Kisses on a Postcard

by Terence Frisby

  Best of all, Mr Holman, a keen fisherman, took Jack and me on some all-night trout-fishing trips on the river during the school holidays. The thrill of being allowed to do such a thing, of having the responsibility of staying awake all night, was considerable. The actual event involved a walk in the late-evening light; we were full of anticipation, following a footpath down the hill from the back of the estate to the river, loaded with a borrowed rod each, bait, sandwiches, wet gear, a blanket, drinks and a torch. This was followed by long hours of just sitting on the bank in the dark with rod and line, often bored, often frightened of the noises in the pitch-black woods that surrounded us. Sometimes these noises came, mysteriously, from the river itself, sudden splashes that could not have been caused by the flow: perhaps fish, perhaps an otter, perhaps something else in our overheated imaginations.

  We broke the night up with sandwiches and hot drinks from a Thermos. Occasionally your line jumped from a bite and all was excitement. It was generally an eel to throw back or kill if the hook was too far down. By torchlight we pushed squirming worms longways onto the hooks for bait and caught the odd trout or three which went into our keep net. I never worked out how the fish saw the worms in the dark; perhaps they smelled them. Up we would trudge in the early-morning light, leave Mr Holman, go home to gut our catch, watch Auntie Rose fry them for breakfast, eat them and fall into bed as Mr Holman got the morning train to his office in Plymouth. In spite of all the fright, cold and boredom I was always eager to be asked again.

  Another all-night thrill, which happened to me only twice I think, was to be allowed – again in the holidays – to do the night shift in the signal box of the next section down the line, Largan box. The signalmen in the box on Doublebois station were local and permanent. Jimmy Peters’ dad was one at some point. Three miles down the line, controlling the next section, was a box right in the heart of the Fowey Valley, deep in the woods, a few yards from the river. These signalmen were not local, only temporary, often taking lodgings in one or other of Railway Cottages. The shifts were 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. We were often allowed in the box on the station but it was an event to be allowed to go down to the other box. It was far enough to demand that we had to be accompanied there and back on the line. So it meant an entire shift with the signalman. One summer’s evening I went down and spent from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. in the box.

  It was quite different from the fishing experience. The noise of the nearby river was a soothing background outside the safety of the dimly lit box. On that warm summer’s night it became a focus for every moth in the woods. They fluttered in and flopped down round the oil lamp and hovered and mated and died by the hundred. The few trains, nearly all goods, were in mid-rush down the valley or trying to gain speed for the climb, so clattered swiftly past the box with a wave from the driver and fireman, who you could see in the light from the locomotive’s furnace. Another wave from the guard, who could see us but who was just a shadow. I was allowed to heave on the great heavy signal levers, nearly as tall as me, and to ring the warning bells to the next section. In the long silences between the trains we saw owls float soundlessly down the line. Sometimes, their eyes turned towards us, just caught gleaming yellow in the far limits of our light, we saw foxes and badgers – lions and tigers in my imagination – crossing, vulnerable for a few yards on the rails before the undergrowth swallowed them. After the sun rose and came shining down the line there was the three-mile walk in the early-morning light, straight into its beams, back up the track to Doublebois, breakfast and bed.

  After one of the empty intervals, soldiers once more descended on Doublebois. The Big House was requisitioned and overflowed. The Nissen huts were reoccupied. Girls took to walking the lanes near by with increasing frequency; Elsie, now abundantly fifteen, lost interest in me. If the vackies had shocked nearby Dobwalls, the soldiers stunned it. As lorries trundled along the main road their bawdy songs rang out:

  Hitler has only got one ball.

  Goering has two but very small.

  Himmler has something similar

  And poor old Goebbels has no balls at all.

  The Miss Polmanors of the village rushed to the Methodist minister. ‘Mr Buckroyd, Mr Buckroyd, have you heard—’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ and then wearily, ‘There’s a war on.’

  Camp concerts were huge events. Entertainment was at a premium in our backwater. The locals – and especially the children – did their best to get places. Professional entertainers and the Looe Fishermen’s Choir performed in the long Nissen hut that was the camp canteen. I remember one concert in particular. The compere, dressed as a vicar, made an announcement that brought a shout of laughter and left me puzzled: ‘I should like to apologise to Mr Shorthouse for misspelling his name in the parish magazine.’ What’s funny about that? When I had made the connection I thought for days about how rude and clever it was: not just one possible subversive answer, but two.

  After the choir a sing-song, ‘You Are My Sunshine’. Rows of soldiers and not enough girls sang with a sudden, rolling, bellowing roar and swayed as they sang. The force and enthusiasm of all those open male throats gave that song an emotional power the composer could only have dreamed of. Oh, my wartime childhood: the stinging smoke and sickly beer smell; the distant light on the stage; and here in the comforting dark, rows of soldiers and the meagre ration of girls.

  It was my childhood but it was their youth: hands tight round willing waists; male fingers pressing into thin summer frocks; female cheeks against harsh Army tunics; bawling out their fervour for the moment with a passion I could sense but not comprehend. Their passion was not to get at the Germans, of course, but to stay – for ever if possible – in the warm half-dark, in the promise of a smile and against the pressure of another body that might be snatched away. They had the threat of extinction to sharpen their senses.

  We kids hung round the soldiers constantly, cadging rides, holding their rifles, wearing their forage caps and, when the sentries allowed us to, swinging open the big iron gates at the entrances to the drives of Doublebois House so that cars, lorries and even Bren Carriers could rumble in and out. Then we could swing the twelve-foot-long things closed again with a satisfying clang. The gates were deemed by the military too much of a bother constantly to open and close so were taken off their hinges and leant against the wall to be removed. Instead of swinging them we just sat on them.

  The smallest of us all was Teddy Camberwell, a five-year-old, evacuated with his mother and baby sister. He was not one of us Welling crowd. I call him Teddy Camberwell, but I don’t remember his surname, just that he was bombed out from Camberwell in the Blitz. Teddy, his mother and little sister were billeted at 3 Railway Cottages and he tagged along with us in most of our play. On this day he was at the end of a row of us sitting on the gate when a lorry came round the corner, caught the gate, tipped it forward and left us falling backwards into the bushes – except for Teddy. He was thrown forward and went under the gate. And the gate went under the lorry.

  I clambered out and looked at the scene before me: the driver, staring aghast at the result of his tiny error; the unbelieving sentry; three other children, one with his hand in his mouth, all beyond tears; Teddy’s crushed body under the gate, leaking blood and other things. I turned and ran for the only help I trusted. ‘Auntie Rose, Auntie Rose. Come quickly, Teddy Camberwell’s dead. He’s dead. Teddy Camberwell’s dead.’

  I arrived at our house at the far end of the Court as Auntie Rose emerged. She stared at me, shocked. ‘You’re covered in blood.’ This was nothing, just scratches from the bushes I had landed in.

  ‘Teddy Camberwell’s dead.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘A lorry went over the gate.’

  We ran back up to the main road. The sentry, accompanied by the bemused driver and three children, was walking up the main road carrying Teddy’s tiny, crumpled body to his home at 3 Railway Cottages.

  Auntie Ros
e shouted at them. ‘What are you doing? What are you doing, man?’

  ‘Are you the mother?’ asked the sentry, probably dreading the answer.

  ‘No, where are you taking him?’

  ‘The boys said he lives in the cottages, here.’

  ‘What are you trying to do? Give his mother a present, you bloody fool? Take him back to the camp.’

  The sentry, no more than a teenager, was hopelessly out of his depth. ‘I didn’t know where to—’

  Auntie Rose practically pushed him. ‘Go on. Take him to your medical officer. His mother’ll be out any minute.’ She turned to me. ‘You, into the wash-house and get that blood off you. You, Jimmy and Brian, home and tell your mams. Alan, go home and get Miss Laity to come to my house.’ Alan was billeted with the district nurse.

  I next saw Auntie Rose taking Teddy’s mother into our house, where she lay collapsed and sobbing on the sofa, watched by Jack’s and my detached, curious eyes until we were driven out. So much emotion seemed more than one person could contain. Her body jerked and heaved as her grief tore its way out of her.

  The next day a soldier appeared in the Court: a private, Teddy’s father. He was accompanied by an awkward-looking Army padre, an officer, and stood mutely, arms pinned to his side by his wife as she clung to him and sobbed anew. What guilt she must have suffered besides her simple agony. To have brought her son to Cornwall for safety and then to have this news for his father. Auntie Rose had already washed, dressed and laid out Teddy, something she was experienced in, so I was later told, from her days in the mining village in South Wales.

  One day later, Jack and I, Jimmy Peters, Brian Bunney, Harold Packham and Ken Plummer were to carry Teddy’s coffin to the station to put it on the 9 a.m. Cornish Riviera express to Paddington: a farewell gesture from us all. The train was stopped especially. A makeshift military band from the camp was to lead us. The whole of Doublebois came out to watch. A funeral march was considered inappropriate for so small a child, so some genius of military bandsmanship used his discretion and ‘Early One Morning’ rang tinnily out as we carried the tiny coffin from 3 Railway Cottages to the station, followed by Teddy’s father and mother carrying his oblivious baby sister.

  Because I was the smallest boy, I was one of the two in the middle. My shoulders weren’t high enough so I had to hold my hands up to reach the coffin. The couple of hundred yards to the station seemed endless. Teddy’s coffin was not long enough to accommodate three boys a side and nobody had taught us to walk in step and, as we tripped and shuffled along, my heels and calves were skinned by the hobnail boots of the boys behind as I inflicted similar injuries on the boy in front, whose heels were meanwhile gashing my shins. Mr Rawlings the stationmaster, stout and self-important, held the train as we filed down the slope of Station Approach between two rows of soldiers presenting reversed arms.

  Passengers stared from the train as we clumsily put Teddy in the smelly guard’s van, on to straw that was laid for some tethered creature, a calf or goat, which stirred uneasily at the activity round it.

  The train departed and we turned and ran hard to our schools in Dobwalls over a mile away, each to our different classes. I was the only one in Junior Vackies. Because I was good at my lessons I was one of Mrs Langdon’s favourites. But my habit of arriving late in the morning and returning late from lunch because of games and digressions with the bigger boys had gone too far this time.

  She stared sternly at me. ‘Terry Frisby, you’re late again.’

  All I could produce was heavy breathing.

  ‘What is your excuse this time?’

  I couldn’t utter.

  ‘Look at the time. And your legs. All scratched and bloody. What have you been doing? Fighting? Climbing?’

  ‘No, Miss.’ I managed.

  ‘Forty minutes you’re late. This is a record, I think.’

  One of the vackies who lived at Treburgie Farm near Doublebois put her hand up. ‘Please, Miss. Miss.’

  ‘Be quiet, June Burford. Terry, come here.’

  The dreaded ruler was produced. God knows how such a failure of communication had occurred in our gossip-ridden little community but Mrs Langdon in Dobwalls somehow knew nothing of the Doublebois farewell ceremony. I got six whacks across my knuckles and broke into breathless sobs. It had all finally got to me.

  Mrs Langdon was not a liberal wielder of the ruler and probably didn’t feel that happy herself. ‘Now go to your place and don’t be late again.’

  June didn’t give up. ‘Please, Miss.’

  ‘Be quiet, June.’

  My sobs grew louder.

  ‘And stop snivelling, Terry. You’ve had that much before and earned it.’

  ‘Please, Miss.’ June’s arm was straining for the ceiling.

  Mrs Langdon turned rattily to her. ‘Yes. What is it, June?’

  ‘Please, Miss. He’s been carrying Teddy Camberwell’s coffin. They put it on the train this morning at Doublebois.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  The bunney children’s uncle Ned drove a lorry for Blamey and Morgan. In school holidays, Blamey and Morgan’s mill was a magnet for us. You could slide down chutes built for sacks of grain, rope them together and help wind them out of first-floor loading bays into the lorry, sit in piles of loose grain or cow cake and run it through your hands as you sank into it. There were a hundred other ways we could supposedly help in this busy workplace as long as we behaved ourselves and the men tolerated us, or until we were ordered out by authority, or – sad days – not allowed in at all.

  Trips with the Bunneys’ Uncle Ned were the best of all as he delivered produce to the farms in the area. The Bunney children had priority; he could get two, or perhaps three, in the cab with him, so we others had to hang about and hope. Occasionally, depending on the load, the bigger boys could ride in the back, clinging to the sacks as the lorry wove its way through the empty roads and lanes. Meeting another vehicle was rare, just tractors, district nurse Laity – she had both a car and a bike – and the occasional piece of military hardware: a Bren Carrier, a dispatch rider, a Land-Rover and, later, jeeps. After the loads were delivered we could all stand in the empty back, holding on to the frame attached to the cab, the wind in our hair, shouting and singing songs that were blown away, waving madly at anyone we saw.

  One day Ned took a bend a bit sharply, hit a bump at the same time and the oldest Bunney, David, shot into the air out of the lorry and over the hedge. Frightened, we beat on top of the cab and shouted. The lorry pulled up, we told Ned and all of us raced back to the bend. We peered through and over the hedge. No David. As we searched we heard a shout from down the road beyond the lorry and there was David clambering over a gate. He had run across the field after us, afraid he would be left behind. A bush had broken his fall and he had nothing more than the scratches we could see and the odd bruise. I don’t remember his uncle’s reaction but he must have been mightily relieved. We all crammed into the cab for the rest of the journey home and later boasted madly about the incident, exaggerating whenever possible. Lorry rides ceased for the remainder of that holiday, to be continued later.

  The lorry took us to many farms that merge into one in my memory except when we went across the moor. Bodmin Moor in its many moods I remember with clarity, almost awe. We went as far as Jamaica Inn on the A30, a name that held a unique place in our imagination; we expected to see smugglers and Excise men, disappointed with the farm labourers and occasional travelling salesmen who were in the bar while Ned had a pint and we stood outside with crisps or pop if we were lucky. We stopped at Dozmary Pool, supposedly bottomless, and stared at its surface, dark under the scudding clouds, and at the sedge, the gorse, the tufty grass that made up the forbidding landscape round it.

  Dozmary Pool had a legend that we all knew well: Giant Tredegor had made a pact with the Devil. He sold his soul in exchange for riches in his lifetime. After his death the Devil gave him the task of emptying Dozmary Pool with a limpet shell with a hole in it. T
his task to last until he succeeded or for eternity. Every so often Giant Tredegor grew fed up with this and tried to run away across the moor. The Devil would send his hounds after him to bring him back and if you listened carefully you could hear them howling. You could recognise this howling, we were told, because it sounded like the wind moaning in telephone wires – only there were no telephone wires on the moor. When we were out of the lorry we listened and, sure enough, there was the sound we had been told to expect. It must have been the wind soughing through the grass and round the rocks. We would climb back into the lorry, enjoyably scared, and look back at the cheerless stretch of water, glad to be leaving.

  We were also told that Dozmary Pool was the place where King Arthur threw Excalibur and the hand came out, caught it and waved it three times before disappearing. But looking at the place I couldn’t really make that connection; it was simply too bleak, free of Arthurian or any sort of romance. It was Giant Tredegor running from the Devil’s hounds that caught my imagination. Every time I walked the roads or lanes round Doublebois and heard the wind in the telephone wires I pictured the whole thing and looked over my shoulder.

  The moor was generally bleak, always menacing, or when low sullen clouds reigned, even dreary – it caught every weather front coming in off the Atlantic. But on a rare fine day it could be magnificent. The horizon stretched away, wild flowers blew in the eternal south-westerlies, the grass welcomed you to lie down in the sun. On such days there were plovers and lapwings, ravens, rooks and buzzards wheeling, distant rabbits who disappeared before you could blink, even shyer than the farmland rabbits we were always hunting. And, especially, there were larks everywhere, rising from the heather before us with their hysterical, cascading song. There was a story, often repeated to us complete with accent, about a cockney vacky, who, on first seeing and hearing a lark hovering and singing, pointed to it and said to his teacher, ‘Look, Miss, there’s a sparrer up there. He can’t go up and he can’t go down and ’ee ain’t ’arf ’ollering.’