by Joan Moules
For the first time that day a smile raced over his face. She don’t know everything, not about fresh-air holidays nor nothin’, but.…
He laid his tin hat on the chair by the bed and patted it. P’raps we won’t need it down here, he thought sleepily, if there’s no bombs in the country.…
Winchurch, a West Country town with a population of, 4,000, had two schools, one church and three chapels, a park, library, a small museum, Victorian-built town hall, and a gracious tree-lined square where most of the shops were situated. There was one cinema and half a dozen public houses. The nearest theatre was five miles away in Bushton, but occasionally a small touring company used one of the rooms in the town hall which had a platform.
Three London schools were evacuated to Winchurch, and the following day was spent by officials, teachers and pupils from both areas, in trying to integrate the local and the evacuee children.
Mrs Dover insisted on accompanying them to school that first morning, and when she left them by the gate Anita said mischievously, ‘Thought you weren’t going to stay, Johnny. You said you were going back to the smoke.’
‘I changed me mind. Thought I’d give it a try,’ he mumbled. They walked in together. Johnny soon saw most of his mates, but Anita knew no one. All the children from one of the schools were sent to the church and chapel halls, and when they had marched away, those left were divided into age-groups. The under-nines went to one of the other schools and the over-nines stayed to share classrooms with the children in this one. When the evacuees were assessed, Anita, who was a few months older than Johnny, went into the top class and he into the middle one.
He watched for her when school was over for the day, and left the boys he was with when she appeared, but he wouldn’t go up to her. Instead he set off on the road back to the Dovers’ house, for he didn’t want to be seen waiting for a girl, but further along the road and out of sight of the school gates, he stopped. She caught up with him a few moments later.
‘You coming back now?’ he said offhandedly.
‘Mmm.’ Falling into step beside him she said, ‘What did you think of school, Johnny?’
‘OK I s’pose. Bit crowded and the locals are a dreary lot. What about you?’
‘It was strange at first, but I expected it to be. Lunch-time I made a friend. Her name’s Janet. She lives here in one of the houses by the park. She told me lots about the place.’
‘Have they got a Saturday-morning cinema club?’
‘Y-es.’ Anita sounded doubtful. ‘I think so, anyway. I’ll find out tomorrow if you like. There’s tennis-courts in the park. I’m going along with Janet next weekend, and she has a friend who owns a pony so she’s going to introduce me to her.’
‘Oh poo, bloody poo. Who wants to ride a stupid pony?’
Anita stopped walking suddenly and simply stood and laughed. She laughed and laughed until tears were running freely down her cheeks and Johnny didn’t know what to do.
‘Come off it,’ he said. ‘Whatever’s the matter with you? Have you gone mad or something?’
‘Oh, Johnny, Johnny,’ she said, gasping for breath, ‘I’ve never met anyone like you in my life before.’
Mrs Dover was watching through the window for them. ‘Don’t make a noise when you go to the bathroom,’ she said, ‘Mr Dover is working in his study.’
Anita looked at Johnny and started to laugh, but Mrs Dover had gone into the kitchen by then, and she put her hand over her mouth and ran upstairs in front of him. At the top she said, ‘I thought you were going to say it again then, Johnny. You’re better than the wireless, you are.’
He flung himself on to the bed in his room and wondered what they’d do now. At home he’d be out with his mates until tea-time, but here, well, he still might not stay. After all, they couldn’t force him to. This evacuation lark was supposed to be voluntary, wasn’t it?
It surprised him during the next few weeks just how many things there were to do. Messing about down by the stream, joining a gang of six for fights against the locals, climbing trees … he tended to stick with his special mates from the old school: Billy Green, Joe Ansty and Bob Tanner. Billy lived in the next street to him back home and he knew his house as well as his own. Anita mixed more with the locals, but then she didn’t have any mates from school.
‘Where did all the other kids from your posh school go then?’ he asked her one day.
‘Some went to America, some to relatives in the country, some even stayed in London.’
‘Why didn’t you? I mean, fancy going to a crummy old school and being evacuated, after that posh one you was used to.’
‘It wasn’t posh, Johnny. Not nearly as expensive as some are. But it was mummy’s old school and she wanted me to go there.’
‘Poo, bloody poo,’ he said, and watched for her to laugh. Instead she said, ‘You’re overdoing that phrase. It doesn’t sound natural any more.’
‘You nearly laughed though,’ he said defiantly.
‘I didn’t.’
‘You did, Annie.’
‘Anita.’
‘Anita’s too bleedin’ highfalutin,’ he said.
‘For someone who knows words like highfalutin it’s a shame to spoil it by swearing.’
‘I didn’t bleedin’ swear.’
‘Yes you did. You don’t even know when you’re doing it, Johnny. Listen, I expect I could get you an invitation to Janet’s friend’s house if you like, but you’ll have to behave and not swear.’
‘I don’t want to go there. I can’t ride a blooming ’orse.’
‘They’ve got a swimming-pool,’ she said.
Now he was interested. If there was one thing he excelled at it was swimming. He went as often as he could to the baths back home, and he often thought how wonderful it would be to live by the sea and have the chance to swim every day.
‘And a tennis-court, but I suppose you’ll think these things too “la-di-da”.’ She mimicked his voice.
‘Wouldn’t mind having a go in the pool,’ he mumbled.
‘Really, Johnny? You serious?’
‘’Course I’m serious. Went swimming every day back home.’
‘Did you?’ She sounded surprised. ‘Where?’
‘In the bloo … in the water of course, where d’you think?’
‘I am a nitwit, aren’t I?’ she said, laughing.
As she turned away he said in a low voice, ‘Well, it wasn’t every day, it was about every month really, Annie, when we could afford it like. And sometimes I managed to sneak in with some others. An’ I swam in the river too, whenever I could get there.’
‘I think they’re covering the pool over for the winter, but after, when it’s warmer, I’ll see if I can get you an invite,’ she said.
‘I shouldn’t bother too much. I mean the war could be over by the summer and then I’ll be back in Hackney baths and you’ll be back having midnight feasts in your posh school.’
There were a lot of books in the Dovers’ house and as Mr Dover was often working in his study when they came in from school, Anita and Johnny were told to keep as quiet as possible.
At first Mrs Dover didn’t like them to go out to play. ‘It’s dark. There’s the blackout.…’ Johnny rebelled.
‘It’s all right for half an hour an’ you’d get a bit of peace. Blimey, my mum wouldn’t have wanted me under her feet all the time.’
The children won, but it was the wrong time of year for doing much, and the weekends were when they had the most freedom.
‘It will be better in the summer,’ Anita said to him one day, ‘when the evenings are lighter. And down here we shall have the benefit of longer days.’
‘How come?’
‘Well, we’re in Somerset, and the sun travels east to west before going down. We are the last port of call, or very nearly, Johnny. Devon and Cornwall stay lighter for even longer.’
Johnny, who had never thought about it before, was impressed. ‘You’re clever, you are, Annie,’ he said. �
�’Course, I’ve never bothered to work it out like, but it stands to reason, don’t it?’
When they came indoors they sat on the settee, which was almost, but not quite, as soft as that roomy armchair Johnny had sat in on the first day, and they read.
Both loved books. At home Johnny belonged to the public library and had worked his way through Biggles, Just William, and some of Charles Dickens.
‘I s’pose you read Shakespeare and stuff. We did a bit at school but it don’t seem real to me,’ he said.
‘We’ve done a bit of Shakespeare, too. It’s wonderfully dramatic, Johnny.’
Anita brought some of her favourite books with her. ‘I like the adventure books’, she told Johnny, ‘but I enjoy other, softer ones too. What Katy Did is my great favourite, and Black Beauty.’
The weather and the blackout combined forced them indoors early that winter, but one day when they were walking home from school together, Annie said, ‘Wonder what Christmas will be like, Johnny?’
He had been pushing the thought of a Christmas away from home to the back of his mind whenever it presented itself, which was quite often lately. Now he looked at her and, realizing she was in the same boat as he was, said, ‘Not too bad, I reckon. We’ll be on holiday from school. Can go into Bushton, I suppose, and have a look round. It don’t seem a bad town. Not like London though.’
‘What did you use to do at Christmas-time, Johnny?’
He sighed deeply. ‘Have a good nosh-up. Me mum makes the best Christmas puds for miles around. Then there was the mince-pies, and a chicken bursting with stuffing. Me dad always brings in a bottle or two for Christmas Day, and me and me brothers was always allowed to have a drop then. That’s the only time. To tell you the truth, Annie, I don’t like it much, but I never told ’em that. And we always play games in the afternoon. Me dad has a kip and when he wakes up me aunts and uncles and cousins come round and we play murder and blind-man’s-buff and pork and beans. Then we have tea and pull the crackers and wear funny hats and play sitting-down games like snakes-and-ladders and things.’ He paused for breath, and when she didn’t speak he said, ‘What do you do?’
She seemed to be gazing into space and not listening, but after a moment she said, ‘Go to church on Christmas morning with Mummy and Daddy if I’m home, and in the school chapel if I’m not. We usually have a chicken and roast potatoes, sometimes we have a turkey. I don’t like Christmas pudding so I just have mince-pies and cream, then afterwards we go for a walk to digest it all. We don’t usually have crackers, Mummy thinks they’re common, but I went out to tea once on Boxing Day and they had crackers. They were beautiful, Johnny, much too pretty to pull. They were red and gold and silver. I smoothed mine out afterwards and took it back to school with me next term. And they had some lovely presents inside, and paper crowns and whistles and flutes. We had a fine time that Boxing Day, but my friend moved soon after – went abroad to live.’
‘That was bad luck, Annie. Must be awful having Christmas at school though. I’m wondering if I can’t go home for it actually, and if I can would you like to come too? It’d be all right with me mum, I know.’
‘Johnny, that is nice of you. We’d … better wait and see, hadn’t we? I mean, we don’t know yet what sort of plans have been made.’
Neither Johnny’s nor Anita’s parents had been to visit them yet. Billy Green’s mum came one Saturday and afterwards Billy talked about when he was going home.
‘But you won’t go ’til the war’s over, will you?’ Johnny asked him.
‘Might do,’ he said cockily. ‘We was talking about it. Me mum says there’s not much happening and London’s as safe as anywhere, she reckons.’
Johnny thought about this remark a lot. Maybe he could go back too. Then again, Billy might be exaggerating. He knew his mum was working in a factory now, that was why she hadn’t yet been down to see him, and his dad was busy on the barrow all day and firewatching all night. His brothers, Jim and Ron, were both in the army, and he wished he was older and more in charge of what was to happen.
Mrs Bookman came for a visit at the beginning of December. Johnny met her at the bus station in Bushton. It was bitterly cold and the bus was late arriving. By the time it came he was starving.
‘Honestly, mum, I’m ever so hungry.’ he said when she opted to wait a while before eating.
‘You know I’m a bad traveller, Johnny, and I couldn’t face a meal yet.’
They went into a café and while she drank a cup of tea Johnny enjoyed a substantial plate of sausage and chips. There wasn’t a chance for her to come out to Winchurch, ‘to see me digs’, Johnny said, because of the time of the return coach.
‘Next time I’ll come by train, Johnny,’ she told him. ‘That’ll be after Christmas.’ She gave him a carrier-bag with his presents in. ‘No peeping now. Hide them until the twenty-fifth.’
Christmas wasn’t as bad as he expected. The WVS laid on a huge party in the church hall, and Johnny enjoyed every minute of it. There were spam sandwiches, mincepies and home-made lemonade. Someone dressed up as Father Christmas and handed out small gifts wrapped in pink for the girls and blue for the boys. Johnny had a puzzle like a miniature bagatelle and Anita was given a small hairbrush-and-comb set. There was even a film show – an old Charlie Chaplin film which kept breaking down. This caused almost as much merriment to the children every time it happened as the film itself.
Afterwards Anita said, ‘The crackers weren’t a patch on those I was telling you about, Johnny. Didn’t have such good presents in either, but they were nice. Didn’t the table look gorgeous?’
Mr and Mrs Dover gave each of them a warm jumper. Johnny’s was red and Annie’s royal blue. Their daughter Alison and her husband arrived for Christmas dinner, and their son and his wife telephoned them after the King’s speech in the afternoon. Then Alison suggested that her husband might go into the loft and find some games she was sure were still there. He emerged a quarter of an hour later with several dusty games and half a dozen equally dusty annuals. Some had belonged to Alison and some to her brother, and Anita and Johnny lay on the floor reading them when it was generally agreed to pack in playing games for a while.
Alison and her husband slept in the study. Anita helped her to set up and make two camp-beds which were kept in a cupboard there.
‘I’ve never been in his study before’ she said to Johnny when they were upstairs later that night, ‘it’s quite a large room, bigger than our bedrooms. He’s got a gigantic desk there, with neat piles of paper and envelopes on it, and a jar filled with pencils, and guess what, they were all the same height. I specially noticed because they looked so odd. Perhaps that’s why he spends so much time in there – sharpening all those pencils until they’re the same size.’
Johnny thought about the pencils when he woke up several hours later, and began to laugh quietly to himself. To his dismay the laughs became sobs and he burrowed beneath the clothes and stuffed his handkerchief into his mouth so that, in the stillness of Christmas night no one else would hear.
CHAPTER 2
1940
The snow came in January and Anita caught flu. Johnny wasn’t supposed to go near her. Mrs Dover said, ‘I don’t want to be running up and down for both of you,’ but every time he went upstairs to the bathroom he popped in to see her. He paid numerous visits to the bathroom during the few days she was confined to her bed.
‘It’s all gloom and doom downstairs,’ he told her, ‘they’ve just announced on the wireless that food rationing starts next week. I didn’t think old man Dover could look more miserable, but he does.’
Anita had not been allowed comics at home, nor at her boarding-school, although she sometimes managed to see one. Her mother had told Mrs Dover, ‘No comics’ but Anita often bought them and hid them under the mattress. When she finished reading them, she distributed them among her friends at school. She had to be careful not to leave them around on bed-changing day, and had one or two near misses.
&
nbsp; Johnny, who now had regular pocket money in the form of a postal order for one shilling (double what he used to get when he lived at home) and sent with his mother’s weekly letter, bought Radio Fun for her while she was ill.
‘Johnny, that’s my favourite. I’ll pay you.’
‘No,’ he said gruffly, ‘it’s a present. Mind she doesn’t catch you with it.’
His mother didn’t get down for a visit during January or February. Working terribly hard at the factory, she wrote, and I can’t take time off. Your dad’s in munitions now too. He doesn’t like working inside but hasn’t any choice really, and it’s all we can do to help our boys.
‘It don’t seem fair us being safe down here while Mum and Dad risk being bombed, Annie.’
‘That’s why they wanted us to come, but what’s the point if we all end up orphans?’ she replied.
Johnny opened his mouth to say that she was away from her parents so much normally that it wouldn’t make much difference in her case, then he had second thoughts about it.
‘It’s all right for you and me, we’re older, but there were a lot of real tiny kids on the train, weren’t there?’
‘Some of them have returned, Johnny. The air-raids they expected haven’t happened. The phoney war it said in big letters on Mr Dover’s paper the other day, and I asked Miss Coventry what it meant. Quite a lot of the young children from the infants classes have gone home.’
‘Mmm, I know.’
A few of Johnny’s mates had gone too – Billy Green among them. He went for Christmas and never returned.
Once a week the school held gasmask and air-raid-shelter drill, but so far they hadn’t needed either. Sometimes they heard and saw planes overhead, but much to Johnny’s disgust he never saw a dogfight and had to make do with listening or reading about them.
He discovered the date of Anita’s birthday accidentally. Mrs Dover gave her a letter when they returned from school one afternoon in early March, and she pushed it into her pocket. Much later that evening when they had been sent upstairs to prepare for bed Johnny said, ‘Who was your letter from, Annie?’