Kisses on a Postcard

by Terence Frisby

  The vackies had one song, favourite among the many that were used, sung to the tune of ‘A Gordon For Me’:

  The turnips are thick, the turnips are dumb;

  They use stinging nettles for wiping their bum.

  They eat mangel-wurzels and live in a shed;

  They’re dotty and spotty and soft in the head.

  The village kids’ song, to the tune of ‘Blow Away The Morning Dew’, had, in my view even then, more style. I think I liked the tune better:

  They come down yere from London so swanky and stuck up;

  They challenge us to take them on and say they’ll duff us up.

  So we’ll blow away them vacky kids to kingdom come;

  We’ll blow away them smarty-pants and kick them up the bum.

  Perhaps the last five words let it down. The tunes, of course, we all knew well from school.

  Efforts were made to improve relations. They were futile.

  Some well-meaning person suggested a cricket match: we walloped them. A football match followed: the score was, believe it or not, vackies thirty-odd, village kids nil. Our contempt for them was confirmed. Westwood Secondary School – no great shakes academically, consisting almost entirely of grammar- and technical-school rejects – was streets ahead of Dobwalls village school. We younger brothers and sisters soon saw that we were equally superior to their infants. As we came from the suburbs with woods and greenery, even their strengths, the mysteries of the countryside, were partly known by us, though we had much to learn. When it came to street wisdom the gap was unbridgeable. They didn’t seem to have heard of knock-down-ginger or scrumping. If they wanted an apple they either asked or took one. Or of stealing from Woolworth’s – for obvious reasons that we vackies made no allowances for, although it soon became apparent to even the most hardened of us that you couldn’t possibly steal from Ede’s, the village shop, not because it was too dangerous but because it was too personal. Unthinkable to take things from Mr Ede and his brother. The anonymity needed for petty crime was gone.

  We arranged our own private group fights – more confrontation and insults than violence – in the dinner break and returned to our separate classes late and dishevelled, to get our knuckles rapped with a ruler – more painful than the fights. And our leader, Frank Emmett, and their leader, Sam Finch, fought each other in single combat to wild cheers and a disputed result.

  The whole village divided. Those with their own children and many others regarded the vackies as a pestilence to be endured or resisted. But there were those who suddenly found themselves with new families: energetic, bright children who won their hearts and brought a new vitality to their village, trebling the under-fourteen population. And, of course, there must have been the unfortunate misfits, vackies who were too difficult to manage for one reason or another and villagers who just couldn’t handle the children dumped on them. But, although the stories of cruelty and abuse abound and resound even now, I remember none among my fellows who was mistreated. Though there was one little boy in Junior Vackies who often wet himself, so at least one of us was unhappy. When he did it, someone would hold up their hand and say, ‘Please, Miss. Dozmary Pool.’ (A famous stretch of water on Bodmin Moor.) And he became the humiliated centre of stifled mirth as Mrs Langdon patiently cleaned him and the floor up. I remember no sign of sympathy from us young savages and he was one of those who soon went home.

  Prominent among the pro-vackies faction was the Reverend Clifford Buckroyd, the Wesleyan Methodist Minister, a pleasant, good-looking, fortyish man (my mother told me years later that every time she visited us she always fancied him, which surprised me as much as an adult as it would have done had she told me at the time – he was a minister for goodness sake) who worked hard to make us vackies feel at home and the village accept us. He was a popular man and lives clearly in my memory. If personality had dictated where people worshipped, his chapel would have been overflowing and the Anglican church empty. I can barely remember its vicar, the Reverend R. O. Oatey, though I attended it for three years, taken there by Auntie Rose. But denominations and places of worship were ingrained, only marginally decided by such ephemeral factors.

  There was one Wesleyan Methodist woman, the anti-vacky Miss Polmanor, the one on whom Elsie Plummer had the misfortune to be billeted, who seemed to personify all the traits of uptight bigoted Christianity that made Uncle Jack so angry. It abounded in the country in those days. When I say country I don’t just mean countryside, I mean the whole country. No one had a monopoly on it. Miss Polmanor lived in one of a pair of houses some yards from the Court, up the road towards Dobwalls. But her religious convictions meant that there was more to her than mere narrow-mindedness, as I learned in due course. She was harder on herself than on anyone. She seemed to make her own life something to be endured rather than enjoyed. There was, no matter what Uncle Jack might have thought or said, not the faintest whiff of hypocrisy in her. Whatever she demanded of people she first drew from herself. I became, soon after my arrival in Cornwall, her unwilling confidant, though I did not understand much of what I was privy to till much later. I certainly did not like her or wish to be near her but was obliged to see her and talk to her alone regularly.

  It all happened by chance. To eke out what must have been a frugal existence – I don’t know what she lived on – she had acquired the Doublebois concession on Corona. Corona was a firm that made fizzy drinks that were far and away the favourite of all of us children. If you wanted a bottle you had to go and knock on her back door. She had crates of full bottles in her cool little cellar and crates of empties ready for collection outside the back door. Corona bottles came pint-sized and were secured with an intricate wire arrangement attached to a ceramic cork which had a red rubber washer round it. You opened the bottle by holding it in your two hands and pressing on the wire on either side of the neck with your thumbs until the whole arrangement moved past some sort of fulcrum. Then the cork was released and the pressure from within blew the bottle open with a satisfying pop. If you had been shaking it, or if it was too warm, the opening pop was an explosion, followed by a foaming tide and you lost half of the contents. Our favourites were cherryade (sweetly disgusting) and ginger beer (probably would still taste good to me today).

  Every Sunday dinner in summer Jack and I were allowed to have a glass each with our meal. But there was a difficulty. Miss Polmanor would not trade on a Sunday. That was against her strict Methodist religious convictions. The same widespread convictions that had ensured, to Uncle Jack’s frustration, that there was no pub in Dobwalls and that most of Wales was shut on a Sunday. So we had to buy our bottle the day before during normal shopping hours. On a Saturday morning, with Jack and with last week’s empty, worth a penny or ha’penny back, it was an enjoyable errand. We could choose the flavour – if there was a choice – and carry the new full treasure carefully home to be stored somewhere cool for Sunday. But the errand was sometimes forgotten on a busy Saturday and disappointment stared us in the face on Sunday morning. On one such morning Auntie Rose cannily sent me alone on what looked like a pointless mission.

  Acting on instructions I said, ‘Sorry, Miss Polmanor, but Uncle Jack was working on the line yesterday, war work. Auntie Rose was ill in bed and Jack and I were at choir practice. Could you let us have a bottle of pop, please?’

  ‘I can’t sell you anything on a Sunday,’ she said in the shocked tones of one who was appalled at even being asked. ‘Mr and Mrs Phillips know that.’ She was one of the few who did not call them Auntie Rose and Uncle Jack. ‘’Tis against the Scriptures. I’m surprised at them sending you.’

  Somehow I had the wit to say, ‘Oh, but they didn’t, Miss Polmanor. I thought it by myself. I thought you might make an exception.’

  She must have liked that because I saw a rare faint smile on her face and she sounded more gentle. ‘ ’Tisn’t for me to make exceptions, young man. ‘’Tis for God. Be you worth an exception?’

  I couldn’t handle the problem
of thinking how God might make an exception for me, so gave up. ‘Sorry to bother you, Miss Polmanor.’ I turned away, looking into a Corona-less Sunday lunch.

  ‘Just a minute, young man. Did you say that you were at choir practice?’

  I was too honest by far, bearing in mind her Wesleyan faith. ‘Yes, Miss Polmanor. But it was Church of England choir practice, at St Peter’s, not at Mr Buckroyd’s.’

  ‘That don’t matter, boy. You was doing God’s will as you saw it.’

  Is that what I was doing, I thought to myself.

  ‘I can’t sell you anything on a Sunday. That’s for sure. But, if you’re very good, I could give you a bottle to take with you and you could pay me tomorrow.’

  I can’t remember what I said, if anything.

  ‘Not a word to anyone, mind, or my life will be a misery.’

  I wasn’t foolish enough to respond to that with a clever remark or old enough to have even thought of one. I stood, respectfully hopeful.

  ‘And only because you was singing to the glory of God. This is just between you, me and Him.’ She gestured upwards. ‘Promise?’

  I did so fervently.

  ‘And will you be good if I do?’

  Another ardent assurance. She certainly demanded her pound of flesh on His behalf.

  ‘There you are, then. And give thanks to God when you drink it.’

  I took it, thanked her and God and ran for it.

  Of course, the minute I was home Auntie Rose had to know how I had drawn ginger beer from that particular stone. When I told her she quietly smiled and I was made to promise to take the money straight after school. Uncle Jack’s eyes lit up when he heard the story. ‘A chink in God’s armour,’ he laughed. ‘Who would’ve thought it.’

  Unfortunately this led to a further intimacy: when I took the money she asked me in. Her house was more old-fashioned than anything I had seen, packed with bric-à-brac, mementoes, religious texts and biblical pictures. There was one item that stood centre on the sideboard that was unmissable: a silver-framed photo of a man. It was turned into a modest shrine, standing on a little tapestry with candlesticks on either side.

  ‘He was a saint,’ said Miss Polmanor, as she saw me look at him. ‘He died abroad for me and Jesus and now I live for both of them. That’s my vocation, willed on me by God.’

  The man just looked ordinary to me, someone from another age. I don’t even remember feeling curious. Realising that I was some sort of favourite, Auntie Rose usually saw that Jack was working on our vegetable patch in the garden with Uncle Jack, something Jack enjoyed and I didn’t, and sent me to buy the Corona on my own. I think she did it as a kindness – to Miss Polmanor, not to me. Objections from me were overridden: it became my job. Miss Polmanor gave me texts and talks and even the occasional glass of Corona along with oblique references to the ‘saint’ that were lost on me but which left me uncomfortable. I got the impression that he was a missionary who had died of something or other in darkest somewhere or other. She liked to open herself, no matter how slightly, to me and even patted my head once and gave me a half-hearted hug, which enveloped me in a two-level, sweet-and-sour sickly smell that nearly caused me to run for it. But we were used to being the recipients of unwanted embraces or cuffs and were skilled at dodging them. After that I generally managed to keep the plentiful furniture between her and me. Somehow I had slipped through the net of her disapproval of all things young – and especially vacky – and had her bottled-up affection.

  I used to hope for Elsie to rescue me from all this if she was in, but when Miss Polmanor answered the door to me with my sixpence and empty bottle Elsie was gone in a flash and I am sure that Miss Polmanor was glad to see her go in spite of her constant denunciations of Elsie’s unwillingness ever to stay in – probably to avoid yet more futile, pious indoctrination.

  Miss Polmanor rode her bicycle into Dobwalls to shop and do her good works, often, so Auntie Rose said, to the exasperation of Buckroyd. She was soon round the Wesleyan minister’s neck about us vackies playing in the Methodist graveyard at dinner break. ‘’Tis sacrilege, Mr Buckroyd. Disturbin’ the dead like that.’

  ‘I don’t think the dead mind too much, Miss Polmanor.’

  ‘They make up profane words to hymn tunes. I’ve heard they.’

  ‘So do our children, Miss Polmanor.’

  ‘But not so profane as they.’

  ‘Well, they’re more – er – inventive.’

  ‘More sinful.’

  ‘There’s a war on, Miss Polmanor.’

  And, in the rumour and gossip that always rides in tandem with war – I mean our private war – stories abounded of vackies who behaved outrageously or were treated with cruelty.

  ‘Have you ever heard? Over to Tremabe they chopped off all the chickens’ heads. Every living one o’ ’em. Two little savages, only seven years old.’

  ‘No. Is that so, my dear?’

  ‘And down to Warleggan they slaughtered lambs in the fields, fired a rick. ’Tis bloody mayhem, I’m telling you – oh, sorry, Mrs. I didn’t mean to – but ’tis terrible.’

  ‘ ’Tis like a plague: the eleventh plague of Egypt, the plague of children.’

  ‘Oh, no, no, no. We got two. They’m nice. I like ’em. My missus dotes on ’em.’

  And, after their gossip, villagers strode off down the main road along which Dobwalls was strung, tut-tutting or doubting, according to their views.

  There was one story that was ubiquitous, told in every village in the county. ‘You know that farmer up the edge of the Moor, Penmalligan. He had two vackies billeted on he.’

  ‘Ar. Boy ’n’ a maid.’

  ‘Well, he locked they in the linney all night, then took his strap to ’em after breakfast. His breakfast. They din’ get none. They was nine and ten years old. Well, their father got to year. In the Guards, he is. Grenadiers. Back from Dunkirk.’

  ‘Yes, they was there, I read it.’

  ‘Well, he went AWOL, went to Penmalligan’s farm, punched he all round his own farmyard, then took his kids off with him back to Lunnon. ’Twas a proper job.’

  ‘Have you heard of anyone else giving they vackies what for?’

  ‘No. Everyone round yere be giving it up for Lent.’

  And though such events always took place in the next village but one, the mythical guardsman was a famous and cautionary figure.

  Uncle Jack took Jack and me in hand. ‘Who started it all?’

  ‘They called us slum kids.’

  ‘And what did you call them?’

  ‘Turnips.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Yokels.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Clodhoppers.’

  ‘Hmm. Who called who names first?’

  This was lost in the mists of time.

  He put his arms round us confidentially. ‘Listen, boys. You can’t call people names when you’re living in a village full of self-righteous, Godbothering hypocrites. So don’t do it.’

  ‘No, Uncle Jack. Sorry, Uncle Jack.’

  ‘I know they’re a lot of Bible-punching Tories, but try to make friends with ’em. We’re fighting the Germans, not each other.’

  Chapter Six

  Quiet but intense excitement in the Phillips household. Gwyn, their younger son, was coming home on leave. He was training somewhere. When he was called up he managed to get into the Royal Welch Fusiliers like his father. The Welch, with its archaic spelling, was a top regiment. Uncle Jack must have been pleased in that schizophrenic way he had of both hating the military and being proud of being Welsh. Tories, staff officers, authority in general, mine owners in particular, shareholders (‘vested interests’ was the phrase then) and religion were all his targets but he was patriotic. Auntie Rose’s political views were simple: she distrusted anything or anyone that put her loved ones in jeopardy. She had suffered the First World War with Uncle Jack being at the front and invalided out. She didn’t need any of that again, and Gwyn was her youngest and
most vulnerable. Her daughter, Rose, was relatively safe in Barry, South Wales. Older son Len, Leonard Llewellyn, was ground crew in the RAF, which seemed as good as she could hope for. Both of them were married, something which gave a feeling of danger shared, of security, no matter how false. But Gwyn was single, all hers, and anything could happen to him. He was already a corporal, another source of unspoken pride for Uncle Jack but of no comfort to Auntie Rose.

  She was on the platform to meet the train; Uncle Jack was working on the line in the valley; Jack and I swung on the wire fence behind the wash-house and looked down on the station. The train blocked our view at first but as it pulled away we saw Auntie Rose in the arms of a soldier, his back to us, her head buried in his shoulder, then raised to look into his eyes; we could see hers shining from fifty yards away. He was dark, not very tall, had a kitbag and rifle. Instead of taking the usual route, walking to our end of the platform, crossing the line (illegally) and climbing the little track that many feet had worn, then ducking through the wires, they walked away from us, the long way round, down the platform to greet the porter and Mr Rawlings the stationmaster, over the bridge, up the road and down the Court. I think she wanted to show him off to anyone who was about.