The Evacuee Summer

by Katie King

  Indeed, if Peggy thought too much about the kind thoughtfulness she was being shown, she would find her eyes filling with tears and a lump forming in her throat. This feeling of weepy melancholy wasn’t confined to when Peggy was thinking of those moments, as she discovered it could creep up on her at the most unexpected of times, one day causing a customer to joke that when Peggy had asked him what he’d eaten, and he’d replied ‘the curried spinach’ and Peggy’s eyes had gone watery, he’d had to say to her, ‘Ee by gum, love, it weren’t that bad!’

  Like Mabel, June also worked on the principle that being kept busy would take Peggy’s mind off things. She suggested that as she herself was up to her ears in meal planning and a few staffing problems at the café, it would be really helpful if Peggy could go over to the hospital to have a word with James, to see if they should carry some first-aid equipment in the event of bombing and, if so, whether the staff at the café should also have some rudimentary first-aid training.

  Peggy sighed in a tired way, and suggested that wouldn’t a telephone call be as good as an actual visit to find out this information? June could do that, she was sure.

  June pretended she didn’t hear Peggy, and so after another sigh Peggy plonked Holly back in the perambulator and popped on her own cardie as the day was overcast, and headed over to the hospital.

  As luck would have it Peggy was able to catch James Legard between shifts, as he was standing outside the hospital entrance with his white coat unbuttoned and his face turned up to the cloudy sky. When she saw how pale he looked she guessed he had been working long hours and hadn’t been able to be outside much, so Peggy apologised guiltily for interrupting his rare free time.

  ‘Don’t give it another thought, Mrs Delbert,’ said the young doctor with a smile, as he rallied and then leant forward to look at Holly lying in the perambulator and to give her a quick chuck under the chin.

  ‘Peggy, please, Dr Legard.’

  ‘Well, Peggy, in that case it’s James.’

  Without being sure why, Peggy experienced the now all-too-familiar sensation of tears threatening, and when she didn’t say anything James threw her a casual but nonetheless scrutinising look.

  Then, as he didn’t much like what he saw, taking hold of her elbow with one hand and deftly scooping Holly out of the pram with the other, he said invitingly, ‘Come with me, Peggy. I was just going to have a cup of tea and so it will be a treat if you would join me. And I can give Holly a quick once-over to make sure everything is shipshape and tickety-boo with her.’

  With that he neatly manoeuvred Peggy into the hospital foyer and down the corridor into his office, on the way asking a blue-uniformed ward sister to take care of the perambulator and then to bring in a cup of tea for himself and Peggy.

  Once Peggy was sitting down, James put Holly down on her back on the narrow bed crammed against one wall. He peeped into her towelling nappy to check for nappy rash and he looked at her tummy button. Doing up the large curved safety pin holding the nappy together, next he lifted all the baby’s limbs this way and that, listened to her chest with a stethoscope, shone a light into Holly’s mouth and ears and eyes, clicked his fingers by each ear to see if she could turn her head that way towards the noise, and finally he waved a scrap of clean bandage all around her face about eighteen inches away to see when she would look to see it and if she could move her eyes from side to side and up and down.

  ‘Who’s a clever thing then, Holly? Who’s a clever girl?’ he said in the voice people often talk to babies with, and was rewarded with Holly’s best grin and chuckle, at which he gave her belly a gentle jiggle with his whole hand, causing Holly to elevate the chuckle into a proper laughing sound.

  The sister came in with the tea, and James plunked pillows either side of Holly to stop her turning over and risk any danger of her falling to the floor.

  He went and sat down with his knees facing Peggy’s. ‘Well, Holly seems to be quite tip-top, which is good, and a testament to how well you are looking after her. I think she’s caught up now with where she would be, had she gone to full term. But her mother is important too, and so I’m just as interested in your state of health, and how you are feeling,’ he said.

  At the sound of the kindness bubbling behind his voice, Peggy bowed her head, and although he was presented with the top of her head, meaning that he couldn’t see her face, James guessed by the sight of her hunched shoulders and trembling tendrils of hair, that she must be crying.

  ‘Have a drink,’ he suggested quietly after a minute, gently nudging Peggy’s saucer a little in her direction.

  Peggy wiped her eyes and sniffed, and then she reached obediently for the cup and took a sip.

  James passed across to her his clean handkerchief that had been neatly ironed and folded, and which had been nestled in the top pocket of his white overall, and then he waited patiently for her to say something.

  Looking down again Peggy dabbed underneath her eyes with the hankie, and she raised her head towards him.

  The light was shining through the window straight onto Peggy’s face, and James could see she was exhausted and wan. There were blue veins just under the skin around her eyes, which were slightly bloodshot, and there was dry, flaky skin under her nostrils. She looked in the grip of an emotional crisis. But he thought he detected alongside all this misery, something resilient and brave in her expression too, and James found that this, in his eyes, gave Peggy the faint but undeniable aura of magnificence and feminine resilience.

  ‘I’m not ill,’ Peggy said, and James had to blink several times to break his train of thought and concentrate on what she was saying. ‘And every day I thank the very moon and the stars that Holly is here, and is healthy and thriving. I thank you too, as without you looking after us on Christmas Eve neither of us would be here today, and so I do want you to know how much I appreciate your skill and quick thinking.’ James’s eyes crinkled at the corners at this, and he looked slightly abashed. Peggy didn’t notice though as, despite her eyes being turned in his direction, she wasn’t really looking at him as she continued in a more downcast tone, ‘But I’ve had some bad news that’s knocked me for six, and I feel quite often as if I’m just done in. And even before that I did sometimes find that I didn’t quite enjoy being a new mother as much as I’d expected – I can’t describe exactly how I felt, only that I found myself feel very inadequate and short-tempered. I can’t seem to get myself back on track. It’s hard to think straight, and I have to fight very hard sometimes not to be snappy with Jessie and Connie.’

  Peggy didn’t elaborate further, although James gave her a further opportunity to do so. But she did twist the hanky this way and that in her hands. So to keep the conversation going, James asked Peggy if she was still feeding Holly herself, and how she was spending each day.

  She replied that yes, she was still breastfeeding, and that in addition, she was helping Mabel as much as she could around the house, and June Blenkinsop too, while also trying to look out for Jessie and Connie. James commented that bearing in mind how poorly Peggy had been at the start of the year, she should remember that her body had taken a real punishing and that it would take a while for her to feel right as rain and completely back to normal, and meanwhile she was asking quite a lot of herself with so many irons in the fire, and so should she think of cutting back a bit?

  ‘You must look after yourself, Peggy,’ he said, and then nodded his head in Holly’s direction, ‘as this little one needs you to be healthy most of all.’

  Peggy nodded in agreement, and James was gratified that her eyes didn’t fill with tears once more.

  Then he looked as if he wanted to probe a little further about what the ‘bad news’ was but Peggy didn’t want to go into this, so she took up the reins of the conversation, jumping in quickly to say she had come to the hospital with June’s questions about first-aid kits in places of work, and in mobile canteens (if she ever got that idea off the ground), and then she remembered to enquire about the
size of the little bags to be made for the patients’ possessions.

  They chatted about this awhile, and at last Peggy smiled properly for the first time when James said that if Roger arranged a day with his parishioners, then he’d be very happy to come to the church hall, or Tall Trees if Roger felt that more appropriate, and do a basic first-aid demonstration, and also explain what the cloth bags would be used for and how they could be made to be most useful to his patients.

  ‘You are kind. I’m sure this will please Roger and Mabel, and June too,’ said Peggy. ‘And if you were to bring a partly made bag you yourself had done, then I think the boys at Tall Trees might not think sewing to be such a namby-pamby thing to do after all…’

  ‘Deal,’ James answered, quite quickly. ‘As long as you make sure that you are getting enough rest yourself and are not pushing yourself too hard.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Milburn was getting quite a lot of exercise these days.

  Roger would take the trap out on weekday mornings, and unless there was an emergency and he had need of the pony and trap later, the children would go out in it either after school or just after tea, and then when Milburn had been driven back to Tall Trees, and unhitched and sponged down, they would put on her rope halter and the boys would take her out to one of the grass verges on the edge of the town to graze for an hour or two.

  Angela would stay behind at Tall Trees for the grazing bit as she would be feeling tuckered out by then and would just want to sit and have a rest, and Connie would usually opt to keep her company, Tommy now tending to stay with his pals following the sighting of the Hull lads.

  The boys religiously made sure that they took the pony out to graze every summer evening, although they had something of an ulterior motive.

  They’d been told that they mustn’t ride Milburn as there wasn’t a saddle nor a riding bridle, and so without the proper tack it wasn’t safe for them to get on board (or as safe as it ever could be with a pony, as even the very best riders could sometimes fall off, Roger had pointed out).

  But boys will be boys the world over, and quite often they dislike being told what to do. Inevitably, they had started giving each other a boost up to sit on Milburn as she placidly grazed.

  ‘Go on,’ Tommy would say, ‘Pa’ll never find oot.’

  Even the normally very obedient Aiden found the lure of Milburn’s broad back irresistible, and he’d reply, ‘All right, just fer a while.’

  ‘I’m next,’ Larry would add, and Jessie saying, ‘Me too,’ with Tommy insisting that he could have the longest time on board seeing as he was last in the queue.

  Milburn put up with this without a fuss, and it wasn’t long before they’d barely have turned the corner away from Tall Trees before one or other of them would be sitting proudly high on top of her. They taught themselves the knack of jumping up on her back by grabbing a handful of mane and using her forward momentum as she walked along to help send them vaulting upwards as they flung a leg over her back. At first somebody would always lead Milburn, until Jessie said, ‘Why don’t we use the lead rope to tie to her noseband on the other side? It’ll be almost like reins and we’ll be able to steer better.’

  This proved to be the case, although that could well be because Milburn was being kind to them rather than they were getting to grips with the nuts and bolts of riding.

  Jessie seemed to have the best balance of all the boys, and therefore looked to be the most accomplished on horseback, although none of them ever dared to do more than urge Milburn forward at a slow walk. But within several days each boy could make her go forward or stop, and turn left and right, albeit with various degrees of success. They had to make sure she had a good hour at least of grazing, and when they realised that they were spending quite a lot of time riding her, they worked out a rota so that they could get up early and take her out for a hedgerow chomp before they had to have their own breakfast or Milburn had to be tacked up to take Roger out and about on his parish business.

  ‘It’ll be dark early in the morning in the winter, and at this time in the afternoon, and so this system of feeding Milburn won’t then wor—,’ said Jessie just after the morning grazing rota had been mooted for the first time, and then he stopped abruptly what he was saying.

  He’d just realised that he’d been assuming that he and Connie would still be in Harrogate once the summer had come to an end in several months’ time, when the autumn nights would be drawing in, and he really wasn’t sure what he felt about that. If they were still in Yorkshire at that point it would mean that he and his sister had spent a whole year away from London – and what a long time a year was to a ten-year-old.

  Larry looked across at Jessie quickly, and they shared a moment of understanding, Larry signalling with a silent look that he wasn’t at all sure about wanting the evacuees’ sojourn up in Yorkshire to end, bearing in mind what was likely to be waiting for him at home, which was almost definitely not going to be pleasant given how horrible his father could be. Jessie telegraphed back that he massively missed his parents and Bermondsey, but there were undeniable benefits to having a ready-made group of playmates around, and not too many house rules to follow, as they were all enjoying under the present regime at Tall Trees.

  Tommy didn’t see Larry and Jessie looking at one another, as he was staring at the ground. Rather to his surprise, and especially bearing in mind the scrumping debacle of the previous autumn when he hadn’t been very nice at all to any of the evacuees, he realised suddenly that now he didn’t want any of them to leave, although he was old enough to understand that all things must come to an end, and so it was inevitable that at some point, Jessie and Connie, and Larry, and – worst of all – Angela would have to return home to London.

  Aiden was standing beside Milburn’s nose and he stroked the kitten-soft area just between her nostrils. He didn’t care to think of a time when Connie wouldn’t be sitting across the table from him at mealtimes or taking him on at a grass-whistling contest. He’d never thought he could be friends with a girl – and neither had Tommy, Aiden suspected – and yet if there was something he, Aiden, wanted to share with the others it was always Connie that he imagined himself telling it to, and he thought that Tommy probably felt the same way about Angela. Who would ever have thought that when they were all standing on the edge of the experimental orchard in October?

  Milburn nudged Aiden’s pocket just to see if he had a spare handful of carrot peelings hidden away in there just for her (which he didn’t), and so Aiden said, ‘I think we ought to make a pact to have the best summer we can. It might be the only one we can spend together so let’s make the most of it.’

  ‘Yes!’ said Larry. ‘Let’s make a serious and solemn pact, and then we have to stick together for all time. I know! It can be a blood pact!’

  ‘All for one, and one for all?’ said Jessie.

  ‘Except you mean that we’d be The Four Musketeers, rather than three,’ said Aiden, who’d recently read Roger’s copy of Alexander Dumas’s The Three Musketeers right after Jessie had finished with it.

  ‘Well, I suppose we’d be the Six Musketeers if we asked the girls,’ said Larry.

  There was a silence.

  ‘Connie will be furious if we do this and she’s not asked to be a musketeer,’ Jessie pointed out.

  Everybody nodded as they could see the truth of that.

  There was another silence, and Milburn lifted a hind hoof towards her belly to shoo away a persistent horsefly.

  ‘But a group of musketeers is a boys’ thing really, isn’t it?’ Jessie added tentatively as he looked from one of his chums to another, who all appeared deep in thought.

  Then Tommy nodded seriously, and stuck his hand, held as a fist, forward.

  Larry smiled and quickly put his fist on top of Tommy’s.

  Jessie, who was on top of Milburn, leant down and put his fist on top of the other two.

  All three looked at Aiden, who seemed to be poised in indecision, obviou
sly thinking of what Connie, who could be a real firebrand when she felt like it, would say when she discovered – as she surely would, knowing Connie – that she had not been included in their musketeer pledge.

  And then he came to a decision, and so Aiden placed his fist on the top of the others, with the declaration, ‘A blood pact it will be then, and we can do the blood part in our bedroom.’

  As they all repeated loudly in unison ‘a blood pact it will be then’, Milburn lifted her nose and turned her pretty head to peer from under her bushy forelock at a spot close to her shoulder where their fists were piled one on top of the other.

  She shook her head as if to say ‘girls have a lot to recommend them – you lot are making a mistake, a big mistake’.