A Different World

by Mary Nichols

  She was drinking a cup of tea when a very large man entered the room. He was in his early forties with a mop of pure-white hair and the bluest eyes Louise had ever seen. ‘I’m not too late, am I? Couldn’t get here before. Some of those RAF chaps are a bit boisterous and I didn’t like to leave Jenny on her own.’ He eyed Tommy and Beattie. ‘This all that’s left?’

  Louise gave him a tired smile. ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘You their mother?’

  ‘No, I’m Louise Fairhurst, their teacher.’

  ‘Poor you.’

  ‘It’s not me who needs sympathy, but the children,’ she said. ‘Are you going to take these two? I must find digs for myself when I know everyone has been homed.’

  ‘I’m not sure about the little girl.’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s both or neither. Thomas has strict orders from his mother to look after his sister.’

  The man grinned. ‘Right you are, then. Come along.’ He took Beattie from her. The child squirmed and tried to reach back to Louise. ‘Don’t worry, little one,’ he said. ‘Your teacher is coming too.’

  ‘Go along,’ Mrs Wayne told Louise, as she hesitated. ‘The other children will be all right tonight. I’ll come and see you in the morning and we can check on them together.’

  Thomas, determined not to lose sight of his sister, was disappearing through the door behind the big man. Louise retrieved her suitcase from the doorstep where she had left it and went after them.

  Her billet, she discovered after a short ride in a pony and trap, was a public house called The Pheasant. She had never set foot in a public house in her life and smiled to herself as she followed their host round the side of the building and in at the back door; her father would be horrified if he could see her. In his eyes, public houses were dens of iniquity.

  She found herself in a large kitchen. A woman in her late thirties was washing glasses at the sink. She turned when they came in, dried her hands and gave them a smile of welcome. ‘You must be exhausted,’ she said to Louise, while taking Beattie from the man.

  ‘This is my wife, Jenny,’ he said. ‘I’m Stan Gosport, by the way. We run the pub.’

  Louise said ‘How do you do,’ and offered her hand which was taken in a huge clasp and pumped up and down.

  Jenny laughed as Louise winced. ‘Stan don’t know his own strength.’

  ‘I’m Louise Fairhurst, the children’s teacher.’ She put her hand on Thomas’s shoulder. ‘This is Thomas Carter and his sister Beatrice.’

  ‘I’m Tommy, not Thomas,’ the boy insisted. ‘And that’s Beattie. She’s four.’

  ‘Let’s get you to bed,’ Jenny said. ‘Time enough tomorrow to learn your way around. Come along, young man.’

  Jenny set off along a hall and up a flight of stairs, with Tommy at her heels. ‘Have you heard the news?’ she asked over her shoulder, as Louise followed.

  ‘No. We’ve been on the move all day.’ The strange smell coming from the front of the building was beer, she concluded, though she could no longer smell it by the time they reached the landing.

  ‘Hitler has invaded Poland. I reckon that’s put the lid on it. There’ll be a war now, for sure.’

  ‘Oh dear, I’m afraid you are right.’

  The pub was a large one if the number of doors leading off the upper landing were anything to go by. In no time at all the children had been washed and put into night clothes and tucked into bed, and Louise found herself in a comfortable bedroom next door to them. For the first time that day she was alone and quiet and able to contemplate a day that had been like no other.

  She was exhausted, but though she went to bed, she could not sleep; there was too much going on in her head. She could still feel the movement of the train, the rattle as it went over points, the whistle as it approached a station and ran through without stopping, the sudden silence as they sat motionless in a siding while a freight train rumbled past. She could still hear the children: ‘Miss, I feel sick. Miss, Johnny’s eaten my sandwich. Miss, I want to go to the toilet. Miss, where are we? Where are we going?’

  Where were they? The name Cottlesham meant nothing to her, but she supposed they were in Cambridgeshire or Norfolk; name boards had been taken down from the railway stations and, being unfamiliar with the line, she could only guess where they were. What had happened to the rest of the school? There had obviously been a mix-up, but would it be put right? The thought of taking the children on yet another train and having them looked over like so much cattle all over again was daunting. If they stayed where they were, she would have to make some arrangements about the children’s schooling.

  Added to that the news was grim. Mr Chamberlain had tried appeasement the year before and had given way to Hitler over Czechoslovakia, but the previous March the dictator had broken his promise not to try to extend his territory and had occupied the whole of Czechoslovakia, not just the Sudetenland. His next demand had been for the Danzig Corridor, part of Poland. Britain and France had promised to help the Poles if Poland was attacked and they could not go back on that. War looked inevitable, which was why the children had been evacuated and why the territorial army had been mobilised. She wondered what war would mean to the ordinary man and woman. The last conflict had been horrific: so many young men dead, wives left without husbands, children without fathers, parents without sons. Others had been so badly wounded or their lungs so irrevocably damaged by mustard gas they could not work again. Was that what they had to look forward to this time?

  She slept at last and woke when Jenny knocked and came in with a cup of tea. ‘The children are having their breakfast. He’s a funny one, that Tommy. He’s looking after his little sister like a mother hen with a chick.’

  Louise sipped the tea, which was hot and strong. ‘I think he’s had to do a lot of that. His mother works in a laundry and his father is in the merchant navy.’

  ‘Poor kid. What are you planning to do today?’

  ‘I must try and locate the rest of my school and I must check on the children and find somewhere to use as a classroom, if we are to stay here. Where is here, by the way?’

  Jenny laughed. ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘I believe the village is called Cottlesham but where it is and how big it is, I have no idea.’

  ‘Cottlesham is a small farming village in Norfolk. The nearest town is Swaffham. That’s where we go for most of our shopping and where the nearest railway station is. There’s a bus that goes from the main road a couple of times a day. You can get to Norwich by bus too, if you want a day out.’

  ‘I’d better get up,’ she said. ‘I have a feeling today is going to be busy.’

  Tommy and Beattie, apparently fully recovered from their journey, had gone out to play when Louise went down for her own breakfast, a huge plateful of fried food which went a long way to making up for the meagre rations of the day before. She had barely finished when Mrs Wayne arrived in a battered Ford and breezed into the kitchen.

  ‘I’ve come to take you round the village to inspect the children’s accommodation,’ she said. ‘And we’ll call in at the schoolhouse to see John Langford. He’s the headmaster, you’ll need to liaise with him. He lost a leg in the last war but he gets round pretty well on a wooden one.’

  Louise realised that not only would she be the children’s teacher but responsible for their general welfare as well, especially since she seemed to have lost the rest of her school and the more senior teachers. ‘Thank you. I was thinking the same thing.’

  ‘I checked all the accommodation with Mr Helliwell last week,’ Edith told her as they set off. ‘Some of the villagers were reluctant to take children and found all sorts of excuses not to have them. I didn’t feel I ought to insist; it wouldn’t be in the children’s interests, but most of them were OK about it. Anyway, if we find we have misfits, we can always move them.’

  Her cheerful no-nonsense attitude calmed Louise’s nerves and she was able to look about her. The village was a typical country village
with narrow roads and high hedges. There was a lovely old church and, tucked away up a long drive, Cottlesham Hall, the home, so she was told, of Sir Edward Dryton. Most of the houses were concentrated round the church, the school and a windmill, but further out were farmsteads and smallholdings.

  ‘There’s a post office and general store,’ Mrs Wayne told her, indicating a shop on the corner. ‘There’s also a butcher, a baker, a smithy and a cobbler. Mr Chapman comes round once a week with his grocery van, a milkman does his rounds every day with a trailer and a churn on the back of his bicycle, and a baker delivers bread, also on a bicycle, but that’s about it, I’m afraid. Not like London, eh?’

  ‘No, but I expect we’ll get used to it.’

  ‘You have to go into Swaffham if you need anything the post office hasn’t got.’

  ‘I’m told there’s a bus …’

  ‘Yes, though let me know if you want to go, I might be going myself and can take you.’

  ‘That’s kind of you.’

  Mrs Wayne pulled up outside the tiny school, beside which was a schoolhouse. ‘We’ll see Mr Langford first, shall we?’

  John Langford was in his fifties and his wooden leg consisted of a peg on which he stumped around quite agilely. ‘The kids call me old peg leg,’ he told Louise, after they had been introduced. ‘Only behind my back, of course.’ He had untidy fair hair and a scar on his cheek which disappeared when he smiled.

  ‘How many children do you have?’

  ‘Eighty divided into two classes. I take the older ones and Miss Sedgewick the younger ones. Come, I’ll show you.’ He led the way from the schoolhouse, across a small yard and through a door at the side of the school.

  Louise found herself in one large room with a pot-bellied stove in the middle surrounded by a mesh fireguard. There were rows of double desks, two teachers’ desks and two blackboards. ‘We divide the room with those curtains when we need to teach them separately’ he said, pointing.

  ‘It’s clear you can’t accommodate any more,’ Louise said. ‘What am I to do? I have twenty-four. Are there any other premises which might be suitable?’

  ‘Can’t think of anything offhand. There’s the village hall, where you were last night, but that’s in use a lot of the time, Women’s Institute, Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, parish council meetings, and the doctor comes from Swaffham once a week and uses it as a surgery. I’m afraid we’ll have to share.’

  ‘If we are still here,’ Louise said. ‘I have no idea where the rest of my school ended up.’

  ‘I gather there was a certain amount of confusion,’ he said with a laugh. ‘But I doubt they’ll move everybody round again, it’d be like ring a ring o’ roses. Besides, the government has more than enough on its plate dealing with the political situation to worry about where the children are. As long as they have homes and an education, that’s all that matters.’

  ‘You are probably right.’

  They returned to the schoolhouse. ‘Do sit down.’ He indicated a horsehair sofa. Louise perched on it next to Mrs Wayne and he took a dining chair. ‘Let’s thrash this out.’

  After some discussion, they decided the village children would use the school from eight-thirty to one, and the evacuees from one-thirty to four one week and then they would reverse it for the following week. ‘You will need to find your own books and pencils,’ he said. ‘Your own LEA should provide those.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll write to them.’

  ‘If we find the children’s education suffering, we could open the school on Saturday mornings,’ he added.

  Louise laughed. ‘I can just imagine what the children will think of that.’

  ‘Yes, but they will only be in school half the day during the week. Mind you, my lot will have to be given homework to make up for it.’

  ‘And I must do the same.’ She paused. ‘We are making all these arrangements without having any idea how long it will go on. I thought there might have been a declaration of war before now. Do you think they are still trying to prevent it?’

  ‘Perhaps, but they are wasting their time if you ask me, and in the meantime, Poland suffers, not that the general public feel very strongly about that. Half of them don’t know where the place is.’

  ‘Then I think geography will need to be part of the curriculum,’ Louise said, then laughed. ‘Oh, dear, that sounds pretentious and I didn’t mean it to be. I’ve only been teaching a couple of years and it’s a huge responsibility.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll cope, but if you need any help, don’t hesitate to ask.’

  ‘And you can call on me for anything to do with the children’s welfare,’ Mrs Wayne put in. She had been sitting listening to the arrangements without joining in the discussion. ‘There isn’t much I don’t know about the village.’

  ‘Thank you, both of you.’ She rose. ‘I must go and let the children and their foster parents know about the arrangements.’

  He stood up, balancing himself on his peg leg. ‘My children will come to school as usual on Monday morning, so I’ll take mornings the first week,’ he said. ‘Is that agreeable?’

  ‘Yes, perfectly.’

  They shook hands and Louise followed Mrs Wayne out to the car.

  ‘He’s a good teacher,’ Edith said as she put the car into gear and they drove off. ‘Strict, but fair, and he doesn’t put up with any nonsense. He got four children through the scholarship last term. They’ll be going to Hamond’s Grammar School in Swaffham next week. Now, I suggest we visit the nearest billets first and then work our way outwards. I live a couple of miles away, so we’ll go there last and you can have a cup of coffee while we deal with any problems we’ve found.’

  The children seemed to have recovered from the previous day’s events and most had gone off exploring a countryside many had never seen before, so Louise did not see them. Their accommodation varied from the mansion home of Sir Edward Dryton, to substantial farmhouses and two-up two-down cottages with no electricity, mains water or sewerage. Some were a great deal cleaner than others, but unless they were very bad and a danger to the children’s health and welfare, their offer of accommodation had been accepted. ‘I don’t suppose a bit of dust bothers the children as long as they get enough to eat,’ Mrs Wayne said as she drove down a narrow winding lane bordered by cow parsley, stinging nettles and blackberry bushes from which most of the fruit had been picked.

  ‘I am grateful for all your work,’ Louise said. ‘I don’t know what I would have done if I’d had to find homes for the children myself.’

  ‘Happy to help.’ She braked suddenly to avoid a sheep running in the road. ‘How did that get out?’ She came to a stop and left the car to catch the animal. Louise followed to help, though dealing with farm animals was outside the scope of her experience and she did no more than watch.

  ‘It’s one of Bill Young’s,’ Edith said when she had her arms round the ewe’s neck. ‘He’s usually careful about shutting gates. Let’s get it back where it belongs.’ She bundled it through an open gate and shut it firmly, just as a man in his thirties came up the road on a bicycle. ‘Your gate was left open, Bill,’ she said.

  ‘It’s them pesky evacuees,’ he said, dismounting. ‘I ha’ bin behind ’em all morning. Don’t know how to go on, they don’t.’

  ‘I’m dreadfully sorry,’ Louise said. ‘They are not used to country ways. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.’

  He turned to look at her, appraising her from head to foot, taking in her tweed skirt, neat blouse and flat-heeled shoes. ‘You in charge of ’em?’

  ‘This is Miss Fairhurst, their schoolteacher,’ Mrs Wayne told him. ‘Miss Fairhurst, Bill Young. He farms at Belmont Farm, just down the road here. He’s taken Frederick Jones and Harold Summers.’

  Louise shook hands with him. His grip was firm and dry. ‘I suppose we’ve all got a lot to learn,’ he said. ‘But just you mek sure those childer of yours know how important it is to shut gates.’

  ‘I will.’ It seemed the c
hildren were all going to be lumped together and called hers. She felt a bit like Mother Hubbard. ‘Do you think you could come to the school and talk to them about it?’

  ‘OK. When?’

  ‘The sooner the better. Monday afternoon, if you can manage it.’

  ‘I’ll be there at two o’clock.’ He went over to the gate to check that all his sheep were safely in the field and the women continued on their way.

  ‘You’ve made a conquest there,’ Edith said. ‘He’s not usually so tolerant. As for talking to a class full of children, that really is one for the book. I wouldn’t mind listening in on that.’

  ‘You can if you like.’

  Edith laughed. ‘No, I’ll leave you to it.’ She turned in at a gate and drove up to the door of a substantial farmhouse. ‘Here we are.’

  The house was large and the kitchen, reflecting its importance, was vast. It had a scrubbed table in its centre which was scattered with papers. ‘Sorry about this,’ Edith said, gathering them up and dumping them on the pine dresser which occupied almost the whole of one wall. ‘WVS business. Do sit down.’ She set about making coffee with water from a kettle already on a black range.

  With cups of coffee in front of them they talked about the children, the billets they had been given and their individual needs. It was, Louise mused, far beyond the business of teaching for which she had trained. ‘Mr and Mrs Young will have their hands full taking in both Freddie and Harry,’ she said. ‘They are two of the most mischievous in the whole class and egg each other on. Perhaps they should be separated.’

  ‘I’m sure the Youngs are up to it,’ Mrs Wayne said. ‘Let’s leave them for the moment and see how they go on.’

  ‘I wonder what’s going to happen,’ Louise mused. ‘If there’s a war we’re all going to have to make adjustments.’