Orphans of War

One of those trees was for her Uncle Julian-no wonder Grandma hated anything to do with the war. She did her duty on her committees but her lips were always set in a thin line and she had no smile wrinkles round her eyes like Aunt Plum.

Maddy lay across a branch of the tree daydreaming, her arms dangling down, hidden by a curtain of rusting leaves. It reminded her of the apple tree near The Feathers, but that made her think of Bertie and Gran and the terrible blitz that haunted her dreams. She hoped her little dog had found a new home.

Aunt Plum’s dogs were big and bouncy, not the same as her own special friend.

Everything was so different here, she thought, hiding under the canopy whilst she watched for spies. There had to be spies in the district if there was going to be an invasion soon, she thought. She knew the fire drill by heart. Now she was supposed to be collecting beech mast to feed Horace the pig in the shed.

It was fun going on salvaging trips down the cobbled alleyways and lanes, staring in through the doors of stone houses with slate rooftops like fish scales. Sowerthwaite was full of secret lanes that opened out onto the wide marketplace. Its shops lined the streets with arched doorways and bow windows straight out of her fairy-tale book. There were banners across the town hall urging the townfolk to buy Savings Bonds, posters in the shop windows warning of ‘Careless Talk’, but no bomb sites or proper air-raid shelters in sight, not like Chadley.

Peggy, Gloria and she were in Greg’s team, collecting newspapers and jam jars for salvage. Peggy was very round, always puffing, and didn’t like pushing the handcart; Gloria was always sneaking off looking through shop windows, so Maddy and Greg did most of the hard work, dodging dogs, knocking on doors and trying to beat the other gang for the team to collect most. Big Bryan Partridge’s gang cheated by hanging round the back of shops, sneaking cardboard boxes while Mitch Brown and Enid hung round the Three Tuns to cadge bottles, but Miss Blunt liked to have them out of the Vic all day being useful, come rain or shine.

Maddy loved practising for the school Christmas concert in church, making secret presents for the oldies, and now with Mummy and Daddy coming home it was going to be just perfect. Only one thing was spoiling everything now.

Last night her dreams were disturbed by bangs and flashes and the flames burning the pub, and she was running to save them but she couldn’t reach them in time and then she woke and her bed was wet again.

Aunt Plum had put a rubber sheet on her mattress when she first came and told her not to worry, but she woke crying from the dream and crying with shame as she sneaked her sheet and her pyjamas down to the scullery to soak in the sink. She was making extra work and there was a war on and it worried her. Then she’d had to creep back in the dark, feeling up the oak banister rail and curl up with Panda, trying to be brave.

The silence outside was scary at first but she strained to hear the night sounds, the bleating sheep, the owl hooting, the drone of a night plane or the rattle of the night express in the distance. She was lucky to be safe and warm in this hidy-hole, but until Mummy and Daddy returned it could never be home.

The old house was friendly in its own way, cluttered with walking sticks and cushions and doggy smells. There were rooms boarded off and shuttered to save on heating. The sun shone through dusty windows, but it gave off little heat now.

Sometimes she walked up from school, up the Avenue of Tears, wondering if Daddy did the same dawdle with his satchel all those years ago. Why had he never come back here?

It was something to do with Mummy and the Millses being ordinary and saying ‘bath’ in the wrong way, but Mummy was beautiful and sang like a ‘storm cock’. When Maddy grew up she would marry someone she loved, however poor he was, if he was handsome and kind. He wouldn’t mind that she was leggy and plain with a turn in her eye that never seemed to get any better. She didn’t want another operation to straighten it out. The last one in Chadley hadn’t worked for long.

Aunt Plum promised when things were less hectic they would take her to see a specialist in Leeds who might sort out her eye once and for all. With the war on, though, Aunt Plum said all the best surgeons were at the front so they might have to wait until peace came again.

It was so peaceful here. The war hadn’t bothered Sowerthwaite, and it wouldn’t if Grandma had anything to do with it. Maddy touched the bark of Uncle Julian’s poplar for luck.

Gloria Conley skipped round the playground singing ‘Little Sir Echo, how do you do…’, her bunches bobbing behind her. She’d just been chosen to sing a solo in the school concert and Miss Bryce said she had lovely voice. She couldn’t wait for it to be Christmas now.

She didn’t mind being moved out of the Hall because now Sid and she had their own special auntie and uncle of their own and all because of Sid’s ear.

It had gone septic and now he couldn’t hear in it at all. Miss Plum had explained how ill he was when the Welfare came to take them away, and that he couldn’t be moved. Then Mrs Batty asked Mrs Plum if they’d like to come and stay with them. It was such a relief. How Gloria’d prayed not to be taken back to Elijah Street. She hoped that the Lord understood why she had to fib like mad about how Uncle Sam, God rest his soul, had beat them and poor Mam had shoved them on the train out of harm’s way. In her heart she knew it was all lies but it made a better story than the truth–that nobody wanted them.

She woke up on that first morning in Brooklyn Hall and thought she’d died and gone to heaven, snug in clean sheets and pyjamas, with thick checked shirts and corduroy dungarees to play out in. There was yucky porridge for breakfast but hot toast and real butter and jam for afters.

Everyone had fussed over Sid until he was better She wished they could stay in the big house for ever but then they’d been allowed to stay on in the grounds at the Battys’ cottage, which would have to do.

Mrs Batty did all the washing for the Hall and the ironing. She had a big copper boiler in its own shed and an iron mangle that she turned with strong arms. She made big stews out of rabbits and stuff that Mr Batty ‘found’ in the woods. Huntsman’s Cottage was small but clean, and the old couple let them run wild in the woods and play with the other vaccies after school.

Even school was turning out better than she dared hoped. Her reading and writing were coming on and Maddy sometimes let her practise the difficult words in the reading book. She was getting quite good now but would never catch up the Belfield girl.

The only worry was that Constable Burton was sending someone to find Mam. She was in big trouble now. Gloria prayed that Mam’d take her time to fetch them back or come and live with them up here. She still couldn’t believe that she’d just shoved them on that train…It didn’t make any sense. Gloria never wanted to go back to the cobbled streets and dark corners of the city again, now she’d seen Brooklyn Hall.

It was Miss Plum who explained that Mam was no longer living in Elijah Street. In fact no one knew where she had gone. ‘Gone orff, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘Not to worry, Gloria, she’ll come looking for you soon enough.’

How could Gloria explain that she wasn’t worried, she was relieved to be staying put? Old Mrs Belfield said they ought to be put in an orphanage, so she cried and hollered and made herself so sick that Maddy’s gran relented, saying that they could stay ‘for the duration but in somewhere more suitable’, whatever that meant.

It didn’t take a numbskull to work out that old Mrs Belfield thought she wasn’t good enough to share a room with Maddy. She was not family, but Miss Plum explained that she could come and play with Maddy any time she liked. Try and stop me, Gloria thought.

She loved the Brooklyn, with its wide curving staircase, the pictures up the walls in gold curly frames and the smell of wet dogs and lavender polish. Every shelf was covered in china Bo-Peeps and silver trinket boxes, statuettes and ornaments.

Why must she be banished just because she wasn’t born rich and petted with pretty dresses? There were no dancing lessons for her, or ponies to ride. The Belfields lived in another world, in a big space with fields to play out in, not cramped in a bricked back yard with noisy neighbours, barking dogs and horrible smells.

Yet this war had done something wonderful in transporting the two of them from the town into the country. There would be no budging her now. She and Sid might live in a humble cottage but she was going to stick close to the Big House like glue. Maddy would be her best friend and where she went Gloria would not be far behind, she smiled to herself.

Huntsman’s Cottage would do for now but when Gloria Conley grew up she was going to find her own rich man with a house with a hundred rooms and servants so she could live the life of a film star. She loved going to the Saturday pictures with the other vaccies to see Mickey Mouse and Charlie Chaplin, and Shirley Temple in Poor Little Rich Girl.

If being rich meant learning to read and write proper…no elbows on the table and no slurping her soup, sucking up to her betters, then she was up for it. She was prettier than Maddy any day. That must count for something, and she could sing the best in her class. When they saw her on stage in the school show, then they would see she was as good as any of them.

Greg Byrne took the corner fast. He’d borrowed some pram wheels off the salvage lorry, just three to make his racing cart. It was low to the ground with ropes to guide the steering. This was the fastest he’d made –if only he could control the damn thing. There was a touch of black ice on the tarmac ahead that was going to be tricky but skidding would be even better, he grinned to himself.

It was worth weeks of cleaning and polishing the Daimler, fetching and carrying empties, to have the money to build this racer.

There was something about going faster and faster that made his head spin with excitement. There was nothing to beat it. The trudge up the steep hill track onto the moors, with its five sharp bends, made it all worth it, scaring horses and carts, making tramps dive into the walls out of his way when he careered down pell-mell.

The best thing of all was to cadge a ride on the back of one of the soldier’s motor bikes up to the battery field, towing ‘Flash Gordon’ behind him.

One push and the cart flew downhill all the way with the soldiers’ shopping list for the village stores. All he could think of when he trudged back up the hill was the loose change he’d earned and the day when he would be old enough to own a racing bike himself. Even a two-wheeler would be a start but the old ‘sit up and beg’ two-wheeler bike in the Vic belonged to The Rug; an ancient black metal affair with a basket up front, that made Miss Blunt look even more like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. She rode it to Scarperton on market day and no one was allowed to borrow it.

She ran the hostel like HMS Bounty, with her rules for wayward evacuees, a strict rota for chores, curfew hours, punishment meted out for bed-wetting and lateness, so once or twice he’d let her tyres down just to get even. One of these days he’d do a bunk but not yet.

There was something about the Old Vic that he’d taken to. It wasn’t a bad billet. He’d been in far worse, and something Miss Plum had said about him being ‘officer material and a born leader’ pleased him, even if he did lead the gang into mischief. He was the one that started them off giggling when Miss Blunt’s wig went all of a quiver, which made it wobble even more. The others looked up to him as their boss, and Enid had offered to show him her thingy for a ride on Flash Gordon.

Sowerthwaite wasn’t that bad a place. There were always summat going on, hills to climb, foraging for mushrooms and sticks, salvaging trips. School was pretty basic. He was marking time for his fourteenth birthday when he could get apprenticed.

As long as he was working on wheels with oil he was happy, and Mr Batty had showed him all the ins and outs of the Belfields’ saloon. He taught him to do rough work, taking engine bits apart and putting them back together again. He watched how to decoke the engine and change the oil and tyres. ‘You’ve got engine oil in your veins, me laddo,’ Mr Batty laughed.

And once, only once, the chauffeur’d let him sit in the driving seat, showing him the stick gears and letting him drive a few yards. This was sufficient to keep him behaving enough to stay put and not draw too much attention to his madcap schemes.

There was a big garage on the main road out of Sowerthwaite that might take him on as an apprentice mechanic if he kept out of trouble and if Miss Plum put in a good word.

Greg liked walking up into the Dales to the battery field. It was manned by a group of old soldiers. He wasn’t supposed to trespass but there was a geezer there called Binns who knew all about birds of prey: buzzards, merlins, peregrines and harriers. Now he could tell a sparrowhawk from a kestrel by its tail.

Mr Batty was a bit of a stargazer and showed him directions by the stars and how to find true north. Greg had never seen so many stars in a sky before, all with different names.

It was a man’s world up here, a train-spotter’s paradise, perches on rocky cliffs to climb in search of dead eggs, waterfalls with deep ledges to jump into pools when the weather warmed up…if he stayed that long.

There weren’t enough hours in the day for Plum to finish getting ready for Arthur and Dolly’s return.

‘I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss, Prunella,’ sniffed her mother-in-law. ‘They can stay in the Black Horse. It’s what they’re used to, after all.’

‘Of course they won’t! They’re family. I don’t understand you sometimes; your own flesh and blood…It’s Christmas, Mother, the season of goodwill. Those two have risked life and limb to get back to Maddy, the least we can do is let bygones be forgotten and give them a proper homecoming. Heaven knows what dangers they’ve faced en route.’

‘Please yourself but don’t expect me to roast the fatted calf for them. Not a word from either of them in years.’

‘Do you blame them? When did you last write to Arthur?’ Plum argued, but Pleasance stormed off out of earshot. How could families quarrel over trivia when the country was in such danger?