by Lizzie Page
At the end of November, hesitantly, I ask Pearl if she has heard any plans. She says, ‘Oh, I think Mummy can work more if I’m not there.’
I ask her if she is all right with that. She shrugs. She doesn’t give me the reassurance I humiliatingly crave, but I know that it’s all right: Pearl does not have a desire to leave. I also know it’s not particularly because of me, but because she has her sights on the school nativity play.
The nativity play is a big deal this year. It will be at the church in front of three hundred people, and Pearl thinks she should be Mary.
‘That’s quite ambitious,’ I say.
She looks at me as though it’s self-explanatory. ‘Yes. Mary is the main character.’
‘Right,’ I say, admiring her self-belief. ‘Well, let’s try and get you the part then.’
I help her plan her audition speech. She does ‘The Owl and the Pussy-Cat’ beautifully, and I can’t help feeling it is more age-appropriate than her other choices, but after much prevarication, she decides on Wordsworth.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
There is something charming about a tiny city girl reading this grand ode to nature – but it isn’t just that; the transformation that comes over Pearl as she reads is something wonderful to behold. One minute she is a wee skinny girl with dark shadows under her eyes, the next she is a tower of strength. It makes me think of Olive and what she could do with a paintbrush.
14
1915 – Then
Only two weeks after our Paddington interview, Olive and I were posted to Lamarck Hospital in northern France, near Calais. We would join some FANYs already there. Our main task was transport: we were to transfer patients from wherever they were to the hospital or wherever they were designated to go.
If only Edmund had just have asked me to marry him, I thought as Olive and I caught the train to Dover. I certainly wouldn’t have stayed in England, but I would have felt as though everything was settled, that we had something to look forward to and that I was someone important. Vivienne Lowe had a nice ring to it. But Edmund hadn’t made his move, and although I was surer than ever that one day he would, I still couldn’t wait for the uncertainty to be in the past.
* * *
The other FANYs came out to greet us and I couldn’t help noting that they were posher than us. They were about the same level of posh as Uncle Toby and the Lowes. (When I told Olive, she laughed, saying I was obsessed with class.) They were Daisy, Enid, Agnes and Dorothy – or ‘D.E.A.D.’, as they explained.
‘Well, now you’re DEADOV,’ said Olive and they laughed.
‘You’re going to fit right in,’ the one in spectacles – Agnes – said.
They showed us round, explaining that the medical staff stayed on the third and fourth floors of the hospital and patients made up the rest of the building.
Olive and I looked at each other in surprise.
‘So where are we staying then?’
We were in huts in the grounds of the hospital. They used to be the sheds and garages.
‘Home for the next few years!’ said Daisy, who, I gathered, was the loud-mouthed one.
I guessed Olive was thinking the same as me. Years?!
Our boss, Mrs Fielding, was squat and short-haired and, to my shame, I thought she was a man when I first met her. Who her boss was, I had no idea.
* * *
At 6 p.m. we went out in our work clothes to the courtyard to one side of the hospital for our first night on the job. No time to settle in for us – things needed doing. It had already grown dark – it was a starless sky – and all I could see was the silhouette of these great lump-like machines. Drawing closer, I realised that these were our ambulances.
‘Girls, in you get,’ Mrs Fielding ordered Olive and me. ‘This is yours.’
‘Good luck!’ called out Daisy. Agnes shouted, ‘Just follow us,’ as she got into hers.
The engine and the driving area were up front, in a cabin of their own; the back was just material over a frame or cage, I think. The cabin was high and had three steps to get up into.
I stared at it. ‘They’ll send us home if they find out,’ I whispered to Olive.
We clambered in obediently. I had landed, unintentionally, behind the wheel side, Olive next to me. I waved at Mrs Fielding as if we were about to go. I slowly put on my hat and my gloves and sat there. I didn’t know what to do. I waved again at Mrs Fielding. She had her arms crossed. I couldn’t make out her expression – it was too dark – but I expect it wasn’t friendly. She stalked away, her boots making irreverent splashes in the mud.
‘Just start it up,’ said Olive. She could talk.
I tried to think of the time Walter and Johnny had driven the beast, but they were messing around, singing and waving whisky bottles. God knows how they’d done it.
‘For goodness…’ I said. ‘I have not the faintest clue how.’
‘Ask one of the others,’ hissed Olive.
‘Why don’t you ask one of the others?’ I snapped back.
But it was too late. One by one, the other ambulances had pulled away: Agnes and Daisy. Enid and Dorothy. Black exhaust fumes, puttering, stalling – Charles the tortoise could probably have given them a run for their money, but off they went nevertheless.
‘It might be the handle at the front,’ I decided. ‘You jump out and try it.’
Olive did. Nothing happened. ‘I can’t turn it,’ she hissed. ‘It’s not this…’
We stayed there, stranded, like a little rudderless boat in the middle of an ocean. It wasn’t long before Mrs Fielding reappeared. If I had thought she looked intimidating before, now, pulling on her tea-cosy hat and long military coat, she looked furious.
‘Girls!’ she said. ‘What are you waiting for?’
‘It’s not a type I’m familiar with,’ I said weakly. I turned to Olive, resignation on my face. ‘If we’re sent home, we’re sent home. You can’t say we didn’t try.’
Olive looked at me. ‘I’m not going home.’
Mrs Fielding had climbed up next to me.
‘Budge up,’ she said and we shuffled along the driver’s bench. She glared at us both, then shook her head, laughing. ‘I admire your confidence. You do speak French though?’
We nodded. ‘Oui,’ said Olive to prove the point.
‘Good. Then, you’ll find the driving’s the easy part. Watch and learn.’
* * *
That first night, Mrs Fielding drove us to pick men up from the meeting place near the front. The men were waiting on the ground on stretchers; even so, they were surprisingly chirpy. They’d been near an explosion but the worst ones had already gone with our colleagues. We put them into the ambulance. I heard Olive telling them, ‘You’re my first.’
Once they were in, Mrs Fielding said I should try to drive us back to the hospital. My heart was in my mouth. I don’t believe I had ever been so afraid. I could scarcely see anything ahead of me. You couldn’t see creatures, you couldn’t see soldiers. It might be a trap, I kept saying to myself, it might be the Hun. There were three patients in the back, Mrs Fielding and Olive next to me, and I was responsible for all of them.
‘You’ll get used to it,’ encouraged Mrs Fielding. It took about fifty minutes in all. When eventually I saw the golden lights of the hospital, I could have wept with relief. Some orderlies promptly came out and whisked the patients away, calling, ‘Thank you!’ and ‘Merci!’ as they did so.
Mrs Fielding followed them, leaving behind a crumpled map for me.
‘Well, that wasn’t too bad, was it?’ I smiled weakly at Olive. I meant, that was horrendous.
Olive was laughing.
‘What?’
‘Vi! You know we’ve got to do it again, and again, and again…’
I tried not to look too aghast.
All night long, I drove the
ambulance into the darkness, that same route, and sometimes there were flashes and explosions near us, and sometimes there was nothing to guide us but blackness, and it was hard to tell which was worse. The later it got, the less I could see, but I suppose gradually the roads became more and more familiar to me, and by the third or fourth time, I knew when to expect a bump or a sharp turn.
The fifth time we arrived at our meeting point, it was to a scene of some horror. There’d been another explosion; several lives had been lost and the people waiting were in a terrible state. Fortunately, Daisy and Enid were there and we coordinated our efforts. We picked up one poor soldier together and put him on a stretcher. Olive ran alongside us, holding his face together.
When we got back into the ambulance, Olive was weeping softly. ‘I didn’t expect it to be so bad,’ she breathed.
I couldn’t comfort her. I had to get us back to the hospital as fast and as smoothly as possible.
* * *
The next afternoon, I tried to teach Olive how to drive. She hesitated, prevaricated and squealed every time the ambulance moved. She said she wanted to cry. When it came to it, at six in the evening in the courtyard, with her shoulders slumped, she said, ‘I just think we’ve got to face it, you’re much better at it than I am.’
And so, although Olive did eventually learn to drive, mostly I drove the ambulance while she navigated. Or, if we had men in the back, she would stay with them to soothe their brows or give them water. She sometimes got them to sing ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’ with her to cheer themselves up, and she would always tell them that she knew who wrote it, whether they were interested or conscious or not.
15
1940 – Now
At three o’clock every day, I go down to the school and stand just beyond the gate. There is just me now; I am the only parent there. Some of the children recognise me and say, ‘Hello, Pearl’s host mother,’ as they walk alone from the school building.
Sometimes Pearl is at the front of the queue, sometimes at the back. Today she is at the back.
It’s the day of the casting. The nativity question. I shouldn’t ask as soon as I see her, but I can’t control myself. This is important to Pearl so it has become important to me. Perhaps more important. Forget the war, this is life and death.
‘Did you get it?’
‘I’m going to be a sheep,’ she says. Her face crumples and she is in my arms in tears. They have chosen Helen, a tall, leggy local girl, instead. A girl who doesn’t even want to be Mary, one who gets stage fright. They have chosen her over my Pearl. Apparently, Mrs Bankhead didn’t think Pearl would look ‘right’.
But that night, as I unpack the satchel like a good host mother, I see that Pearl is not only a sheep, she is also Mary’s understudy – at least that’s what the letter says.
I read it again and again. Didn’t Pearl understand? I wonder. I lie in bed and I can’t sleep. I know that all over the country, mothers, fathers, politicians are worrying about the war and here I am, worrying about a sheep. But it’s not just a sheep. I ask myself, How will this affect Pearl’s self-esteem?
Next morning, at breakfast, I tell her.
‘You know, you’re Mary’s understudy.’
‘What is that?’
‘It means you’re still in with a chance, Pearl,’ I say.
* * *
At Mrs Burton’s, the dogs roam around the kitchen, tails held high, and I scratch the top of Laurel’s furry head as I offload to Mrs Burton. ‘And even worse: I’ve got to make a sheep costume! Have you ever heard such a thing?’
How can I make a costume when we are running low on wool? But actually, more importantly, how can we continue to be the WVS if we can no longer knit for the soldiers?
Hardy woofs at me and then rubs his face against my leg. It’s like he is trying to tell me something. Mrs Burton and I stare at each other.
‘You know what?’ asks Mrs Burton hoarsely.
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ I reply.
We look at Laurel and Hardy and then at each other.
‘There’s no reason why dog hair can’t be made into yarn, same as wool,’ Mrs Burton says.
‘Absolutely,’ I say.
And that is how we founded the WVS first dog-hair unit.
* * *
We brush the dogs in the kitchen, just Mrs Burton and me, for the other members of WVS tend to prefer knitting or making toys. One of us gently holds the dog down and whispers sweet nothings into its ear, the other combs his loose fur off him. Then we send the fur to be spun in the town of Ashby, some fifteen miles away.
The first time we do Laurel and Hardy, we give the dogs half a sausage each as a thank-you. We’ve gathered so much from them. ‘Unfortunate timing, it being winter,’ says Mrs Burton. ‘They might get cold – but what a good pair they are, they’ve done their bit too.’
As a special treat, I go back home and fetch my slippers, and give them one each. They are over the moon.
We call in all the dogs in the area. The vets and the pet shop are a terrific help (I feel like I have more than made up for the awkwardness over the returned rabbit). We see about seven or eight dogs a week. We are so busy we even have to turn some away. We have our eyes on Mrs Carmichael’s fluffy Golden Retriever and Farmer Jones’s Newfoundland for a while before they let them over.
I am amazed at myself. I have become someone who handles dogs with ease. Someone who thinks nothing of hauling a Collie or an Afghan Hound over my lap and telling him or her to stay still. When I tell Edmund about it, why do I still tell him things? he can’t stop laughing. He says it’s the most hilarious thing he’s heard all week, in months even. I say we’ve got the support of the WVS and the government right behind us, and he stops laughing pretty sharpish.
* * *
Pearl and I take the role of understudy seriously too. Throughout November, I ensure she memorises Mary’s lines just in case. In my opinion, the Mary in the script is a particularly verbose Mary. She is in nearly every scene and she is full of backchat. Is it wrong of me to think, Well, it would have been quite hard for Pearl to remember all this? This is a job for four actors, not one. This Mary makes great friends with the angel. She chats with Joseph. She is the star – no, she is not the star, the star is also great friends with Mary. When the innkeeper turns them down, she has to huff, she has to say, ‘I really should have called ahead.’
And then, only two weeks before show-time, we learn that poor blonde Helen has scarlet fever and is going to be put in a sanitorium for a few weeks.
Pearl is Mary!
We prepare every afternoon after school at home and at Mrs Burton’s.
‘Action!’ I say. ‘And… cut!’
We pretend to be film stars. Pearl knows her lines, no problem. Even as we knit, Mrs Burton balances the script on one knee. Mrs Shaw reads ‘narrator’. My next-door neighbour claps and nudges me: ‘Ooh, I wish I was at her school.’
Pearl can’t speak without a Mary-ism. My favourite is the way that in the stable scene, she puffs: ‘The baby is coming,’ then staggers around as though she’s been shot.
* * *
But all the rehearsals, all the tickets, all the costume-making is in vain, all is wasted, because there is ‘no risk to London’ at present and so they’ve decided to return the evacuees for Christmas. They’ve decided there mightn’t be a real war after all.
Do we celebrate that Hitler hasn’t yet attacked? Twelve are going back. Five are staying. A few have disappeared already.
The butcher’s boy and Mrs Dean’s boy stay. The farmer’s Nathan stays – he is part of the family!
Pearl is one of the twenty who goes.
I wave off her peaky face. She is wearing her favourite pinafore and the pretty blouse, and a coat I bought her from the lovely Mrs Purnell. The children are desperately excited and singing Christmas carols. If I hear what ‘my true love sent to me’ one more time I might scream. Pearl says very little. I want to tell her something profo
und, something to convey what she has brought to me for these few short months; how I don’t think I’ve been this happy for a long time – since 1917, in fact – but instead, all I can say is:
‘Take care, Pearl.’
‘I really wanted to do the Mary,’ she whispers.
‘I know you did,’ I say. ‘I know.’
* * *
The house feels quieter than ever but it’s worse than before, much worse. I have seen what I might have had. Edmund eats dinner, then pushes the plate away.
‘Perhaps it’s for the best,’ he says, gently. I look up in surprise, but he leaves the room before I can respond and soon, I hear the Ford Prefect purr away. Pearl never even got the chance to ride in it. I keep the glassy-eyed toy bear she used to hold next to me on my pillow. It had been wonderful while it lasted.
I must be an evil person because secretly I want a very gentle and friendly un-killing kind of bomb to wash down over London and for everyone to leave again.
* * *
The next day, I box up the toys and take them next door, but Mrs Burton says, ‘Keep them just in case’ and ‘You never know’.
And I shake my head. I will not cry, I won’t. Not in front of anyone. Olive would have, I won’t.
Mrs Burton takes my hand. She knows I’m heartbroken. ‘We’ve got knitting, sewing, brushing and organising to do, Mrs Lowe,’ she whispers. ‘Don’t give up now.’
I go into the living room, where the ladies are. We’ve got uniforms now, we’re official – the WVS at your service – and although I feel bereft, I join in. No dogs today. In three weeks, we’ve taken fur from over thirty of them and we’re sewing dolls for orphaned children now. I grab some scissors and start the pattern.
