Exiles from the War

by Jean Little

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Guelph, Ontario

  June 1940

  July 1940

  August 1940

  September 1940

  October 1940

  November 1940

  December 1940

  January 1941

  February 1941

  March 1941

  April 1941

  May 1941

  June 1941

  Epilogue

  Historical Note

  British Expressions

  List of Required Clothing

  Images and Documents

  Credits

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  Books in the Dear Canada Series

  Guelph, Ontario

  This is the diary of Charlotte Mary Twiss

  In which to record her thirteenth year.

  Happy Birthday,

  Love, Eleanor

  June 1940

  Monday, June 17, 1940

  My 12th birthday

  George phoned me long distance at six o’clock this morning to wish me happy birthday. I couldn’t believe it. That is the first time anyone has ever called me long distance. I was still in bed, but he said he’d been up for hours milking the cows and feeding the chickens. I can’t believe how much I miss him. He will be away working at that farm all summer and, in September, he’ll be leaving home and going off to university.

  I have to have breakfast now and get ready for school. I’ll write more later. George did not talk to anybody but me!

  Half past twelve

  Before I write more about birthday things, Diary, I have something momentous to announce. When we came home for dinner at noon, Mother told us, right in the middle of passing the potatoes, that she and Dad have applied to take in a War Guest child!

  Now that people think that horrible Hitler will soon start bombing British cities filled with ordinary people like us, some families are sending their children over here to be safe. And we might get one!

  When Mother told us, everyone forgot it was my birthday, but I don’t blame her for telling. It was too big a piece of news to keep. She and Mrs. Bennett heard about it at their WMS meeting, and afterwards she and Dad decided to apply.

  Having an English child here is going to change my life totally! In this house, Eleanor and George are too old to count as children, so I am The Family Child.

  Often I have wished I had a sister close to my age, someone I could play with and tell secrets to. But I never dreamed it could happen.

  There is nothing else to tell about this yet. Mother said they requested a girl around my age, but we will take whoever is assigned to us. I do hope she is my age. She will live with us until the War is over! I asked how long that might be and Dad said the last war took FIVE years to finish! If this war goes on as long as that, the child and I will be practically grown up before she has to go back to England. But surely it won’t last that long.

  Drat. That’s “The Happy Gang” song starting up on the radio. I’ll have to run or I’ll be late for school. NOBODY SHOULD HAVE TO GO TO SCHOOL ON HER BIRTHDAY! It ought to be against the law.

  After school

  All afternoon I thought about nothing but the War Child. I even forgot it was my birthday. The teacher never once noticed, but Barbara did. She passed me a note asking what was wrong with me. I guess I must have been staring into space. I explained at recess. She gave me one of her black looks. “Once she comes,” she said, “I guess you won’t have any time to spare for your old friends.”

  I told her not to be so dumb — she’s the only real friend I have and she knows it. When Margaret lived here, she and Barbara and I did everything together. George used to call us the Three Musketeers. But ever since the Frosts moved to Halifax last Christmas, there are just Barbara and me.

  Barbara is always getting her feelings hurt for no good reason. Mother calls people like that “thin-skinned.” I call them tiresome. You have to be careful what you say to them. With Margaret, I never had to worry. If this means I am thick-skinned, I don’t care.

  Barbara was invited to supper tonight to celebrate my birthday, but her mother would not let her come because it is a school night. Mrs. Steiner is hard to understand. Everyone knows Barbara will be head of the class as usual. And school is so close to being over.

  Barbara handed me a package when it was time to come home. I opened it then and there. It was a little statue of a fawn to put with the other animals on my knick-knack shelf. I told her I loved it and I do. It looks very sweet there next to the rabbit and the squirrel. I keep the dangerous ones like the lion and the fox on the shelf below, so the others will be safe.

  But I must get back to telling about my birthday before it is over.

  George’s phone call was the first surprise. Then, at breakfast, Mother gave me a card he had made for me. He drew a picture of me trying to decide on my future. It has a tiny mountain climber and a doctor and a cowgirl and a professor. They are flying around over my head. Everybody laughed. I don’t know how George does it.

  Then Eleanor gave me this diary. Inside it she had written the words on the top of the first page about it being a diary in which I am to record “my thirteenth year.” She said she thinks your 13th year is important because it is when you begin to think for yourself. I almost said that I have always thought for myself, but maybe she means a different kind of thinking. She is seventeen now, so she would know.

  Then she said she realized how much I hated keeping a diary but she hoped I would try. I asked her how she knew. She said she had found some of my old diaries when she was tidying up stuff and I never wrote in any of them past the first week.

  It’s true. What I wrote always seemed so dull. I didn’t like the way my life sounded. I feel much more interesting than that. But each blank sheet in this book looks as though it is just waiting to take down my exciting adventures. When the War Guest girl comes, we’ll be bound to have some.

  Anyway, Eleanor really wants me to keep a record of this year because she is sure it is going to be special and, when I grow up, I will read over this year and see myself change through the months. She also says she will give me a reward if I do it. She won’t say what, but she promised it would be a good one. I actually said I would try. I wonder what sort of reward it will be. Do you suppose she has already chosen one, dear Diary?

  How will I change? I cannot imagine.

  Must dash — they are calling me for supper.

  Tuesday, June 18, 1940

  Here I am again, dear Diary. The War Guest’s coming must be inspiring me. I have seen a picture of some war children in the paper but I have never met one. I wonder if they are thin and pale and nervous from living in fear.

  They must worry about bombs and the Germans marching through France. Dad says the French might not be able to hold out, but maybe he is wrong. He keeps talking about Dunkirk and what a miracle it was.

  I do hope that our girl is not utterly ordinary. What if I don’t like her?

  Oh, I will.

  What if she doesn’t like me?

  I’ll write more later. I want to read Anne of Ingleside. I told Barbara she could borrow it when I was done, but she mostly reads Nancy Drew. Nancy is okay, but I like other books better, like L.M. Montgomery’s, for instance. I just wish Anne had not grown up so fast. I liked her best when she was a child and always getting into scrapes.

  Guess what. I like reading words in a book better than writing them in a journal. Sorry, dear Diary.

  After school

  I was so busy celebrating yesterday that I never wrote about the other presents I got. Mother gave me
a fountain pen and a bottle of blue-black Waterman’s Ink and a thick pink blotter. The pen is lovely, a green Esterbrook. Fountain pens are so superior to the pencils and straight pens we use at school. It makes me feel grown-up. I already had an eraser that is half for pencil and half for ink, but ink is much harder to rub out. You end up with an ugly hole in the paper half the time. I guess I will have to be careful what I write down so I won’t need to erase.

  Dad gave me a dictionary of my very own, not a child’s dictionary but a real one. We have the Dictionary Habit in our house. Dad has taught us to look up the meaning of each word and then read more about it. He says word roots are fascinating, and I agree. It is as though every word has its own little life story and some are old and some are just starting out.

  Lizby made me a lovely cake — she may be our hired girl, but she feels like family. I got to clean out the icing bowl but did not have to help with the dishes because it was my birthday. I LOVE getting out of doing dishes, especially now that Mother has decided I am plenty old enough to wash the pots. I despise the pots. I told Lizby so. I think I hoped she would offer to do them for me, but she just looked up at me and said, “Everybody hates doing pots, Miss. Only men escape.”

  I got the dime in my piece of cake. It means I will be rich. Lizby got the wedding ring and Mother got the button. Lizby blushed and Mother groaned. The ring says you’ll be married within a year and the button means you will end up doing housework, I guess.

  When Dad got the penny he said that they would need a rich daughter to support them in their old age. Everybody laughed but me. I hate it when Mother and Dad joke about getting old and dying. I want to have them with me always.

  I wonder if our War Child worries all the time about what terrible thing might be happening to her parents. I am sure I would, in her place. How awful for her!

  Dad says the people in England can have lights on as long as they have the blackout curtains pulled and no chink of light showing. After they go to bed, though, it must be pitch dark in their bedrooms with not even a glimmer of starlight coming in through the blacked-out windows. Frightening thoughts are always worst in the darkness. Mother leaves our hall light on, but in England they probably can’t do that.

  The War Guest’s coming reminds me of Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert getting Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables. If we got a girl like Anne, it would be such fun. I do hope ours is a true kindred spirit. A bosom friend, as Anne would say.

  I left out my other presents. But I need a rest. I’ll get ready for bed and then come back.

  Ready for bed

  George’s phone call was my very first present, but he left a parcel for me too. His old jackknife was in it, with a note. He said he knew I liked it and he has a Swiss Army knife now. He put in a couple more funny pictures he had drawn of me. He can sketch anything in a flash.

  Lizby gave me some handkerchiefs she had embroidered, with a C for Charlotte. In the orphanage in Ireland where she was brought up, they taught the girls to sew beautifully.

  Robbie Bennett brought over a box of Mackintosh’s Toffee, which he got with his own money. “It is the best candy they sell,” he told me.

  I agree. He looked at it so longingly that I whacked the bar until it broke and then gave him a piece. It pulled out one of his teeth. He was pleased as punch, because now the Tooth Fairy will give him a nickel for it.

  Aunt Carrie, who had joined us for dinner, asked him if he wasn’t a little old to believe in the Tooth Fairy. He laughed and said he did not believe, but his mother did.

  Everybody laughed. Then he told me that he could get an ice cream cone for a nickel at Jumbo Ice Cream downtown. Mother found him an envelope for the precious tooth and he ran back across the street to put it under his pillow immediately.

  I tried to notice today whether I feel any different from when I was eleven. I don’t. Maybe it takes a week or so to happen.

  What if the ship our girl is on gets sunk by the Germans? It could. We hear about the ships that the German U-boats torpedo. I must try not to think about it or I will have nightmares. I think they go for troop ships though, not ones with children.

  Last bit for today

  Mother found out that the Bennetts have applied for a War Guest too. They want a boy to be company for Robbie.

  Eleanor asked if I’d written anything startling in you today. She was right about my not liking writing much, except writing in YOU feels different. Once I get started, words just keep spilling out.

  Good night, dear Diary.

  Wednesday, June 19, 1940

  I was going to skip today, but Dad asked if I had written anything about Dunkirk. I do not want to but I will. It is a thrilling story. But why does it belong in my journal?

  All right. I’ll put it in because it is thrilling. There were thousands of British soldiers stranded on a beach in France on June 4th and hundreds of little boats that weren’t Navy boats sailed across the Channel from England to rescue the soldiers before the Germans could kill them.

  Fishermen went, I guess, but also other people who owned sailboats or launches. I can’t imagine my family ever owning their own sailboat. But Dad says I would understand if I lived in an island country or on a coast.

  The Air Force sent planes flying over, driving the Germans back until the men on the beach could be rescued. Thousands of men were there! The British kept firing at the Germans, to protect our soldiers. If it weren’t for those planes, the Germans would probably have massacred the men trapped on the beach.

  Dad says it was enormously brave of the people who sailed over. I couldn’t picture the scene until Dad read me part of a letter he got from his friend Geoffrey Norton this morning. Mr. Norton married an English girl after the last war and lives there now. He sailed over three times and brought twelve men away. One had a broken leg and kept crying out when the sailboat bounced around in the waves.

  I felt sick at my stomach before Dad finished. His voice went all husky and the letter shook in his hands. “Geoff is a lawyer, not a fighter,” he said. “Try to picture Robbie’s father sailing into such danger, Charlotte.”

  I could not do it. I suppose it is a piece of history. When children study this time years from now, maybe they will read, in their history book, about what happened long ago at Dunkirk. And I was alive for it.

  I guess history is happening somewhere every day, but you don’t think of it that way. It is just living.

  Yet in school, History is usually so boring. Our textbook is full of pictures of old bearded men who never smile, and dates of battles, and laws. There are no girls in the history world. And I can’t think of any children except the little princes in the Tower.

  I wonder if my grandchildren will ask me about “the olden days” the way I sometimes ask Grandpa. I mostly ask because it pleases him, but he does have some good stories.

  I can’t imagine telling my grandchildren about Dunkirk. I can’t imagine having grandchildren!

  Thursday, June 20, 1940

  I don’t want to be bothered writing today. Maybe Eleanor made a big mistake getting me this diary. I never seem to be ready with all the necessary parts — the book, the pen, the blotter and ideas of things to write. I think of the ideas, but not when I am where I can write them down. I don’t feel in a Diary Mood until I start writing.

  Or I think of something that happened and then I’m off. This morning, for instance, Lizby woke us up screaming because a mouse ran across the floor when she came into the kitchen. When we got there, she was standing on a chair. She is so small for her age. They practically starved the children in that orphanage she came from. But she had no trouble scrambling up onto the chair. She says we need a cat, but Mother is not keen on cats.

  Eleanor has this way of looking at me with her wide thoughtful eyes that makes me feel I must try harder to live up to her hopes for me. She often looks serious even when she is happy. George says she’s an egghead, which maddens her. She doesn’t have a boyfriend.

  Maybe it
is her glasses. Barbara says boys don’t like girls in glasses, but Eleanor is too short-sighted to go without them. Someone should invent invisible glasses, but I am afraid there is no chance of that.

  Yesterday I finished Anne of Ingleside. Even though she is a grown-up, Anne still has those bewitching eyes. Nobody would ever call mine “bewitching.” When I stare into the mirror, my eyes just look like regular eyes staring back. They never sparkle or change colour or fill with stars. I am also too tall. Mother keeps telling me not to slouch but to stand up straight and be proud. When I stand up straight, I am as tall as she is and I feel like a giraffe.

  I cannot write one more word. I’ll bet L.M. Montgomery didn’t write in a diary. Not when she was my age anyway. She would be out with her friends, getting into mischief.

  Thursday bedtime

  Diary, did I tell you that Dad tried to enlist in the Navy just after New Year’s, but they would not take him because he wears glasses and is over forty and has a wife and children? He was in the last war though, right near the end. That is when he made friends with Mr. Norton who saved those men at Dunkirk. I don’t want him to go this time. The very thought of my father in danger terrifies me.

  But the kids at school talk a lot about whose father or brother has gone and who has not. Norma’s father is in the army, training. I forget the name of the place. You would think, to hear her go on about him, that the War will be over when they see him coming. Lillian’s father got turned down because of his feet. That sounded odd but she would not explain.

  Barbara’s cousin Daniel has signed up too, although he has not left Canada yet. He’s ten years older than she is and really nice. I hope George isn’t thinking of enlisting when he turns eighteen in August.