The Hills and the Valley (7 page)

‘Oh, for goodness'sake, don't you understand? We're
all
at sea

this time!'

Although Hillsbridge, along with the rest of the country, had been rocked to its very foundations, very little seemed to happen that first weekend when England was at war.

In the bar at the Miners Arms and the George, the two public houses which faced one another across the main street, the talk was almost entirely of the terrible events which had overtaken them, and a few young hotheads marched into an army recruiting office in Bath only to be told that for the moment their services were not required and to go home and wait for their call-up papers. Margaret Hall, along with the rest of the band of willing volunteers, waited for the rest of the day and on Sunday, too, at the railway station, yet no trainloads of evacuees rolled in.

It was late on Monday afternoon before the first of them arrived, bussed in from Bath, and they managed to take the reception committee by surprise by their sheer numbers and the lateness of their arrival.

‘Oh my goodness, whatever are we going to do with them at this time of night?' Captain Fish's daughter, Elinor, stalwart of both the WI and the St John's Ambulance, groaned as the pitiful procession filed off the hired charabanc and a fleet of private cars disgorged still more and even more into the Market Square.

‘We'll sort them out, don't worry,' Margaret said, but she was almost as shocked by the sight of them as she had been by the declaration of war itself.

Some, it was true, looked tidy and well cared for, but far too many were a pathetic sight. Pale, undernourished children, each clutching a bag of food and chocolate and the cardbox box containing their gas mask, each with a label pinned to their clothing, for all the world as if they were just another piece of baggage. Some of the little ones had been crying; their faces were tear streaked and ribbons of slime ran from their noses to their upper lips, while the older ones wore mulishly defiant expressions as they tried to be brave about finding themselves here in this alien place. Most looked as though their clothes were hand-me-downs or had come from a stall at a jumble sale, the girls with darned handknitted cardigans buttoned unevenly over the cheap cotton frocks, the boys mostly wearing shorts which were either too small or too long, so that their battle scarred knees were almost hidden by voluminous grey. Socks had long since rucked down around skinny ankles, hair had been cut with the pudding basin. Like a truckload of mute young animals they herded together looking at the willing workers who greeted them with eyes that were hostile yet frightened.

There were a few women with the party, haggard women who should have looked young, judging by the babies in their arms. Their clothes, too, were cheap and unfashionable, and one had a bristle of curlers escaping from the headscarf she wore turban-style.

They were from the worst of the slum areas that still existed in some parts of the East End of London and to them Hillsbridge might have been the moon. To the people who waited to greet them they were an astonishing sight, poorer looking even than the children from Batch Row and scruffier than the gypsies who used to come with the fun fair to winter each year in the Market Yard.

As soon as they were assembled the volunteers set to work, attempting to match children to the people who had offered to take them in. But it was soon clear it would be no easy task and the Square soon came to resemble a cattle market.

‘Mrs Parfitt – you agreed to take one.' Margaret led a small boy who looked as if he had been crying towards a sharp featured woman in a smart floral dress and marking off a name on her list as she went. ‘This is Johnny Cooper, six years old, from Peckham. Can I leave him with you?'

‘No thanks.' Winnie Parfitt shook her head vehemently. ‘I don't want a boy. They do too much damage. I'd rather have a girl.'

‘But …' Margaret looked around helplessly. Useless to try and persuade Winnie if she had already made up her mind. That would only make the child feel more unwanted than he already did.

‘I'll have
her.
' Winnie nodded vigorously towards the most respectable of the girls.

‘I was going to take that one,' another woman, whose name Margaret did not know, spoke up. ‘At least she looks clean, which is more than you can say for most of them. I said I'd take one in when they came round and asked me but I shan't unless I can have some say which it is. I don't want one with fleas or anything like that.'

‘I'm sure they haven't got fleas,' Margaret pleaded.

‘And I'm sure they have – if not worse!' the woman argued. ‘Look at that one over there – she hasn't stopped scratching since she got here.'

Margaret sighed and persisted and gradually the band of children grew smaller as they were matched with volunteer families and taken off home to be given a meal – and in some cases a good scrubbing.

Those who were left were the most difficult cases, however, and by the time the volunteers had been exhausted there was still a small cluster of them, mostly boys, rejected for the same reason Mrs Parfitt had given that they would be likely to be too much of a handful – and the siblings, brothers and sisters who were clinging tightly to one another in an effort to avoid being split up.

‘This is a pretty state of affairs,' said Elinor Fish as she marched across the cobbled yard to Margaret, still waving her sheaf of papers on which the names had been mostly ticked off by now. ‘What are we going to do with the rest of them, I'd like to know?'

Margaret passed a hand through her hair. She was so tired that every movement was an effort and she felt slightly sick – perhaps because the hands of the town clock were now showing a quarter past seven and she had had nothing to eat since midday. But she had no business feeling tired, she thought. She was a great deal younger than many of the volunteer helpers here today and the most important thing was finding beds for the night for these poor children.

‘There's nobody left on the list is there?' she asked.

Elinor Fish shook her head. She was a tall straight woman who had inherited her military bearing from her father and the crisp navy blue uniform of the St John's Ambulance Brigade suited her.

But she now wore the harrassed expression of a woman facing an impossible task.

‘Nobody. In fact, one or two who were on it changed their minds when they saw the state of the children. If this goes on it's going to have to be made compulsory for people with the room to have them.'

‘If only Harry was here we could bundle some of them into the car and take them round to anybody we can think of who has the room'.

‘Good idea,' Elinor agreed. ‘But since we haven't got a car we'll just have to make them walk. A bit of exercise won't do them any harm.'

Margaret looked at the children doubtfully. Of course exercise did nobody any harm and most people got plenty of it. But these children looked on the point of exhaustion and to drag them, off on an endless trek from door to door seemed the height of cruelty – especially since it would probably involve a climb up one of the steep hills which were the only way out of Hillsbridge town centre.

‘What about Holly Bush House?' she suggested. ‘They've got plenty of room and it's not too far to walk.'

‘Oh, I don't think so,' Elinor said swiftly. Holly Bush House was the home of the Dowlings, one of the most prominent families in Hillsbridge. ‘They would feel most out of place there.'

Margaret felt a stab of irritation. In Elinor Fish's book it was one thing to push unwanted guests onto ordinary families, quite another when it came to imposing on people she knew socially.

‘Well, what about the Rectory? Or Dr Carter's? If the children
do
have fleas at least he'd know what to do about it.'

‘We could try the Rector, I suppose,' Elinor said doubtfully. ‘Though it's a bit much to put something like this on a housekeeper. If he had a wife it would be different.'

‘Well, we've got to find somewhere for them to go or we'll be here all night.' Margaret was beginning to feel irritable.

‘Let's make a start in Market Cottages,' Elinor suggested. ‘That's the closest and at least it's on the level.'

Not very hopefully Margaret agreed with her. The cottages in Market Row were small ones, two up, two down, and she couldn't see many of them having room for an extra child. But as she herself had said something had to be done or the children would be sleeping under the stars.

Two of the other volunteers, looking equally harassed, joined them and the remaining children were split into three groups, one to tour the houses in Glebe Bottom, one to be despatched to the Rectory and one, with Margaret as leader, to try Market Row.

‘Come along then, children,' she said, summoning up her best schoolroom manner.

‘Where are we bleedin'going now?' The speaker was one of the bigger boys, a gawky lad with a narrow, aggressive face.

‘To find you a bed for the night.'

‘I don't want a bed here,' a small girl wailed. She was clutching tight to the hand of her older sister and her small face was streaked with dirt and tiredness. ‘I want to go home!'

‘That wouldn't be a very good idea,' Margaret said gently. ‘It might not be very safe. There could be bombs.'

‘We ain't afraid of bombs,' the big boy said. ‘We ain't afraid of anything.'

‘I'm sure you're not. But it's still best for you to be here for the time being,' Margaret said. ‘Come on, let's go, shall we? The sooner we do, the sooner you can have something to eat and a nice cup of tea.'

With her small group she started along the road in the direction of Market Cottages. They followed her with a mixture of reluctance and defiance and her heart bled for them. How strange and terrifying this must seem to them!

At the first two houses she tried Margaret drew a blank, met by a shaking of heads and a door firmly closed in her face. At the third she managed to settle one of her charges, the small boy who had been turned down by Winnie Parfitt, and by the time they had reached the end of the road two houses further on ‘Nosey'Parker's wife reluctantly agreed to take the older boy. But nobody, it seemed, had room for more than one child and Margaret was reluctant to split up the pair of sisters.

‘We're stopping together,' they insisted when Margaret tried to suggest gently that it might be necessary and her ready sympathy went out to them.

They were an odd pair, as scruffy as any of the children, the older one tall and gangly with her cotton dress so short that Margaret caught an occasional glimpse of her knickers, the younger small and undersized so that her frock, an obvious hand-me-down, reached almost to her ankles. Both had cropped hair, probably as a result of an edict of ‘the flea lady', both looked pale and wan and disturbingly old before their time. Yet in contrast to this both were possessors of the most beautiful dark brown eyes Margaret had ever seen.

At the end of the row where the lane narrowed and began to curve steeply upwards towards the dairy and the Co-operative farm Margaret stopped. Pointless to go any further. The farm manager's wife was a sharp shrewish woman who would almost certainly turn them away though Margaret suspected that if compulsory billeting was brought in she would be found to have plenty of room. But in the end what good would that do? Forcing children into homes where they were not wanted would be a recipe for disaster in her opinion.

Sighing she turned back.

‘Are you all right, girls?' Even as she spoke the words she knew it was a stupid thing to say and the older girl glowered back at her scornfully.

The younger one, however, was close to tears.

‘I'm tired!' she wailed.

‘Keep quite, our Marie,' the older girl warned.

‘But I am! Oh'Lainey, I'm tired!'

‘Keep quiet, I said!' The older girl, Elaine, punished her sister with a vicious kick on the shin and the little girl's tears, held back for so long by sheer effort of will, overflowed.

‘Don't start blubbering!' Elaine said in disgust.

The child puckered up her mouth in an effort to stop the tears but it was useless. They flowed down her dirt streaked cheeks and she scrubbed at them with a grubby hand.

‘Oh don't!' Margaret dropped to her knees beside the child, searching in her pocket for a handkerchief. ‘Don't cry, love.'

‘I want to go home!' It was a soft pitiful mew like a lost kitten and suddenly Margaret made up her mind. She couldn't tramp these children round the streets any longer. She would take them home with her. It couldn't be a permanent arrangement, of course, for she was out at work all day and they needed to be properly looked after, with a good breakfast to go to school on and a square meal to come home to at night. But at least it would mean their ordeal didn't have to last any longer tonight.

‘Come on, I'm going to take you back to my house,' she said.

There was no response of gratitude. The older girl still merely glowered at her, the younger began to trudge along, head bent, on feet that scuffed the ground with each exhausted step.

Seeing her weariness, Margaret dropped to her knees beside the child.

‘I'll carry you, love.'

She picked her up. The roughly cut unwashed hair against her chin made her wrinkle her nose and the girl's shoes, reinforced with metal studs beneath the toes like a boy's to make them last longer banged against her hip but she felt a sense of satisfaction:

At least she was doing her bit towards the war effort. It might not be much, but it was something.

‘They can't stay, you know,' Harry said. ‘They'll have to go as soon as you can find someone willing to take them.'

After reluctantly allowing Margaret to give them a good scrub and ravenously wolfing down a supper of bread and cheese, the girls had at last gone to bed, sleeping side by side in the double bed in the spare bedroom. This in itself had caused a stir for at first they had insisted they wanted to sleep
under
the bed as they did at home.