But as the other London children settled down, or were taken back by their parents for one reason or another, things went from bad to worse for Cissie Messiter and Peggy Jones at the Rectory. Cissie grew paler and thinner. Peggy became slower and slower, and more irritating to Mrs Templeton, who, herself, grew thinner.
Perhaps, out of all the evacuees at Framlingham, Mary Waterhouse was the happiest. She was the youngest, so that her earlier memories erased themselves faster. Her beloved Jack was just a short walk across the fields from her. She had the best conditions – she was, after all, the squire’s evacuee. The Allaun fields, including those of the tenant farmers on either side, were hers to play in. There she walked in the late summer among rows of stiff and yellow wheat, plucking off the ears and rubbing them between her fingers, chewing on the hard grains. There were the meadows in spring. The sweet grass was hers to lie in and gaze up at the blue sky. The poppies in the summer cornfields were hers to pick, the shady copses were hers to wander in, the shallow stream at the bottom of the watermeadows was hers to dam, to paddle in, to float twigs in, pretending they were boats. She would lie there for hours wondering how long it would take her to get to the sea if she followed the stream until it became a river and the river until it reached the sea. In autumn she and Jack got the best conkers from the trees on the estate. Sometimes, lying dreaming in a summer field, she would see planes fighting in the sky, in the distance, over the orchards and fields and hills. She would watch them spiral down in rolling columns of smoke but thought little about it, except to have a daydream about capturing a German airman and taking him to the village policeman. Sometimes she would pick up an extra large piece of shrapnel and lug it home for Jackie, who had the biggest shrapnel collection in Framlingham, but this, like the army trucks going up the main street or the burnt-out carcase of a plane growing among the ferns up on the hillside, was just another part of the landscape, no more interesting than the sight of a full moon moving silently among the clouds, or a sickle moon suspended above the oaks and the lakes in the grounds of Allaun Towers. Mary often stayed up at night in order to stare over the tiles at the darkness and the sky. She had to be very quiet or Mrs Gates, in the next room, would hear her. Their proximity, however, ended a year after she arrived, in an odd way.
Mary came swooping up the drive after school one day in September with her deliberately unbuttoned mac blowing away from her in the wind. Jackie had been telling her about Dracula and, with typical egotism, she had instantly assumed the role of Dracula, rather than one of his victims. Leaves from the trees on either side of the drive were blowing round her head as she whirled and swerved. She stopped suddenly when she saw a long, low, black limousine parked in the semi-circle of gravel in front of the house. Looking at the car Mary wondered if it belonged to the mysterious “Sir Frederick” whose visit was expected shortly. They were a funny family, Mary thought. They never came home. Lady Allaun had once gone to see this “Sir Frederick” in London, when he was on leave. Another time she had gone to see her son, Tom, in Yorkshire, where he was staying with his cousin, Charlie. But none of the family ever came here. There’s enough room, Mary thought wonderingly, remembering for a moment the four small rooms at Meakin Street, where everyone was in the way of someone most of the time. Perhaps it was just too far to come, from where they were, she decided. But it would be a nice sight to see Sir Frederick in his soldier’s uniform.
As she came through the back door she said to Mrs Gates, who was bending over to open the door of the kitchen range, “Is that Sir Frederick’s car?”
“No,” said Mrs Gates, straightening up with a baking tray of scones in her hands, “but whoever it is he’s important. Lady Allaun got a letter this morning and starts on about a proper tea, straight away. With cake – a proper tea, she says. She must think I’m Fortnum and Mason’s. What I had to promise Twining for a pat of butter I daren’t tell you.”
“Is there a cake?” said Mary eagerly. “Where is it?”
“On the table, in there,” Mrs Gates said, nodding in the direction of the drawing room as she put the scones on a rack.
“Do you think they’ll leave any?” said Mary. “Can I have a bit if they do?”
“A piece – you should say ’a piece’,” said Mrs Gates. “I expect they’ll leave some. Have to be fairly greedy to finish it all between the two of them.”
From the board above the kitchen door the drawing room bell jangled. Mary’s game, when Mrs Gates and Lady Allaun were both out of the house for a little while, was to run all round the house, upstairs and down, pushing all the bellpushes in all the rooms, bedrooms, dining room, drawing room and library, and try to get back to the kitchen before any of the brass bells across the door had stopped vibrating. She had never managed it yet, even though the bell in the big bathroom was broken.
Mrs Gates went out of the kitchen to answer the bell and Mary opened the oven door to see what there was for supper. It was shepherd’s pie.
Mrs Gates stood in the kitchen doorway, observing her. She said, without feeling, “I’ve told you time and again not to open that stove door without asking.” Mary looked at her guiltily. “Anyway,” said Mrs Gates, “you’re wanted in the drawing room for some reason. Take that mac upstairs, put them wet shoes by the fire and go straight up and give yourself a tidy – change those socks, put your sandals on and brush your hair.”
“What am I going in there for?” asked Mary.
“I don’t know,” said Mrs Gates, grimly.
“Will they let me have a bit of cake? Is it chocolate?” Mary asked excitedly.
“They might,” said Mrs Gates. “But don’t go begging for it, mind. Wait till you’re asked.” She stood on the flagstones, after Mary had trotted out to get ready, and said, “Something funny going on.” Then she started spooning jam into a cut glass bowl. As she did so she tried to work out why the evacuee was being summoned in to tea in the drawing room. At five years old. Perhaps Lady Allaun was trying to prove to some bigwig she was doing her bit for the war effort. But that theory seemed unlikely and, even with her sophisticated knowledge of everything which might take place in the household, she could not imagine what the answer to this could be. The limousine, driven by a chauffeur in civilian uniform, had come to the house at three. A tall, middle-aged man, obviously, to Mrs Gates’s experienced eye, someone of dignity and importance, had come in. Mrs Gates knew that Lady Allaun did not know him. At four the bell had rung for tea. At four-thirty, with a batch of fresh scones and a fresh pot of tea made, she had to prepare Mary Waterhouse to go in to the drawing room. Not The Times, interviewing the better class of home for evacuees, she thought. Not the police, come to say the Waterhouses had been killed in a raid. Had it got something to do with that letter from Mary’s mother announcing the birth of a little sister? Not likely, thought Mrs Gates, that anyone so posh would arrive to discuss the birth of a Shirley Waterhouse, in the drawing room. It made no sense at all.
“So it’s a big, front bedroom for you now, madam,” said Mrs Gates, who was on her knees, polishing the wood surrounds from the skirting boards to the edge of the faded green and gold carpet of the large bedroom. “Well – get your dusters and give us a hand then.”
So Mary went off and got the little pinafore Mrs Gates had made for her, the one with the pink rabbit on the front, and collected her dusters from her own corner of the cleaning cupboard and ran upstairs again to help. She liked the room. It was important. It was above the library. There was a big carved chest under one window. There was a dressing table, made of inlaid wood, for Mary to put her clothes in. There were two little tapestry chairs under the other window. The heavy, faded green velvet curtains had been taken down for a good airing. The dusty grey-green carpet had been vacuumed. She even had her own bellpush.
“I’ve got my own bell, now,” said Mary with satisfaction as she pushed her rag into the polish and smeared some on the floorboards.
“Woe betide you if you use it,” said Mrs Gates.
“I might get scared,” Mary said. “Why am I moving my room?”
“I told you – it must be to do with Tom coming home,” said Mrs Gates.
“Is he nice? Will he play with me?” asked Mary.
“He’s a big boy. He goes to school with a lot of other boys,” Mrs Gates said diplomatically. “He might think you’re too young.”
“He can play with Jackie – he’s the same age,” said Mary as she polished the floor.
“Maybe,” said Mrs Gates.
“I’ll ask him if I can borrow his puzzles,” she said vaguely. She very much wanted the piles of wooden jigsaw puzzles stored in Tom’s room, at the opposite end of the landing from hers. She had once sneaked her brother Jack up to the room. Looking at the spotted rocking horse, the train set laid all round the floor, the Meccano, all Jack had said was, “Cor – this is like the King of England’s place.” But Mary was forbidden to touch anything in the room.
Mrs Gates now looked at her dubiously. Hard as she tried to root out lightminded, egotistical and optimistic ideas from the golden head of her charge and to plant instead a few wholesome saplings of doubt, fear and humility, she was, like many a gardener, eternally defeated by nature. Mary’s soil seemed unable to accept them. If one hope died, another automatically sprang up in its place. She sighed as she looked at the child energetically rubbing the boards with a yellow duster, got up and put a sheet of old wallpaper in a drawer, for lining. She had, she thought, seen many such girls in her time and few of them had come to any good. She had even had some, fortunately not much, of that spirit herself, but God knows, it had been quickly enough knocked out of her after she left service impulsively at seventeen years old to marry Gates, a printer. She had borne a baby which died of scarlet fever six months later, which was, perhaps, a blessing in the circumstances, for not long after Gates had run off without a word. Luckily the Allauns had taken her back. Luckily she had learned her lesson then. She hoped Mary would not have to learn her own so painfully – married to a charmer, bearing a child he could not be bothered to keep. She finished lining the drawers and bent over to wipe up the smears, which were Mary’s mistakes in polishing.
Isabel Allaun’s son Tom arrived a few days later. He was brought from the station by old Benson, the gardener, odd-job man and chauffeur now that the other two male staff had been called up. They had saved their petrol coupons for the trip so that Tom would feel welcomed on his first visit home for more than a year. Mary saw him from her bedroom window, sitting in the back of the Bentley with his mother. He was thin, small and very fair. Mary rushed downstairs and shouted to Mrs Gates. Together they took up positions on the front step. The boy who walked up the steps a little ahead of Isabel Allaun had hair so pale it was almost white, and lashes so pale there seemed to be no edging to his very pale blue eyes. He wore a grey jacket, short grey trousers and a white shirt, with a school tie.
“Hullo, Mrs Gates,” he said. “Hope you’re well.” Then, looking past the housekeeper at Mary he said, “Is this the evacuee?”
Mary’s mouth went down. The word “evacuee” was never used in a friendly way, even between the village children. It meant intruder, alien, someone who was ignorant and did not know how to behave. Isabel Allaun frowned. She had evidently told Tom to be polite to the evacuee. “This is Mary Waterhouse, Tom, as I told you,” she said.
“Sorry, Mary,” said Tom, pushing past her into the hall. Mary, with sinking heart, realized that he was not sorry.
The issue came up again at tea. “She has tea with us?” Tom said, his pale eyebrows raised.
“She is a guest,” said Lady Allaun.
“She makes a lot of crumbs,” Tom said, studying Mary as she ate her cake. “What about dinner?”
“Mary goes to bed early,” said his mother. “She does not sit up to dinner. Nor will you if you continue to refer to anyone, however young, who is sitting in the room, as ’she’. Can we have done with this? I don’t want your first visit home for so long to start with silly arguments.”
“All I can say,” Tom Allaun said clearly, “is that it’s the first time I’ve heard an evacuee called a guest.”
Isabel Allaun bit her lip but said only, “Your father should be arriving in the next few days. Won’t it be nice to be all together again for once?”
Sir Frederick, however, was delayed, and Tom, bored without the usual company of his cousin, Charlie, and frustrated by the rain, which poured down all day long, passed the time by tormenting Mary secretly, jumping out on her from corners, pulling terrifying faces at her while no one was looking and, on one occasion, coming into her room after she was asleep, dressed in a sheet and howling like a ghost. Mary was terrified of him and of his faces, his pinches and squeezes on her upper arms and his frightening remarks. When challenged he denied that he had ever been in her room and told her a story about a ghost which had always haunted her room. “I’m surprised you haven’t seen it before,” he said. “Other people have. That’s why no one ever sleeps in it. I expect that’s why they gave it to you.”
The half term seemed very long to Mary. She grew pale. She dared not to go to sleep at night in case Tom, or the ghost, came in again.
When Jackie, who in spite of the rain had been hard-worked all week by Twining, finally made his way to the back door he found Mary very subdued and Mrs Gates surprisingly welcoming. Taking off his cap and wiping his feet carefully on the doormat outside, Jack came in and said to Mrs Gates, “What’s up with ’er?” He nodded at Mary who was sitting in a chair staring up at the ceiling.
Mrs Gates said, “Want a cup of tea, Jack?” as if she were talking to a grown-up. Jack, like a grown-up, replied, “That’s very kind, Mrs Gates. Thank you. Well, Mare,” he said, going over to her, “what’s up, then, gel? You look as if you’d lost a shilling and found sixpence.”
“She’s not getting along too well with young Tom,” said Mrs Gates.
“Oh – ah,” said Jack, understanding. “I’d forgotten about him. I’ve heard about him before, from Mr Twining. He cut up a live chicken with an axe – right?”
“He was too young to know any better,” said Mrs Gates.
“Not what Mr Twining said,” the boy told her promptly. “He said it was unnatural and it made him go cold all over. And you should see what he does – Twining, I mean – with lambs and the pigs and all that. He’s not exactly lily-livered.”
“Twining should keep a still tongue in his head,” was all Mrs Gates could manage.
“Anyway, what’s he been doing to my old Molly?” said Jack. “Come on, Mare – out with it.”
“He keeps on frightening me and pinching me and he says I’ve got to sleep in the shed with the spiders. They won’t send our Shirley here, will they, Jack?”
“Poor little Mary,” said Jack. “Course they won’t. She’s only a baby. I’ll see to Tom Allaun –”
“Oh no you won’t,” said Mrs Gates. “All you’ll do that way is cause more trouble for Mary, not to mention yourself. He’s going back to school on Monday – just let it be, Jack, there’s a good lad.”
Jack looked at her. He said, “Yes, Mrs Gates.”
“Here’s your tea, then,” she told him. “Have a couple of these digestives.”
“You’d better stay out of his way, then, Mary,” said Jack.
“I’ll go back to London and live with Ivy and Sid and the baby,” Mary said obstinately.
“There’s a war on,” Jack told her.
“If a little baby can be in the war so can I,” Mary said. She was frightened but she would not show it.
“You’ll stay where you are,” said Jack. “Because it’s the best place to be.” The Waterhouses glared at each other. For a moment they were like two adults. Then Mary dipped her head and said, “All right.”
That night Mary awoke to find a spooky head in a sheet, with a torch beaming out of two sooty eyeholes, staring at her. She screamed and could not stop screaming. Isabel Allaun stood in the bedroom doorway in a white nigh
tdress, looking furious. Mrs Gates made hot milk. Mary sobbed out her story about a ghost. In the end Mrs Gates took her upstairs to sleep with her in her own big brass-knobbed bedstead. She was not very surprised, after Tom had gone back to school, to find that she had one sheet too few. Tom had evidently disposed of the evidence. Mary’s peace of mind did not immediately return, however, for as he left in the car he managed to put his head out of the window and whisper to her, “I’ll be back soon for Christmas. And I’m bringing my cousin Charlie with me, ha, ha. Smelly evacuee!”
Mary went back into the house with a white face, feeling the air around her sour with malice. Her terrors diminished during the next two months of rain and early darkness. Sir Frederick came for the weekend and was nice to her. He brought her a doll from Africa. But when they started to practise the Christmas carols at school she became frightened again. While she was worrying about the arrival of the boys, Pearl Harbor was bombed and the USA came into the war.
“Don’t see why we shouldn’t have them home for Christmas,” said Sidney Waterhouse, forking up a piece of meat pie. “They’re our kids, after all.”
“Maybe,” said Ivy. “I do miss them. But what’ve we got to offer them here? Bombs – rationing – where they are, they’ll be killing geese for Christmas dinners. And they’re safe, that’s what matters.”
“They haven’t even seen their sister yet,” Sid pointed out.
“Suppose they come here and get killed, what will you think then?” demanded Ivy. The baby, which was lying in a basket on the kitchen floor, began to cry. Ivy, stooping down to pick her up and opening the buttons on her cardigan said, “Oh, Christ.”
All The Days of My Life Page 5
