Goodbye Piccadilly

by Betty Burton

  And then came the first sound of guns.

  They were in the war.

  —

  The odour that pervaded the classroom was one that Otis would remember for as long as she lived. It was the smell of unwashed little children in unlaundered clothes. It wasn’t all that unpleasant – rather like a face-flannel that had been left rolled up and soapy, plus the fustiness of the interior of an old cake tin – but it was pervasive. The corridors and cloakrooms smelt of Lysol and the row of lavatories across the playground smelt of themselves. Two of these were kept locked for the use of teachers, but it was only in extremis that a teacher unlocked one of those doors. Otis wondered how one managed when it was the time of their Eve’s Curse – prudently wearing one’s linen strips or pads a day or so before the expected event appeared to be the answer.

  The school did not boast a Principal, but each division – Boys one side of the divide, and Girls on the other – had a Head. There was a third Head, Miss Mason, who managed the Mixed Infants, and it was to Miss Mason that Otis answered.

  The Mixed Infants had been assembled in one room for the purpose of worshipping God. The twenty or so new intake children who were in Otis’s own charge were in a bewildered little group around her. As the six-and seven-year-olds sang stodgily, fidgety, gasping breaths at the end of lines, Otis looked over the source of her ambition and the material that would fuel her driving force from here on.

  Little bundles of ill-fitting, ill-assorted clothes covered by large, coarse aprons.

  ‘All fings bright and beautiful, All creachures great and small…’

  Few had socks, very few had boots that fitted or were in a state of repair. Some boys had near-shaven heads. Most of the girls had their hair tied back with string, though here and there was a bit of ribbon. There, on their first encounter with the rest of the Mixed Infants, they stood as though planted, overwhelmed and afraid, perhaps on account of something dire they had heard from an older brother about what big children did to you at school.

  ‘He gave us eyes to see them, and lips that we might tell…’

  Otis, apprehensive too at the responsibility of it all, longed for the assembly to be over so that she might return to feeding the minds of these small, underfed, rough-skinned, rickety children. Here was the most basic clay of humanity that one could find, and it was going to be hers to mould and make into decent vessels and, with luck, perhaps form an occasional small work of art.

  ‘How Great is God Almighty, Who has made all fings well.’

  —

  This was Kitt’s first train ride. Because military movements disrupted civilian travel, it took Esther, Kitt and Nursey hours and hours to get from London to Exeter, but with a cat-nap here and a picnic there, Kitt took the journey like a seasoned traveller. Esther was proud of him, kneeling solemnly at the window, asking sensible questions such as why had the fields turned to red once they were steaming through the West Country, and was that the sea or a wide river as they slowed down at the estuary. He was petted by ladies and given joeys or sixpences by gentlemen. Although he had been told that he would not see Dada so often when they got down to Mere, all in all, Kitt thought that going down to Mere was a splendid adventure.

  Two of Windsor Villa’s longest-serving members of staff – Mrs Clipper the cook and Ernest, who had no designated title except Mr Clipper, but was a most excellent general handyman and better than anybody in an emergency – had gone on ahead to Lyme Regis. Only Nursey travelled with Esther. She hoped against hope that the Windsor Villa couple did not fall out with those few domestics still remaining at Mere.

  Ernest, widely grinning, was waiting with a trap at the station. Esther breathed a mental sigh of relief. Ernest had never been able to disguise his emotional state, glowering when put out at the master’s occasional attempts at pruning, grinning when sharing a smoke with him in the greenhouse, weeping silently at the death of the family dog. Ernest was grinning. He talked all the way from the station to the very steps of Mere Meldrum, commenting on the virtues of the place as though Esther knew nothing of it and might be a purchaser.

  ‘Lord, Miss Esther, this ’ere air down here is as good as a florin tonic. Like Mrs Clipper says she can’t think of nowhere better for you and the Little Master. Mind you, as you can see, there’s a bit of uppin’ and downin’ as far as the streets of Lyme’s concerned, but like Mrs Clipper says, who wants to go gallivanting round the town when there’s such grounds and views over the sea from your very doorstep. And do you know that bit they call The Cobb? Well, they say that it was writ up in some story where a lady fell down some steps and is quite famous. Well, our place is right above there and looks right down on it.’

  Mrs Clipper, nowhere near as garrulous as her spouse, took a moment from her domain to assure the missis that it was every cook’s dream below stairs, and not to be fooled into thinking that the local girls was simple because they spoke slow because it was just their way.

  Jack had been right. It was a place in which a woman might wait in peace and tranquillity for the birth of her baby. So that by the time George Moth came to visit his children at Christmas, he saw not only that his daughter was the very image of a madonna, but that she had turned a soulless antiques museum into a comfortable and homely place in which she, Kitt, and the entire domestic staff were as settled and pleased with themselves as they could be.

  When he watched her calmly rocking, her hands holding her small mounded belly, a faint secret smile upon her mouth, he knew why she had worked with such enthusiasm to create this atmosphere of security and comfort.

  ‘It will be our first home. Mine and Bindon’s and baby’s… and Kitt’s too I hope.’

  George Moth wondered how much news of the war on the Western Front reached this idyllic spot, for certainly during his stay there he saw no newspapers with their ever-lengthening lists of casualties; and the letters from his son-in-law which Esther insisted that he read were as were all letters from that place, cheerful and non-committal.

  1914

  My dearest Wife, Of course, I have always known that men are men the world over, knowing the same emotions. The last thing we want is to kill one another. We trusted them and they trusted us. No treaties, no signatures, nothing but the goodwill of ordinary men, a cask of beer and a plum pudding. In exchange for a picture of his Gilda, I gave a photograph of you. Neither of us could speak the language of the other, but in his great muddy boots and winter great-coat, he pirouetted and pointed at you. I told him ‘Esther’ and he nodded. The word he used means fairylike, or dainty. He mimed the query ‘Children?’. I held my hands over my belly, and we both wept and shook our heads at the mindlessness of what we were doing to one another to gain a few yards of foreign mud. I send you Gilda so that when you read of atrocities, you will for a moment question whether it might be propaganda. Both sides use this means of building up hatred and nationalistic emotions. When we take prisoners, they are in a state of terror because they expect us to commit the most cruel acts. That is not to say that neither side is capable of barbarity…

  Christmas morning and it was all quiet on the Front.

  When the fog lifted it revealed the shocking sight of some unarmed enemy soldiers standing above their parapet waving.

  No one had rescinded the order to shoot, and because of a suspicion that there might be fraternization on Christmas Day, Headquarters had sent down an order specifically forbidding it.

  ‘Don’t shoot!’ The voice carried easily across the short distance between the two lines. ‘Don’t shoot, we have beer for you.’

  A kind of tremor ran through the British line when a cask was hoisted and rolled into no man’s land. There were men out there. Ordinary blokes like yourself who wanted to stand you a round of drinks on Christmas morning.

  A grey uniformed soldier pushed the cask further into no man’s land. A German officer followed and stood open-handed facing his enemy lines. For moments no one knew what to do. This was the first time that the Tommys had
seen grey uniforms worn smartly; they were more used to the sight of them bloody and fragmented, and mud-soaked and rat-gnawed, or worn by slouch-shouldered dejected prisoners-of-war; but here was a Boche officer’s uniform standing open-handed offering a cask of beer.

  The first move by the British was when an officer climbed up and walked the equal distance and faced the German. ‘Please, take the beer. It is good beer.’

  The British officer nodded. ‘Thank you. We have something for you. Your English is good.’

  ‘Thank you. I was in England one time for a year. I have in Winchester a cousin by marriage.’

  ‘I have never been to Germany, I hear your lakes are impressive.’

  ‘You should come there.’

  ‘Tell you the truth, old son, I’ve been working my ass off trying to do just that.’

  The men of both sides wondered what their officers could have said to one another to have caused such an outburst of laughter. – Men on both sides emerged unarmed and cautious, slowly at first and then with longer strides, until grey and khaki intermingled. A German soldier appeared with a tray containing glasses and beer in bottles which was poured for the officers.

  ‘Today, we do not shoot one another. Ja?’

  A British officer raised his glass. ‘Against our orders, old son, but ja, today we do not shoot one another.’

  A presentation of a Christmas pudding was made to the Germans, and after the men exchanged regimental badges or photographs of their families or girlfriends, the two sides withdrew across the frost-hard ground to their own sides for a silent night that was eerie in its peacefulness. Following the incident, Bindon Blood longed to write and tell Esther of the emotions he experienced and the way he spent Christmas night in contemplation.

  At eight o’clock on Boxing Morning his reverie was interrupted by three pistol shots. The two sides exchanged greetings daubed on a flag. The answering three shots fired into the air was the signal to start up the killing once more.

  1915

  BLOOD. To Esther Clermont Blood (nee Moth), wife of Major Bindon Hubert Blood, on 4 May, a daughter, Stephanie Anne, at Mere Manor, Devon.

  During the month in which Esther laboured to produce her daughter and observe the lying-in and resting required by ladies of Mrs Blood’s social class, 60,000 men were killed or maimed.

  1915

  Otis Hewetson looked at her class of ‘babies’. They had spent a year in her care and, as far as anyone could tell, had come to no harm. Without exception they had learned the alphabet by heart, and most could read and write a few simple cat-sat-on-the-mat sentences, and add together single numbers. There had been crises such as when ‘dip’ touched these babies’ families.

  ‘Please Miss, our Timmy went and died last night.’

  And not only Timmy. Diphtheria and whooping cough had taken two of Miss Hewetson’s Mixed Infants. Prevention of all ills was by sprinkling Lysol on the floors, iodine tablets to suck and purple fluid at the drinking tap. Otis walked slowly between the rows of little battered desks, straightening a chalk here, a slate there. Wilfie had lost hearing in one ear from a mastoid; it had been necessary to move him closer to the front of the class. At the front too were Elsie and Danny, the twins who had got charity spectacles for their sty-rimmed eyes. Kathleen’s Dad had been killed, Rose’s father had been gassed and Edward’s had lost a leg. Head-lice had been rife and treated with a glutinous paste, then impetigo and scabies had a turn at the babies’ skin. There were times when Otis thought that schools could do a lot worse than to start each day with hot baths instead of hymns. But it was a Church of England school where Cleanliness played second fiddle to Godliness.

  She stopped behind Maggie Harris’s desk. Her slate was empty. ‘Hurry along with it, Maggie.’ The child jumped to life and blushed. She had started school knowing her alphabet, how to count to one hundred and could recite as many nursery rhymes as Otis herself. Since May, Maggie had become a ‘difficult’ child: not disruptive, but given to forgetting her lessons and sitting staring into space.

  At Stockwell College she had been told: The children of the poor will always have difficulties, a good teacher never allows herself to become personally involved in them. She must endeavour to ignore the home lives and concentrate on providing within the classroom an ambience in which the child may take in its lessons.

  A good teacher should try to be aware of what events within the child’s family might affect its classroom performance, but she must never be tempted to go beyond this.

  How could a teacher ignore what it was that changed a child from the brightest in the class to a dullard? No, Maggie was not a dullard, her brightness was still there.

  As soon as she had heard, Otis had ignored the Advice to a Good Teacher and involved herself in the home life of a Poor Child and, by going to ask her father’s advice, had involved him also.

  ‘It does sound as though this is an unfortunate case, Otis, and I am sure that if it were up to me I should never behave in so callous a way. A month’s imprisonment is exceedingly harsh for a first offence.’

  ‘Pa! Any term of imprisonment in this case would have been exceedingly harsh. Mrs Harris ought never to have been arrested.’

  ‘She broke the law, the Defence of the Realm is a serious matter.’

  ‘But Father, the Defence of the Realm Act was surely never intended to crush women like Mrs Harris. She is a decent and hardworking woman. Do you know the wording of the offence with which she’s charged?’

  ‘You told me, my dear – of being an “Unworthy Woman”. But she was in a garrison town, there was a curfew for servicemen’s wives and the commander was perfectly within his rights to bring her before a court-martial.’

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Pa, the woman was visiting her injured husband’s relatives.’

  ‘The arresting officers were not to know that when she was out after curfew hours.’

  Otis had thrown up her hands then. ‘Curfew hours, Pa! This is England, she has a husband in France and a family of children. They have court-martialled her, withdrawn her dependants’ allowance.’

  ‘I understand how you feel, my dear, but you will soon discover that the kind of people with whom you have chosen to ally yourself fall into one bit of trouble after another.’

  ‘Then it is they who need lawyers and solicitors isn’t it? and not our sort of people.’

  ‘Perhaps in an ideal world. Until then.’

  But he had done something. He had spoken to a local solicitor in the town where Mrs Harris had been imprisoned and she had been released after serving only ten days. But those ten days had damaged little Maggie.

  This was Otis’s last day with these children, when they came back from the Summer Break they would start in Standard II where her only contact with them would be ‘’ullo Miss’ as they rushed past her in the street. Maggie would be transferred into the care of Miss Trethowen, who might not believe that this child was as bright as bright and had come from a family where she had been taught her letters before she was five.

  For a moment Otis let her hand rest on the child’s shoulder.

  A good teacher never allows herself…

  ‘Very well, children. You may put away your slates.’

  The last day of term ended traditionally with the children reciting their work and the teacher reading an uplifting story. Otis had thought that these little Mixed Infants would not gain much from the recommended Kingsley’s Water Babies or the moralistic Aesop’s fables.

  ‘That was done very nicely, children.’

  The Good Teacher will always praise work well done.

  ‘Go to the green cupboard, Maggie, and carefully carry to my table the brown box.’ Anything in a box will excite a six-year-old.

  It has been found that a class of four streams will compete to their advantage. Rewards by way of ticks and paper stars on a chart will urge young children to compete on an individual basis.

  They craned their necks as Otis opened the box. ‘We must be v
ery quiet about this, so that we shall not disturb Miss Trethowen’s class because they are still working.’

  She was sure that a box of Lou’s individual apple-pies specially baked with no spice and plentiful sugar were a much more satisfying reward than competitive paper stars.

  ‘Remember, this treat is a secret between us, a special reward for being such good children.’

  If anyone walked in or the Head discovered the little party, Otis was sure to be on the carpet, but it was worth the chance of being found out, and she had an excuse ready.

  I am sorry, Miss Verilees, but I thought it might be an object lesson in a few table manners.

  When Miss Trethowen came in later to claim Otis’s children of the poor for her register of next term’s six-year-olds, all that remained was the faint aroma of apple and an indefinable collective giggling mood which she put down to end-of-term silliness.

  1915

  Bindon Blood had been in the army for most of his adult life. A family tradition of music and soldiering had taken him along the same career path as three preceding generations of Bloods and, like them, he had loved the life where orderly men paraded in orderly patterns to orderly music. Until the extraordinary event of falling in love, life was predictable. His schooling and music tuition had been regular and uninterrupted, his entry into his father’s regiment assumed, his promotion assured. He had always been a fine musician and a competent officer.