Kisses on a Postcard

by Terence Frisby

  We managed to buy a Beano, quite an event, and read it together on the train back. One of the comic strips, about Mussolini, the Italian Fascist dictator, was called ‘Musso Da Wop, He’s A Bigga Da Flop’, which we found uncontrollably funny. We were overcome by giggles which we could not contain as we sat in the full compartment. People stared, then smiled and soon were chuckling with us. The better their humour, the more hysterical we got. Perhaps playing to the audience, we speechlessly pointed to the drawings and captions, the reasons for our incontinence. The adults’ good humour grew and we all got out to change at Bodmin Road with grins on our faces and said goodbye like old friends. Then the fun evaporated, everything went flat. We stood spaced along the platform waiting for our train, once more back in our own separate worlds. The whole group of us embarrassed, it seemed, by our former exuberance.

  A circus came to Liskeard. The children were told to bring money to school to book a seat if they wanted to go in a party. I was left out. Somehow or other Jack and I failed to ask Auntie Rose for the money. I don’t believe she would have refused us. Or she or Uncle Jack had said circuses were trashy things, or this one would be no good, or Jack was doing something else (what else would a boy be doing when the circus was coming to town?) and I was too shy to ask – another unlikely prospect. Anyway, I was alone, didn’t have a ticket and felt very hard done by when most of the children crowded onto the bus and left school early. A few of us remained to scatter drearily to our homes.

  ‘You’re early. What’s up?’ asked Auntie Rose when I got in.

  ‘Everybody’s gone to the circus early from school.’

  ‘Well, why haven’t you gone?’ she said, surprised.

  I was near tears when I realised I could have been on that bus. It was all a misunderstanding. Now there was no bus and the next train would be too late. Auntie Rose gave me the entrance money, a shilling and sixpence, plus the fare home from Liskeard in case I couldn’t get on the bus coming back, a sandwich, and pushed me out to thumb a lift from one of the rare passing cars or lorries. Actually, I needed no pushing. I ran towards Dobwalls. I ran through Dobwalls, still no cars. Out of Dobwalls, down the winding hill and up the long, long drag past Moorswater. Still no lift. Four miles I covered and arrived at the circus, pitched in a field between Liskeard station and the town, to find that the show had started and, anyway, the marquee was full. I stood there with no breath, gasping with exhaustion and frustration, only just holding down my sobs.

  My heartbeats and breathing slowed down as I wandered about listening to the laughter and applause from inside, more gall to my soul. Someone was selling candyfloss, unheard of during the war. It tasted filthy even to my eager tongue. I couldn’t finish it. I went round the back and saw some dejected-looking ponies, which I tried to pat until abruptly told to leave them alone. I moved resentfully away among the circus people who were bustling about.

  Just as I was about to give up, a baby elephant came out of the marquee, having done its stuff for the moment. This creature, with its huge ears and searching active trunk, seemed like a miracle. I swear it glowed. It stood shorter than I did and must have been very young. I stared at it in wonder, then sidled up to it and was allowed to pat it. I felt the sensitive top of its trunk explore my clothes, searching for my sandwich, I suppose. This was no mirage but a wonderfully solid, magical, gigantic pet. I asked its handler, an unbossy woman, if I could give him some sandwich. She inspected it and said yes, adding, ‘She’s not a him.’ So, breaking my sandwich into the smallest pieces I could, I fed it bit by bit to the elephant, who stood there waiting for more, its trunk running over my clothes and hands, thrilling me with its touch, not always gentle, always demanding. When my sandwich was finished I asked the woman what else the elephant liked.

  ‘Fruit,’ she said.

  ‘What fruit?’

  ‘Apples.’

  I raced out of the field to the nearest greengrocer’s, still just open, bought a pound of apples and tore back. The elephant was gone. Lungs again bursting I nearly cried with frustration but it reappeared from the tent, having done another turn. It headed straight for me; I nearly died with joy – elephants, apparently, do remember – and I fed it the apples until told by the woman that that was enough, she had to take her away. I patted my new best friend goodbye, tried and failed to hold her trunk for a moment, watched her amble away, spent my remaining pennies on a bag of chips, had my last apple and, penniless, walked contentedly home.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Uncle Jack’s antipathy to all things religious turned a minor incident involving Miss Polmanor into a comic and shaming episode. It was their polarised attitudes that caused it and I am certain that he, at least, regretted it. His atheism was founded on or confirmed by his experiences in the First World War. Any faith he may have had was – like the faith of many others – blown to pieces in the trenches along with the thousands of their comrades and nominal enemies. His real enemies were not German soldiers, of course, but all people with civilian power over him: bosses, owners, all officers above a certain rank, staff officers perhaps, who ordered the soldiers into danger as opposed to sharing it with them. Bestriding all of his world was religious authority, then so much more important than now. So a woman like Miss Polmanor, who, though she paraded her faith, was in reality a sad lonely figure (as Auntie Rose recognised), was a red rag.

  Some Saturdays Uncle Jack would take Jack and me into Dobwalls for our regular visit to the barber. There, in a glass-covered annex to a house on the right just as we entered the village, sat a barber’s chair which looked across the road at Rowe’s garage opposite and at Ede’s village shop on its right. A smaller road and three lanes joined the main road here; it was as near to a focal point that a village which straggled along one road for over half a mile could have. The house was a few steps above street-level so the barber’s chair was a splendid place from which to watch the world – or Dobwalls, anyway – go by. And to gossip. Uncle Jack sat there chatting to the barber while his little ring of hair was cut even shorter and shaved at the neck. Jack and I – and all the other children in the village – were seated on a board set across the arms of the chair and ruthlessly given pudding-basin haircuts in spite of our wriggles. Up the back of the neck and over the crown went the clippers, short back and sides it was called, very nearly short back, sides and top. This haircut was thought to keep the nits to a minimum and it probably did. A forelock was all that was left of my former fair-haired tangle; my mother hated it when she visited: her boys in hobnail boots and cropped hair like hobbledehoys.

  One Saturday, with newly shorn heads and itchy bits of hair caught down the inside of our shirts, we left the barber’s to see if there were any sweets or comics to be bought in Ede’s. It was a busy morning: there were several vackies and village kids in the road, some villagers were chatting and Miss Polmanor arrived on her bicycle with its shopping basket.

  In the shop children were pestering Mr Ede. ‘Haven’t you got the Beano?’ ‘No Dandy?’ ‘Any gobstoppers?’ ‘No sweets at all?’

  He was a pleasant man who got on with most people. ‘No, no, no, us don’t have naught.’

  ‘You said you’d have the Beano today.’

  ‘Us can’t do naught about the paper shortage.’

  ‘You’ve got the Farmers Weekly.’

  ‘That’s vital for the war effort.’

  And the children would make a ragged chorus of that ritual answer to all complaints: ‘Oh yeah. There’s a war on.’

  ‘Go on, you children, off you go. Don’t block up the shop. What can I do for you, Miss Polmanor?’

  She was rummaging anxiously. ‘I’ve got my list here but I can’t find my purse.’

  Mr Ede addressed Uncle Jack. ‘Morning, Mr Phillips, what can I do for you?’

  Before Uncle Jack could answer, Miss Polmanor spoke loudly. She was getting agitated. ‘My money. ’Tis not yere. I must have been robbed.’

  ‘Perhaps you dropped it,’ said Mr Ede helpf
ully.

  ‘No, I can’t have.’ She gestured to demonstrate. ‘ ’Twas in my purse, which was in my handbag, which was in my shopping bag, which was in my basket.’

  Uncle Jack couldn’t resist such an opening. He chipped in with a friendly smile. ‘Must have been Dick Turpin to get that off you.’

  Miss Polmanor’s temperature went up. ‘ ’Tis not funny, Mr Phillips.’

  ‘Did you leave it in the off-licence?’ His concerned expression looked quite real.

  ‘How dare you!’ She was quite rattled by this and went too far. ‘They children jostled I just now. One o’ they must have taken it.’

  Uncle Jack took this seriously. He rounded on us. ‘Have one of you got Miss Polmanor’s purse?’

  Fervent denials all round.

  ‘There.’ He spread his hands to her as though the matter were concluded.

  Mr Ede was genuinely helpful. ‘Look round on the floor, my dear. ’Er must be yere somewhere.’

  Everyone started looking.

  ‘There’s more than two pounds in there,’ wailed Miss Polmanor.

  We all redoubled our efforts, some of the children overdoing it a bit. ‘Wow.’ ‘Quick. Where is it?’ ‘Do I get a reward?’

  A vackie called John White started to leave the shop. Miss Polmanor jumped on him. ‘Where be you going?’

  ‘I was gonna look outside,’ said John, upset at the implications.

  ‘Escaping, were you?’ She went on to dig her own grave, something she had probably done her whole life. ‘You’m hiding it somewhere.’

  John, a gentle boy who later became a Methodist minister, was near tears. ‘I haven’t got your rotten purse.’

  ‘Us should search all of ’em. One of ’em has it, ’tis sure,’ continued the distracted Miss Polmanor.

  Uncle Jack strolled to the door, seething. He muttered, ‘I don’t think I can stand it in yere.’ He raised his voice. ‘I suppose I can leave, can I? Without being searched?’ and added to me, ‘I’ll be outside, boy, when you’re released.’ He growled something in Welsh as he left.

  Miss Polmanor pointed at me, perhaps someone she felt she could trust. ‘You stand guard by the door, boy.’

  Once more I was her unwilling accomplice.

  Mr Ede, too, was upset. ‘Well, how’s us gwain to search they?’

  She was at a loss for only a moment. ‘The boys can empty they’m pockets to start with.’

  The boys reluctantly started to do this as, outside, I saw Uncle Jack meet Jack, who had been talking to a friend. ‘Look, Uncle Jack, I’ve just found this purse over by Miss Polmanor’s bike.’

  Uncle Jack gave a thin, bitter laugh. ‘Take it in the shop. She’s in there having kittens. Tell her where you found it.’

  Inside, the melodrama continued. I had no chance to open my mouth. Mr Ede looked at the girls in their flimsy summer dresses. ‘How’s us gwain to search they maids? They bain’t got nowhere to hide naught.’

  One boy pointed at Elsie. ‘You’ll have to look in her knickers. She puts everything in there.’

  Elsie coloured up as all the children except me giggled. To have searched her would have been ludicrous: she lived with Miss Polmanor.

  At which moment Jack came in. ‘Is this your purse, Miss Polmanor?’

  She grabbed it triumphantly. ‘There. One of ’em has it. I told you.’

  Mr Ede protested that Jack had just come in.

  Jack said, ‘I found it on the ground by your bicycle.’

  Miss Polmanor was humiliated and confused. To cover her embarrassment she checked the contents as Jack added earnestly, ‘I didn’t look inside, Miss Polmanor. I didn’t like to.’

  She left, trying to gather the shreds of her dignity. The moment she was outside excited giggles and chatter burst out among the children. ‘She blames us for everything.’

  ‘Blinking old bat.’

  Mr Ede wasn’t having that in his shop and we were all driven out to where Uncle Jack was in conversation with Miss Polmanor. He was chewing a matchstick and grinning. ‘So the vackies didn’t steal your purse after all, then?’

  ‘Little devils. You don’t know what they’ll get up to next.’ She turned quickly away to her bicycle. ‘Oh. Look at this. I’ve got a puncture. A flat tyre.’

  ‘Oh, bad luck,’ said Uncle Jack. Then an even bigger exclamation of sympathy. He pointed at her back wheel. ‘Look at that. Both of ’em. That’s terrible. Where have you been riding it? In the quarry?’

  Miss Polmanor stared at her bike. ‘Two flat tyres. It’s they vackies again.’

  ‘But they was all in the shop with you,’ said Uncle Jack. ‘You kept ’em in there. Remember?’

  She was silenced.

  He looked away down the road to Doublebois and the army camp. ‘I reckon it was one of those two soldiers who were here just now. I saw them fiddling about by your bike.’

  Miss Polmanor was near tears. ‘Soldiers. Vackies. I’ve left my pump at home. I’ll have to push it all the way.’

  Uncle Jack dived to her rescue. I think he was starting to feel genuinely sorry for her. He called the biggest vacky boy over. ‘Hey, Frank, wheel Miss Polmanor’s bike over to the garage and pump her tyres up for her and she’ll give you sixpence.’

  She grabbed the bike. ‘Don’t worry. I can do it myself.’

  ‘No, no, you mustn’t. There’s help here aplenty.’ He turned to Frank again. ‘You do it and I’ll give you sixpence. We can’t leave her to do it on her own, can we?’ He reached into his pocket. ‘Miss Polmanor will just say, “Thank you very much. You’re a good boy.” ’

  ‘I shall do no such thing,’ she said firmly and pushed her bike away, leaving everyone longing to say something but waiting till she was out of earshot.

  ‘Cor,’ whispered Elsie. ‘How did she get two punctures?’

  ‘I reckon someone let her tyres down,’ said Frank.

  There was much sotto voce excitement at this, quite a daring crime in all the circumstances.

  ‘I told her. I think it was those two soldiers. I saw them messing about.’ Uncle Jack again pointed vaguely towards Doublebois. ‘D’you know how they did it?’

  ‘Easy,’ boasted Frank. ‘You can do it with a matchstick.’

  Uncle Jack took the matchstick from his mouth and gestured with it. ‘That’s right, boy. You just use the matchstick to push the valve in and . . . psssss . . . there you are.’ He gave the matchstick to Frank. ‘But don’t you ever try it on my bike or I’ll tan the hide off you.’ He winked at Jack and me. ‘Come on, boys. Home for some dinner, is it?’

  Doublebois and Dobwalls were due for more shocks. Once more the soldiers piled into their Bedford lorries with their kitbags and rifles and rode away, waving to us kids and singing bawdy songs. We again had the run of our glorious playground, Doublebois House and grounds and the empty Nissen huts.

  The district just had time to heave a corporate sigh of relief before the rumours started as to who would be next to occupy it. The Land Army? People who had been bombed out? The Commandos? Everyone except the Germans, it seemed. The roar of different motors was soon heard. Vast, high-bonneted, high-sided lorries which the occupants called trucks, with names like Dodge and Chrysler. And jeeps, a stylish updating of the English Land-Rovers. Yes, it was the Americans.

  A year earlier Hitler had declared war on them to show solidarity with his friends the Japanese after they attacked Pearl Harbor. Churchill had been trying to get the Americans in from the beginning and Hitler generously did his work for him. The outcome was no longer in any serious doubt. Now England was being flooded with American soldiers prior to D-Day and the invasion of Europe.

  In our part of Cornwall, people from the next village were strangers; Englishmen from across the Tamar were foreigners; Americans might have been from Mars. And that wasn’t all: to cap everything, they weren’t just Americans, they were black, a whole regiment of them. Many in the village had never seen a black man; I don’t think I had.

  ‘They�
��m BLACK,’ some squawked at each other.

  ‘What? All over? All the way up and down?’

  ‘They got white palms to their hands, I saw when I shook ’ands wi’ one o’ they.’

  ‘It wears off, that’s why.’

  ‘Does it wash off?’

  ‘They can see in the dark.’

  ‘They’d have to, wouldn’t they.’

  ‘And their lips!’

  The men lowered their voices. ‘They got John Thomases like Crago’s bull.’

  ‘Twenty-two inches of uncontrolled flesh.’

  ‘They’m mad for white women,’ one man whispered to Miss Polmanor.

  She needed no encouragement. ‘Us’ll all be raped in our beds.’

  Her informant reassured her. ‘Don’t you worry. They’ll make an exception in your case.’

  It’s no good thinking in terms of colour prejudice. The village wasn’t prejudiced – it was astounded. Although we were at the centre of the British Empire, populated with millions of every size, shape and colour, this was a remote part of Cornwall in 1943.

  And we kids in Doublebois, we loved them. They made our own soldiers seem drab. Their uniforms, their equipment, their cigarettes, their sweets and, above all, their very colour. We wore their hats, chewed their gum, held their strange hands and ate their candy. Rides on army vehicles doubled. Jeeps were the big treat: tooth-loosening, rebounding joy-rides across the fields. We drilled with their rifles and learned their slang. I had a tap-dancing lesson on a sheet of plywood at the army camp gates from a man from New Orleans itself.

  I was in Ede’s shop with some other people just after they arrived, when a couple of them strolled in. They politely took their caps off and greeted us.

  Mr Ede was always kindly but perhaps he sensed trade. He practically curtsied behind the counter. ‘You’m welcome to Cornwall. ’Taint much but ’tis home to us.’

  ‘This is paradise. You should see where we come from.’ The deep voice and Southern accent astonished me. It wasn’t like the voices in the Westerns we had seen every Saturday morning before the war.