The Twisted Way (3 page)

‘I’ll write, Mum’, he said. ‘I’ll write too,’ his mother replied, choked and uncertain. ‘I’ll send you some pocket money each week, sixpence if I can. Be careful how you spend it.’

‘Sixpence Mum, cor … that ain’t ’arf good.’ He would be rich. He cheered up.

Tom was learning to read; he was quite advanced for his age, a clever boy who could write his name and understood the meaning of many written words before he went to school, but his mother knew that a long letter from him would be out of the question. Most of the young teachers had joined the forces or were employed in some other war work so there were only retired and elderly teachers in the party to look after the children. It was a motley collection of human beings that left the small London suburb station that day in an old smoke-caked steam train commissioned for the purpose. The dingy black engine puffed into the station billowing a filthy cloud of smoke that swirled around the sad group on the platform as though to envelop them and protect them from what was to come.

‘Goodbye,’ Tom’s mother said, in unison with the other parents, tears brimming in her eyes, as she watched the train crammed with children chug its way out of the station. Small hands, some clutching Union Jacks, were waved out of the windows which were closed by the carers as soon as possible to avoid accidents and to prevent eyes filling with smuts. Mothers and some of the fathers in reserved occupations, including a few firemen and policemen, grouped disconsolately together on the platform and waved back. Some, like Tom’s mother, had tears in their eyes whilst others displayed little outward emotion but their faces were, with a few exceptions, stricken and anxious.

Some of the children thought that it was an adventure but homesickness would catch up with them later. Many of them chattered and laughed as the train clattered along although few had been away from home before.

‘What fun!’ one or two of the bolder children chorused as the more timid shrank back into their seats and tried not to cry. The more fortunate opened their packets of sandwiches and shared them with unaccustomed generosity with those who were not so lucky. Tom carefully unwrapped his. Hmm … jam without butter. His mother had said that it was extravagant to have both. He entered into the contagious benevolence and shared his small packet with the other children. Nobody noticed the lack of butter. It was wartime and hunger soon overcame any inhibitions as the group merged together. Middle class, lower class and slum dwellers became for a short time homogeneous.

Tom arrived at Everton railway station in the Midlands county of Russetshire with forty other children aged 
between five and eleven. They were herded onto a rattling 
old bus and taken to Enderly where they were to be allocated billets with local families. The children sang lustily as they were driven to the village hall which was a small dilapidated building that had been erected in the centre of the village shortly after the First World War. ‘Run rabbit run’ and ‘Hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line’ and other popular wartime songs recently learned permeated the air and lifted their flagging spirits, although several of the younger children had begun to cry.

On arrival they were given a glass of lemonade and a plain rich tea biscuit. Official-looking local ladies adorned in obligatory 1930s felt hats sat at a long trestle table with a list of names in front of them and did their best to pair the children up with suitable hosts.

Tom wondered for a few moments if he had been delivered to a cattle market. He had heard somewhere that cattle were sold or chosen by local farmers in such places, though he was not sure what the procedure was. The cold atmosphere increased his discomfort, fingers and feet merging on numbness, and a sad sinking feeling settling like a lump of lead in the pit of his stomach. The rain rattled on the thin corrugated roof of the hall and the rough painted concrete floor was unpleasant underfoot. He thought of his mother and longed to be home once again, to feel her warm young arms around him and toast his feet by the old black range. He was directed, along with several of the other children, to sit on one of the low wooden benches that had been placed round the edge of the main room of the hall. The majority of the evacuees soon became decidedly restless. There was a small kitchen at the back where a young girl of about fourteen was washing up the lemonade glasses in soapy water before wiping them with a scruffy tea towel and placing them in a shabby wooden cupboard above the sink. Tom could just see her and watched her work. Hunger clawed at his insides but apart from the small glass of home-made over-sweet lemonade and broken rich tea biscuit it seemed nothing more was to be offered to the children. At least he could not see any food. His stomach rumbled, his eyes felt heavy and his mind drifted for a while as he waited.

‘I want a little girl,’ he heard one woman say in a strident tone. He woke up from his reverie with a start. ‘I want one who will be company for my Lizzie,’ she continued. Nobody it seemed wanted a small timid boy.

Tom sighed. He had started to wet himself, not much but it was getting difficult to hang on. His bladder ached but fear stopped him from asking for a toilet and he pressed himself further into the shadows in one corner of the room.

‘Oh, Mum – come and fetch me home,’ he mumbled under his breath. ‘Perhaps they’ll forget all about me. I might escape and catch a train home ... oh Mum.’

Mrs Alicia Merryweather looked with interest at the sad little boy. She had come to help with the refreshments and had decided not, after all, to take in an evacuee because her husband was far from well, although she had earlier arranged to have one when the possibility of having evacuees in the village had first been put forward. One look at Tom’s forlorn face convinced her that she would take one after all.

‘I’ll take that little chap, Madge,’ she said to her friend who was officially in charge. Madge was relieved. It looked as though they were going to be short of people to take in all these children. Her head was beginning to spin and ache. She hadn’t realised that the villagers would pick and choose and squabble with such ferocity about which children they would allow to share their homes. Poor kids, they were all needy in her opinion.

‘Thank goodness,’ she said. ‘The whole thing is getting me down. I need a couple of aspirin.’

Some of the girls who had still not been allocated billets were crying, their sobs getting louder by the minute, whilst several bold and cheeky older boys ran round the room playing tag until they were cautioned by the village vicar who had arrived with obvious reluctance and fingered his dog collar with nervous jabs for a few moments before attempting to make himself useful.

‘Can I help?’ his deep voice boomed out after he had composed himself. He was not anxious to become involved but had been coerced into helping by his wife. ‘We must do our bit, set an example in the village,’ she had insisted but did not herself offer to take in any of the London ragamuffins, as she had labelled them.

‘Some of those have dirty habits,’ she said with disdain. ‘What a scruffy looking lot I saw arriving. They probably never change their underwear or clean their teeth. Ugh, they are not for me. Just say, dear, that we do not have a spare bedroom.’ The vicar thought with sadness and shame about the latter remark. The vicarage boasted five bedrooms, all quite well furnished as most of the villagers knew. His two sons had joined the forces. At least they were doing their bit and that salved his conscience. He sighed. His wife was a stubborn self-opinionated woman who made his efforts to follow his vocation very difficult.

Tom put his small cold hand into Alicia’s with relief. She gave it a reassuring squeeze and spoke gently.

‘Don’t worry dear. I’ve nearly finished here and we can go home, get you a proper meal. The toilet is over there if you want it.’ She pointed to a wooden door in the corner of the room and patted his hair, looking with undisguised and sincere interest at his earnest thin little face with the deeply dimpled chin. What a dear little boy. She smiled at him, her warm generous face lighting up, and he began to relax.

Thus began Tom’s stay with the Merryweather family, first with Alicia and Will in Honeysuckle Cottage and five years later, when they were no longer able to take care of him, with their daughter Janet and her husband James Anderson in Primrose House on the edge of the village.

Tom’s mother was not able to write to him as planned. Before she made her way to the Anderson shelter that evening a bomb hit the house. She lay crushed and mutilated beneath the rubble, covered by the home that she had loved and imagined invincible. Her brief funeral in a local churchyard was attended by Tom’s father and his two aunts who were of the opinion that the service would not be suitable for a child. There was too much sadness in London and he would only fret.

‘Not right for kids, ’e’s better off in that there country place,’ Robert’s old Aunt Aggie had urged and he had agreed.

Tom’s father visited him shortly after his arrival in Enderly. ‘Your mother son, she’s gone ...’ He held his head in his hands and didn’t know how to continue.

Tom understood.

‘Dad,’ he said with a wisdom beyond his years, ‘don’t fret about me. I’ll be all right.’

Tom could not cry. The misery foisted upon him was deep and frightening. He felt lost and alone.

His father handed him a small cardboard box. ‘Keep this safe Tom. It was your mother’s.’ Tom looked inside the box where his mother’s silver cross and chain nestled in some cotton wool; it was the one she had always worn round her neck and once told him had belonged to her mother.

‘Course, Dad.’ His small face crumpled though his eyes remained dry and expressionless. ‘I’ll keep it safe.’ Reality would confront him later.

When it did Alicia Merryweather tried to console him and he clung to her for comfort and affection. She cradled him in her arms as a vision of his London home invaded his young mind. He pictured the shelter where he slept on a bench near his mother, the fish pond and mean backyard. The nightmare of broken bricks, flames and charred wood that had terrified him then still evoked vivid memories of whistling bombs, the smell of burning buildings, fire engines clanging and ambulances. Black planes like large birds once again droned above him in his imagination, their engine sounds painfully familiar.

‘You’ll be all right with us, love,’ she reassured him. ‘You can stay in our cottage as long as we can look after you my lovey.’ She was concerned about her own and her husband’s health but was determined to do her best for Tom as long as she was able to.

‘What a brave little boy,’ he heard her say to her husband in her quiet soft country voice. ‘Time is a great healer. We’ll take care of him.’ And they did.

Tom experienced the joys of country life. Red and yellow Pershore plums grew in the Merryweathers’ garden and the yellow ones were made into his favourite jam, whilst the others were bottled and stored for the winter. A Worcester Pearmain apple tree provided fresh apples which he was allowed to pick. They were not good keepers and considered unsuitable to store away in the cottage roof with the Coxes and other more durable varieties but he enjoyed their fresh crisp taste. He had accompanied his mother to the local greengrocers in London to buy fruit and vegetables but this was a different experience. The Merryweathers’ garden provided them with fresh vegetables most of the year round. Rabbits were given to the family, together with the odd duck or partridge, by fellow farmworkers who were conscious of Will Merryweather’s fragile state of health and were anxious to help. Will had suffered for several years with rheumatoid arthritis which was becoming worse.

The friendship of the good-hearted country folk surprised Tom. It was very different to life in south London where many of their neighbours were too busy going about their own business to bother to say good morning let alone be concerned about anybody else’s state of health. He began to realize how lucky he was to live with the Merryweathers. The villagers cherished their independence; most of them were not wealthy, but helped the less fortunate with a generous spirit which provoked admiration and awe in the young child. Tom liked to help Mr Merryweather. He fetched his slippers, pipe and paper and tried to make himself generally useful. It was the least he could do. The bombing raids and carnage he had experienced in London were for a while pushed to the back of his mind and he started to relax.

Many of the village cottages were black and white; some were tied to the few big landowners, but all, including the Merryweathers’, lacked modern conveniences, in particular running water, and had a privy at the bottom of the garden. Cooking was done on a paraffin stove in a small kitchen off the main living room. Alicia’s father had once owned the cottage and had left it to his daughter so they were fortunate. There was a good deep well in the front garden with a bucket hanging from its slate roof. All their water had to be hoisted up every day, which was hard work. Tom loved the small green lawn at the back of the cottage and the flowers – hollyhocks, pansies, geraniums, roses and marigolds – that provided bright colours during the summer months. He learned their names and how to care for them, planted vegetable seeds for Will and helped him with the weeding and staking of peas and beans; it was knowledge that was to stand him in good stead later on.

Will owned a good-natured collie dog called Gyp, black and white with soft fur and appealing brown eyes who followed him everywhere. Tom enjoyed stroking the dog and the feel of his soft muzzle as he pressed it into his hand. It instilled in the boy a love of dogs which would remain with him for the rest of his life.

Will was proud of his large bushy moustache that reminded Tom of a neat thatched roof as it formed a half circle over his top lip. He was fascinated as he watched him eat his supper of bread and milk every evening and wondered why more of the bread and milk did not stick to those thick whiskers.

‘Hush boy,’ Will would say in an impatient tone. ‘I’ve got the wireless on now and I want to hear the news.’ Tom sat on an old three-legged stool by his feet, the dog curled up between them, and attempted to be as silent as a church mouse. He was happy.