‘Well, just see she’s punished right and proper!’ shouted Mr Gordon after us, the dogs circling wildly at his feet.
It would have been a great sin, breaking all known codes of loyalty, to tell PC Bennett it was Mary and not I who had committed the misdemeanour, so when he asked I had no choice but to confess to the whole affair. All the while I was imagining with horror what might happen to me next. Thrown in jail and forced to eat bread and water, stretched out on the rack, or worse, hanged, drawn and quartered.
But none of these was to be my fate. Instead PC Bennett gave me a stern telling off, but also agreed not tell my parents, just this once, but I was to promise to steer clear of Mr Gordon, and if he ever caught me door-knocking again, there would be trouble. Perhaps PC Bennett wasn’t so bad after all.
Of course, nothing stayed secret in that village for long, and when Mam and Dad found out, which of course they did, Mary agreed to tell them that it was really her who had planned and executed the whole affair. And we soon forgot about my little brush with the law: in 1939 there was something much bigger on everyone’s minds.
Mary and I were on our way home from school, smarting from the ruler for getting our sums wrong again. I had a penny in my pocket, earned by helping Mam, so we decided to buy some sweets to soothe the pain. Mary had her eye on some jelly babies while I was drooling at the thought of Liquorice Allsorts or acid drops. As we were stood at the counter, surveying the delights, a little wireless on the shelf crackled and a serious voice interrupted the broadcast.
The whole shop went quiet for a moment, and then hushed conversations started up. A man called Hitler wanted someone’s land, the voices chattered, and they had known it was only a matter of time. Mary and I hadn’t a clue what it all meant and why everyone looked so serious all of a sudden, so we skipped off and sucked on the sweets and didn’t worry much about anything, until I got home and saw Mam and Dad standing in the living room, looking very grave indeed. The man’s voice droned over the wireless.
‘What does it mean “at war with Germany”? Who is Hitler and why does he want someone’s land?’ I demanded, arms folded, waiting for an explanation for this sudden turn of events.
‘Don’t worry, little mouse. Come here, you,’ said my Dad and he ruffled my hair. He had just got home from work; he ran his own business in a nearby town. ‘It’ll all be all right. It won’t last, they say.’
My little brother Peter came in from the garden, running round us in circles, whooping, wearing Red Indian feathers and brandishing his new homemade bow and arrow.
‘Get down, all of you, or I’ll shoot!’ he said.
We were silent. I hoped this war thing would turn out to be just that, a big game of Cowboys and Indians.
Everything changed. Food and even clothes were rationed and everyone had to muck in: ‘Dig for Victory’ said the posters. Then there were soldiers. They came to the village to take down the road signs, and Mam made them tea and sardine sandwiches. I went along with her, intrigued to see them, all smart in their uniforms.
‘Mrs Rhodes, your sarnies are a lifesaver,’ they’d say as they gulped down the hot tea. ‘And who’s this pretty little thing?’ they’d ask, looking at me, and I would blush and look down at my shoes.
One day, as we were walking back from a delivery of sandwiches, we came across a huge parachute stuck in a tree, puffing in and out in the wind like a huge sleeping bird.
‘I wonder who that belongs to?’ said Mam, looking thoughtful. She ran her fingers through the silk. ‘You could make a few dozen dresses out of that. Anyway, I hope the pilot’s not hurt, whoever he is’.
We both stood and watched the parachute as it fluttered in and out for what seemed like hours. I suppose we’ll never know whose it was, or what happened to him.
Luckily for us, Dad didn’t have to go away to war because when they checked him out he had a heart murmur. I think he felt a bit guilty though when a lot of his friends went off to fight for king and country.
The first time I heard an air-raid siren it was exciting and scary. We’d all been warned about what to do, but nothing prepares you for the noise. Everyone in the neighbouring cottages and houses had agreed to go to a house nearby which had a cellar and stay in there until it passed. We did have an Anderson shelter in the garden, but Mam didn’t trust it.
‘That wouldn’t stop an incoming pigeon,’ she said, and she made sure we all got a place up at the big house.
When the siren sounded one night, we met Mary with her mam, Mrs Green, on the way up the lane. Mary and I pulled ghostly faces with the torches and tried to scare each other as we walked up the path. Then we scrambled over a wall and through the back garden, down into the stuffy old cellar where Mrs Tench, who owned the house, brought us all cups of tea. There was an eerie silence when the door slammed shut, and I could only just make out people’s faces in the torchlight. Then, after a while, we relaxed a little as our eyes got used to the dark, and people started chatting.
‘I mean, what does Hitler want with Gomersal anyway?’ asked Mr Gordon, trying to control his two dogs, who kept jumping up and down on people’s laps.
‘If a Jerry pilot lands here, we might all get captured!’ said Mrs Phillips, in her dressing gown and with her hair still in curlers, positively revelling in the idea.
My mam was quiet, staring into her tea cup. Dad was still outside, helping to make sure everyone’s lights were out.
Mrs Green started to panic. ‘What if a bomb lands on the house? The piano. My china! I saved for years.’
Mary and I looked at each other and didn’t say a word.
‘They said on the wireless that in London whole streets are being taken out. In one hit,’ she went on, ‘leaving massive craters in the road, bigger than a bus!’
But we never did see any bombs over our village that night or any other, so we were the lucky ones.
The war may have been on everyone’s mind, but I had another enemy in my sights: Eric Willis. He lived opposite us and would shout names at us from across the street. We ignored him most of the time and went off to play in the field up the lane. But he sometimes followed us.
‘Oh no, it’s you,’ said Eric on one occasion as he approached us, pretending he hadn’t known we would be there. ‘Why are you in my field?’
‘It’s not your field, we were here first,’ I said, standing in his way with my hands on my hips.
‘Well, you’re just girls anyway, what do you want being out here?’ He pushed me aside. ‘You should be playing with dolls or knitting or something.’
I turned away and ignored him.
‘Did you catch that cricket yet, Mary?’
‘No, he got away,’ she said sadly.
I had a jar all ready and we were going to take one home to show my dad how they make that noise with their legs.
‘Well, me and Peter’s gonna play in the stream and you better not bother us with your boring girl’s stuff,’ said Eric.
‘Yeah,’ agreed Peter, and I realized that my brother was there too. So he has joined the enemy, I thought. Well, we’ll see about that.
When they had walked away, we picked blades of grass and blew them to make high-pitched squeaks. It was deadly serious stuff. We nearly forgot about Eric and my brother’s defection. Anyway, I knew that they’d be hours, damming up the stream with rocks and stones. How utterly dull and pointless.
‘Ooh, there’s another cricket!’ shouted Mary and jumped up to try to catch it. I lay back in the sun and looked through the petals of a buttercup, twirling it, shining yellow on my skin.
All of a sudden there was a loud splashing and shouting from down by the stream. At first we thought nothing of it, but then Eric came scrambling up the bank.
‘He’s in. He’s fallen in!’
Oh my God, I thought. Peter. He can’t swim!
They’d wandered down to the bit where the stream gets suddenly deep; there’s a spring and Mam told us never to play there. When we got to the edge of the wat
er I could see him splashing about feebly, his little face poking out. Then he went strangely still and quiet. I started shouting and reached out across to see if I could grab him, but I couldn’t reach, and I couldn’t swim either.
‘Help! Help!’ we all shouted and started jumping up and down in the air for some reason. Peter began to splash again and then disappeared down into the water further.
‘What’s up? Lost your dog?’
Farmer Brian was checking on his cows in the next field and heard the shouts. He peered over the fence.
‘Oh Lord, that’s no dog,’ he said, seeing Peter’s arms flapping.
He leapt over, took off his hat and shoes and jumped into the water, disappearing for a while as he heaved my brother up out of the water. Eventually they both surfaced, their clothes blown up and full of water, Peter spluttering.
He lay on the bank with mud and silt all over him. Peter looked pale, almost green. Bill wrapped him up in his coat and carried him back to his truck nearby. We followed quietly. It seemed strange to be riding in the truck in this sombre, serious way when it was usually such fun.
‘Will he die?’ asked Eric nervously.
‘The boy’ll be all right. He’s just had a shock, is all.’
I could see Peter through the window in the cab, slumped and shaking with the cold, curled up on the front seat.
Later that evening, when Peter was tucked up in bed, nearly asleep, Dad was sitting by his bed and telling him a story about a giant bird which saves a little boy who is all alone in the desert and takes him to a beautiful paradise city where everything’s made of food.
‘Even the walls and gates of the city are made of cheese and meat, and as you pass through the gates to the city, the most gorgeous drinks, fresh lemonade and ginger beer, are poured out whenever you want them. And the doors to all the houses are made of sweets that you can pick off and eat whenever you feel like it.’
My dad was always making up stories. Peter dozed off and I hovered by the door a moment but decided not to go in. I couldn’t be sure but, as I turned to leave, I thought I saw a tear running down Dad’s cheek. He never showed his emotions, it just wasn’t the done thing in those days. But that night I’m sure I saw him shed a tear of relief that his little boy was safe.
After his accident, my brother stopped playing with Eric. Mam wouldn’t let him, so Eric went back to teasing us both from across the road, but a little less often. Perhaps he felt a bit bad about what had happened that day.
I had a big important exam coming up to see if I would get a scholarship to the local grammar school. Dad had been the first in his village to get a scholarship and everyone was keen for me to continue the family tradition. I sat the exam and, the following week, two nuns came round to our house to let me know I had a place.
Mam and Dad were proud as punch when they sent me off to catch the bus. I would go on my own all the way to Bradford, and I felt very grown up as I paraded up the road in my smart new navy uniform, complete with hat and gold braid.
One morning the bus drivers were all on strike, so an army lorry came to take us to school instead. When it arrived it was khaki green with a big tarpaulin over the back; handsome soldiers helped us all into the back. Sister Joseph had told us not to fraternize with the boys from the other grammar school. But of course we did nothing but chat to them all the way there.
The first years of the war passed largely uneventfully for us. During the winter months, Mary and I played on the ice on the village pond, skittering round and round in circles, not caring when we fell over. We built a huge snowman, gave it a big turnip for a nose and said it was Mr Gordon. One summer we had two evacuees from Liverpool in the village, Beryl and Sara. Country life was new to them. We showed them how to build a little tent using Mam’s clotheshorse, and we all pretended we were lost in the desert like wild explorers. In the autumn, we picked and ate crab apples, which looked like small cherries but were as sour as lemons. We even saw a cow jump over a fence once. We called it the Miracle Cow.
But, despite our games, the war was always there, a steady presence. We had an air raid shelter at school and a vegetable garden. The girls in our class knitted scarves for the troops and wrote letters to a battleship called HMS Repulse. We got letters back from their captain about what they were up to, and they were read out in assembly. We all got quite attached to the ship and its adventures on the high seas, and looked forward to the letters immensely, imagining we were all on a voyage with them to far-off lands. It seemed much more exciting than arithmetic and French verbs.
One afternoon, Mother Superior called everyone into the big hall after lunch, which was unusual since assembly was in the morning. A few of the other girls and I were chattering away quietly when she stepped out onto the stage, looking very serious. We all shut up immediately.
‘Girls, I regret to inform you …’ she paused and cleared her throat. ‘I regret to have to tell you that we have had a communication that the battleship Repulse was struck while on duty in the Straits of Malaysia, along with the battleship The Prince of Wales. It is believed they have suffered heavy casualties, with possibly many killed. We are awaiting more news.’
Her voice cracked. ‘I am grieved to be the bearer of such tragedy. I know you have all got to know and love the ship and its brave men.’ She sniffed and finally pulled herself together, inhaling deeply and folding her hands as if in prayer. ‘But this is the nature of war. And I trust you will all take a moment to remember those sailors. Those boys.’
There followed the longest silence, as we girls sat there completely stunned. Those last words spun round and round in my head. Some of them were just boys, not much older than us. On the front row, Belinda Quinn let out a giant sob, but mostly you could hear a pin drop; that was the first time ever the hall had been so full and yet so deathly quiet, I’m sure.
Once the news had sunk in, we sang some hymns and said quiet prayers for the ship and all those men with it. Suddenly the war no longer seemed quite the adventure I had hoped. It wasn’t just a game of Cowboys and Indians, after all.
When the war was over, not long after I’d finished school, Dad arranged a special holiday for us to Scarborough, the seaside town in North Riding. We watched Punch and Judy on the beach and ate fish and chips, or huddled from the rain in a little ice cream shop. For a few days, Peter and I stayed with a family friend during the afternoons, while Mam and Dad went off on mysterious trips around town.
One evening, after bacon and eggs, we were gulping down rice pudding when Dad made an announcement.
‘Your mother and I have decided we’ll be moving here, to Scarborough. We can get a bigger house, and you two can have bigger rooms.’
‘But, Dad! What about my friends?’
I would have to leave Mary and our adventures. I even had a pang of regret at leaving old Mr Gordon.
‘Your father and I will be setting up a guest house here. We’ve saved a bit of money together, and this is the time to get into the holiday market,’ Mam said.
Peter seemed too absorbed in his rice pud to care. But I was stunned. In any case, it was all settled, we’d be moving to Scarborough. And now that I’d left school, I’d have to get a proper job and start paying my own way.
So what on earth is a young girl to do? Sixteen years old, with life before me. I knew a few people who worked at the mill but that wasn’t for me, all day in the dust and grind. Others were already engaged to be married, working in the family trades, or training to be nurses and teachers even. But I hadn’t a clue what to do.
‘Why don’t you get a job as a sales girl at Marshall & Snelgrove or Rowntrees?’ suggested Mam one day as she stirred a giant tub of washing, froth overflowing onto the kitchen floor.
‘I was a milliner, you know,’ she said, stirring madly. ‘In a big department store in Leeds. Matthias Robinson. Making hats for all kinds, even gentry. That was before I met your father. And there are just as good prospects, if not better, for a young one like you now.’
‘I don’t know the first thing about clothes!’ I said.
But I didn’t have a better answer than that. The next day she shooed me out of the door in the direction of the store to ask for an interview, and it turned out they were all too keen for new staff, so it was easy enough to get a job. And that was that. I would work as a sales girl in the huge department store on a three-year apprenticeship. I’d work for two years as a junior, and my wages would be five shillings (25p) a week, with one week’s holiday a year.
Marshall & Snelgrove was a large, impressive Victorian stone building, which took up a good portion of the street it was on. As I approached the main doors on my first day, I was greeted by Albert, the doorman. He was an eager young chap who seemed to revel in wearing his official brown suit and hat with gold trim and buttons. He was always smiling and flattering the old ladies. But as I was about to march in through the front entrance that day, a skip in my step, he stopped me in my tracks.
‘Staff come this way,’ he said and pointed to a rather grubbier side entrance.
‘Oh. How silly.’ I blushed beetroot red.
‘You’re a new one, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. Sorry. I’m Pamela.’
‘Well, pleased to meet you, Pamela. Look out for Mrs Preen, that’s all I’ll say,’ he said in a low whisper. ‘She eats the new girls for breakfast.’
Then he darted back to his position and greeted a very elderly lady, taking her arm as she walked through the main door. She was carrying a dog which kept biting his sleeve, but he smiled all the way.
I walked through the side door and found myself in a dingy corridor, which smelled slightly of fish. I could hear the sounds of hustle and bustle coming from a small flight of stairs that led up into the shop. There was a shrill voice and an apologetic voice, then the sounds of running feet.
When I got upstairs to my department, Separates, the department manager, Mrs Preen, stood waiting at the top of the stairs with her head to one side, a concentrated expression on her face.
Bobby on the Beat Page 2
