Child from Home (26 page)

Ever-smiling Mam, whose love was boundless and unconditional, came to see me on Christmas Eve, and she blushed like a peony when Mr Harris gave her a kiss under the mistletoe hung over the kitchen door. She must have left a present for me with Mrs Harris when I wasn't looking. She was sorry to go but she had to be with George on Christmas Day. The next morning I ripped the brown wrapping paper from my present in great anticipation, not thinking about the difficulty Mam had probably experienced in getting it, and we had a nice Christmas dinner as Harold Mann had killed one of his chickens for us. As a special treat at teatime, Mr Harris roasted the chestnuts that he had collected earlier. Putting them on a shovel, we watched them jumping and splitting as he held it over the fire, and we thoroughly enjoyed their hot, sweet taste; but being far from home meant that Christmas was inevitably tinged with sadness.

Over the past year a fine new school, called the Joseph Rowntree Secondary Modern, had been built. All those over twelve, or who were to become twelve in the present school year, were to go there, and it meant that our Harry and thirty-five other children from Haxby and Wigginton would be amongst its first intake. Their departure meant there would be room for the older infants of the two villages, including me, to move up to the ‘big' school.

The new school was a mile and a half from the village centre south of the Hilbra railway crossing and it became known locally as the ‘Joe Row' (pronounced Joe-Roe) school. The opening ceremony took place on 12 January which marked the start of the new spring term, as the holiday had been extended to save on fuel.

Harry was surprised at the size of the school and felt a bit lost in the long corridors that were lined with modern classrooms. They now had a different teacher for each subject, whereas at Haxby they had just the one teacher. The school had a well-stocked library, a separate assembly hall and a dining room. The emphasis was on practical skills and there were large rooms and laboratories for science subjects. The girls, who all wore black gymslips, had practical cookery classes using modern ovens and the older girls even cooked the joints for the school dinners. In those days it was accepted that a woman's place was in the kitchen.

The pair of gentle spinsters had bought Harry a good second-hand three-speed bicycle with a Sturmey Archer hub gear that ticked over quietly when he freewheeled. It was his pride and joy and he oiled it and cleaned it till it gleamed. I would often see him with the bike nonchalantly propped up against his thighs, as he stood with a crowd of girls around him.

As the sharp frosts and snowy weather persisted, I was delighted at the prospect of starting life in the big school with the others. As we trooped along the snow-covered roads, the bushes and the gossamerlike spiders' webs were white with hoarfrost. By the time we got there our fingers were blue and our noses were red but even in the classroom it was bitterly cold with ice on the inside of the windowpanes. Our fingers hurt as the blood gradually flowed back into them and it took a long time for the coke-fired boilers to feed hot water through the pipes to the green, cast-iron radiators. I was pleased to learn that I would still be in Miss Francis's class; she was a teacher whose smiling demeanour and friendly tone of voice brought a touch of warmth and sunshine to those wintry days. Several teachers had stayed for only short spells and being with her for another year ensured some continuity.

The tall windows of the high-roofed Victorian classroom looked out onto the snow-covered playground and the crumbling bricks of the bike shed. The wooden sills, which were about four feet from the ground, had been designed to prevent schoolchildren, like me, from seeing out and thus being distracted. The small glass windowpanes were, of course, criss-crossed with the ubiquitous brown anti-blast tape and their upper parts were opened by means of the long white cords that hung down from them. We sat on the bench part of the old wooden desks that had been made shiny by generations of shuffling bottoms. The lids were covered with scratches, graffiti and ink blotches left by countless village children; many of them now parents and grandparents themselves.

There had been an influx of new children into our class as the formidable Miss Curry told us that Singapore had fallen to the Japanese on Christmas Day. Most of them had been attending the tiny school in Wigginton, but due to increasing numbers of evacuees, a few had been having their lessons in the minister's vestry or in the old Wesleyan Methodist Chapel. One of them was John Wade, who was a month older than me, and he had been among the first evacuees sent here.

He was a cheerful lad with a round, red, moon-like face and he now sat next to me and we became good pals. I showed him how to do pencil sketches of Spitfires and soldiers in uniform, as drawing was one of the few things that I was good at – apart from chattering and laughing, which tended to land us in trouble. As we crouched over our ink-splotched, penknife-etched desks, John said, ‘I were billeted with a family in Wigginton when ah first came 'ere yer know. We walked t' t'house from t'railway station when we came 'ere at start o' t'war. The people 'ad t'choice of billeting RAF lads or us evacuees and Mr and Mrs Allinson kindly took me in. They were a 'appy and 'ard working family with two kids. That were eight-year-old Bernard, and baby Pauline, who were only about ten months old.'

I was green with envy when he had told me, ‘Bernard had a real Meccano set and an electric, model-train set an' all. It 'ad two engines, carriages, goods wagons, stations, tunnels and tracks. One o' t' engines were a glossy green “Flying Scotsman” and it were all laid out on t'floor of his big bedroom.' How lucky could you get? I thought. ‘Mr Allinson worked at gas works on t'outskirts of York an 'e pedalled to work every day on an old push-bike. When he were not at work, 'e spent a lot of'is spare time working in 'is garden. 'E were allus busy so I didn't see him all that much.

‘Through a gate at t'bottom o' their back garden, after passing t'outside toilet, was a big field that 'ad a pond an' a small brick building in it,' he continued. ‘Next door, in t'first house, were t'Fletchers and they 'ad a fair amount o' land an' all. Mr Fletcher were just a little fella. 'E were a butcher and a farmer and 'is parents 'ave lived and farmed there since before t'turn o' t'century. They 'ad a butcher's shop and a barn that were full of straw and hay bales. Me and t'lads from next door used ter make dens in it. They 'ad a cow byre where they milked t'cows by 'and an' we played in t'fields for 'ours an 'ours.'

He was a right chatterbox and I couldn't get a word in edgeways. He told me that the Fletchers' two sons, who were young men at the time, worked on the farm. John said he enjoyed helping them out by putting the beet and turnips into the opening at the top of the shredder while one of them turned the handle. The Fletchers had two young evacuees from Middlesbrough. At a later date one of them was taken seriously ill and was taken into York County Hospital, but when his mother was informed she refused to come, stating that she ‘did not wish to know'. John told me that during the snowy days of early 1940, he and Bernard had built a real igloo in the corner of the yard and had sat snugly inside in the glow of a lighted candle.

John was moved another three times before he came to Haxby School and was now living with the Dixons at Holme Farm. This was a smallholding just west of the Co-op store and his sister and six other evacuees, one of whom was Dot Sirman's brother Ray, were billeted there. He said that Mrs Dixon was very kind to him and he often helped Mr Dixon to ‘muck out t'osses'. John said, ‘Mrs Dixon treats me really well. A nicer person yer couldn't wish ter meet. She works five days a week as a domestic servant and cleaner for Mr Butterfield. One of my regular chores is ter collect three copies o' t'evening newspaper from Torville's shop and tek 'em t' t'Butterfields, Dixons and their friend Mrs Lee. Ah do odd jobs for Mrs Butterfield from time ter time, such as sorting out logs for t'fire.'

I was delighted when, at the end of the month, Mam and Dad came to see me. Mam told me that she had replaced Dinner Lady who had given up her post as cook. Dad had managed to get a forty-eight hour leave pass and they wrapped Jimmy and me in newly knitted woollen scarves and balaclavas and, holding our woollen-mitted hands, they took us through the snow-covered village. They spoiled us rotten, buying us cakes, small toys, sweets and comics from the local shops. Dad was wearing his khaki gloves and had his thick army greatcoat on and I felt so proud to be his eldest son and to be seen out in the village with him. I was tender and very sensitive around the ribs and Dad, knowing this, tickled me mercilessly. He repeatedly threw me up into the air and caught me in his strong arms after Jimmy and I had bombarded him with snowballs. When he laughed his whole face lit up.

Dad was proud of his regiment, and its badge – a side view of a large-wheeled cannon – was tattooed on the bulging bicep of his right arm. I thought that Mam, although her cheeks were lightly rouged, looked rather tense and pale, but the strain of the war left many people feeling run-down and anxious and children are quick to pick up on these things. Whenever they came to see us – even when Mrs Harris knew in advance – they were never offered a meal and were unable to stay overnight. We had so much to say and the time fled, and all too soon it was time for them to leave, as they had to catch the bus back to York station. I turned away with my heart breaking after yet another touching farewell. My lip started to tremble and the tears rose unbidden and I tried to take my mind off them by taking my newly bought
Beano
comic up to our cold bedroom. I tried to immerse myself in the adventures of Big Eggo the ostrich, Pansy Potter the strong man's daughter, Lord Snooty, Tommy the tin can boy, and Herman the German (the latter, of course, was a caricature of Goering), but it didn't work! As someone once said, ‘happiness unalloyed is not for sentient beings' and I could not get the thoughts of Mam and Dad out of my head. I huddled under the bedclothes with my knees up to my chin shaking and crying my eyes out. I felt so alone and homesick and the snow falling from the leaden sky reflected my feelings.

After my tears were spent I looked out of the window to see that the back garden was thickly blanketed in pure virgin snow, and large, fluffy flakes were coming straight down before twisting and swirling around close to the ground. The falling snow, which looked like smoke being blown about on eddies of cold air, fascinated me. It settled softly on the skeletal twigs and branches of every tree and shrub and heaped itself up on top of the trelliswork and the garden fences. It piled up on the clothesline making it look like a thick white rope or a ship's hawser. It formed large white pompons on the withered remains of the hydrangea flowerheads so that they looked like white lollipops or white woollen balls on long sticks. Composing myself, I dried my eyes and rushed downstairs eager to play in it. Such is the resilience of childhood! Great clods of soft fresh snow clung to the soles of my shoes making them seem like deep-sea divers' boots. The sky was the colour of slate and we played out in it till teatime – and it was dark before six o'clock.

In early February the cold was so intense that, much to our delight, the school was closed for two weeks. The antiquated heating and water pipes had frozen solid and when a thaw came they burst causing floods. On those bitterly cold and frosty days the thickly lying snow became ice-encrusted and in some places the wind had formed it into weird shapes. The top layer froze and overhung looking like waves about to break and the dormant stems of the cow parsley were snow-capped. The ploughed fields were like corrugated iron under their blanket of snow and there was a thick layer of ice on Mr Harris's rain butt. We spent a good deal of our time enjoying the unexpected extra holiday up on the icy slopes by the windmill pond, where the rusty metal vanes of the old irrigation pump groaned and creaked forlornly as they swung to and fro in the icy wind. We sat on old tin trays and slid down the steep inclines keeping our feet raised off the ground. As our giggles and screams of pleasure were carried through the thin icy air we were completely lost to everything. Nothing else mattered and we wished that it would never end.

In that silent frosted world the little birds suffered; but they weren't the only ones. Our cold noses, nipping fingers and frozen mittens eventually drove us back indoors and, once inside, we got a clout round the lugs for getting our clothes wet. At other times we got lashed on the legs with the thin cane that Mrs Harris selected from her growing collection of punishment tools, which she appeared to enjoy wielding. The canes and belts that hung on the wooden strut supporting the kitchen cabinet were a constant visual threat. If we did not settle down quickly at bedtime she would shout up the stairs, ‘Get to sleep or you'll feel the belt around your backsides!' There seemed to be no warmth or affection in her and we were being thrashed more and more often.

On going back to school our sleep was often disturbed by the deep, throbbing sounds of low-flying British bombers, while at other times it was the wailing of the air-raid siren that shattered our rest. It often startled us into full wakefulness in the middle of the night but, fortunately, most of the warnings turned out to be false alarms or the enemy planes were nowhere near us. The small bedroom fires were never lit and on bitterly cold mornings we often got dressed under the bedclothes with our teeth chattering. We had learned by experience not to put our bare feet on the cold brown lino. The lack of sleep left us lethargic in school, which did not make for much progress. With the teachers overstrained, harassed and numbed by anxiety, it was not exactly an ideal situation but, after being up half the night, we tended to be quieter and less boisterous. Even so, the village school with its rigid and stultifying syllabus appeared to Jimmy and me to be the most stable part of our tottering world. We felt safe there surrounded by the other children and our teachers.