The Evacuee War

by Katie King

  There was a moment of stillness and quiet in the depressing room that had already smelled faintly of a men’s lavatory even before Bill’s malodourous arrival, as Peggy cast around for something to say to her husband about Holly that wouldn’t be contentious.

  This was harder than she expected, and eventually she settled for, ‘Holly took her first steps this morning.’

  To Peggy’s ears, her voice sounded tight, and she recognised that behind her words pulsated the overwhelming desire to say something further that would be cross and hurtful to Bill.

  She wanted so very much to remind him about how he’d not thought of her and Holly when he’d made Maureen pregnant, and how his infidelity had wounded her right down to her very quick. And, she thought, even when his worst had been done, how hideous it was that he’d gone out of his way to rob her of a chance of happiness with James, who perhaps in time could have made the little girl a wonderful father. A father who would have been kind and considerate … and faithful.

  But Peggy found that she couldn’t bring herself to speak in such a spiteful manner, not with Holly perched on her knee.

  Bill seemed to understand some of the struggle Peggy was having within herself and although he sighed in a pained manner, he didn’t try to defend himself further, even though Peggy noted his eyes were shiny with tears as he regarded Holly.

  After a while he waved a grimy finger at her but curled it back into his palm once more when his daughter shrank even further away from him, pressing her body more tightly against her mother’s.

  It was abundantly clear to all three of them that Holly didn’t want to be any closer to this strange man.

  Then, somehow, Peggy found to her surprise that she felt sorry for Bill, a slightly different feeling than the pity of her first sight of him a few minutes previously.

  He hadn’t much going for him, she realised, what with being the father of two children but not really being in the life of either of them. Or at least that was her assumption about him and Maureen, for if it were otherwise, what was he doing in Harrogate and why had he made such a fuss about her and James?

  Whatever Bill’s precise romantic situation was – and actually Peggy realised that now she had cast aside her emotional ties to her husband, she didn’t much care what it was – he had well and truly made a hash of his life in the year since they had all left Bermondsey in September 1939. Peggy didn’t think anyone would deny that.

  ‘Bill, what is it exactly that you want to happen?’ Peggy asked, and she realised then that she was actually quite interested in what he had to say on this.

  ‘I want you an’ me an’ Holly to be happy together – a family like we always wanted,’ Bill answered quickly and unequivocally.

  Peggy sighed. Oh dear. She knew he wouldn’t like her reiterating to him what he already knew deep down, she was sure, to be the case. She had – very forcibly – told him all of this before, months ago when it had all first come out about Maureen expecting his baby, but she felt that she had to say it to him again right away so there could be no chance of muddled expectations between them.

  ‘Look, Bill, a lot has happened in the past year. And the very instant you climbed into that other woman’s bed was the moment our family life and promises to each other ended, and you made your wish of us all being together quite impossible. You do understand that, don’t you?’ said Peggy, and she backed up her words with a fierce look on her face.

  There was a pause in the conversation when it looked as if Bill was struggling with his own inner conflict, but then, under the tough scrutiny of Peggy’s unflinching gaze, at last he nodded and so Peggy took it that he knew what she was saying and wasn’t going to try to insist that she was wrong or that she had made a mistake.

  Still, Peggy drove her point home. ‘Look, I suspect that you don’t quite love Maureen and you never wanted to be with her long-term, but it was more a case that she was there and you were there and, well, we all know the rest. But it’s 1940 now, and I’m not the woman I was a year ago. I can’t forgive you, and that just isn’t going to change for me, Bill. Ever. Since Holly has been born I’ve had sole responsibility for her, and so to go on doing that won’t be a problem for me. As I’ve told you already, I want a divorce, and it’s making me cross that you refuse to acknowledge what I want, or what is the best thing for Holly, when for you it’s only about what you want. And what I want is – I’ll say it again – a proper divorce, and a final formal ending of our marriage, as our solemn vows to one another have turned out to be worth less than the paper they are written on as far as you are concerned, and I can’t live with that.

  ‘I know it’s unusual and probably everyone will advise me against this, thinking that to be a divorcee is going to leave me full of shame and bitterness. I don’t see it like that though, as for me the shame and bitterness would lie in admitting you back into our family again. And so, although undoubtedly some people will look down on me, I can live with that. Holly and I need a proper and unequivocal end to your and my relationship – it really will be better for us all, and your various children.

  ‘And for your information, nothing has happened with James beyond what you saw, but deep in my heart I had already given up on the idea of myself as the faithful wife to you; the spectre of Maureen and her pregnancy well and truly put paid to that long ago. I think we all need a clean start from here – me and Holly, and you – and frankly I just don’t want to be associated in any way with you from now on. And I hope in time you will understand the value of what I’m saying.’

  Bill scuffled his feet around on the floor as he sunk down in his chair, looking most unhappy as he dragged a filthy hand through his hair that Peggy could now see was thinning on top, with a mumble of ‘You’re wrong, Peg, very wrong, I promise’.

  Peggy ignored this as she glanced with deliberate obviousness at Holly, who was now waving her rattle in the air.

  Then Bill pulled himself together and sat up straighter as Peggy heard him swallow down a mumble of ‘over my dead body, you and that man, there’ll be no divorce while I have breath left in my body’.

  She sighed and then very firmly but in a quiet voice said, ‘Just listen to yourself, Bill! I want you to understand a divorce is going to happen sooner or later, whether you agree to it or not – make no mistake about that. I’m sure you can understand all the reasons from my point of view why that has to be. But in turn I promise you that I wouldn’t ever keep you from seeing Holly, you do know that, don’t you? You are her father, and she is your daughter.’

  She wasn’t finished giving Bill things to think about that she knew he would feel most uncomfortable about. ‘And, while we’re on the subject, I think Holly and Maureen’s child should know about each other, considering they will be related to each other, after all. I expect Holly, therefore, to find you a good father to her, and to this other child when he or she arrives. I don’t want my daughter growing up knowing her father isn’t a good man who deserves her respect and love, and that he has neglected one of his offspring. Nobody benefits by that, and I don’t ever want Holly for a moment to think that she might not be worthy of being a princess in the eyes of whoever falls in love with her when she is a grown woman, or that she should put up with being treated in the way you have dealt with both Maureen and me. You need to make Holly feel special, and she needs to see you taking responsibility for any other children you may have. That’s not too much to ask, is it?’

  Bill and Peggy stared at each other for a very long minute, and for a moment Peggy felt she could almost see curls of animosity between them gathering at the outermost edges of her vision.

  Then Bill said, ‘I doubt Maureen will be happy with having it driven home yet again that there’s another child I’ve fathered, an’ that you think the children should know about each other. She knows about you an’ Holly, but it’s not going to be exactly happy families for any o’ us, is it?’

  ‘Probably not at the moment. And maybe Maureen would do well to recall
that it was she who leapt into the bed of a married man, no? And that she didn’t seem to care an iota about that at the time? Anyway, you forget that Maureen and I have met, and she has seen Holly, or near enough when Maureen came to Tall Trees. Then again, you haven’t treated Maureen and her child very well either, have you, Bill? I expect she will be feeling very peeved with you for quite a long while yet.’ Peggy couldn’t resist that little dig.

  She went on, ‘But there may come a time when Maureen is glad of anyone she thinks is even halfway on her side, even if that anyone is me. The passing months might alter how she feels, as that is what I’ve found. And while I can’t make up Maureen’s mind as to what she should do about her own affairs or her own child, I need to put Holly first, and that means me being honest with our daughter. And this means that as Holly and this other bastard child are related and there is nothing that any of us can do to alter that fact, it seems to me that it’s only fair that they know about each other. Blood is thicker than water, as they say, and these children might want to be in touch one day, and perhaps when they are older even to spend time together.’

  Bill winced when Peggy said ‘bastard’, and although he didn’t say anything, he didn’t look happy.

  Peggy kept up the pressure. ‘And I want you to pay what you should for both Holly’s financial upkeep, and for Maureen’s child too. You must treat both of your children well, you must see that, surely? And I want you to give me Maureen’s address so that I can write to her.’

  ‘Are you out of your mind, woman?’ Bill sounded panicky at Peggy’s suggestion. ‘Maureen’s not a woman to take things lying down.’

  Peggy knew this already, but she almost wanted to laugh out loud at the quiver of fear in his voice.

  Maureen had a famously short fuse, they both knew – Peggy because Maureen had slapped her extremely hard during that one very angry visit she had made to Harrogate to meet with Peggy back in the heat of high summer when Maureen had been visibly pregnant – and Bill was clearly thinking about Maureen’s temper for his own reasons, reasons that Peggy didn’t care to know about. Still, Bill’s horrified expression made Peggy suspect that he and Maureen almost definitely had uncomfortable history concerning Maureen’s forthright behaviour. This gave her a tiny wiggle of pleasure deep inside.

  ‘No, I’m not, as you put it, “out of my mind”, Bill. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been more of sound mind. I don’t take to or approve of Maureen in the slightest, but like it or not, she and that baby are now part of your own daughter’s life – and therefore part of mine, as we are in hers, and so it’s no good for any of us to pretend it’s any other way.’ Peggy heard her snippy tone, and she reminded herself once again that she shouldn’t be unnecessarily mean to Bill in front of Holly. But even with her good intentions – and even though she knew her words were uncharacteristically coarse – the sight of the continuing anguish in his eyes meant she couldn’t resist adding, ‘For goodness sake, get a grip, man. I don’t know why you are looking so put upon, Bill – it wasn’t me who couldn’t keep his flies buttoned! You have done this to us all, and so it’s no good you now crying over spilt milk. It’s time for the reckoning you must have known was coming.’

  Bill remained looking hangdog though, and then Peggy saw his attitude alter when he decided that attack might deflect this awkward conversation towards something less challenging for him. Instantly, Peggy was determined that it wouldn’t.

  ‘Well, you – you! – you’ve got your own fancy man, and so you are on dodgy ground coming over whiter than white, Peg. I ask you, what am I to do about hi—’ Bill sounded het up as he tried to score a point.

  ‘Seriously, Bill, seriously?!’ Peggy retorted. ‘You made another woman pregnant, while I was always totally faithful to you – and remained so for long after I heard about Maureen’s pregnancy. And in fact I have never been unfaithful to you. I’ve had a single proper kiss. One kiss, and that’s it! You don’t have a leg to stand on in the throwing-blame-around stakes, and so it’s now of no consequence to you whether I have, as you put it, a fancy man, or not.

  ‘You’re to steer clear of me and not interfere with or even have an opinion on how I decide to live my life, or whom I choose to spend my time with, although I expect you to contribute to Holly’s upkeep and to be a good and reliable father to her. Your and my only dealings with each other will from now on be over our daughter, and as far as I am concerned, I have no interest in the choices you make, as long as you fulfil your duties to Holly, and hopefully Maureen’s child too. Have I made myself crystal clear, Bill?’

  To her irritation, Peggy was never to find out whether Bill had understood fully, because the bobby stuck his head around the door again, with a ‘lift’s here’ and a thumb jerked in her husband’s direction, and Peggy knew it was time for Bill to be escorted back to the base where he worked training military personnel as drivers of all sorts of vehicles, from large lorries and haulage vehicles to small jeeps and motorcycles.

  Always a petrol head; Peggy had no doubt that Bill was very good at his job. It was just as a husband that he’d come a cropper.

  Bill shook his head in what might have been anger, or was it disappointment? Peggy couldn’t tell.

  He gathered himself, and then he kissed two fingers and gently placed them on top of Holly’s head, much to the little girl’s dislike to judge by the protesting squirm and irritable squeal she made. Peggy supposed he had been hoping for a tender moment between father and child as he said goodbye, but if that was the case, it was if Holly had sided with her mother.

  He withdrew his hand very quickly and then, with a breathy ‘ouf’ of pain as he forced himself up from the chair, Bill hobbled out of the room without a word or backwards glance at either his daughter or his wife.

  Peggy listened to the retreating uneven footsteps of his hobnail boots, and the clang of the door at the end of the corridor as it was closed behind him and the lock turned as he went through the entrance to where the holding cells were.

  She felt unutterably sad, and although she didn’t openly cry as she had done first thing that morning when she had remembered the furious look James had fired at her after the fight, a single tear dribbled slowly down her cheek as she pulled a surprised Holly to her breast for a comforting cuddle.

  Chapter Two

  After she got back from the police station, Peggy sat alongside her sister Barbara on a wooden bench in a patch of sunlight in the back yard. They had cups of tea perched beside them.

  Barbara and her husband Ted had been on a short visit to Harrogate to see Jessie and Connie, catching the train up from London. But they had to be on the early afternoon one back later that day as Ted, who now worked on the river ambulances, knew he would be needed.

  Barbara was on the waiting list to train in Air Raid Precautions, probably as an enemy plane spotter and possibly even making sure the air-raid sirens rang out, and so she would be needed back in London too.

  Following the endless Phoney War, where it had been very quiet on home soil, Jerry had started to ramp things up. The Battle of Britain had been raging all summer over the English Channel, and only the previous evening at last there had been the long-awaited move of aggression inland with a barrage of German bombers flying overhead that Peggy had seen. What a momentous night, for all sorts of reasons.

  As Peggy had sobbed in the darkening murk of the back yard to Tall Trees following the fight, she’d heard a strange droning noise. She looked around but it was only when she glanced upwards that the sound made sense, as she bore witness to a large stream of enemy planes flying in formation across the moonlit sky high above Yorkshire.

  Everyone at Tall Trees had been up early listening to the news reports of the multiple bombings of the previous night across the capital, and the news hadn’t been good.

  All the same, this wasn’t what Peggy or Barbara were thinking of right at this moment. They were waiting for the vet to arrive to check over Milburn, and Barbara was keen to grab this
moment of quiet to hear from Peggy how it had gone with Bill.

  The two sisters had lived in nearby streets, and Bill and Barbara’s husband Ted had been best friends, and so they all knew each other very well. In fact, Peggy assumed that Bill and Ted would remain close; she hoped so anyway, as although she wasn’t happy right at the minute she didn’t want Ted to feel awkward or that he should take sides.

  Meanwhile, Barbara’s now eleven-year-old twins Connie and Jessie had been in and out of the back yard since first thing, trying to tempt Milburn with a variety of food they’d scavenged from the vegetable plots. But the normally greedy pony steadfastly refused to eat, and so to distract the children, who were clearly upset, Barbara had suggested that the twins pop Holly in the perambulator and walk her around the block in order that she could have a quick word with Peggy.

  ‘Oh Barbara, what a mess,’ said Peggy as the sounds of the twins’ chatter dwindled when they pushed Holly into the street from the front garden path, Peggy’s elbows dejectedly on her knees as she stared sadly down at the lichen-sprigged yard paving stones under their feet. ‘Mabel was very kind this morning about Bill and James having a set-to, but I think Roger is avoiding me.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s true, Peggy, so don’t read too much into it. I know for certain that Roger had to go out first thing on parish calls as I heard him take two really early telephone calls,’ said Barbara briskly. ‘Mabel didn’t say anything along those lines to me at any rate, although she did concede last night had been a “right pickle”. I know they’re upstanding members of the community, but they are very tolerant of human nature, you know.’

  ‘A “right pickle” is certainly one way of putting it.’ Peggy nodded, and smiled weakly at her sister. ‘My first thought today was that I should make a bolt for it with Holly back to Bermondsey. I just feel so embarrassed at being the cause of a dead loss like Bill causing such a rumpus, and then James getting involved when he absolutely didn’t deserve to. I can hardly bear to look anyone in the face today, that’s how bad I feel about it all.