she tied them through the buttonholes in the lapels of our jackets. As I look now at all those old photos and films of vackies boarding trains and buses in their thousands in 1940, it leaves a hole in my stomach to consider how our mothers felt, tying labels on the most precious things in their lives and sending them off like parcels to God knows where, with the threat of annihilation from the air or sea hanging over us all. But our mother showed no sign of worry. She had two serious points to remind us of. The previous night at bedtime she had drilled them into us.

  ‘Terry, you’ve got to do as Jack says. Do you hear me?’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘Oh yes. And you stay with him all the time. Got it? He’s older than you.’

  ‘Four years four months older,’ put in Jack. That was the precise difference, to the day, that we always pointed out.

  ‘I’m cleverest.’

  She snapped at me. ‘Cleverer, Smart Alec, and you’re not. You do as he says. Always.’

  She was on delicate ground and she knew it. Although I was so much younger, I was a far better reader, coming top of my class regularly in most subjects and regarded as a very bright child, especially by myself. Jack, on the other hand, although no fool, was a very slow starter. He not only had the nuisance of a younger brother to deal with, he also had the humiliation of constantly being bettered by me in lessons and hearing me held up as an example to all. I, as a consequence, was pretty cocky. Getting me safely under Jack’s wing must have been tricky for her.

  ‘He’s your big brother. You stay with him and do as he says. And you, Jack, you see that he does. All the time.’

  Jack agreed, but the prospect of the pair of us being together the whole time, his albatross-little-brother round his neck, must have dismayed him as much as it did me. ‘Can I bash him?’

  She silenced my protests. ‘There’s no need for that but don’t you stand any nonsense from him, Jack. And don’t you dare leave him.’

  I was indignant. ‘I can look after myself.’

  ‘All right, all right. You look after each other. How’s that? You both look after each other.’

  For Jack, the idea of being looked after by me, even partially, held no charm, but as he started to protest Mum threw in her final compromise. ‘Just until you get to where you’re going. Until you get there. Really there.’

  ‘Where?’

  There was no answer to that so she introduced her second point, her game. ‘Now listen, both of you. Look what I’ve got here. It’s a postcard. And it’s in code. A secret code. Like the Secret Service. Only this is our code. Our own secret code. Read it, Jack.’

  This was exciting stuff; the postcard was stamped and addressed to our parents. Jack started to stumble through it. ‘ “Dear Mum and Dad, Arr – arr – arrived safe and well.

  Ev – ev – every—” ’

  I snatched the postcard from him and rattled off, ‘ “Everything fine. Love, Jack and Terry.” ’

  Mum was furious with me. ‘Give that back at once. I told Jack to read it, not you. He’s the older one, you do as he says. Always.’

  ‘I don’t see why—’

  ‘Always.’ The word was flung across the room at me, cutting through my disobedience, telling us both on a deeper level just how serious all this was. Jack completed the reading of the card, uninterrupted. There was a pause. Mum was getting hold of herself.

  ‘But – what’s the code?’ Jack ventured nervously.

  ‘When you get there,’ she continued, ‘you find out the address of the place where they take you. And you write it on the card there.’ She looked at us both. She had left a space. This was the really tricky bit. ‘Here, Jack. Here’s the pencil to write it with. You look after it. I’ll put it in your case. And when you know the address—’

  Jack cut across her. ‘I’ll give the pencil to Terry and he can write it in there.’

  Mum was momentarily taken aback. She wasn’t expecting such help. ‘That’s right, Jack. Good boy.’ I didn’t understand then why she gave him a hug that nearly stifled him when all he had done was to suggest the, to me, obvious solution. She continued to both of us, ‘Then you post it at once. All right? Now listen, I’ve only got one card so you’ve got to stay together or I won’t know where one of you is.’ It was her final shot on the other subject that was eating her.

  ‘But that’s not a proper code.’ We were disappointed.

  ‘No. Now this is the code. Our secret. You know how to write kisses, don’t you?’ We agreed with ‘eargh’, ‘yuck’ noises to brandish our distaste for such things. She waited for the ritual to subside. ‘You put one kiss if it’s horrible and I’ll come straight there and bring you back home. D’you see? You put two kisses if it’s all right. And three kisses if it’s nice. Really nice. Then I’ll know.’

  In the anxiety and horror of this major crisis in her life – our lives – our mother, and perhaps our father too, had come up with something for them and us to cling to in the chaos. That night we slept soundly, perhaps dreaming of our code and the adventure to come.

  She walked us under a canopy of barrage balloons to the 89 bus stop by the We Anchor In Hope pub at the foot of Shooters Hill. They were digging up the golf course to put in more anti-aircraft guns and searchlights. Welling, with the Thames and the docks a mile or two to the north, was on a direct route for bombers from the Continent heading for London. The water tower at the top of Shooters Hill was an outstanding landmark.

  The narrow up-line platform of Welling station was packed with hundreds of excited, chattering, rampant, labelled children with their cases and their teachers and mothers. Four or five travellers on the down-line platform stood staring at the extraordinary sight opposite them. Teachers were
ticking registers, two men were removing the station nameplates.

  ‘Why’re you doing that?’ asked a pushy bigger boy.

  The man who answered him fancied himself as a comedian. ‘It’s so the Germans won’t know where they are when they get here.’

  Our special train puffed round the bend into the station and the decibel-level rose sharply.

  ‘It’s an N-class,’ Jack and I saw with intense disappointment. ‘A manky old N. It hasn’t even got a name.’ We were clearly not as important as we thought, even though the N-class was a powerful 2-6-0, used for long-distance freight and passenger work. Suddenly we saw it was a corridor train and excitement again took over. Plenty of scope for fun: we could run from end to end of it, from compartment to compartment; lavatories to lock ourselves in; a guard’s van to explore.

  I don’t remember seeing any tears on that platform but there must have been plenty. Jack and I stood at a window, waving and shouting at Mum, who stood in a crowd of waving, smiling mums. She mouthed, ‘Don’t forget the code,’ as though we could have. She told me years later that she went home and sobbed. Like all the other mums, I expect. I still cannot think of her inventiveness and bravery, even now nearly seventy years later, without my eyes filling. Mum and Dad, with her (their?) secret code and his man-to-man confidences about our route and locomotives, ensured that Jack and I left home without a qualm. Perhaps even her success, seeing us shrug them off with such ease, gave another twist to the knife. We have all heard the stories of frightened, unhappy vackies being torn from their parents and shipped off to the unknown, but not Jack and me. As far as either of us can recall we just thought it was an adventure with his classmates and teachers and friends, although I had no difficulty in obeying Mum’s instruction to stay close to my big brother. Perhaps I was more anxious than I realised. As one of the youngest I knew practically nobody there; I was the only representative of Eastcote Road Primary; my infant-schoolmates had been sent elsewhere, many of them with their mothers because they were too young to be separated. But Westwood Secondary School, situated too far from my home for me to know any of those children, was kept together, a gigantic school outing. In any case they were all, except the younger siblings like me, eleven or over – Jack had only just started there – so they were distant, godlike figures to a seven-year-old. None of that made any difference to my feelings; they were a seething, familiar-to-each-other crowd and I had Jack and was caught up in it all.