I was told nothing about the war in lessons, either. The head teacher—we called her ‘Governess’—would have received no instructions regarding the way to present the facts to under 11s, so it was hardly mentioned in class.
Not so in the playground, however. The boys, assuming a knowledge that they could not have had, started to tease the girls with tales of bombs and tanks and the imminent invasion by the wicked Germans. They were not alone in the belief that we were about to be invaded—most of the adults believed this, too.
Everyone was issued with gas masks in little cardboard boxes on strings and instructed to carry them at all times. We had a lot of fun in class, trying them on and laughing at one another. The boys chased the girls, trying to frighten them by making roaring noises from inside their gas masks. Everyone talked about air-raid shelters, and Daddy began to build a thick-walled concrete affair next to the back wall of the house. It had three bunk beds and a tiny table with an oil lamp on it.
We were told that the church bells would remain silent and would only be rung if there were an invasion. Thankfully, they were quiet until 1945, when they actually announced victory!
We heard for the first time the wail of air-raid sirens, as they were tested. And far away in London, plans were being implemented to evacuate children to the provinces, as fears of air attacks grew.
Evacuees
I don’t remember the day our evacuees arrived, or the preparations that must have been made in advance, but suddenly two girls of about my age were there—in Meadow View. At first, I was delighted to think that I would have company. I was an only child and was not allowed to play with other children outside school hours. I made plans in my head for games that I might play with the evacuees. I also felt that Mum’s attention might be split now, so that I was not under her perpetual scrutiny. Sadly, things did not work out like this at all.
The girls, called Lily and Hettie, came from a place called Poplar in the East End of London. I had trouble understanding them, and they must have found my Somerset burr equally peculiar. They were nearly two years older than I was and what we would now call ‘streetwise’. I was in awe of their knowledge of London—or what I thought to be knowledge of London. Actually, they had rarely been outside their own area.
They knew nothing of the countryside at all and were always either frightened or scoffing of our quiet corner of Somerset. Hettie was terrified of the cows in the field next to the house—at first she did not even seem to know what they were.
‘Cor, what’s them?’ I remember her asking Mum.
‘Cows. That’s where we get our milk from,’ answered Mum, informatively.
‘Coo. We gets ours from the milkman.’
Right from the start, I knew they would make Mum cross. They did not sit still at the table but got up whenever they felt like it and wandered about eating their sandwiches. Sometimes they would not come to the table at all: they’d just grab a piece of toast or bread and butter from the plate and run off. They did not come straight home from school but played with other evacuees in the village, and Daddy often had to go and look for them. They were amazed that anyone worried when they were hours late.
The first time Mum put a plate of stew and dumplings before Hettie, she said, ‘Ugh! What’s that muck?’
I held my breath, eyes wide, watching Mum. Had I said anything like that … well, I wouldn’t have, anyway. I was scared for Hettie. But of course Mum could not smack an evacuee, as she would have done me. Oddly, I don’t remember what happened afterwards, just the shock of hearing Hettie’s words!
Lily was quieter than Hettie and seemed to have a little more idea about washing herself and eating at the table. One day, Mum asked Hettie what they usually had for their dinner at home.
‘Dinner?’ she said. ‘I dunno. Mum just gives us a bit o’ bread if we’re ’ungry an’ we goes out in the street. Or we ’as fish ’n’ chips. We don’t ’ave no table. Don’t want one.’
I was told that I had to set a good example to them. I did not quite know what this would mean, so I just did everything the way I always had.
‘Show-off! Snob!’ was what greeted my uncomprehending efforts.
Hettie was soon in trouble in the village. She saw no reason why she should not leap over people’s walls to steal plums or apples—or anything else that took her fancy—and thought nothing of pinching a comic from the village shop, Miss Mitchell’s. The local policeman eventually got involved and appeared at the door one day. Luckily, Daddy knew him well and explained that these children were completely out of control and that he and ‘the wife’ were trying to curb them.
But Hettie and Lily just laughed it off. Because a telling-off was a dreaded thing for me, I thought that they would be upset, too, when it happened to them. But of course they didn’t care at all.
One day in the orchard things went horribly wrong when I tried to play with the girls. I had always been allowed to pick the ‘fallers’ (fallen apples) and either take them indoors or, if they were rotten, throw them on the compost heap. I was not allowed to pick apples off the trees. Hettie and Lily started to throw fallers at each other and me, and when they had exhausted the supply of fallers they began to pick apples from the trees and throw those about. I hovered, whimpering, ‘You mustn’t!’ but they took no notice. I started to gather the apples, good and bad, from the ground to sort them out.
Just then my father came stomping up the garden path, looking very angry. I had an armful of apples, and he must have thought that I was joining in the game. I was always scared of Mum’s anger, but this time it was Daddy who was cross, and, without waiting to hear any protest, for the first and last time, he spanked me. It was through my coat and not very hard, so it did not hurt, but the injustice of it and the jeers of the girls did hurt. He could not spank them and they knew it, but he shouted a lot and made us all pick up the apples, put them in a basket and then go to bed.
Mum watched all this from the kitchen door and would not speak to us as we went in. Once in bed I cried bitterly, but Hettie and Lily, who shared a room, giggled and laughed and had some sort of play fight. I heard them with envy, but also with fear for them.
I never did tell Daddy that I had been gathering the apples, not throwing them about, but why didn’t Mum tell him? She had been watching the whole thing from the kitchen door.
As the term continued towards Christmas, at first the village school ran in shifts. There were only two classrooms, and the evacuees doubled the number of pupils. Local children attended school in the mornings and evacuees in the afternoons. A teacher, Mr. Richmond, had come with the children and taught the evacuees. They loved him, and he had as pronounced an accent as they did. His classes were rowdy, and they all had great fun, as far as I could see. Governess was appalled at the ‘lax attitude’—I remember those words, they impressed me.
Being a church school, we all went to church on Thursday mornings. Mr. Richmond had a row with the vicar because he did not see why ‘his’ children should have to go to church. I think he must have won the argument because I do not recall a single evacuee coming along.
I recall Hettie being taken to the school nurse when Mum discovered that she was wetting the bed. The nurse said it was the trauma of the evacuation and being away from her parents.
Daddy spoke to her that evening to say that we were sorry that she was upset at being parted from her father and mother. Hettie looked at him as though he were mad.
‘Favver? That old bugger? I ain’t sorry to leave ’im,’ she said.
There was a shocked silence. I held my breath. What would happen now? My eyes swivelled from Daddy to Mum and back. I had never heard the word, but somehow I knew that she was swearing. Before Daddy could gather his wits, she went on to say that she missed her friends and the ‘street’ and that she didn’t like the country because there was nothing to do and she was scared of the cows and sheep. She didn’t like the food, and all the local kids were daft! The house was too big, and outside was too
dark at night. And we had these funny lights—the gas lights. She liked going to the pictures, but there weren’t any. And so it went on.
Eventually, Mum broached the subject of the bed-wetting again, saying that she would stop Hettie’s bedtime drink, so that might help her to remain dry in the night. (I couldn’t understand why the evacuees got a bedtime drink when I had never had one).
‘What’s the fuss? Mum don’t mind if I wets the bed.’
‘Well, I do. I have to wash the bedding every day.’ Mum was very cross now.
‘Wha’ for? Mum don’t.’
Another stunned silence. I tried not to think of a wet, smelly bed just left for days. I don’t recall what the outcome of this conversation was, but the wetting went on.
Mum and Daddy showed great patience with Hettie and Lily, but one incident marked the end of their few months with us.
I had never heard of nits, but I was told that the girls had them because their homes were dirty. The school asked parents to treat all evacuees’ heads, but DDT and other sprays had not been invented then, so as a precaution Daddy rubbed paraffin into our heads—my head included! Hettie shrieked and Lily yelled when Daddy rubbed the stuff into their hair, but they later boasted about it at school. I hated having to go there with my hair plastered down with paraffin in case the rest of the children thought I had nits, too—and was dirty!
I am horrified now to think of the danger. After all, we had open fires and a gas stove; our hair could have caught fire easily, but no one seemed concerned about that possibility; they were only worried about getting rid of the nits.
The paraffin was all washed off the next day, but it didn’t deter the nits. They were soon in the bed, on their clothes and—the final straw—falling onto the table and into Mum’s cup of tea!
That was it. First Hettie, then Lily was re-homed.
Hettie had several homes after ours, but no one could manage her, and in the end she was deemed uncontrollable. The final straw came when she set fire to someone’s house. The authorities sent her home.
When I think back, I can see that Hettie was full of bravado. Did she even realise she was from a poor home? I don’t think it even occurred to her.
Parts of her tale appalled me, but I was sneakily envious of the obvious freedom that she enjoyed. To be able to run outside whenever you wanted, to have lots of friends to play with, to be allowed to play in the street. We didn’t have streets, we had lanes—but that would have been just as good.
Lily was much quieter and tried to understand what Mum wanted her to do, but it was naturally difficult for both of them to adjust. And in those days that was exactly what was expected of most of the evacuees. Very few allowances were made—they were to fit in to a lifestyle and surroundings that were utterly alien to them. Some of them were lucky and their surrogate parents were understanding, while many were better housed and better fed than ever before. Not all of them seemed to miss their home and family, and those who did soon went back, in spite of the danger of bombing raids.
There were just a few whose homes had been demolished and their parents killed and who, therefore, had to stay on until other arrangements could be made for them. Lily’s parents, on a visit to their daughter, decided that they liked Somerset and eventually settled there after the war.
Gradually, many of the evacuees went home, as ‘the phoney war’ (as this period of calm became known) went on. People said it would all be over by Christmas, just as they had done in the First World War, and were disappointed when Christmas came and went and men were conscripted and the news was ‘grim’, as Daddy said. Not allowed to listen to the wireless or read newspapers, I could only rely on other children’s highly coloured comments and opinions on the progress, or otherwise, of ‘our side’.
Auntie Jinny Again
After Hettie and Lily had gone, Daddy decided that we should go away for a few days to cheer Mum up. She had certainly had a lot to put up with and much to do—with all the washing. It happened that Auntie Jinny had written a few weeks earlier, saying that she would like to see us, so off we went to the Cotswolds, where she lived. Petrol was already rationed, but Daddy was allowed some for his work-related trips and had managed to save just enough for this little holiday. How happy I was! I believe it was the first time that I had seen Auntie Jinny since my mother had died—two years ago now.
She hugged me with equal joy, greeted Daddy in her usual friendly way and made an obvious effort to be welcoming to Mum. But even I could see that it was an effort.
She would have disapproved of my father’s hasty remarriage and seeing me probably brought her grief back, as well. But things ironed themselves out, and I felt loved and valued again.
Nothing seemed to have changed in the cottage, but there was something new at the front of the pub on the opposite side of the road. This pub was called the Corner Cupboard. Over the door was a flat porch with the stone head of a man on the top. At about this time a young man from the town had been called up and was about to go off to fight. His father had been in the First World War, and the lad still had his tin hat. On his last evening before leaving, he placed this tin hat on the stone head, saying that it was to stay there until he came home.
Tragically, he did not come home, but the locals left the hat there as a sort of memorial. Over the years, the top of the crown rusted away, and the ‘brim’ fell down round the neck of the figure. There it stayed for many more years until, eventually, it rusted away altogether.
Many years later, I learnt that the head was a bust of Benjamin Disraeli and that the pub had been a farmhouse, originally built in 1550. No one knows how it got its name, however.
Auntie and I went up into the town sometimes by ourselves. The buildings, round a sort of central square in the small town, were made of a lovely honey-coloured stone, and the pavement was several feet above the street, with some big trees overhanging the churchyard wall. I loved the high pavement; I had not seen one like it before. We went to little shops, and everyone seemed to know and like Auntie. We chatted about all manner of things, including Mummy.
‘You won’t ever forget your dear mother, will you?’ she said.
‘No. No, Auntie, I won’t, but no one talks about her and I can’t, either.’
‘Why not, my dear?’
I could have said that I longed to talk about Mummy but did not dare. I didn’t know what to say. When we were on our own, I asked Auntie Jinny lots of questions about Mummy. I was beginning to forget some things. Never her voice—that remained with me for years—but I could not remember what she looked like sometimes. Auntie had photos, though: lots of them! They were all black and white: colour photography had not arrived at that time. Some of Auntie’s were so old that they were brown. I did not ask for any because they would just have been put away somewhere, but I just enjoyed looking at them and was happy when Auntie talked about Mummy to me.
Auntie and I were in the garden one afternoon, Daddy was painting a bedroom, and Mum had gone to the shops. I took a deep breath, then said, ‘Auntie, I try to pretend that Mummy is still alive sometimes. But it doesn’t work because there is this Mum, as well. Do you think Mummy minded going to Jesus? Wouldn’t she have wanted to stay with me?’
Auntie looked upset but very kind, as she hugged me to her.
‘Are you not happy, little one?’
‘Oh, don’t tell. Don’t tell, will you?’ I was in a panic. Why had I said that? Supposing Auntie said something …
But Auntie said, ‘No. This is a little talk just between you and me. No one else. Now … I’m sure your mummy would not have wanted to leave you because she loved you so much.’
‘Did she? I’m so glad!’ No one had told me this.
‘Of course she did, very much, and she didn’t want to leave you. I know that. But she was very ill and God could not let her suffer, so she had to go. But I don’t think you can pretend she is alive. It wouldn’t be right. But you can try to remember all the things that you did together when s
he was alive. How would that be?’
‘I’ll try, but I was very small … Auntie, how do I know that she is happy with Jesus? I say my prayers every night and I ask God to bless everybody, but I can’t ask Him to look after Mummy … They wouldn’t like it. But she has the baby with her, doesn’t she? My sister,’ I added, with pride.
Auntie Jinny held me even tighter and gave a great big sigh. She probably had not known that Daddy had told me about my sister. She had tears in her eyes.
‘I’ll ask the angels to look after her when I say my prayers,’ she said. ‘It will be our secret.’ She smiled, and I felt warm all over and not so worried about Mummy.
Whilst with Auntie Jinny, Daddy contacted Great Aunt Louisa, intending to take me to visit her. Great Aunt Louisa would have none of it. Daddy came out of the phone box looking very angry.
‘She won’t hear of it,’ he said. ‘She disapproves of Mildred and the fact that I married again.’ This was not in Mum’s hearing, of course.
Later, Auntie Jinny told him, ‘Well, I’m not surprised. I don’t want to lose touch with dear Phyll’s child, so I try to ignore your behaviour, but … ’
I held my breath. People did not speak to Daddy like this. What would happen? But nothing did because Daddy was fond of Auntie Jinny. Did he realise how much she and I meant to each other, I wonder? I cried when we left and so did she.
When we got home, I found that the arrangements at school had changed with the exodus of so many evacuees. Now we—the local children—were combined with the remaining evacuees. Why did Mr. Richmond stay when there were only about six of ‘his’ children left? Sometimes, he taught us all for reading. We found the class difficult, as he talked funny, we thought.
I remember one small London lad spelling ‘drowned’ as ‘drownded’. Mr. Richmond said, ‘It’s not “drahhhnded”, it’s “drahhhned”,’ in his broad cockney accent. I’m sure he did not know why we all laughed.
The Country Nurse Remembers Page 7
