The Evacuee War

by Katie King

  Roger turned to the direction Peggy was staring, to see the rather comical sight of a guard heading their way, firmly holding onto the twins as he strutted along between them, their nearest ear in each of his hands.

  The guard looked cross and as if he was holding on to the children very firmly, and although presumably this was quite an uncomfortable way of being led along, the twins were, for a moment, clearly delighted at the sight of familiar faces, although this quickly gave way to trepidation at what Peggy and Roger would do now that they had been caught out.

  ‘Do you know these children?’ the guard said testily to Roger and Peggy, who had both run forward. ‘I caught them hiding away in the guard’s van. These reprobates seem to think they could travel without paying, and so we are off to see the station master.’

  Peggy thought that Jessie and Connie appeared more regretful that they had been caught in their attempt of stowing away on the train, than in any way contrite about their actions.

  They looked like what they were – children who had had precious little sleep – but their expressions remained incredibly determined that they were going to London to try and find their missing father.

  Then Peggy noticed something she found almost unbearably touching. They were each clutching tightly to their chests the knitted toy bears that had accompanied them up to Harrogate over a year earlier.

  Jessie and Connie, although in many ways quite grown-up now, had clearly thought that they might be in need of the sort of childish comfort that only holding a treasured toy could provide.

  Bless them, she thought, and then Peggy had to fight manfully yet again with another lump of emotion that had come unbidden to her throat.

  ‘These are my niece and nephew,’ Peggy hastily admitted to the guard, as relief flooded through her that the twins hadn’t come to any obvious harm, despite the rashness of their impulsive and potentially dangerous actions. ‘I’m sure they didn’t mean to cause you trouble.’

  With a sniff of what seemed like disbelief, the guard continued to look very affronted, and he kept tight hold of the children’s ears although Peggy noticed the two of them relax when they realised she sounded more cajoling rather than cross as she spoke to the guard.

  ‘They learned very late last night that their father is missing in London, and so they wanted very much to get home to Bermondsey, come what may. I’m sure you can understand what a very big shock to them that news was,’ Peggy added in as persuasive a voice that she could muster as she appealed to the guard’s better nature. ‘I don’t think they set out to commit an offence on the railway.’

  ‘Ah,’ replied the guard, the wind taken out of his sails at Peggy’s words, although he then added, ‘Well, that’s as maybe. But we can’t have all and sundry riding on the railways for free, can we? No matter what the reasons are.’

  The guard was a jobsworth, Peggy decided, and she felt too weary and fraught to be polite any longer.

  But as she opened her mouth to give him a piece of her mind, Roger nudged her arm in a way that warned Peggy that she was in danger of making things worse, and quickly he stepped in to smooth things over, saying that of course he’d pay for the children’s fares from Harrogate to Leeds, and after that he would take them home with him in the car, while Peggy went on to London.

  ‘No!’ shouted Connie and Jessie as one. ‘We’re going to London to find Daddy! We’re not going back to Harrogate.’

  ‘That’s not possible, I’m afraid. You must both go back to Tall Trees,’ Peggy told them very firmly. ‘Now the bombing has started, it’s too dangerous for you in London, and you know that. Mummy will let you know the very moment there’s news, whatever it is. I promise.’

  ‘NO!’ Both twins were adamant. ‘We’re going to London. With you, Peggy.’

  The whistle was blown by an exasperated-looking guard for the final stragglers to get on to the London train. The Tall Trees contingent looked at him, and he stared pointedly back at them. A decision had to be made right away.

  Roger and Peggy stared at each other helplessly as the sound of closing doors clanged up and down the train platform.

  Peggy didn’t want to miss the train as she’d have to wait an age for another, but she didn’t want the twins to risk hurting themselves if she got on alone, should they give chase as the locomotive pulled out of the station and attempt to jump into a moving carriage.

  ‘Would I be able to buy them tickets from here to London on the train?’ said Peggy, and the guard nodded.

  Roger pressed some money into Peggy’s hands just in case she didn’t have enough, and then he said, ‘I’ll sort those other fares. Off you go.’

  And with a whoop of triumph from the twins and Peggy saying, ‘Don’t either of you make me regret this’, the three of them climbed onto the train in the nick of time, and the moment the guard banged the door to, off the train chugged.

  Five minutes out of Leeds, Connie said, ‘We’re starving. I don’t suppose …’

  ‘You suppose right,’ said Peggy a trifle snappily. Well, a bit more than a trifle snappily, truth be told.

  She’d had a rotten night’s sleep and had had an early start marred by a cartload of worry. And now she felt very put out at being ambushed by the twins into having them accompany her.

  For a few seconds it all seemed a bit much, and she fiddled with her gloves in a thoroughly disgruntled way.

  But then she calmed down when she saw Jessie catch his sister’s eye and then from their seats opposite her, both twins looked at her with downcast expressions.

  It didn’t take Peggy long to feel overcome by guilt; the poor things were only eleven after all, and they would be tired and hungry, as well as beside themselves with worry over what might have happened to their father.

  Peggy smiled to let them know they were forgiven properly now, and putting her basket on the floor she opened her arms and they both came forward for a hug, a hug that Peggy found she valued every bit as much as both of them.

  Once the twins had been persuaded to sit down, gently Peggy tried to prepare them for every eventuality that they might find when it came to Ted, but their serious expressions and glistening eyes told her they were fully aware of what they might have to face.

  They needed distracting, Peggy decided.

  And so at the next sizeable station, Peggy had a word with the guard waiting on the platform, explaining the situation, and he directed her to a stand selling sandwiches, indicating that it was all right for her to jump the queue. Peggy apologised to those she was pushing in front of, and then she bought food and drink, running victoriously back to the carriage with her arms full.

  After they had eaten, the clackety-clack of the train’s wheels on the metal tracks as it rattled along quickly lulled the children to sleep.

  Although Peggy felt weary, she didn’t feel sleepy as such. But while restless at first with her worries over Ted refusing to lessen, nonetheless she found the gentle rocking of the train’s carriage to be soothing, and as the miles passed she started to feel stronger and a little recovered.

  As the fields rolled by, punctuated by the train stopping at various stations, stations often overshadowed by depressed-looking red-brick factories and other industrial buildings, most of which seemed to be belching out thick clouds of smoke, Peggy stared out of the window and wondered if those inside – who’d be nearly all women, these days, often even right up into the ranks of management – were making armaments. She fancied that in many ways in these dank buildings the war was being won by an army of selfless workers.

  And slowly, although the view was sometimes dour and her thoughts downbeat, Peggy felt her spirits settle, just a tiny bit.

  As the train paused for a minute or two at yet another station – Peggy wasn’t quite sure where they were as all the stations had had their name plaques removed to confuse Jerry should there be an invasion, and of course that this meant that ticket collectors or guards no longer shouted out the stops – she noted that somebody was st
ill taking the trouble to make sure the wooden planters along the platform had abundant foliage and cheery flowers spilling over the sides.

  The sight of this riot of colour and verdancy suddenly made Peggy infused with optimism about Ted’s fate. It was impossible not to be uplifted by such a joyful sight, and she couldn’t believe the flowers would be so colourful if Ted were no longer in the world.

  Chapter Thirteen

  An hour or so later, the twins were awake and the train gave a very loud yet comically wheezy toot to its whistle to signal their arrival at Kings Cross in London.

  The mere thought of the station’s name brought its usual flush of warmth to Peggy, as whenever any member of the family could be persuaded to say Kings Cross, Jessie and Connie had nearly always immediately responded with ‘And the Queen’s not too happy either’, and so this had become something of a running gag at Jubilee Street. It was a small joke, but a sweet one, Peggy felt, and she rather hoped the children wouldn’t grow out of saying it too quickly, although she knew that day would come at some point.

  The twins’ faces remained stony though, and Peggy knew that today wasn’t the day to remind the understandably trepidatious Jessie and Connie of such jokey things. They had serious matters in hand they needed to save their energy for.

  As she stepped a trifle stiffly down from the carriage onto the platform, the more positive mood of earlier threatened to evaporate as Peggy felt just to be in London was unaccountably odd, and for her to be there without Holly even more so.

  It didn’t help that she couldn’t help comparing the sight before her now with how it had been when the three of them had been at Kings Cross last, on their way up to Yorkshire the previous September for the duration as evacuees.

  Two more contrasting views would be hard to come up with, Peggy thought.

  Back then, just over a year earlier, the whole station had been crammed to the gills, simply awash with excited evacuees jostling against one another.

  A million and a half people had been in the first wave of the Government’s evacuation, and a large proportion of those evacuees had left from Kings Cross in just a matter of days. The evacuees gathered in the station back then were a raucously noisy mix of children who were often accompanied by their school teachers, or pregnant women – Peggy had been both – or mothers with toddlers or those who were blind or otherwise disabled.

  Some of the poorer children had absolutely nothing with them other than the filthy summer clothes they stood up in and holey plimsolls or badly scuffed sandals on their feet, many without even a cardie or a pullover, even though autumn was just around the corner, and Peggy had been left horrified that some dear children came from poverty-stricken families that had so little.

  She’d been touched, too, by the luggage labels many parents had pinned to their children’s clothing, with the kiddie’s name and address scrawled, and sometimes their age, and their likes and dislikes. Peggy had found the sight of this both optimistic yet almost unbearably poignant.

  Peggy remembered that there had been long queues for the station’s lavatories and refreshments, but people waited patiently in line as others were herded past them on the way to their trains, although nearly everyone shared the same pensive look on their face as they wondered quite what it was they were heading towards.

  The hullabaloo in the station had been chaotic, with people milling antlike everywhere, and an almost deafening din of excited chatter rebounding from the high rafters in the station’s roof as everyone tried to find where they needed to be. Those keeping the melee under control had glared down at their clipboards of lists of passengers, and shouted crossly into megaphones or blown whistles to try and get the right evacuees’ attention; some even waved flags in the air to marshal together the group of evacuees they would then escort to the correct platform where they could find their trains.

  Peggy had found it very disorientating and she had been understandably scared that such an upset might be harmful for the baby she was carrying. Jessie and Connie had shrunk very close to her side as they pushed their way through the station, determined to stick to her like glue.

  Certainly, many of those evacuated alongside Peggy and the twins had gone on to hate where they had ended up, and Peggy knew that a sizeable tranche of evacuated children had soon returned to London when their parents couldn’t bear their families being split up. Some evacuees had been woefully treated as little more than slave labour by the households that took them in, and so who could blame them for wanting to go home?

  Peggy and the twins had understood immediately that their billet at Tall Trees was one of the really good ones, and that they had well and truly fallen on their feet when Roger and Mabel had picked them as their evacuees. Tall Trees was comfortable and spacious, with inside plumbing and the luxuries of a telephone and even a refrigerator, plus it had the added bonuses of a large garden for children to play in and lots of books and musical instruments for the evenings. And even a pony and a piglet who were very much part of the new family they all now belonged to.

  Over the last year Ted remained insistent that they were all staying in the right place. Harrogate was much safer than Bermondsey, he swore, adding, ‘It’s nought but a matter of time before these docks ’ere are bombed. You all need to be out of it, you mark my words.’

  Peggy started when she realised that almost everyone from the train down from Leeds had now departed, leaving the twins staring up at her questioningly as she stood frozen in thought.

  She said, ‘Right, you two, let’s find the bus stop,’ and Jessie and Connie looked relieved.

  As they made their way through the station, everywhere was dusty and grubby, and smoke from the dense number of hearths nearby caught in their throats and prickled their eyes. The station looked much more depressed and shabby than Peggy remembered it being when they had been there last time, and the glimpses of London streets as they had chugged into the city suggested this was the same outside of the station as well as in it.

  Peggy couldn’t recall London being like this before, but then she thought that maybe she was just more used to the griminess when she had lived in the city.

  Large propaganda posters had been pasted up on every conceivable space, reminding people to Open Their Door to strangers should there be a raid, that they all should Grow Their Own veg, Wear Something White in the blackout, and – most pertinent to Peggy and the twins, being evacuees – Leave The Children Where They Are.

  Harrogate had the same posters but there in the sharp Yorkshire air they seemed fresher and brighter-hued somehow, offering a more uplifting sense of Britain’s bulldog spirit. Here the posters seemed faded and worn and verging on the mournful.

  Perhaps most noticeable to Peggy of all though was that the excited high-pitched clamour of the evacuee children of a year ago had given away to the deeper, huskier hum of what sounded to be almost totally men’s voices, emanating from a mass of soldiers in army uniform standing around gossiping as they waited for, Peggy assumed, their trains up to various camps and airfields.

  Peggy could see virtually no women in the station and she was struck by the sight of each Tommy having a huge sausage of a canvas bag containing his kit upended on the ground beside him, big enough in which to hide almost anything. To a man, these chaps smoked cigarettes as they chatted, many casting an appraising eye over Peggy’s figure as she made her way past.

  There was a lewd catcall made in Peggy’s direction despite the presence of Jessie and Connie, followed by a bawdy shout of ‘Oi, I’m over here and ready for you, lady’, followed by somebody else saying ‘Hello beautiful’ and another calling ‘Smile, it might never happen’.

  With a chippy toss of her head, Peggy tried to ignore these comments and bawdy whistles. But it was difficult as many of these men refused to look elsewhere if she caught the glint in their eye, and she could feel herself growing flustered.

  The twins were unhappily silent and seemed to share their aunt’s discomfort, and Peggy’s chee
ks began to colour although she tried very hard not to let them, quickly darkening from her customary pale shade to a flush of becoming rose and on to an uncomfortable fuchsia.

  Luckily the promenade past the soldiers didn’t last for too long, and once Peggy and the twins were safely upstairs on the bus that would take them through Blackfriars, across the River Thames and down to the Old Kent Road – they would walk to Bermondsey from there – she began to feel a bit less hot under the collar.

  Then, as the bus made its way slowly around the next corner, suddenly her and the twins’ attention was transfixed by the sight before them.

  The sheer extent of damage the slew of night-time bombing raids had already inflicted on London was plain to see.

  Peggy was shocked and her mouth fell open. The London in which she had grown up, and which she loved, was clearly badly wounded and bleeding.

  After a while Jessie summed it up, saying, ‘It doesn’t look like London,’ and Peggy had to agree.

  Although it had only been a few days since Jerry’s aerial offensive had begun, collapsed buildings were numerous, sometimes with depressed-looking people standing around as they surveyed the damage. There were wisps of smoke curling upwards still from some of the heaped masonry on the pavements and shattered glass everywhere. Just as shocking were the large craters left by the blasts here and there in the road, sometimes meaning the bus had to divert from its normal route into side streets, once almost getting stuck trying to navigate a particularly sharp corner to a very dingy back road.

  At one point Peggy looked down at a pavement, and saw an abandoned, soggy-looking dolly lying there blackened with soot and with an arm missing, the other arm waving at her as if the dolly were drowning. It was only a little thing that Peggy spied for a second or two, but even so she found her eyes filling with tears at the distressing sight. She hoped neither of the twins had noticed the filthy toy that had probably once been very loved by a little girl. And she hoped that by having the twins with her, she wasn’t leading them into physical danger or a horrible situation to do with what might have happened to Ted.