The Evacuee War

by Katie King

  ‘In fact, I almost got as far as packing the moment I woke, and then I remembered the twins. I realised then, like it or not, I have responsibilities in Harrogate with Jessie and Connie as you’re not here to look after them. And the more I thought about Jerry’s bombers and what this really means, the more I understood it would be silly to take Holly towards danger as it should be reasonably safe here, and London is sure to be in for the main trouncing – which in turn makes me worry about you and Ted, and what you both might be in for. I know Ted not having to be called up as he’s a docker seemed good a while back, but now I’m not so sure …’ Peggy’s voice was close to a wail at this point.

  Barbara had clearly thought about and accepted this already, and so she remained calm in the onslaught of Peggy’s anxiety. She reached for her sister’s hand and said, ‘If I were you, Peg, I think I’d concentrate just on Holly and you, and let everyone else take care of themselves for the minute. You’re not a bolter, that’s for certain, and nobody would think that about you. Not for a minute, I promise! You know that you always try and make everyone else happy. But there are times when you need to put what you want first. Bill is a blithering idiot, and if I’m honest, last night James didn’t cover himself in glory either.’

  Peggy took a deep breath and almost made as if she was going to defend James, but Barbara gave her hand a firm squeeze to indicate she hadn’t finished speaking. ‘Really, what all of it adds up to is that if you don’t want to stay here, Peggy, then you mustn’t. The twins are used to it now in Harrogate, and while they would miss you of course, and Holly too, the truth of it is that they would be able to manage without you both, I promise. Certainly neither Ted and I would expect the both of you to stay in Yorkshire if you’re not happy, and lots of evacuees have returned to London.’ Barbara tried to gauge Peggy’s expression.

  Unhelpfully Peggy was leaning forward once again, concentrating on the flagstones with a ferocity they didn’t merit, and so Barbara had to guess what her sister was thinking.

  ‘Mabel also advised that I put Holly at the top of the list when I saw her just now,’ Peggy said at last. ‘And I don’t doubt the twins would get on perfectly well without me to keep an eye on them, as they really are quite grown-up now, and more so every day. And while they miss you and Ted, they know they’d only cause you both more worry if they were in Bermondsey with you, and so I think they’re reconciled to being here. But I don’t know what it is that I really want to do, or what it is that I want to happen, and so what on earth is the point of me running away? What would you do in my situation, Barbara?’

  There was a silence, and it was quite a long one as Barbara thought carefully about the question and the best way of answering it.

  Peggy gave up waiting for her sister’s reply and added, ‘I’d be less than true to myself if I didn’t admit that the thought of James being here in Harrogate hasn’t entered my thoughts too, although know I’m the last person he’ll want to see. But the thought that he’s not too far away does seem something, even though I feel pathetic even thinking this.’

  ‘If it were me, and I were having to consider all the things that you are thinking about,’ said Barbara, ‘then I don’t think I’d do anything for a day or two, actually. I’d let the dust settle and I’d try to remember that none of us can change what has already happened. I do know that I’d hold my head up high regardless, Peggy, and not for a moment allow myself to think that I wasn’t a catch and worthy of being treated well. You are not in any way to blame for Bill being drunk, or James losing his temper, remember.’

  Peggy didn’t say anything, but she let out a big sigh. She hadn’t realised she had been holding her breath, but she had.

  Barbara looked at Peggy and then she nudged her arm. When there was no response, Barbara gently elbowed Peggy again. But it was only on the third attempt that Peggy smiled and she bumped her sister’s elbow back with her own.

  And just then the vet arrived, and so Peggy stood up, saying softly to her sister as she laid a hand on her shoulder and squeezed quite hard, ‘Thank you, Barbara, I don’t know where I’d be without you.’

  Roger had telephoned the vet before he had left Tall Trees on some parish visits, and as Barbara went to pack, Peggy introduced herself and then told the vet that she would be paying for her visit and whatever needed doing to help the pony, and that the vet absolutely wasn’t under any circumstances to give the bill to Roger.

  They peered over the door, and silently inspected the normally bonny pony.

  Now, Milburn was anything but bonny. Although it was a sunny September day he looked cold, even though he had two tatty wool bed-blankets slung across his back, with some straw heaped underneath the wool. He was standing with his head low and his weepy eyes half closed, a small pile of untouched chopped apples from the orchard on the brick floor in front of him. The sort of pony who ate like a trooper, Peggy knew it was serious if he was off his tucker. The skin on his legs and belly was shiny pink and hairless in parts where he had scrambled over the door, with some cuts still oozing, and one of his front hooves looked painfully split where his metal shoe had been ripped off in the collision with the police car.

  ‘Let’s get him out where I can see him properly,’ said the vet, tipping her head this way and that as she inspected the pony once Peggy had slipped a rope halter onto Milburn and coaxed him into the yard. He seemed reluctant to leave his stable, moving only very stiffly and slowly, and he gave a complaining groan as he went through the doorway. The vet added, ‘Tell me a bit about him and then what’s happened to him? He looks as if he’s been through the wars.’

  Quickly Peggy described the panicked pony’s bid for freedom to escape from what she described as ‘a fracas in the yard’, adding, ‘He seems to have been in deep shock since he was involved with the car, and I don’t think he’s eaten or drunk anything, or been to the toilet since then. The children would be devastated if Milburn had to be, um, er, um, destroyed.’

  The vet took Milburn’s temperature, inserting the thermometer as she pulled his tail up, and then looked closely at his eyes and mouth. The normal salmon colour inside his eyelids and on his gumline was the palest pink and even to Peggy’s inexperienced eye it was clearly far too pale. The vet ran her hands all over his body, Milburn flinching now and then, after which she inspected the skin scrapes where Peggy and Roger had bathed them the previous night.

  ‘Those external injuries will heal best if we can let the air get to them to dry them out. We can drench him to up his liquid intake, but let’s see what a little walk in the sun will do for him first, as I don’t want to upset him more than we need to,’ said the vet as gently she pulled on Milburn’s little tufted ears to comfort him. He pressed the front of his face against the vet and held it there, and Peggy’s heart went out to him as he looked both terribly scared and dejected. The vet told him he was a good boy, and then added for Peggy’s benefit, ‘I’ll take off all his shoes and trim that split hoof first though to see if that will help.’

  Aiden, the most sensible of the disparate group of children who now lived at Tall Trees, had come out to see what the vet had to say, and so Peggy passed the halter’s lead rope over to him, explaining to the vet that if she wasn’t desperately needed for a few minutes, she should probably go inside to see if Mabel or Barbara needed her, and then Aiden could come and get her when the vet wanted to go.

  Inside the rectory, Peggy found that Barbara had stripped the bed she and Ted had slept in, and so while Mabel got the wooden washtub ready for the linen to be dunked into, Peggy nipped around taking everyone else’s linen off; it would be criminal to waste the hot water by not doing a linen wash across the house, especially as soap of any description was so hard to get these days, and as much use needed to be made of the tub as possible once washing was going to be done.

  It wasn’t too long before the vet poked her head round the back door with the good news that after a gentle walk a couple of times around the large garden, Milburn had
munched on some grass and taken a long drink. He was now lying down in a patch of sunlight with his eyes closed as Aiden sat quietly beside him.

  A little while later Mabel and Roger’s son Tommy pushed evacuee Angela’s wheelchair along the garden path, followed by Larry, who’d also been in Jessie and Connie’s class back in Bermondsey, to where Aiden was sitting gently stroking Milburn’s velvety muzzle as the small chestnut rested.

  ‘Do you think if we sing, it will help him have sweet dreams?’ wondered Angela, who was very fond of the pony as when she had learned to drive him in the trap it had given her a much longed-for sense of freedom, as she found being confined to her wheelchair very frustrating a lot of the time.

  Tommy, Larry and Aiden exchanged looks. They thought it a sissy idea, frankly, but nobody liked to disagree too much with Angela because of her being stuck in the wheelchair, and so they kept schtum.

  As far as Tommy was concerned, in large part his reticence in disagreeing with Angela was because he was very taken with her, and so he always tried to keep on her good side.

  ‘Maybe,’ muttered Aiden cautiously, after it became obvious the others weren’t going to venture the first opinion on whether they should sing, or not.

  ‘If you start us off, Angela,’ added Tommy.

  Angela began to croon ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ quietly, and after a while the boys succumbed to the inevitable under Angela’s eager nods that they should join in, and they began to hum along.

  Milburn gave what some might say should be described as a deep sigh of horror, although Tommy insisted it was a noise that merely indicated how much the pony was enjoying their serenade.

  On the other side of the greenhouse, Barbara and Peggy were gathering some greens for lunch from one of the vegetable plots, and they listened to the children. Their song wasn’t at all tuneful, and it was punctuated by snuffly rooting noises from Porky, the pig the children had been looking after since he was a piglet. Now that there were stout fences around the vegetable patches to keep him out, Porky had the run of the garden, and he had sidled up to the children to see what was going on.

  Jessie and Connie joined their friends, leaving a snoozing Holly in her pram in a shady spot in the back yard, and the song took on more gusto, although unfortunately not musicality. Jessie wasn’t able to sing in tune, and Connie wasn’t much better.

  ‘Poor Milburn,’ said Peggy to Barbara. ‘As if he’s not had enough to put up with already.’

  Milburn whinnied as if in agreement, and lurched to his feet, turning his back end towards the children.

  Chapter Three

  Understandably, Jessie and Connie were very subdued after they had been to the train station to wave goodbye to their parents as Barbara and Ted made their way back to London.

  Peggy wasn’t a lot of help either, as with a wave of exhaustion threatening to engulf her after lunch, she’d begged Gracie, the young single mother who was also living at Tall Trees, to look after Holly for a while so that she could climb into bed for an hour. Gracie happily plonked Holly on the rug on the lawn in front of Tall Trees beside Jack, her own little boy, and then watched as the two babies crawled about on the grass, getting quite dirty but finding it huge fun if their giggles were anything to go by.

  Luckily Roger was back at Tall Trees, and he stepped into the breach when he noticed Connie and Jessie were down in the mouth about their parents leaving, while all the children were still shaken by what had happened to Milburn.

  ‘Right-o. While Milburn enjoys the sun, what say you all if we give his stable a proper spring clean as a bit of a treat?’ Roger said. ‘If we each do a little bit, then it won’t take long and don’t you think Milburn would like it?’

  Milburn was once more lying flat out on the grass, only now with Porky nestled close beside the pony as the pig’s fulsome snores vibrated in the air, and the pair didn’t look like they were going to be moving any time soon. Bucky, the family’s battle-scarred black and white tomcat who resolutely refused to answer to his official name of Nebuchadnezzar, was curled tight against Milburn’s back. It was an adorable sight.

  The children agreed that Roger’s plan was just the ticket.

  An hour later they were tired and wet from sloshing water around, and no longer convinced that Roger had had a good idea.

  While he showed the other children how to make up a bran mash for Milburn – ‘to get things moving’ – Jessie clomped up the wooden stairs to the bedroom that Peggy and Holly shared.

  ‘Aunt Peggy,’ he called softly, as he tapped gently on the door, which was in stark contrast to the noisy ascent. ‘Are you awake?’

  Peggy was rousing from a heavy sleep, as Jessie’s boots on the stairs had been hard to ignore.

  ‘Jessie, is that you?’ she said, her voice faintly croaky with tiredness. ‘Is there something wrong with Holly?’

  Her nephew gave her a shy smile as he edged into the room, shaking his head to let Peggy know that she needn’t worry about Holly.

  She shuffled up the bed and leaned back against the wall. She patted a spot beside her, so that Jessie knew it was all right for him to come close for a snuggle.

  Peggy put an arm around his bony shoulders, thinking he was still very small for his age. ‘Did Barbara and Ted get off all right, Jessie?’ she asked.

  ‘They nearly missed the train as Mabel was making them sandwiches and a flask, and that took forever, and so we all had to run the last bit.’

  ‘I bet Barbara was cross about that.’

  ‘She was, and she got very out of puff, but the station master with the whistle who was closing all the doors let Connie and me have a last hug,’ said Jessie.

  ‘That was nice of him.’

  ‘Mabel was just reminding us that we have to go back to school this week,’ said Jessie then, really quietly.

  He was a very clever boy, and usually was top of the class – unlike his sister, who was always right down at the bottom.

  It was most unusual for Jessie not to be buoyed up at the thought of his lessons and a new term, Peggy knew.

  Jessie and the other children were now done and dusted with primary school; even though in other areas of the country ‘primary’ school could continue to teach children older than they were, the particular school they had been to previously in Harrogate didn’t cater for pupils after they reached eleven, and so they were now going to be attending ‘big school’.

  Back when the summer holidays had begun, Jessie had seemed very excited at this prospect. But no longer was this the case, Peggy could see.

  Peggy looked at her nephew, and his unhappy face told her that he definitely wasn’t relishing the prospect of what the next week would bring.

  ‘Is there a reason you don’t fancy going to your new school very much?’ she asked.

  He shook his head, but when Peggy said very quietly, ‘Are you sure, Jessie?’ he stared at the eiderdown for a while.

  ‘It’s those Hull lads,’ Jessie confessed at last in little more than a whisper. ‘I don’t think Connie saw them, and I beg you, really beg you, Peggy, not to say anything. But when we were coming back from the station today there was one of them hanging about near the dairy, and when he saw me looking at him, he did this.’ Jessie looked up at his aunt as he drew a forefinger across his throat, miming what a knife could do.

  Its meaning was all too clear.

  Peggy could see that to a serious and sometimes timid child such as Jessie, such a gesture would be very frightening indeed. And of course it was only a few short weeks since the boys from Hull, who had also been evacuated to Harrogate but who were a little older as well as much rougher round the edges than Jessie and his pals, had beaten Jessie up very seriously, knocking him unconscious, with the result that he had had to spend a spell in hospital being looked after by James. Any child would feel wary after an experience like that.

  Peggy pulled him close.

  ‘Try not to take on so, Jessie,’ said Peggy. ‘I’m sure that it won’t com
e to anything, and things rarely turn out as one might expect they will, remember. Really, you mustn’t worry, I promise.’

  Jessie was still tense despite her reassuring words, and it was a while before Peggy felt him relax.

  Peggy felt a little bad about what she’d just said. As a former schoolteacher herself, she knew that bullying was nearly always a complicated issue, and one that could be very hard to stop. And to judge by her own recent experiences, things often turned out a lot worse than one expected them to. But Jessie certainly didn’t need reminding of this.

  She hugged Jessie even more tightly, taking as much comfort in holding him as he was in being held. He was only eleven and was naturally very shy, plus his head injury had been an extremely salutary experience for everyone at Tall Trees, and her heart swelled with emotion.

  Peggy wished she could make it all better for Jessie, but she knew life wasn’t that simple and he might well face some unpleasant times ahead.

  Chapter Four

  On their first day, Connie decided that she rather approved of their new school.

  She had seen it before of course, quite often in fact, when she and the other Tall Trees children had been out and about with Milburn in the trap over the summer when they had been doing their bit for the war effort by collecting scrap paper. But now Connie realised she had never really looked properly beyond the newly painted, sturdy wooden gates to what might be on the other side.

  She narrowed her eyes as she inspected the school’s impressive frontage as they headed down the street towards it, the children’s gas masks bumping annoyingly against their hips in their cardboard boxes as they dangled on long twine loops.

  Before the school gate they’d all came to a halt as if by agreement, and the children bent down to hoick their socks up as far as they would go, and then they gave each other a scrutinising once-over to make sure everyone was presentable, with tidy hair and no smuts on their faces.