London Pride (41 page)

Sir said they were to stand in a line while the train emptied and then he'd go and see what was what. So they stood in the sunshine, clutching their luggage, and waited. Yvonne was glad that she and Norman had suitcases, because some of the kids only had brown paper parcels and they were all coming undone.

‘This way,' Sir said. ‘They've got us a coach.'

It was a jolly old-fashioned coach, with tiny little windows and scratchy seats and it bounced along the road as though it was made of rubber, throwing them all from side to side and jolting them into the air. But fortunately it didn't have to go far. After rattling them along between hedges it suddenly stopped alongside a wooden hut. There were two women in green uniform standing on the step and they came down at once and bustled all the kids into the hut and told them they could eat their dinner if they wanted to.

‘Please Miss,' Yvonne asked, as politely as she could, ‘Please, Miss, where are we?'

‘You're in Sussex, my dear,' the woman said. ‘Eat your sandwiches up nicely and then you'll be taken to your new homes.'

So they ate their sandwiches as nicely as they could when they were sitting on the floor, and Norman said he was thirsty, and Katy Burnett said she wanted to go to the lavvy. And they waited.

Presently people began to arrive, peering in through the door at them as if they were animals in a zoo. And after a while a woman walked into the hut, strolled about, looked them all over, and said, ‘Two strong boys' as though she
was ordering two pounds of sugar. And two of the big boys were told to stand up and go with her. The next lady said she wanted, ‘A clean little girl.' And after her five or six women came in together and there was quite a bustle of movement and leave-taking.

‘You won't let me go on my own, will you Yvey?' Norman asked, his little round face puckered with anxiety.

‘Course not,' Yvonne assured him, even though she had no idea how such a thing was to be done.

‘These are just the ones,' Sir said coming to stand beside them. ‘Yvonne is a very good needlewoman, aren't you, Yvonne?'

‘Yes, sir,' Yvonne agreed, her heart thumping most unpleasantly. There was an ugly man standing with Sir and he was looking straight at her and Norman. Oh a horribly ugly man, a great fat lumpy man with a face like one of those bloodhound dogs, with a long fleshy nose and watery green eyes and great big yellow false teeth.

‘This is Mr Ray,' Sir said. ‘He's going to take you home.'

‘Back to London?' Norman said hopefully.

Mr Ray cleared his throat by coughing in a bubbling sort of way. ‘Don't be stupid,' he said to Norman. Then he turned to the lady with the list. ‘I don't think I want the boy. He's a bit on the small side. 'Aven't you got another gel?'

‘He'll grow,' the lady promised. ‘Brother and sister you know. Less trouble. She'll look after him, won't you, um?'

Yvonne assured them both that she would, of course she would. And Norman clung to her hand and scuffed his shoes along the floor.

‘Oh all right then,' Mr Ray said. ‘Come on.'

So they picked up their cases and followed him, walking several paces behind him as that felt safer and seemed to be what he wanted. They went past several tatty cottages, one roofed in straw which was really amazing, and a church which seemed to be hiding behind a lot of trees and then on downhill for quite a long way until they came to a glass-fronted shop standing all by itself at a bend in the road.

There was nothing in the window except a white urn full of flowers standing on a shelf covered with a black-out curtain, but there was an explanatory sign above the window that said ‘W Ray Undertakers and Funeral Directors.'

‘Here we are,' Mr Ray said, and he led them round the side of the shop and through an open door into a very dark passageway. ‘I'm back, Mother,' he called. ‘Any messages?'

‘No,' a voice said. ‘It's been as quiet as the grave.' And then it laughed in a gloating sort of way and Mr Ray laughed too as he led them into a dark room where a long thin lady was sitting sewing a piece of bright pink satin.

If Mr Ray was bad, Mrs Ray was worse. She was tall and straight-spined and formidable, with thin grey hair, small pale eyes and a nose like a spoon. And she didn't like either of the children one little bit. They knew instinctively. And they were right, as children usually are in such circumstances.

The Rays had married late in life and had consequently avoided the nuisance of having children. They had taken over the funeral parlour from Mr Ray's father after his own demise, and were known locally as ‘Rays the Dead', but in a village as small as Myrtlebury there was too little trade for them to make ‘a living out of dying' as they jokingly put it. For as they frequently told one another, ‘If people don't die in the natural course of events we can hardly go round killing them off to make business.' So when the government announced that people in the reception areas for evacuation would be paid eight shillings and sixpence a week for every evacuee they took into their homes, Mrs Ray saw at once that this was an excellent way to supplement their income.

‘They won't eat much, Father,' she promised. ‘I'll see to that. If you get us two girls they can earn their keep and help with the sewing.'

She wasn't too pleased to see that one of her proposed little girls was a five-year-old boy.

‘Land sakes,' she said, setting aside the pink satin, ‘What've you gone and brought us a boy for, Father? Boys are nothing but trouble. You'll have to get him changed.'

‘I don't want to be changed,' Norman said, hanging on to Yve for dear life.

Mrs Ray swept across the room and whacked him round the ear. ‘You speak when you're spoken to,' she said. ‘Nobody asked you.'

Norman began to cry and Yvonne made faces at him to stop and shook his hand where it was hidden in the folds of her coat, because these two ugly grown-ups were cross enough without making them worse.

‘Stop snivelling,' Mrs Ray ordered. ‘Now you're here I suppose I'd better show you where you're to sleep. But don't go making yourselves too much at home, that's all.'

The room she showed them into was a small back bedroom furnished with a small square of carpet grown grey with age, a chipped jug and wash basin, a chamber pot and an iron bedstead on which was a very stained mattress, two pillows without pillow cases and a folded pile of dark brown blankets. There were no curtains at the window and the gaslight didn't look as though it had been lit for ages.

‘Bedtime is six o'clock,' Mrs Ray said patting one of the stains on the mattress ticking. ‘I shall serve supper at five sharp, not a minute before or after. If you're not back by five sharp, I shall clear the table and you'll have to go without. Breakfast at seven, this room to be cleared by eight, supper at five. You can go where you please between times just so long as you understand you're not to hang around the house. Church on Sundays of course. We've got to keep in with the church in our line of business. Is that clear?'

The two children stood stupefied before her. Neither of them had understood a word she was saying but they didn't admit it, because one whacking was enough.

‘Yes, Miss,' Yvonne said, squeezing Norman's hand to encourage him to say yes too.

‘Off you go then,' Mrs Ray said, pushing them towards the stairs. ‘Back at five.'

So they wandered out of the house and into the lane as that was what she seemed to want them to do. It was a lovely summer's afternoon. The sky was blue and there were birds singing in all the trees.

‘I'm ever so thirsty,' Norman said.

‘There's a tap over there,' Yvonne noticed. ‘In amongst those funny looking trees. Look Norm, they're growing apples. There's little apples all over those trees.'

So they climbed through the hedge and drank at the tap and picked one or two of the biggest apples from the trees. But they were very sour and hard to chew, and after a while they gave up trying to eat them.

‘If we sleep in that room where are we s'posed to hang our clothes?' Norman asked. Mum had been most particular that they should hang up their clothes when they arrived.

‘We'll keep 'em in the cases,' Yvonne decided. ‘We might not be here very long.' And she offered up a silent prayer to her Maker. Please God don't let us be here very long. ‘Least we can sleep together. That's good, ain't it?'

‘How are we going to know when to go back for supper?' Norman worried again.

‘We'll sit up here and watch the house,' Yve said sensibly. ‘Perhaps she'll look out for us, like Mum does.'

But as they discovered later, there was a clock somewhere that struck the hours, so they were able to walk past that horrible urn full of flowers and into the back door on the very stroke of five.

Supper was sardines with bread and margarine which neither of them enjoyed at all. Mrs Ray stood guard over them as they ate, and immediately their plates were empty she sent them out to the lavvy and marched them into the front parlour. There was a pile of pink satin on the table and a box full of cheap cotton wool beside it.

‘That's your sewing,' she said to Yvonne. ‘I've pinned the seams together. All you've got to do is sew them up. Neat stitches if you please. And you,' turning to Norman, ‘you can stuff the finished ones. Not too full. There's no need for extravagance.'

The two children worked for more than an hour while Mrs Ray sat on the opposite side of the table and cut out more shapes from a roll of blue satin she took from the cupboard. Nobody spoke and there was no sound in the room except the click of her scissors, the tick of the clock
and the rasp of the cotton thread as Yvonne pulled it gingerly through the satin, trying hard not to buckle the cloth or mark it with her fingers.

But at last the clock struck seven.

‘That's enough for one evening,' Mrs Ray said, removing the cloth from Yvonne's hands and putting the lid on the box of cotton wool. ‘Bed.'

And with that she marched them upstairs to the attic. It was already growing dark and the room smelt damp and unwelcoming.

Neither of them got much sleep, for by then they were so homesick that they spent most of the night in tears.

‘I don't want to stay here, Yvey,' Norman whispered over and over again. ‘I want to go home.'

‘So do I,' Yvonne said, crying with him. She'd been brave all day and now she simply couldn't go on being brave any longer. ‘Oh so do I.'

Back in Deptford Joan had spent a wakeful night too, wondering where they were and how they were and missing them with a perpetual yearning ache in her belly that no thoughts could ease. At daybreak she gave up trying to sleep and got up to begin her first day without them. Perhaps a good scrub round would make her feel better. Housework was usually a cure for most of her miseries. But it was no help to her that Saturday. By mid-morning her two rooms were spotless and she was still full of anxious energy. That afternoon she washed the curtains and cleaned the windows and turned out the kitchen cupboards, lining them all with fresh newspaper. But the misery remained and next morning when she'd washed up her solitary cup and saucer there was nothing left for her to do. She put on her hat and coat and took a tram to Greenwich.

Paradise Row wasn't itself either, although it took her a little while to work out what was different about it. She was used to the street shelter now, large though it was, a great flat-roofed ugly brick-built box blocking the middle of the roadway, and she'd grown accustomed to the sight of black curtains edging the windows, because there was black-out everywhere. No, what was new that morning
was the emptiness of the street and the awful silence. And that was because there were no kids about.

‘Come on in, lovey,' Mum said as she opened the door. ‘Did they go off all right?'

‘Bloody war!' Joan said, breaking down as soon as the door was closed behind her. ‘I don't see why we got to have our kids sent away from us just for a pack a' bloody foreigners. We should keep out of it. Bloody war!'

‘You have a good cuss,' Mrs Geary advised, hobbling down the stairs towards her. ‘Do you a power a' good. No good keeping it in.'

The parrot was cussing fluently above their heads. Now and at last it was possible to give full vent to her feelings and to swear and cry for as long as she needed to.

‘I'll put the kettle on,' Baby offered when the worst was over. ‘Nice cup a' tea.'

‘That's right,' Mum said walking Joan into the kitchen. ‘Nice cup a' tea, an' then you can stay to dinner, eh. They'll be all right, you'll see. I'll bet they're having the time a' their lives in the country. Think how you used to enjoy it at Tillingbourne when you was little.'

Peggy had a sudden seering recollection of the slaughter of the pig, but she shrugged it away quickly. This was no time for such thoughts. ‘I'd better put on some more potatoes,' she said smiling at her sister. ‘I'm on duty at two o'clock.'

‘On a Sunday?' Joan said.

‘It's being full-time,' Mum explained, basting the joint. ‘She has to work all sorts of hours now.'

‘I'm sorry I swore,' Joan said. ‘It's just I miss them so. It's so quiet.'

‘The O'Donavans went yesterday afternoon,' Baby said, as if that explained the lack of noise.

‘What, evacuated?' Joan asked.

‘Back to Ireland,' Mrs Geary told her. ‘All the lot of 'em. Sold up every mortal thing they possessed so she was telling me, an' even then they only just scraped up the fares. God knows how they'll make out now!'

‘So how many kids have we got left in the street now?' Joan asked.

‘Only Percy,' Peggy told her. ‘Lily could've gone with
him only she wouldn't leave Arthur. She said she couldn't bear for them all to be split up.'