The Evacuee Summer

by Katie King

  ‘Yes!’ Connie not-quite-shouted. ‘We could have Tall Trees Paper Collection at the top.’

  ‘And?’ said Angela.

  ‘Well, that’s it. What more do you want?’ Connie brows were moving from enthusiastic to miffed as she replied.

  ‘Um,’ stalled Angela, anxious not to invoke Connie’s flash of temper. ‘Maybe when the cart would be collectin’, an’ on which day. An’ the streets we’d be goin’ to.’

  Seeing Connie starting to bridle, Gracie cut in to adjudicate before tempers flared by suggesting that perhaps the best thing would be that instead of having to make lots and lots of cards to post through people’s letter boxes, which would in itself be adding to the waste of paper, the girls – and maybe the boys too – should make posters for a few shops, and for the church porch and the church hall, saying when the pick-ups would be, and in what streets, and that the children would ring a bell on their way around so that people could flag them down. Gracie thought for a bit and then added, ‘Some people might ’ave a lorra paper now an’ then, an’ so you could also put t’ Tall Trees telephone number in, sayin’ special collections can be made “by arrangement”.’

  Feeling very grown up, the children cleared the tea table in record time, and as the boys polished their shoes, the girls got to work on the posters. Once all the shoe brushes and polish were back in the wooden box that lived under the kitchen sink, the boys – who had poo-pooed the idea of them joining in with the posters – concentrated on, as they saw it, the more manly task of working out the most efficient route for the collection.

  Then Mabel poured cold water on the whole shebang, saying she was playing devil’s advocate and were they all really convinced that it was a good idea? Was it a service that was really needed in their part of Harrogate, and were they sure that they weren’t doubling up on something that other people were already doing – had anyone checked that? (They hadn’t, but Roger and Gracie chipped in to say that they hadn’t heard of a competing collection.) Then Mabel went on that if they got a loyal base of users, these people wouldn’t like it if the children lost interest after a month or two, and they probably would, as it might turn out to be quite hard work and boring too. And would they be prepared to keep it going through the summer and on into winter if the war lasted that long?

  The children sat sullenly for a while, Jessie and Connie both hoping that the war would be ending before the cold months began as they were missing their parents. Then Aiden remembered that he had read a story in one of the newspapers at the teashop about a milkman saving an elderly lady’s life when he noticed she hadn’t taken her milk bottle in from the day before. The milkman had gone into her kitchen, through the unlocked back door, to find that she had taken a fall and had been unable to get up because of a broken hip, and the lady had understandably been very grateful. And so he said, ‘I think we’d be good at doin’ it at the same time every week, an’ Roger could tell us of anyone in ’is congregation he were worried about, an’ we could look in on them on our rounds too. An’ by t’ time t’ summer ’olidays are ending, maybe by then we could ’ave found a grown-up to ’elp if we’re busy wi’ school stuff.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ said Roger in an approving way, as he was all for encouraging free enterprise in the younger generations. ‘Capital idea.’ The children smiled at him gratefully.

  Mabel still looked distinctly dubious but she could see that nobody was going to agree with her. She put her hands up in mock surrender, and then couldn’t resist pointing out a spelling mistake Connie had made in her very first poster.

  Roger and Tommy both scrutinised Mabel, and then glanced at each other – she looked the same as always, but it wasn’t like her not to be encouraging get-up-and-go in other people. Roger gave a slight shake of his head, and Tommy realised that his father was saying that it would be best not to draw attention further to this.

  Connie let out a slightly anguished noise meanwhile, and sounded very grumpy when Angela suggested that she did the writing and Connie stick to decorating the posters. She’d been more than a little upset by Mabel’s comment as her poor handwriting and terrible spelling was very much a sore point, and it meant that she hated to be criticised out of school as she felt she got far too much of that when she was sitting at her school desk. And with Angela also seeming a bit critical it all felt a bit much.

  The boys could see the way this was likely to go and so they quickly invented something to do in their bedroom just as Connie began to say petulantly, ‘Are you saying my writing isn’t good enough?’

  The next day, James Legard caught Larry jumping up onto Milburn just around the corner from Tall Trees, as the lads were going to walk the streets to see how many they could reasonably do in an hour, which Roger had said would be long enough both for them and for Milburn to start with, and they could increase the round at a later date if all went well with being out for an hour.

  ‘Hello lads, is Reverend Braithwaite in? I want to have a word with him about a first-aid demonstration Peggy mentioned,’ the doctor asked. And after Tommy had said yes he was, but that James would have to go down to the hen run as Roger had just gone to clean out the coop, James looked at Milburn, who was in her rope halter, and Larry sitting bareback astride her, and then he said, ‘You all best be careful. That doesn’t look very safe. Even if that pony is quiet as anything, you’re not going to have much control if something out of the blue happens and makes it want to take off.’

  Although he hadn’t said as much, it was clear by his firm tone that James was saying that he didn’t think the pony should be ridden without better tack on, and after James held his eye for a while, Larry gave in wordlessly and slid one leg over Milburn’s rounded back and dismounted with only a single ‘blimey’ whispered very, very quietly under his breath.

  James left them to it, and Larry and Milburn looked at each other dolefully, and even though she prodded at him with his nose as though urging him to get back on, Larry didn’t vault onto her again, and neither did any of the other boys.

  Chastened by the unexpected combination of Mabel and James’s attitudes, the boys set off with Aiden holding the map, Jessie a notebook and pen for him to jot down the precise route, and Aiden with Roger’s stopwatch that he had borrowed on ‘pain of death’ should it be damaged in any way, as Roger used it for summer fairs when he would usually organise some track events, which, aside from giving the winning times for that year, would be measured against the times the watch had given to race winners over past years.

  Larry led Milburn, although privately he thought they probably should have popped her back into her stall to pull at her hay net so that they could have gone on their reconnoitre without the pony, as if they weren’t going to ride her then there didn’t seem much point in dragging her along.

  ‘Does it look a bit soppy,’ Larry asked after a while, ‘us leading Milburn through the streets as if she were a big dog?’

  ‘Well,’ Aiden reassured Larry, ‘surely it’s sensible we bring ’er as we can check the roads an’ make sure they’re not too slippy if she has a heavy load in the trap, an’ we see if there’s something she might scare at that we wouldn’t think about if we didn’t have ’er with us.’

  Milburn didn’t seem to feel it soppy. She was very good and paid no untoward attention to anything they walked her by, and Larry began to hope someone would suggest riding her again as it was his turn. But no one did and he didn’t feel quite confident enough to jump on her back regardless, in case somebody would be snarky with him for acting off his own bat and not taking working out the route they would need for the collections seriously enough.

  Still, the party had cheered up considerably by the time they were at the furthest point that they thought they might reach on their paper-collecting round, being halfway down a long straight street with no turn-offs.

  Suddenly, and eerily quietly, the five Hull lads, just like the time when Jessie and Aiden had been sitting in the trap looking backwards while Ted had be
en tutoring the girls in how to drive Milburn, slithered over a wall about a hundred yards in front of them, and stood side by side with one another in an ominous line watching the group from the rectory making their way towards them.

  Larry’s grip on the halter rope tightened although Milburn’s pace didn’t falter despite her throwing her head to look at the unusual sight before her, her ears pointing sharply forward.

  The Hull evacuees were all older and considerably larger than Jessie and his friends, even Aiden and Tommy, who were the biggest of the Tall Trees lot. They didn’t make so much as a murmur and they didn’t move, but as Milburn’s clopping hooves got nearer to them, with seemingly no communication between them, as one the boys from Hull all moved their feet apart just as they inclined their heads towards their right side and jutted out their jaws, before taking two large steps forward very quickly, and suddenly stopping completely still again, standing lofty and menacing. The Tall Trees boys were unable to take their eyes away and, allowing enough time for their hearts to hammer uncomfortably, the Hull boys then rolled their shoulders slowly backwards and switched their jaws from their right side to their left.

  Jessie thought these bigger boys must have practised those moves many times together as they were so perfectly timed, and although he was sneakily impressed with their foresight of working out a routine to perform without the need of any obvious signs to one another, he had to admit it was most effective at being very disturbing. He heard Aiden breathe in deeply beside him and so he guessed even Aiden, whom Jessie believed privately to be the bravest of them all, felt similarly.

  ‘Look at t’ middle one’s face!’ Tommy murmured excitedly in a quiet undertone, and so they all stared at the scruffy boy in the middle of the row, who was sporting a black eye and a split lip; and then they noticed that one of the other boys had scabby knuckles, as if he had hurt himself viciously punching somebody. It was a truly dispiriting sight, and none of those from Tall Trees dared to examine what combat injuries any of the other boys standing in the bullying line-up might have.

  It was undeniable that these lads looked like trouble, and that they were nasty with it. They seemed mean and ready for a fight. And they were – deliberately so – standing in a really tricky spot.

  The group from Tall Trees would have to make their way past them or, unthinkably, turn around and head back the way they had come. In spite of the unpleasantness of keeping going along the street and having to walk right by the Hull lot, to turn around in acknowledged defeat was a much less pleasant option as it would be an obvious sign to their aggressors that they were scared of them, which although the truth, nobody from Tall Trees felt it needed to be broadcast. They all knew too that if they did turn around, the Hull boys would smell blood and would very probably then give chase, which aside from whatever might happen to any, or all, of them in terms of being beaten up, might also have horrible implications for Milburn, who might get frightened or even injured, and this didn’t bear thinking about.

  And so they kept on walking although their pace definitely felt increasingly heavy and laboured. Jessie found his friends huddling closer to him, and as they came up to where the Hull boys were, subconsciously they positioned Milburn between the two factions as a sort of furry shield.

  There was no musketeer camaraderie, no ‘all for one, and one for all’, as their threat had crept upon them far too quickly for that, leaving no time for them to rally each other. Out in the real world it all suddenly seemed more complicated than they had bargained for.

  Milburn didn’t help matters. Taking no notice of the posing boys from Hull, she lifted her tail as she plodded on and let out a loud gust of wind. Normally this would make everyone snigger, but not today.

  The Hull lot certainly weren’t laughing. They tilted their heads in unison the other way, and scowled as if Milburn had made a foul smell, which in fact she hadn’t. But still not a sound left their lips. This was worse than if they had jeered and cat-called, or even issued an out-and-out invitation to a fight.

  A few heart-thumping seconds later and the Tall Trees lot had managed to creep with shaking knees (well, Jessie’s were shaking) past the threat. The Hull boys hadn’t so much as twitched a muscle in their direction. But it was quite a long way down the street before Tommy breathed a very quiet but nonetheless heartfelt ‘Bugger me’, which the others all nodded agreement with.

  And when Jessie sneaked a look back from about fifty yards further on, he was shocked to see that in total quiet the Hull boys had spread themselves in a line across the street and realigned themselves as a wall of antagonism shooting piercing looks at their retreating banks. They were standing in the same menacing pose as before, staring intently at the departing backs of Jessie and his pals.

  As Jessie continued to stare, the biggest boy – the one with the split lip – raised two fingers in a ‘V’, not for victory but for something much ruder. And then as Jessie looked on in horror, very slowly this boy pointed his two fingers at his own eyes and then slowly turned his hand to point these two fingers at Jessie’s eyes and silently mouth what Jessie thought might be ‘fucker!’ at him, although he couldn’t be sure, at which point the other boys beside him each gave, again in unison, a slow single nod.

  Without realising it, Jessie had faltered to a standstill. And as he gawped at this lad’s hideous filthy fingers pointing in his direction, he felt almost blinded, as if the threat they posed was being launched straight at him and was finding its target deep within him.

  Jessie hadn’t thought he could have found these bigger evacuees more imposing than when they had been standing and staring at close quarters towards him and his friends. Sadly though, this wasn’t the case at all, he discovered now with a slithering downward lurch of his belly as he realised without a doubt that this wasn’t the last they’d see of these evacuees from Hull.

  ‘I think that big one just said “fucker” to me,’ said Jessie, when he had caught up with the others.

  ‘D’ yer think ’e meant ’imself, or one o’ us?’ said Tommy, trying to make a joke of it.

  Nobody laughed.

  That evening Jessie took a long time to come up with a letter that he hoped his father would find to be both reasoned and grown up, and – crucially – impossible to ignore.

  Dear Father

  We are all well and Mabel and Roger say hello. Milburn and Peggy and Holly are well to. But I want to ask you for some advise, and it is VERY IMPORTANT that you reply to me QUICKLY. I think I might need to box some boys soon, and so I want some tips on boxsing if you have them, and very much on the best way of punching and making them stop if the person you are fighting is much bigger than you. This is URGENT.

  Thank you. And please say hello to Mother.

  Your affectshunite son

  With best regards

  Jessie Ross

  Chapter Fifteen

  James arranged with Roger that he would do a demonstration of first aid in the church hall for anyone who wanted to attend.

  It was a well-attended event as Roger had mentioned it at church under ‘notices’, plus Gracie put a card about it in the greengrocers, while Peggy stuck one up in June Blenkinsop’s.

  Although Britain was largely still in limbo waiting for something to happen, with no attacks yet from the Germans on the home shores, people were feeling increasingly edgy after what had happened at Dunkirk, a mood not lightened by the newspapers being packed with column inches on the high-profile sinking of several large aircraft carriers such as the HMS Glorious and RMS Lancastria, and reports coming in of Japanese offensives in China. Whilst everyone was trying to keep morale high, it was also true to say that most people – even the children – felt increasingly jittery as clearly the Phoney War they’d experienced so far wasn’t a state of affairs that could go on for too much longer. Barbara was clearly feeling the strain, Peggy thought, as she had been most curt in her last letter to the twins in response to Connie suggesting that she and Jessie return to Jubilee Street, a
t least for a little while, and her stern words had quite upset Connie.

  On the afternoon of the first-aid demonstration James arrived at the church hall accompanied by an obviously efficient but rather gruff-looking woman in medical get-up called Nurse Hampton. But before he could get down to what he was there for, first James had to deal with Tommy, who was sporting a sprained wrist that looked swollen and painful.

  When James asked how he’d got it, Tommy said initially that he’d fallen off a gate they had been playing on. However, when James kept his counsel but continued to stare at him seriously with his forehead kinked in his direction, Tommy shrugged and then admitted that he and Larry had been trying to ride Milburn with one bunked up behind the other. Milburn had taken exception to this, and she had done a little bunny-hop of a buck and then had trotted off quickly, with both boys being unable to find purchase on her slippery summer coat and soon they had tumbled to the ground into some long grass, which although providing a softish landing, wasn’t enough to prevent Tommy’s wrist bearing the brunt of the fall for both boys.

  James tutted, and said in a depressed-sounding voice, ‘I warned you all about messing about too much on that pony when you didn’t have enough control. If you saw the sort of injuries I see … well, you’d take it all much more seriously. And really there are no excuses for this, Tommy, are there? Angela ran into a car when she was messing about all those months ago at Halloween, and look at how long she was in hospital and how she is still unable to walk. You all see poor Angela in her chair every day, and yet you and Larry were taking liberties with the pony, without a hard hat, may I point out, and now see what’s happened and where it’s landed you. It’s not a serious sprain luckily and so I’m going to pass you over to Nurse Hampton to bandage, and not a peep from you as she does it, mind you, as I’m told she’s very firm, almost brutal in fact.’