by Anne Bennett
‘Maybe,’ Jenny said. ‘Let’s go to the back of the train and see if we can get into the guard’s van.’
‘Why?’
‘You’ll see.’
It seemed a long way to the end, and any minute they expected the train to move, but they eventually reached the guard’s van and Jenny peeped through the window. The guard was in there taking luggage from the platform and packing it in the van, and Jenny chewed on her thumbnail and wondered how to get in without him seeing them.
‘What we doing here?’ Billy asked.
‘Ssh,’ Jenny cautioned. ‘If we can get into the guard’s van we can travel all the way to Birmingham in it.’
‘Without paying?’
‘Have to be without paying, won’t it, Sally?’ Jenny said. ‘Less you’ve got some money stashed away somewhere.’
‘Hardly.’
‘Well, then,’ Jenny said. ‘There’re plenty of crates and sacks we can hide behind.’
As she watched, suddenly the guard was called away. Quick as a flash, she opened the door and, pulling the other two behind her, led them to some crates right at the back of the van.
‘How will we know where to get off if all the stations haven’t got no names?’ Billy whispered . .
‘Ssh,’ Jenny said, because the guard was back on the train and closing the big sliding doors. There was a piercing whistle and then the train was on its way. It was hard to keep in the one position, Jenny realised, though she was cheered by the miles the train was eating up. She stretched her legs as far as she could without their being seen because she was afraid of cramp. Eventually she felt first Billy and then Sally sag against her as they succumbed to sleep, lulled by the movement of the train. How Jenny wanted to join them. She hadn’t had much sleep all told but she knew she couldn’t risk that. The train seemed to be stopping at every station and at each one the guard’s van was opened to offload some stuff or take more on board. She could see when the doors were open that the stations were small, no bigger than Lichfield, and in some cases much smaller. Jenny was fairly certain that they would know Birmingham by its size, but if she allowed herself to go to sleep they could go sailing past.
When the guard’s van doors opened to the one of the bustling platforms of New Street Station Jenny knew straight away. She shook Sally and Billy awake. They were bleary-eyed and stiff but saw as Jenny did that the guard had so many packages to unload they could easily be discovered. Fortunately he was so occupied that it was easy to slip out one by one when his back was turned, and on that teeming platform no one noticed them. They sat on a bench while Jenny shared out the remaining food, and then they set out on the last leg of their journey to Bristol Street and Terry.
At the same moment as the children were walking towards Bristol Street, Dan Wainwright – a grocer in Rugeley – was sitting facing Sergeant George Newbury. ‘Might be nothing in it,’ Wainwright said. ‘But it was with them Germans we found hiding out last week after parachuting out their plane. I got to thinking that if she found one, she’d likely harbour him – and then get killed in her bed, most likely – ’cos she’s as nutty as a bleeding fruitcake.’
‘Now, now, Dan,’ the sergeant chided. ‘That is no way to speak about Lady Hammersmith.’
‘Oh, come on, Sarge. Everyone knows she’s tuppence short of a shilling.’
‘All right, so she is a little strange,’ conceded the policeman. ‘And stranger still since the army commandeered her house and she had to move into the Lodge, but what makes you think she’s harbouring anyone?’
‘The food she buys,’ Dan Wainwright told him. ‘She don’t understand the rationing and can’t get it that she can only have so much stuff and no more. She’s always on about it, and then she buys lots of bread ’cos it’s not on ration, and my Bessie does the milk round and she says Lady Hammersmith has two large jugs to fill every day and she sometimes has three. So what is she doing with all that food if she isn’t feeding someone else as well?’
The sergeant thought for a moment. ‘It is strange, I’ll give you that. I’ve had no reports of any planes going down, apart from that one last week, but we’ll go up and have a look anyway.’
The policeman was very gentle with Lady Hammersmith, especially when he noted the vacant eyes and manner, and thought it a shame that the family that lived in Rugeley for generations should die out with this vague old lady, because the family’s four fine sons had been killed in the Great War. But he explained about the food, and asked her politely why she needed so much, being a lady on her own.
‘Not that much food,’ Lady Hammersmith said. ‘Mr Wainwright won’t let me have any more. I see it on the shelf and I have money but he won’t let me have it.’
‘You buy bread.’
‘Oh, yes, he lets me buy lots of bread.’
‘But why would you want so much bread?’
Lady Hammersmith gave a toss of her head. ‘That’s my business.’
‘Are you sharing it with someone else?’
‘Don’t want to tell you,’ Lady Hammersmith said childishly. ‘You’ll take them away.’
Them? The policemen thought, and a memory stirred in his brain of the missing children the copper at Penkridge had told him about. Said they were three young evacuees gone missing from Rugeley and he had never heard that they’d been found. ‘Lady Hammersmith,’ he said, ‘you know it’s wrong to lie?’
The lady nodded her head slowly and he said, ‘So you must tell me. Have you got children living here?’
He saw the slump of her shoulder and heard the sigh that escaped from her before she said, ‘Not here, not in the house.’
‘Then where are they?’
‘In the barn at the back of the Lodge,’ Lady Hammersmith said.
‘I must see them,’ the policemen said and, with another sigh, Lady Hammersmith led him to the barn, released the padlock and opened the doors. The barn was completely empty.
‘They’re gone,’ she cried.
It was obvious there had been people there: there were beds made up of hay and bedding, and also left behind were three gas masks. Two were children’s ones, made to look like Mickey Mouse. Now the policeman was worried.
‘Where are the children, Lady Hammersmith?’
‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘They were here yesterday.’
‘You haven’t hurt the children in any way, Lady Hammersmith?’
‘Of course not.’ There was nothing wishy-washy about Lady Hammersmith’s denial. ‘I wouldn’t hurt children,’ she went on. ‘That would be a dreadful thing to do. But I don’t know where they are now.’
Sergeant Newbury couldn’t doubt her sincerity, and when he found the hole at the back of the barn, he guessed they had run away. Later, searching in the house, he came upon the stamped postcards they had been given to send home to say they had arrived safely.
But these poor children had not been able to send anything back. No wonder the family had been frantic, but at the time they had had nothing to go on; no lead to finding them at all. He had thought at the time it made no sense, sending unaccompanied children all over the country. Certainly adequate care had not been taken if three young children could be spirited away and disappear for over ten months.
Finding the children was now a priority, but as Sergeant Newbury drove back to the station, he began to wonder if the children might not be hiding away locally somewhere – they would have no money for bus or train fares and no idea where Birmingham was from here.
He called on the doctor as he reached the village, told him what Lady Hammersmith had done and advised him to visit her. ‘Maybe her days of living on her own up there are at an end,’ he said. ‘She needs looking after.’
‘It was only ever a matter of time,’ the doctor said. ‘Leave it to me.’
Sergeant Newbury was only too glad to do that and, once back at the station, he ordered a search of the area, certain the children were not far away.
Back in Birmingham, the children were just opening the door to D
rummond’s shop. Terry, who was serving behind the counter, looked up as the bell tinkled. His mouth dropped open as he stared at his siblings in absolute amazement. The waiting customers also looked and their chattering stopped; for a couple of seconds there was absolute silence, though not all of them knew who the dirty, bedraggled children were.
Jenny’s relief at seeing her brother was immense. She had brought her sister and brother this far, and now she wanted someone else to take charge. ‘Terry,’ she cried. ‘Help us.’
Terry completely ignored the customer he was in the middle of serving and almost vaulted over the counter. Seconds later he was hugging Jenny, Sally and Billy tight, as if he would never let them got again. And though he wept with the children, through his tears he was asking them where they had come from and where they had been all those months, and the children seemed too overwrought to tell him anything as they continued to sob.
Neil was also astounded at the arrival of the children, whom he knew Terry had been worried sick about, and he told his uncle and the waiting shoppers the story as far as he knew it. The customer looked at the little distressed group with sympathy as Billy pulled himself away from Terry’s embrace, scrubbed at his eyes with his coat sleeve and said, ‘Have you got any food, Terry, ’cos I’m starving? We’re all starving.’ Terry looked at his two sisters and they nodded their heads enthusiastically.
Mr Drummond laughed. ‘First things first,’ he said to Terry. ‘Feed the troops and ask questions later. Take them up to my wife and I’m sure she’ll find something.’
With rationing the way it was, though, Mrs Drummond was a bit stumped. ‘Will porridge be all right?’ she asked. ‘You can have treacle to sweeten it.’
Jenny felt herself relax, for she felt safe now she had arrived. Porridge was at least familiar. She wasn’t sure that she could speak without crying and a nod seemed awfully rude. Fortunately, Mrs Drummond seemed to understand how upset they were, and while she made a big pan of porridge, Terry helped them off with their outer clothes and showed them where the bathroom was, knowing Mrs Drummond wouldn’t let them eat with such dirty hands. Within a few minutes of their arrival, they were sitting at the table watching Mrs Drummond ladle thick and creamy porridge into three bowls.
They ate ravenously, though Jenny reminded herself that she was twelve now and could not fall upon the food like some wild animal, as Billy was doing, but she wanted to and did not rebuke her young brother. Mrs Drummond’s eyes met Terry’s as they both realised how truly hungry the children were. When Billy finished before his sisters and lay back in his chair with a sigh of contentment, Mrs Drummond smiled as she said, ‘Could you manage some toast?’ and he gave her a big beam as he said with gusto, ‘Oh, yes please.’
The girls had some, too, so it was a little while before they were able to satisfy Terry’s curiosity.
‘Can you tell what happened now?’ he said at last. ‘No one seemed to know where you were.’
‘We didn’t know either,’ Jenny said.
‘Why didn’t you send the postcards and tell people?’
‘Because Lady Hammersmith took them off us,’ Jenny said. ‘She’d said she would send them for us, but I never thought she did.’
Terry shook his head. ‘No one received any,’ he said. ‘Who’s Lady Hammersmith?’
‘The woman who took us off,’ Jenny said, and then the story came tumbling out.
‘Everyone kept telling us no one would take on three children,’ Jenny said. ‘So we went right to the back of the room ’cos I didn’t want someone to come in and just choose one of us. And then the fire door opened beside us and Lady Hammersmith peered round.’
‘Only we didn’t know it was Lady Hammersmith then,’ Billy said.
‘No,’ Jenny said. ‘But even if we had … none of us had ever been evacuated before and they told us people would come and choose the children they wanted to live with them and when this elegant woman beckoned me over to her I went, and so did Sally and Billy because I was holding their hands. She didn’t want either of them, just me, but I said I wouldn’t go if she didn’t take us all. She didn’t argue, she just put us into this old jalopy of a car and drove for miles out into what was like the middle of nowhere.’
‘She stopped by this barn,’ Sally said. ‘Told us we’d be sleeping in there.’
‘And you two pulled a face,’ Billy said. ‘But I never ’cos I thought it were exciting to sleep in a barn and she’d made it real cosy.’
‘She had,’ Jenny agreed. ‘There were plenty of blankets and the hay beds were very comfortable and warm.’
‘And she brought us loads of food at first,’ Sally said.
‘Tons,’ Jenny agreed. ‘The pantry was stocked.’
‘Where was it from?’
‘The Big House,’ Jenny said. ‘She used to live on her own in this huge mansion of a place with an army of servants and then the army commandeered it.’
‘You can hardly blame them,’ Terry said. ‘Why was she on her own?’
‘There was no one else,’ Jenny said. ‘She told us her brothers had been killed in the Great War and her sisters succumbed to Spanish flu and her broken-hearted parents died shortly afterwards. Now there’s just her.’
‘She’s not married herself?’
The children all exchanged glances before Jenny said, ‘No … she’s a little … strange.’
‘Crazy?’
‘No, just strange.’
‘But kind,’ Billy said. ‘She didn’t even shout at me when I pulled all the flowers up in the garden thinking they was weeds. I mean, how was I expected to know the flipping difference?’
Billy’s indignation made Terry smile and he realised how much he had missed his little brother, missed them all.
‘She was kind,’ Jenny said. ‘And she had no one. All the servants left when she moved to the Lodge. I think she was just looking for a girl to train up because that’s what I would do: lay out her clothes and do her hair, help Sally to clean the place and cook her meals. She had never had to look after herself and didn’t know how to do it, and Billy would help now and again.’
‘You must have known that something was wrong?’
‘Yes, of course we did eventually,’ Jenny said. ‘But what could we do? We were miles away from everywhere and because no one had visited we assumed no one knew we were there. Whenever Lady Hammersmith had to go out we were locked in the barn and she would give us piles of books to read. We talked about escaping a lot but we’d nowhere to run to and were pretty sure that no one in the village would take three children on. And anyway, we all liked Lady Hammersmith and felt sorry for her.’
‘So what made you do it in the end?’
‘The food,’ Jenny said. ‘Or should I say lack of it. We’d see what she brought back from the shops and it was just a scrappy piece of cheese and meat and bacon and a tiny amount of marge, butter and sugar. Sometimes there would be a small bowl of eggs left, and that was always a good day, but most times we lived on bread and milk.’
‘That will be because of rationing,’
But of course they knew nothing of rationing and, Terry realised with a sinking heart, they didn’t know either that their father hadn’t returned from Dunkirk, nor about Ruth being sent to Ireland, and he badly needed Meg’s wisdom to know how to deal with it all.
TWENTY-SIX
Meg was in the field scything the hay when she saw the telegraph boy turn in the lane. Her heart flew to her mouth, especially when she saw the boy speak to Will, who was scything the area abutting the lane, and he pointed in her direction. Her mouth felt incredibly dry as she took it from the boy, and her hands shook so much she could barely rip it open, but when she did, she crushed the letter to her breast and tears spurted from her eyes. Enid and Joy, fearing bad news, were by Meg’s side immediately, their arms around her, and Stephen, sitting on the upturned barrow with his bad leg stretched out in front of him, lumbered to his feet and crossed the uneven hay field with difficulty.
CHILDREN RETURNED HOME. SAFE WITH TERRY. PLEASE ADVISE.
‘I must go to them,’ Meg said, and as she spoke she looked around the hay field guiltily; she knew if she returned to Birmingham she was leaving Enid and Will in the lurch. But the welfare of the children had to come first.
‘Of course,’ Enid said.
‘Any answer?’ the telegraph boy asked, and Meg said there was, but Enid held up her hand.
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘I have an idea. Why don’t they come here, all of them, your brother Terry as well? The boys can bunk in the rooms we had made in the barn and we’ll get another bed into your room for the girls to share. Give them a wee bit of a holiday in the fresh air and good country food to build them up. You need to be together with all you have gone through.’
‘It’s a lovely idea,’ Meg said. ‘I don’t know whether Terry would get the time off.’
‘And you won’t know unless you ask him,’ Enid pointed out. ‘Look, the boy is here waiting for your answer.
The children were ecstatic that they were going to see Meg, but Terry didn’t think he could ask for time off for himself.
‘Why not?’ asked Nicholas, who thought – as Enid did – that the family needed to spend time together. ‘Someone has got to take the kids, anyway.’
‘I know,’ Terry said. ‘I wouldn’t like them to go anywhere unaccompanied again, even though they are resourceful. Fancy sneaking on to the guard’s van.’
‘Yeah,’ Nicholas said, for both of them had been impressed.
‘But I don’t want to put them at that sort of risk again.’
‘So what’re you going to do? Deliver them to Meg and hightail it back here?’
‘Something like that.’
‘She’ll be up to her eyes haymaking now,’ Nicholas said. ‘And not able to give that much time to them straight away. I’m sure she expected you to stay a bit.’