The Evacuee Summer: Heart-warming historical fiction, perfect for summer reading

Angela noticed Jessie’s expression reveal all too clearly that he was pondering what she and Tommy thought about each other, and so as a distraction she quickly reminded Jessie again of lots of the things she had learnt in the library about ponies, which seemed to make much more sense now that they had Milburn standing in front of them

When she had run out of useful titbits to share, she was relieved to see her tactic had worked, as Jessie said that he wondered if Milburn was well behaved when ridden, as he rather fancied a go.

At this Milburn gave Jessie what seemed like such a look of disgust, followed by a shake of her head that jangled the metal bit in her mouth and set her springy mane and forelock bouncing as if to say No-o-o-o at the very thought, and both children couldn’t do anything but laugh.

‘She’s good, isn’t she?’ said Angela, and Milburn nodded.

‘Yes, she seems to be,’ Jessie agreed, although the moment was immediately somewhat spoilt as Milburn swiftly dipped her nose into the wicker basket of a passing woman and nimbly lifted out a greaseproof-paper-wrapped sandwich, much to the ire of the woman and the embarrassment of the children.

Jessie wrestled the package from Milburn’s mouth, and then he offered it back to its owner, who took one look at the slobbered paper and the indent of the pony’s teeth and said crossly, ‘Those were fer my Bert, but ’e won’t want them now, will ’e? An wot’ll he ’ave fer his dinner now, an’ ’e’s on blackout checkin’ after? T’ pony had better have ’em, I s’ppose, an’ mind you keep more control of ’im in future. There’s a war on, you know.’

The affronted woman stalked away, and Jessie and Angela exchanged glances and then as one they looked accusingly at Milburn, who was concentrating very hard on the package in Jessie’s hand.

‘I suppose I ought to have paid more attention to Milburn,’ admitted Jessie, sounding a little guilty.

‘Poor Burt,’ said Angela, and the mere mention of him made the children hoot.

Jessie unwrapped the sandwiches, which had reconstituted egg as the filling. He and Angela gave the top one to Milburn, who snaffled it greedily, but they decided the bottom one wasn’t too squished for themselves to eat and so they shared it quickly, keen to finish before the others came back.

They talked then of the posters they could see up, seeing the irony of a poster urging a visit to the Yorkshire dales smack bang alongside a poster of a British Tommy questioning ‘Is your journey really necessary?’ Angela angled her chair slightly differently so that she could see the other side of the station’s entrance, where there was another poster urging people to bring their own cups and glasses to railway refreshment rooms as they were often running short, but the children couldn’t find much to interest them or to joke about in this last poster.

After what seemed hours, there was the sound of an ancient puffing billy chugging slowly into the station, at which Milburn held her head very high, her small ears so pointed towards where she could hear the unfamiliar sound coming from, that their darker tips looked to be almost touching.

As the sound of the final burst of steam from the train’s engine gave way to the noise of doors opening and the passengers alighting, Angela started to say, ‘It won’t be long before Lar—’ when Connie’s unmistakeable voice rang out in a loud and high-pitched yelp that sounded as heartfelt as it was hard to interpret.

It was such an unexpected outburst that Jessie immediately felt queasy as these days, like so many other people, he tended to overreact to any unexpected shock, knowing that it could herald bad news, and he swung towards Angela, whereupon the children stared at each other with worried faces.

Then Jessie sprang forward as he dropped the lead rope to Milburn’s halter so that it dangled in the road. Uncaring and with his thoughts of paying more attention to the pony completely forgotten, he fairly pelted towards the station platform to run to his twin’s aid.

Angela apprehensively watched him go, and then as he raced inside and turned towards the platforms she saw him halt suddenly, his mouth open in obvious shock. Her heart lurched more stomach-churningly than before, and a rising panicky feeling made her tingly and jittery.

Jessie ran forward again abruptly, but not before Angela had seen his face break into a tremendous grin as he stretched both arms out as wide as they could go.

He does seem very pleased that Larry is coming back to Tall Trees to be with us all, thought Angela, the sickly feeling quickly dissolving and falling away.

It wasn’t long before the reason for the excitement of Connie and Jessie became clear.

Barbara and Ted had come all the way to Harrogate on a surprise visit to see the twins, and to catch up with Peggy and Holly too, of course. They had travelled up to Yorkshire from London on the train along with Larry.

Neither of the twins would remove their arms to let their parents go from their hugs, they were so excited to see them.

Barbara and Ted had spent a weekend with them at the end of January, as their train tickets had been funded for that journey by the government.

Understandably, since then it had felt a very long four months for the ten-year-olds to be without their mother and father, instead having to make do with letters, and – joy! – on Easter Sunday, even a telephone call made from the Jolly for Barbara and Ted to say they hoped that Mabel’s Easter Egg hunt of hand-decorated hard-boiled eggs hidden in the garden was going to be fun.

‘My, look how you two have grown!’ said Barbara now, as despite having a shopping basket hooked into her elbow, she managed to put an arm around both of her children to pull them close.

‘You’re nearly as tall as yer ma, both of yer!’ Ted added, standing close. He was naturally a more reserved person than Barbara, but the tremor in his voice gave away how happy he was to see his children, and then he allowed himself a gentle pat of hello on each of the twins’ shoulders, just so that they knew how deeply he cared for them.

Jessie and Connie were both too overcome to do anything more than grin at each of their parents with glee, as they both turned around to hug their father too, their eyes shining bright with the unexpected thrill of what had just happened.

Jessie, who was more observant than Connie, noticed a few wrinkles at the corners of Barbara’s eyes that had not been there before the war, and some white hairs glinting in Ted’s short hair. He thought too that both of his parents seemed a bit smaller and very slightly shabbier than they had before, but Jessie was wise enough to know that maybe he had grown a little and that these days nobody could buy new clothes for best as often as they had done previously, and so most people were making do and mending to preserve outfits and shoes for as long as possible.

Barbara and Ted felt just as overcome, although they were making a better fist of hiding their exuberant feelings. They really missed having their children at home, but Ted was convinced that the bombs would soon be falling on London and so Connie and Jessie were much less likely to come to physical harm, or worse (although that didn’t bear thinking about) if they stayed billeted in Harrogate. And although Barbara probably would have brought the children back to Bermondsey if it had been left up to her, she trusted Ted’s opinion and knew that he wouldn’t be so insistent if he didn’t really believe that Jubilee Street was going to be very vulnerable to aerial attack.

Angela had no option other than to wait for them all to walk back to her, while she sat marooned in her wheelchair on its wheels as she noticed how alike Peggy and Barbara were, and how Jessie favoured his father’s colouring.

Milburn’s lead rope was still hanging downwards but the pony hadn’t taken the opportunity to test her freedom and instead had edged over so that she was standing beside Angela, casting curious looks towards the new arrivals. Then the small mare shook her nose forwards and backward several times as if she rather approved of Ted looking strong and muscular in his Sunday-best suit and Barbara smart and pretty, with the sunshine highlighting her freshly pin-curled hair.

‘Blimey!’ yelled Larry, the second he spied the pony. And then a little more quietly but with an unmistakeable tone of wonder in his voice, ‘Blimey O’Reilly.’

Milburn looked as if she were pretty much thinking the same thing as Larry headed towards her.

‘Larry, language please,’ Barbara reprimanded.

She might as well have saved her breath as Larry looked around at his pals with a massive grin and then simply repeated ‘Blimey!’ again, although this time in the most excited tone of all, as if he were thinking of all sorts of things they could all get up to now that they looked as if they might have the cheeky-looking Milburn with them as a partner in crime.

Milburn’s mischievous glint in her eye seemed to say that yes, she agreed with Larry, and that they only had to say the word and she’d be ready and willing for all manner of fun and frolics over the summer. Whatever japes they could think of would be all right with her, yes sirree.

Larry appeared to everyone as if he had grown taller too, although his scrawnier frame, sunken cheeks, shadows smudged under his eyes and generally a more put-upon demeanour were a far cry from the bonny boy who had left them at Tall Trees earlier in the year.

As Tommy went to grab hold of the handles to push Angela’s chair, Aiden picked up Milburn’s rope, Ted divided everyone’s luggage between his two hands, and Larry seemed unable to take his eyes off Milburn. And then he said as if he hadn’t uttered anything a matter of seconds ago, ‘Wot the bloomin’ ’eck is that?’

‘It’s a pony, dimwit. A pony,’ said Tommy, laughing. ‘And when Father isn’t using her, she’s ours to do with what we want.’

‘Blimey. Blimey O’Reilly.’

‘Lang—’ said Barbara, and then gave a defeated smile. ‘Oh, what’s the point!’

Ted laughed and pulled Barbara close to him for a moment, and then they broke apart, eager to hear what the twins had been up to.

And with that, the odd mismatch of people trooped back to Tall Trees.

Mabel and Roger knew already that Barbara and Ted were coming to visit, although they hadn’t given as much as the tiniest hint about this to anybody else, even Peggy, as Barbara had telephoned the previous afternoon to say that she was terribly sorry for the short notice, but she wondered if it were all right if she and Ted could stay over for a day or two at Tall Trees.

Mabel told Barbara how wonderful it would be and that the twins, and Peggy, would be over the moon.

Then there had been the usual friendly argy-bargy between the women over the financial arrangements, with Barbara offering a payment and Mabel refusing, and Barbara insisting, and Mabel refusing, and so forth, after which Barbara had begged Mabel and Roger to keep their visit a surprise.

Mabel had agreed, but actually it proved to be a trickier thing to keep quiet about than she had expected.

For first thing that morning Mabel had almost been caught by Peggy carrying fresh sheets and clean towels across the back yard on her way to sort out the generously proportioned room above the stables that Peggy and Gracie had once shared and where Barbara and Ted would now be sleeping.

A quick-thinking Mabel had had to dart into the pantry to hide as Peggy then spent what felt to Mabel to be an inordinate age standing just on the other side of the pantry door in the kitchen getting herself and Holly ready to leave the house and head over to June Blenkinsop’s. At one point, Peggy even asked Holly if she should take June the bag of currants she had for her that were – naturally – in the pantry, causing Mabel’s heart to do a flip, and then a double-flip as if in answer.

Holly didn’t say anything in reply – well, that wasn’t surprising given her tender age – but she did let out a cheery gurgle.

At last Mabel was able to breathe an audible sigh of relief when Peggy decided that the dratted currants could wait for another day as June probably wouldn’t be doing any of this sort of baking on a Sunday as she’d be concentrating on getting large trays of cottage pies and Lancashire hotpots ready for the coming week. Finally Peggy got around to pushing the pram out through the back door and weaving it through the yard and onto the garden path to the road.