The Runaway Children

by Sandy Taylor

  The woman in charge of us looked harassed – she was puffing away and holding her side as if she’d just walked all the way from London. ‘I need a cup of tea,’ she gasped to no one in particular.

  There was a long table running down the length of the hall that was laden with food and drinks. There were sandwiches and buns and little cakes with icing on the top, slices of spam and loaves of bread. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen so much food. Most of the kids had hardly eaten all day and their eyes were nearly popping out of their heads as they gazed at the feast in front of them. Men and women, mostly women, were standing around the edge of the hall, looking at us, and there was a short round woman standing on a little stage at the far end of the hall behind a loudspeaker.

  ‘Welcome, children,’ she said, so softly that we could barely hear her.

  A man from the back of the hall shouted, ‘Speak up, Gwyneth.’

  ‘Silly me,’ she said, giggling.

  The next time she spoke, her voice boomed out over the hall, making everyone jump, including herself.

  ‘Not doing very well, am I?’ she said, smiling down at everyone.

  ‘You’re doing a grand job, love,’ said the man at the back of the hall, ‘and your new perm looks lovely.’

  She patted her hair. ‘Thank you, Dai,’ she said shyly.

  ‘Now, I know you must be tired and hungry,’ she continued, ‘and a little frightened, so I won’t keep you long.’ She cleared her throat before going on. ‘On behalf of the people of Glengaryth, I would like to welcome you to our little village. We feel privileged to open up our homes to you dear children, and I hope that you will be very happy with us for the duration of your stay.’

  ‘Why is she talking so funny, Nell?’ said Olive.

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Do you know what I think, Nell?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think we’ve landed in another country.’

  ‘Can we eat now, missus?’ came a lone voice from the floor.

  That broke the ice and everyone laughed.

  ‘Of course you can eat, my lovelies,’ she said. ‘Tuck in and enjoy the food that the good ladies of Glengaryth have made for you.’

  Olive tugged at my coat. ‘What, love?’ I said.

  ‘I like it here, Nell.’

  I grinned at her. ‘I like it an’ all.’

  Olive pointed to the plump lady on the stage. ‘Do you think that lady will pick us?’

  ‘We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Well, I think they all look nice, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Nell, I think they all look nice – but I do hope that lady picks us.’

  The kids were swarming over the food as if they hadn’t eaten in weeks. They were piling it on their plates and scuttling off in all directions to eat it. I had a feeling that by the end of the day, a lot of it was going to be coming back up again.

  ‘You hungry, Olive?’

  ‘Starvin.’

  ‘Let’s tuck in then, or there won’t be anything left.’

  I noticed that the women were staring at Olive. Well, I supposed they would, because she was beautiful. A couple of them were talking to the plump lady and pointing our way, then I saw them shake their heads. I got the feeling that they wanted Olive but not me.

  We put some food on a plate and went to sit on a bench against the wall.

  ‘This is better than bread and scrape, Nell.’

  I thought so too; maybe this adventure that I had been dreading wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

  Children were being chosen and led away, some of them looking reluctant to leave the food behind.

  ‘Hello?’

  I looked up, and a lady was smiling down at Olive.

  ‘How old are you?’ she said.

  ‘Dunno,’ said Olive, looking up at her.

  ‘We’re sisters,’ I said quickly. ‘We stay together.’

  ‘How wonderful,’ said the lady. ‘Dylan,’ she called across the room.

  A tall man walked over to us. He was wearing a dark suit and a black hat and for some reason he had a white bandage around his neck – perhaps he had been injured in the war and come home for a rest. The beautiful lady looked up at him and then back down at us.

  ‘They’re sisters,’ she said.

  The man crouched down in front of us and grinned. ‘And do they have names?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, Dylan, of course they have names,’ said the lady, smiling at him. ‘And I’m sure they are beautiful names.’

  ‘I’m Nell,’ I said. ‘And this is my sister Olive.’

  ‘I knew you would have beautiful names,’ she said.

  ‘I have a feeling my wife has fallen in love with you two,’ said the man. ‘Am I right, Beth?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And I always trust my wife’s feelings. So, would you like to come and stay with us?’

  I looked at Olive and she nodded. All thoughts of the plump lady forgotten, she gazed up at the beautiful lady in front of her.

  ‘Yes, please,’ I said.

  ‘Can we finish our food first, missus?’ said Olive.

  ‘Of course you can,’ said the lady, laughing.

  Once we’d finished eating the lovely food, we picked up our parcels and followed the mister and the beautiful lady outside.

  We climbed into the back of a shiny black car and sat on big squashy seats. Olive had to kneel to look out the window. The car smelled of leather and cigarettes. I’d never been in a car before; it was lovely. I touched the seats, which were cool and smooth beneath my hand. I felt like a rich kid, not a skint one from the East End.

  Tony would have loved this. He was a bit of a bugger but I suddenly missed him. I missed his bony knees and holey jumper and the fact that he didn’t seem to give a damn what anyone thought of him. And the way he loved Mum with a fierceness that was sometimes hard to understand and which had got worse since Daddy went away to war. I stared out the window at the little houses and the people walking along the street, the women queuing outside the butcher’s. There weren’t any bombsites or damaged houses – maybe there wasn’t a war on in this place. It was hard to believe that only this morning me and Olive had been saying goodbye to Mum in Rannly Court and now we were in a big posh car heading to our new home. It felt funny sitting behind this man and woman who we didn’t really know, but it didn’t feel uncomfortable or scary. The lady kept turning round to smile at us and ask if we were all right, and to point out things that she thought we might be interested in.

  ‘That’s the village school,’ she said, ‘and that’s the shop and that’s the post office. You’ll be able to post your letters home from there.’

  I glanced at Olive to see if the word ‘home’ had upset her but she hadn’t even noticed, as far as I could tell.

  At the end of the village we turned into a lane that ran alongside an old stone church. At the back of the church was a field.

  ‘What’s that?’ Olive asked.

  ‘What’s what, dear?’ said the lady.

  ‘That thing with legs over there. That dirty thing. And that, and that… Blimey! There’s bloody hundreds of ’em.’

  ‘Those are sheep, dear.’

  ‘Sheep?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But sheep are supposed to be white, ain’t they? They’re supposed to be like little white clouds on legs!’

  ‘In picture books they are. But in real life they’re out in the muddy fields and they get dirty.’

  Olive pulled a face.

  ‘That don’t look right to me,’ she insisted. ‘That don’t look like what sheep are supposed to look like.’

  ‘Maybe it’s just our Welsh sheep that are so dirty,’ suggested the man.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Olive. She frowned and pressed her nose up against the car window. ‘They don’t look like sheep to me,’ she said again, with the utmost suspicion.

  ‘I don’t suppose there are
many sheep in London, dear.’

  ‘None at all,’ I said.

  ‘Well, there you are then.’

  Olive didn’t look convinced and continued to scowl at the dirty sheep.

  A short way up the lane we drove through some large iron gates and onto a gravelled driveway. The car stopped. ‘Here we are,’ said the man.

  We all got out and we stood by the car, looking at our new home. It was a beautiful old house. It was huge!

  ‘Which bit do you live in?’ said Olive, staring at the house in awe.

  The lady smiled down at her. ‘All of it, I suppose.’

  ‘Just for two of you?’

  ‘Olive,’ I said, ‘that’s rude.’

  ‘Sorry, Nell,’ she said.

  ‘Well, there’s four of us now,’ said the lady, and we all smiled at one another. ‘This house is called Pont’yr’ Hirian, which means “long house in the hollow” – isn’t that pretty?’

  ‘What’s a hollow?’ asked Olive.

  ‘It’s a kind of dip,’ said the lady.

  ‘What’s a dip?’

  ‘You know bloody well what a dip is, Olive,’ I said.

  ‘Do I?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  Olive didn’t look convinced.

  ‘You know that slope outside the flats?’

  ‘The one we all slide down on our arses when it snows?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, that’s a dip.’

  ‘It used to be a private house but now it’s a vicarage,’ the lady explained, smiling down at Olive. ‘My husband is a vicar. We don’t actually own it.’

  ‘You got a landlord, same as us?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘We’re as poor as church mice, really,’ said the man.

  Olive giggled. ‘You’re just like us then.’

  ‘Exactly like you,’ said the lady, taking Olive’s hand and walking towards the front door. It was painted green and in front of it was a prickly mat, and on the mat was the word Welcome. Next to the mat, lined up, were boots: big boots for the man and smaller boots for the lady. There was also a pot for walking sticks and umbrellas. All this was under a small wooden porch. Olive looked up at the lady and grinned. She gave a little skip and I knew she was imagining her shoes lined up next to the lady’s shoes under the porch. Suddenly I felt very tired. Happy, but tired.

  I hung back and looked up at the house. I had never seen a house this big in all my life. The tenement where we lived in Bermondsey was made of red brick – well, it was once red brick but now it was grey and grimy, and you could hardly tell that it had ever been red. Although this house was made of brick, the stone was of the palest yellow. It looked at if it had been washed by the sun. Green ivy covered the walls and roof and hung down over the many windows, which sparkled in the early evening light. The roof was tiled, and I watched as a tiny bird darted into a hole in the tiles with twigs in its beak. I knew that meant it was building a nest, and soon there’d be baby birds going in and out of the roof, and we’d be there to see them.

  There were chimneys at either end of the long house, and a faint wisp of smoke was curling out of each. The house would be warm. I looked up to the upstairs windows, to the curtains that hung at their sides, to the flowers on the sills, and I wanted to be inside that lovely house, looking out.

  I picked up my parcel and followed the others into the porch, through the green door, which now stood wide open, and into my new home.

  Chapter Six

  I was woken the next morning by the sun streaming in through the little window. I lay there for a while, all warm and cosy, and thought about Tony. I hoped that he’d got home all right. I wondered what Mum said when he turned up at the door. I had a feeling that part of her would be pleased to have him back; she wouldn’t be alone. Olive was still fast asleep. She lay on her tummy, which is the way she always slept, her small hand cradling her face. I looked around the room – it was even prettier than I remembered from the night before. We were at the top of the house under the eaves. The sloping walls were white and there was a dark wooden beam running the length of the ceiling. The big bed took up most of the space; it was covered in a soft quilt of the palest blue with yellow flowers all around the border. Back home we slept end to end in one tiny bed – we had never had a big bed like this, or a lovely soft quilt. We had scratchy brown blankets and, when it was very cold, Dad would put coats on top to keep us warm. At least now I didn’t have to sleep with Olive’s feet in my face. On the wall opposite the bed was a picture of the Last Supper, with Jesus and the Twelve Apostles sitting around a long table eating their dinner.

  I carefully pulled back the covers, got out of bed and went across to the window. The wooden floor was warm under my feet. I pulled back the curtains and looked out over the garden. It was full of tall trees and green lawns and flowers, and beyond the garden I could see the church.

  Olive stirred. I turned around, and she opened her eyes and smiled at me.

  ‘Mornin, sleepyhead,’ I said.

  ‘I forgot where I was for a minute,’ she said, sitting up. She got out of bed and padded across to me. She slipped her warm little hand in mine.

  ‘Is that the mister’s church, Nell?’ she asked, staring out the window.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Imagine owning a church.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think he owns it – in fact I’m not sure that you can own a church.’

  ‘Because it belongs to God?’ said Olive.

  I had to think about that one. I suppose God did own it, because Father Devlin in our church back home always referred to it as a House of God; but then again, if he owned it, when did he collect the rent?

  ‘I’m not sure, Olive,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll ask mister,’ she said.

  We splashed water on our faces from a bowl that stood on a marble table against the wall, threw on our clothes and ran downstairs.

  The kitchen was warm and it smelled nice, like flowers and trees. There was a yellow couch against the window and a long table running down the middle of the room. The fireplace was enormous. There were logs piled up against the bricks and a fire burned and crackled in the hearth.

  The missus was stirring something in a pot over the stove and the mister was reading a paper. He looked up and smiled.

  ‘Sleep well?’ he asked.

  He was still wearing the white bandage, which I now realised wasn’t a bandage at all – it was what vicars wore, just like our priest, Father Devlin, at home. I smiled back. ‘Yes, thank you,’ I said.

  ‘Porridge and eggs?’ asked the missus, smiling at us.

  ‘Proper eggs?’ said Olive.

  ‘As proper as they come,’ she replied. ‘We have chickens out the back that very kindly give us lovely brown eggs every day. You can feed them later, if you like.’

  We sat down at the long wooden table. The sun was warm on my back and the room felt so cosy I could feel myself relaxing. This was a good place; we would be safe here. The missus put two bowls of porridge in front of us. I took a mouthful; it was sweet and creamy.

  ‘Mister?’ said Olive, in between mouthfuls.

  ‘Yes, dear?’

  ‘Do you own the church?’

  He laughed. ‘I’m afraid we don’t own anything, Olive. We work for God and he doesn’t pay very well.’

  ‘I think God pays Father Devlin loads of dosh, cos he’s got a cook and a cleaner and a big shiny car, and he drinks beer down the Pig and Whistle.’

  ‘And who is Father Devlin?’ asked the mister.

  ‘He’s our priest back home,’ I said.

  ‘So you’re a Catholic, Nell?’

  ‘Sort of lapsed,’ I said, grinning. ‘Our church got bombed and the only other Catholic church is too far for us to walk to.’

  ‘But you have faith?’ said the missus.

  ‘What’s faith, Nell?’ asked Olive.

  ‘The missus wants to know if we believe in God.’

  ‘Well, we
says our prayers, don’t we, Nell?’

  ‘Course we do.’

  ‘And we lights candles.’

  I smiled and nodded.

  ‘Then you have faith,’ said the missus, smiling sweetly.

  ‘Well, we’re not Catholics,’ said the mister, ‘we’re Methodists. There’s a lot of Methodist chapels in Wales, but you would be made very welcome in our little church, if you would like to come.’

  ‘We can’t,’ I said. ‘It’s a mortal sin to step foot inside a Proddy church.’

  ‘We’d burn in the Fires of Hell for all eternity,’ said Olive, very seriously.

  ‘Golly,’ said the missus. ‘That sounds painful.’

  ‘Bloody agonising,’ said Olive.

  ‘Olive!’

  ‘Well, it is.’

  ‘I know it is, but you don’t have to swear.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Do you know what I think, girls? I think God would be happy wherever you choose to worship him and I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you prayed in our little church. We could sneak you in when the devil isn’t looking. How about that?’

  I grinned. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Is your father away at war, Nell?’ asked the missus.

  ‘He’s in the Navy and we all miss him somethin rotten.’

  ‘I’m sure you do.’

  ‘Isn’t there a war on here?’ said Olive.

  I’d been wondering the same thing myself. Back in London the air-raid sirens went off all the time but I hadn’t heard one since we got here and none of the houses in the village seemed to have been bombed.

  ‘Luckily, the Germans aren’t very interested in us, Olive: it’s Cardiff and Swansea that are getting the worst of it. Sometimes at night the sky glows red over Cardiff and we pray for them.’

  ‘It’s the same in London,’ said Olive. ‘Bloody bombs every five minutes.’

  ‘Olive!’ I said, glaring at her.

  ‘Well, it is,’ she insisted.

  ‘I know it is, but you don’t have to keep swearing. The mister is a vicar, just like Father Devlin. You wouldn’t swear in front of him, would you?’

  ‘No, cos he’d give me a bleedin great penance for me trouble.’