I used to go and play often with the Burfords, Pat, June, Peter and Derek, at Little Treburgey Farm,past Treburgie Water and across the Lostwithiel road, where they lived. An avenue of magnificent beech trees led to the farm. As soon as I reached it I would start to sing. This avenue formed a natural nave which sent my voice echoing back to me. Alone in my beautiful cathedral I used to let rip with all my being into whatever we were rehearsing at the time and into my favourites. ‘Jerusalem’, of course, was one of them and I would send it soaring up into the branches to come back at me. My voice never sounded better and it gave me the confidence to stand up and sing it in the East Cornwall Silver Voice competition one anti-acoustic day in Liskeard cattle market when sound was shredded by lowing cattle, bleating sheep and a gusting wind. The marketers stood in respectful silence while we children entertained them but it must have been thin gruel. I won, possibly because I was the loudest, and was presented with a half-crown’s worth of National Savings stamps and a bucketful of pride for Auntie Rose and Uncle Jack.
One Christmas towards the end of my time there Betty Cormack and I sang the carol ‘Good King Wenceslas’ in costume to the school, indeed the whole village. She was the King and I was his/her page. Auntie Rose sat beaming at me from the audience and Uncle Jack looked suitably critical. The downside of that was that I had to write about it in detail to Mum and Dad. Well, at least I had a subject for my letter that week.
Cornwall is probably the warmest county in the country but when the wind swung round the wrong way and came down off the moor it used to cut through us as we walked to school and back; we would run home to get out of it. One Christmas had a brief, very cold snap. There was more than a smattering of snow on the ground being blown into your face by a biting northerly wind. Under the snow were sheets of ice, which had fallen as rain and froze before the snow came. By Boxing Night we children must have been driving our parents and foster-parents mad because we were all let out, or perhaps sent out, to play. The Plummers, Jack and me huddled in the Court. We hit on the idea of going carol singing, unusual, as far as I remember, in our world. We collected Jimmy Peters, the Bunney children, Harold and Alan Packham. Eight or ten of us gathered. Someone found an old tin and we punched a slot into the lid. We had our collecting box. We wrote ‘Mrs Churchill’s Russian Red Cross’ on the side of the tin, so it must have been 1941 or more likely ’42, by which time the Russians had been invaded by the Germans and were on our side. We started singing in the Court, were given some money and set off into the blackest of nights. We didn’t notice the temperature or wind-chill in our enthusiasm. Half a mile up the road to Dobwalls were some cottages down a lane. We sang and knocked, were given some money, sang some more and went on our way. Down the road to Crago’s farm. The same story. Across another half-mile of frozen field to the houses on the Lostwithiel road at Treburgie Water, where some sort of party was in progress. We were asked into the glorious warmth and stood in rows, singing the parts, solos and in unison to the householders and their guests, who smiled benevolently at us as we performed. They applauded us, gave us food, drink and money, and off we went. Another trek across fields and down lanes. More coins clanking into our tin. We stopped at a crossroads, crouched in a circle and emptied it on to the icy tarmac to count it by the light of a torch. On through the bitter dark night with tingling fingers, ears and toes to other isolated houses and finally triumphantly home. Fifteen shillings, we raised. We got a postal order, sent it off and proudly showed everyone our letter of acknowledgement signed by Mrs Churchill herself.
Chapter Seventeen
Some sort of a Silver Voice competition was held every year in many villages. Jack and I were to sing a duet, coached by Uncle Jack: ‘Sheep May Safely Graze’ by Johann Sebastian, Jack singing the alto line, me the treble. Uncle Jack wanted us to win this for many reasons: his Welsh pride in singing; his previous work with Gwyn; his desire to beat the ‘God-botherers’ in their own backyard. It must have been in 1943 because Jack was due to go back to London to the Poly and Elsie was heavily pregnant. The competition was to be held in Dobwalls Methodist Chapel, the largest space in the village – someone had realised that the cattle market was no place for children’s voices. Jack kept complaining to Uncle Jack that his voice was ‘going funny’.
‘Don’t you dare let it break till after the competition,’ Uncle Jack said.
We arrived at the Methodist chapel along with most of the district. I had tried to persuade Elsie to come but she had refused; she was too shy or ashamed to go to such a gathering with her burgeoning stomach and, had she asked, I am sure Miss Polmanor would have refused permission for her even to leave the house in such shape: literally publicising her sin. We all sat in a state of excitement as the chapel filled. Auntie Rose pulled my sock up, straightened Jack’s tie, ineffectually smoothed our cropped hair. ‘There. You look a pair now, both of you.’ Her favourite compliment.
‘Nervous, boys?’ asked Uncle Jack.
‘A bit.’
‘That’s good. You should be. Take good big breaths, you’ll see ’em all off.’
The congregation sang ‘Ye Holy Angels Bright’ with its glorious descant and all the competitors’ voices were warmed up.
The Reverend Clifford Buckroyd welcomed us all while the Reverend R. O. Oatey sat beside him and smiled vaguely: joint denominational events were rare. Buckroyd led us in a prayer which beseeched God to give the children tuneful voices and the judges clear minds. Like all prayers of whatever denomination it finished with ‘. . . and bless all our forces, army, navy and air force, wherever they may be’, always followed by a fervent ‘Amen’ from everyone.
During the prayer, while everyone’s head was lowered, someone slipped onto the bench beside me, nudging me along. It was Elsie. She grinned covertly, proud of her own daring. I was both glad and embarrassed to see her there.
Uncle Jack had no such qualms. ‘Hello, Elsie,’ he said, none too quietly. ‘You decided to support us, then, is it?’
Elsie grinned briefly as I was aware of something else going on. Miss Polmanor was on her feet. ‘Mr Buckroyd. Mr Buckroyd.’
‘Yes, Miss Polmanor?’
‘In view of the fact that most of the children of the village are here this evening, I wonder if you fully approve of the congregation?’
What on earth was this? Some sort of attack on the fact that C of E people were in her Wesleyan chapel?
Buckroyd was equally confused. ‘I don’t think I quite understand, Miss Polmanor.’
‘This is a children’s occasion. We should be protecting them. From corruption. From lewdness.’
The penny was dropping all round the chapel. There were murmurs and a muttered ‘Hear, hear’.
Elsie squirmed beside me. ‘Oh, no. Oh, no.’
I must say, no matter what I thought of Miss Polmanor, she had guts, the conviction of her beliefs. She had already reported Elsie to the authorities, sparking off the decision to have her sent away to a home, but she hadn’t kicked her out, that would have been unchristian. But now she was prepared to stand up in public and make a fuss about Elsie attending this gathering when she should have been invisible at home. ‘While our menfolk are away fighting God’s holy war we womenfolk should be setting an example, not pointing the way down the primrose path to damnation. I think you all know to whom I refer.’ She didn’t even need to point at Elsie.
There were more murmurs, a louder ‘Hear, hear’, and Elsie got to her feet. Whatever battles Elsie had fought and won against Miss Polmanor when they were at home, she was thoroughly cowed now.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Buckroyd. I am, honest. I only came to hear the boys sing. I’ll go – I—’
A hand came across me and grabbed her. ‘You bloody sit down and don’t move,’ growled Uncle Jack. It was the showdown he must have been dreaming of for twenty years since the 1918 armistice.
Elsie was crying. ‘No, no, I—’
Everything started to go very fast. People were talking loudly as Miss P
olmanor said, ‘I saw her. She slipped in while we were all at prayer’, as Buckroyd said, ‘Please, Miss Polmanor, I am sure there is no need—’ and Uncle Jack topped it all with, ‘What’s she supposed to have done then, eh, missus?’
Auntie Rose pulled at Uncle Jack’s sleeve without much conviction. ‘Oh Jack, don’t make a scene,’ but I am sure she was on his side; it was only her natural aversion to public display that prompted her to object.
Miss Polmanor’s voice rose above the hubbub. ‘Sinned. As well you know, Mr Phillips. Sinned again and again.’ Three years of failure with Elsie’s morals tinged her voice.
Buckroyd managed to get in with ‘Please, please, this is a house of God.’
‘Durst we not mention sin in the house of God now?’
‘Elsie may have transgressed—’ began Buckroyd.
Uncle Jack had the best pair of lungs there. He used them now. ‘Let him or her that is without sin cast the first stone.’
‘I was about to use those very words,’ said Buckroyd.
‘Then what’s all this transgressing?’ said Uncle Jack. ‘She did what come natural.’
‘I intended no censure,’ said Buckroyd.
‘Then why not?’ Miss Polmanor was indignant.
Poor Buckroyd, under attack from two directions. Oatey, as far as I remember, wisely stayed out of it all. The place was seething by now, with people taking sides, joining in or just sitting, fascinated by some entertainment they had never expected, much better than children warbling.
Uncle Jack continued without pause. ‘And if anyone should leave this house, you should order her out . . .’
Mr Buckroyd chimed in, ‘Mr Phillips, I’m not ordering anyone out. That’s not my—’
‘. . . for the sin of envy. We all know she’d like to have been in this state years ago only no one’d touch her, bloody dried-up old haybag.’
We were all shocked at this. It took the row into another dimension.
Buckroyd showed his dismay. ‘Oh, now, Mr Phillips, that is not Christian.’
‘Well, I’m not one of them, thank God. Come on, Rose. Come on, boys, let’s breathe some clear air outside. Elsie, you want to walk home with us, is it?’
As far as I know East Cornwall never did get its Silver Voice for 1943, but I can’t be sure because events in my life crowded out what went on in Dobwalls. The voice of propriety, the voice of conformity, had a strength then that went far beyond the outbursts of frustrated old maids, as we all discovered when the vackies’ billeting officer came and went one day. Though what followed seems antediluvian as well as inhuman to us now, it happened. I suppose all one can say is that millions of children were sent away from their parents in the evacuation and someone, somewhere had to make some rules. I was not allowed to hear what he said and he missed Uncle Jack, which was just as well. He had an order: I was not to associate with Elsie again for my ‘moral welfare’. She was unmarried, fifteen, underage, and pregnant; I was ten. Breach of this could result in my being taken away from Auntie Rose and Uncle Jack, again for my ‘moral welfare’. By the look of him when I saw him walking away up the Court the billeting officer had not enjoyed his mission any more than Auntie Rose had.
‘Has the world gone mad?’ Auntie Rose asked me rhetorically, not even seeing me before her.
Uncle Jack got home from work. He was predictably purple. ‘God save us all from the clutches of the bloody Holy Ones,’ he spat. ‘The sooner they all join Him in heaven and leave us down yere in peace . . .’ He threw his jacket across the room.
Auntie Rose went out to gather eggs while he calmed down.
I was coming out of school a day or so later when I met Mr Buckroyd. He greeted me as usual and got a half-hearted or surly response. ‘What’s the matter, Terry?’
‘They’re taking Jack and me away,’ I blurted accusingly.
‘Who are? Your parents?’
‘No. You. The Holy Ones. And you’re sending Elsie away.’
‘What the devil are you talking about?’
‘See? You swear too.’
The Reverend Buckroyd took a swift hand in our affairs. A phone call from him to Welling police station sent a constable to call on Mum and Dad – frightening the life out of them into the bargain. A return phone call from Dad soon settled where we should stay. But Buckroyd couldn’t wave his wand over Elsie. Miss Polmanor would not tolerate a newborn illegitimate baby in her house and that was that. Elsie’s father had become a prisoner of the Japanese; her mother was nowhere to be found – whether through enemy action or Allied attraction, I don’t know. Elsie was bound for a home. Homes for unmarried pregnant girls appeared all over the country during the war. Somehow or another they seemed to be compulsory. Incarceration of the mother was followed by adoption of the child.
And alongside the trivia of our lives great events were taking place in the world. After the entry of the Americans in the war and our victory at El Alamein the tide had turned. North Africa was taken from Rommel; the Russians were turning defeat into triumph. British forces under the command of General Montgomery – the former Desert Rats – together with the Americans, landed on the island of Sicily. The invasion, of what Churchill mistakenly called ‘the soft underbelly of Europe’, had begun.
Chapter Eighteen
Our three-year ‘other childhood’ came to a swift climax. With air raids more or less over, Jack was to return home to go to Woolwich Polytechnic and I was awaiting the results of the entrance exam to see if I would go to Dartford Grammar School. I heard of no plans made for me if I failed; I don’t think anyone thought that would happen. The postman saw me in the Court one morning; our summer holidays had started. He handed me two envelopes and rode quickly off on his bike. The top one said ‘Kent Education Committee’ on it. I didn’t even look at the one underneath but turned and ran indoors shouting, ‘Auntie Rose, Auntie Rose, the letter’s come. Look. It’s come.’
She was as excited as I was. ‘Well, open it, boy. Let’s see.’
As I separated the two letters to open the top one I saw that the one underneath was a telegram. I stopped dead, my voice changed. ‘It’s a telegram.’
Her voice, indeed every angle of her body, became tense. ‘Telegram? What’s it say on it?’
I faltered. ‘It just says “Telegram. War Office”.’ Any telegram was a rare enough event to send out warning signals in those days. Even I, at ten, knew the dread import of one from such a sender. The postman had shirked his duty in handing it to me. I looked at her. ‘Shall I open it?’
She looked shattered, her head moving about as she looked vaguely for something. ‘Where are my glasses?’ There was no answer. She knocked something over. ‘Oh Duw. Yes, open it – no – you can’t – yes, open it. Read it. I can’t—’ She sank into a chair.
I opened it and started banally from the top. ‘The War Office, Whitehall, London SW1. 8.30 a.m., 14 July 1943. We regret to inform you that your son Gwyn has been—’ The word glared up at me from the telegram tape stuck onto the yellow paper. The world was reduced to that one word filling my vision. All I could manage was, ‘Oh, oh.’
Auntie Rose didn’t look at me. She said, almost inaudibly, ‘Does it say it, boy? Does it say it? Say it doesn’t.’
I just stood there staring at the word. I daren’t look up at her.
She held an arm out. ‘Come yere, boy. Put your arms round me. Hold me for a minute.’ There was no sign of weeping. I did as she asked though she scarcely seemed to notice that I was there. ‘Oh Gwyn, Gwyn, my little – I was always afraid for you. Oh Gwyn, Gwyn, Gwyn.’ She started to rock back and forth still saying his name every few rocks.
After a while I said, ‘Shall I go down the line and find Uncle Jack?’
‘No. He’ll be up from work later. Time enough for his world to end then.’
Jack and I watched Auntie Rose and Uncle Jack for two days. They didn’t cling to each other or sob but their palpable misery was a bond between them that excluded us. He touched her more ofte
n than usual as they moved about the room and once she laid her head against his bald one in a weary, hopeless way that seemed to fill the room with a sigh. When Auntie Rose and I were alone for some moments I took her hand, too awkward and the wrong height to embrace her properly. She put her arms round me and buried my head fiercely in her bosom. We stood there motionless while I tried not to suffocate, the only time I ever remember her needs taking precedence over mine. Jack and I crept about not knowing what to do till we went outside, over the road to the Park, and climbed up into the big beech tree to discuss it. We wrote to our parents with the result of our deliberations.
Dear Mum and Dad,
Just a line to let you know that Auntie Rose and Uncle Jack’s son Gwyn has been killed in Sicily. They are very unhappy. Auntie Rose keeps crying and Uncle Jack keeps going to the bottom of the garden and just sitting there instead of going to work. We thought it would be a good idea if only one of us came home and one of us stayed here with them and became their son. Then you’ve both got one each. That’s fair. We were going to toss for it but Jack said I’ve got to go back to Dartford Grammar School, Jack doesn’t mind not going to the Poly and he can stay here and work on the track with Uncle Jack. He says he would like that. He could come and visit with a privilege ticket.
Love, Jack and Terry xxx
PS. I passed my entrance exam.
Kisses on a Postcard Page 16
