Isobel's Story

by Jennie Walters

  Punchy was a grey African parrot who lived in the day nursery. He spent the day spitting out seeds and watching proceedings through his round beady eyes, uttering the occasional squawk or exclamation of disgust. ‘That will never do, Charles!’ was one of his favourite sayings. I was wary of Punchy myself, but the twins were devoted to him and would happily let him perch on their shoulders or heads, his scaly black toes tangled up in their pale hair.

  ‘Miss Murdoch hates living creatures. She’d sooner they were all dead so she could eat them.’ Julia folded her arms and glared at the sheep.

  ‘Now that’s enough!’ They couldn’t be allowed to carry on like this. ‘If there’s one more word from either of you about Miss Murdoch, we’ll go straight home.’

  There was nobody much about as we approached the shop. A notice was pasted on the door. ‘AIR RAID DRILL’, it read. ‘When you hear the ALARM (rattle operated only by ARP warden), proceed immediately to your shelter or other designated place of safety and remain there until the ALL-CLEAR is sounded (long whistle blast). Do not forget your GAS MASK but do not stop to take any other items with you. CALM and ORDERLY behaviour is essential. PANIC costs LIVES.’

  Perhaps it was just as well Nancy couldn’t read. I pushed open the door. Would Andreas be there? I found myself disappointed not to see him, although in some ways it was a relief; I wouldn’t have known whether to say hello.

  ‘Any word from Lady Vye?’ Mr Tarver enquired in a silky voice, passing us a sherbet fountain and two liquorice bootlaces across the counter. ‘She’s certainly having a nice long visit to London.’

  ‘Her cousin’s daughter is being presented at Court in the middle of March,’ I replied, repeating what Eunice had told me the day before. ‘She’ll be back after that.’

  ‘Very good. You girls will be happy to see your mother home, won’t you?’ Nancy and Julia were not so easily won over; they stared silent and unsmiling at Mr Tarver, hand in hand, as I paid for the sweets.

  We were walking back up the road when Andreas came cycling towards us, his cheeks flushed with the cold. I couldn’t pretend not to have seen him, he was too close for that, but he obviously wanted to talk and pulled up the bicycle straight away. ‘Isobel, I am happy to see you. There is a thing I want to say.’

  Now what was he going to lecture me about?

  ‘I am sorry for the last time, the things I said,’ he went on. ‘It is not your fault what happens, and you have done a good thing for me, to show my picture to Lord Vye. So thank you.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ I muttered, hating myself for being so mean-minded. ‘It’s a lovely painting. I’m not surprised he liked it.’

  ‘I will make you another one. Of the boat house, perhaps.’

  I snatched a quick look to see whether he was joking. Why did his smile have such an effect on me? Because he was usually so serious, I suppose. ‘I shall come to the Hall on Sunday,’ he went on. ‘Perhaps you will be there?’

  ‘I hope so. My mother wants me to go back home to London, but we’ve written asking her to let me stay for a while longer.’

  ‘I am sorry if you go home,’ he said, making me blush. ‘You are the first person I talk to about such things. I hope we will be friends.’

  It was a strange idea; I’d never had a boy for a friend before. Andreas was different, though. I still didn’t know what to talk to him about, but somehow there was a connection between us which meant that didn’t matter so much. I looked him in the face for the first time. ‘If I have to go home, perhaps we could write to each other?’ My cheeks were flushing hotter by the minute.

  ‘Yes, and then my English will be better. And you will come again soon, to visit your grandmother?’

  Suddenly I was distracted by the fact that both the girls were gazing up at him with rapt attention; they seemed particularly fascinated by his cap. Quickly, I stood in front of them so he wouldn’t notice. ‘Yes, of course I will. In the summer, perhaps.’

  He hesitated, glancing over my shoulder down the lane. ‘It is difficult for me with Mr Tarver,’ he said, all in a rush. ‘In the shop, and the apartment afterwards.’

  I could imagine it was. Mr Tarver had rooms above the shop, two narrow windows draped in grimy net curtains looking out on to the street. In a flash, I could picture the awkward meals up there; no conversation, only the ticking of a clock on the mantelpiece to disturb the silence. I’d seen the way Mr Tarver constantly watched Andreas to see if he was pinching anything. What must it feel like to have his eyes fixed on you day and night? And Andreas had no one to talk to except me. How could I not be his friend?

  ‘I want to ask something,’ he went on. ‘Is Lord Vye a good man?’

  The question took me by surprise. ‘Well, yes, I think so. As far as I know, anyway. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because I must live somewhere else. It is not right for me, in the shop all day, and so much church and now Bible study on Sundays as well. Mr Tarver tries to turn me into another person. He wants to save me and I do not have to be saved.’

  I remembered his closed, obstinate face in church. ‘Does that really matter so much? Couldn’t you just go along with it and pretend?’ It’s what I do most of the time, though I didn’t like to say so. Mum’s never been much of a one for church-going, and the boys and I fell out of the habit of saying our night-time prayers a long time ago. Sometimes I pray these days, although I think God must know I don’t really mean it.

  ‘I am not a very good Jew,’ Andreas said slowly, ‘but when my grandmother is killed for that, how can I pretend to be something else? How can I turn away from my family? Of course it matters. It matters more than anything.’

  I could see that now. ‘But what does all this have to do with Lord Vye?’

  ‘Do you think he will let me stay in Swallowcliffe Hall? I do not want money, only food, and I can work in the garden or somewhere else. I work hard and I am honest. Can you tell Lord Vye this?’

  With these words, everything changed. So that was it. With a sinking heart, I realised exactly why Andreas wanted me to be his friend: because I was useful. ‘Lord Vye doesn’t talk to me about that sort of thing,’ I replied stiffly. ‘Maybe you should tell him yourself on Sunday.’

  He might have been puzzled by the change in my voice but I didn’t care. ‘Come on, girls, time to go.’ Nancy and Julia had started messing about with sticks in the swampy stream that trickled along the bottom of the roadside verge, squatting beside it with their two blonde heads close together. Nodding goodbye to Andreas, I rounded them up and we set off for home. How could I have been so stupid? And why did I ever suggest writing to him? I’d made such a fool of myself! He only needed me to ease his way into the Hall, which had probably been his plan all along.

  It wasn’t until we were nearly back that I thought to ask Nancy, ‘Why were you staring at the German boy like that? It was rather rude. You don’t still think he’s a spy, do you?’

  ‘We wanted to see his horns,’ she replied, very matter-of-fact.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘He’s Jewish,’ Julia explained. ‘Sissy told us, and she said all Jewish people have horns. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘That must be why he wears a hat all the time,’ Nancy said. ‘To cover them up.’

  I couldn’t be cross with them but, really! What did Sissy think she was doing, filling their heads with such rubbish? I might have seen through Andreas now, but the idea that he could have had horns sprouting out of his head was so ridiculous I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The twins had to put up with quite a lecture, although I couldn’t get them to pay me much attention. They were fidgeting about, preoccupied by something else, and I could tell they weren’t listening to a word I said. Looking back, I should have realised they were hatching a plot, but I was feeling too nettled myself to notice.

  The next morning, I was busy in the kitchen with Gran when an ear-splitting shriek made us both stop dead in our tracks.

  ‘Heaven preserve us!’ she de
clared. ‘What on earth was that?’

  Not a ‘what’, but a ‘who’: Miss Murdoch. She was up in the nursery, screaming as though Hitler himself was after her.

  Seven

  Jack got to the top of the fir tree

  But he was dizzy, and he fell and snapped his neck.

  So he was killed on the spot.

  From Reading Without Tears, 1898

  I took the back stairs two at a time and ran along the corridor to what used to be the day nursery, now the twins’ schoolroom. Miss Murdoch was backing out of the door, her hand over her mouth.

  ‘Are you all right, ma’am?’ Sissy came hurrying towards her from the other direction. ‘Whatever’s happened?’

  ‘Wicked children,’ Miss Murdoch breathed, her eyes glittering behind their spectacle lenses. ‘Savage, ungrateful little heathens! They can stew in their own ignorance from now on, and serve them right. I won’t be setting foot in that room again for love nor money.’ She brushed past Sissy and lurched down the passage.

  ‘Oh, heavens, what have they done now?’ Sissy stared into the schoolroom, but I beat her over the threshold.

  At first sight, everything seemed to be much as usual. Punchy sidled up and down his perch, muttering darkly. Since Miss Murdoch’s arrival, the rocking horse and dolls’ house had been pushed back against the wall to make way for a blackboard, and all the nursery-rhyme pictures around the room had been replaced by alphabet charts and pasteboard mottoes. ‘A healthy mind in a healthy body’ read one, followed by, ‘I don’t sniff, Oh no, no, no, I take a handkerchief and blow, blow, blow’, and then, oddly enough, ‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord’. Nancy and Julia stood close together beneath these exhortations, trembling with excitement. They were gazing at the round oak table in a corner of the room. I looked at it, too - and gasped. Squatting in the middle was the largest, wartiest, yellowy-browniest toad I had ever seen. It shifted uncomfortably on its plump, damp haunches and stared back at us from under heavy-lidded orange eyes. Sissy screamed from the doorway.

  ‘Poor Mr Toad,’ Julia said. ‘He’s frightened because Miss Murdoch made such a noise when he climbed out of her bag.’ She picked the creature up and stroked it tenderly along its knobbly back. I noticed Miss Murdoch’s large black handbag on the floor under the table, a packet of cough lozenges and a handkerchief spilling from its open mouth.

  ‘Leave that horrid thing alone and give me the handbag,’ Sissy said. ‘I’ll run after Miss Murdoch and try to calm her down.’

  Julia popped the toad in the pocket of her pinafore and gathered up the bag and its contents, which Sissy received at arm’s length. ‘Ma’am? Wait a minute!’ we heard her call as she set off down the corridor.

  Nancy grinned at me, sparkling with glee. ‘How did the toad get into Miss Murdoch’s handbag in the first place?’ I asked, finding my tongue at last.

  ‘I suppose he was lost,’ she replied. ‘The bag must have been open somewhere and he probably thought it was a nice dark cave and crawled in to hide. That’s exactly what happened, I should think.’

  ‘Nancy,’ I told her sternly, ‘stop making up stories. You know how important it is to tell the truth.’

  ‘We found him in the village yesterday,’ Julia said, taking the toad out of her pocket and cradling it protectively in her hands. ‘When you were talking to the boy. I carried him home in my gas mask case, and then I put him in Miss Murdoch’s bag this morning when she wasn’t looking. It was all my idea.’

  ‘You’ll have to say sorry. Imagine what a shock Miss Murdoch must have had when she opened her handbag! Why ever did you do such a naughty thing?’

  ‘Because we wanted her to run away.’ Nancy’s lovely grey eyes held mine. ‘Just like she did.’

  ‘We’re not sorry at all,’ Julia added. ‘Are we, Nancy?’

  ‘Then you’ll have to pretend,’ I told them. ‘And what happened to your gas mask, Julia, when you put the toad in its case?’

  ‘I hid it in the ditch.’

  ‘We’d better go and fetch it straight away. You can put the poor thing back where you found him at the same time.’

  There wasn’t much more to be said. I couldn’t bring myself to be cross with them because, deep down, I wasn’t sorry to see the back of Miss Murdoch either. That night a wonderful dream came floating into my head, just before I fell asleep. Mum would decide she’d had enough of living in London, and she and the boys would come down to Swallowcliffe. She could teach Nancy and Julia and we’d all live happily together, with Stan and Alfie going to the village school and making friends with Tristan in the holidays. And yet I realised this was too far-fetched, even for a dream: Mum would never consent to being a governess. She’d managed to escape from the Hall years ago and wouldn’t be coming back in a hurry - not on a permanent basis, anyway.

  26 February 1939

  Dear Izzie

  Gran tells me it’s all right with her if you stay on a bit longer, if that’s all right with me. I suppose so, darling, if you really think the country air is doing you so much good. Don’t get too settled there, though, will you? I’ll send down some schoolbooks and then at least you can start studying.

  Perhaps it’s just as well you’re out of London for the time being, with the way things are - anti-aircraft guns in the park and yesterday the sky full of barrage balloons. Some of the scouts are going to act as messenger boys for the ARP and of course Stan was first in the queue to sign up. Mr Jones isn’t required by the fire service so he’s concentrating on stocking up the house. According to Mrs Jones, he’s filled their larder with tins of condensed milk (a job lot from his friend in the market) and is driving her mad.

  No more news, really. Ginger caught a mouse yesterday and left its head on the mat. Lovely! The boys send their love, and we’ll look forward to seeing you at Easter. Perhaps we could all come down in the holidays to pick you up?

  Love to Gran and you, of course. Keep well, darling -

  Mum

  So I’d bought myself a few more weeks at the Hall. I sat on the bed with Mum’s letter in my hand, thinking about everything. I thought about how comfortable I was at Swallowcliffe, how safe its sturdy walls made me feel, despite air raid drills in the village and Miss Murdoch going on about poison gas and shrapnel wounds. I thought about Mum’s promise that we would stick together if the worst happened, and how it was all that really mattered. When I was in the sanatorium, Mum would come and visit me every weekend. One day she missed the train and visiting hours were over by the time she arrived, but she waved at me through the window until the matron told her to leave and that kept me going for another week. I thought about Andreas, who would be cycling up to the Hall soon to try and make Lord Vye trust him, and about his mother, still in Germany, and then about all the other mothers who were trying to send their children away. Little children, some of them, younger than Julia and Nancy and hardly speaking a word of English. How desperate these parents must have been, to put their trust in complete strangers! It was an amazing act of faith. Despite the terrible things that had happened to them, they still believed that somewhere, human beings could be kind to each other.

  I went downstairs to talk to Gran. She was sitting in her chair by the window, darning socks.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said when I’d finished, taking off her glasses and rubbing her eyes. ‘It’s been on my mind too. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so hard on Mr Tarver’s lad. He can’t help where he was born, can he? I heard a programme on the wireless the other day about those kiddies coming over from Germany and Czechoslovakia. They put up a crowd of them in a holiday camp on the coast for the winter. With the weather we’ve had! I shouldn’t imagine that was much fun.’

  I took a deep breath. ‘Do you not think the Vyes might agree to take some children here? There’s so much space and I bet the Refugee Fund would help us fix the place up. We could maybe get hold of those beds you had for the wounded soldiers.’ The Hall had been used as a hospital during the war; sometimes men came back
to visit the place who’d been patients then, and could remember racing on crutches across the lawn.

  Gran looked doubtful. ‘And who do you think would look after the poor little things? Who’s going to cook for them and make their beds and do their washing? Sissy and Eunice? I don’t think so.’ She patted my hand. ‘It’s a nice idea, lovie, but it’s never going to happen. You won’t get Her Ladyship agreeing to fill the house with refugees, not in a month of Sundays. She’s got her own children to think of, for one thing. Lord only knows the habits Nancy and Julia would pick up - they’re wild enough as it is. And besides, look at the state of the place. Half those spare bedrooms have got mushrooms growing out of the walls.’

  ‘All right, then. What about finding a governess for the girls?’ This was my fall-back plan. ‘You know that leaflet about Lord Baldwin’s Fund for Refugees?’ I took it out of my pocket. ‘Well, it says here you can offer to employ and train refugees between the ages of sixteen and thirty-five. There’s bound to be a person who can speak good English - maybe even someone who’s a teacher already!’

  Gran put her glasses back on and smoothed out the leaflet. ‘That’s not such a bad idea,’ she admitted after looking at it for a few minutes. ‘And she’d probably come cheap, which should please His Lordship. I could have a word with Lady Vye about it when she comes back next week.’

  ‘But, Gran, there’s not much time left. As soon as the war starts, no one will be able to go anywhere. Why don’t we start making enquiries? You could put the idea to Lord Vye now, couldn’t you?’

  ‘Always in such a hurry, you young people,’ she grumbled. ‘When you get to my age, you’ll realise there’s no point rushing into things. They’ve been talking about war since the autumn and nothing’s happened yet. I reckon that Hitler’s bitten off more than he can chew - he’s just looking for a way to back down without losing face.’