Child from Home

by John Wright

  We decided that we would slide the sledge down a bank of frozen earth that sloped steeply down towards the ice-covered pond. Jimmy, who was a bit of a daredevil, volunteered to go first but, when the sledge hit the thin ice at the edge, it creaked and then there was a deep, ominous growl as it split open into several clear, green-edged shards. Jimmy and the sledge shot straight through into the icy water, but luckily he did not go completely under the ice and was able to hang on to the floating sledge. A group of grown-ups, on seeing what had happened, quickly dragged him out of the bitterly cold water. He was shocked, shivering and soaking wet but we soon got him back to the house where he was put into dry clothes and warmed through by the fire.

  We thought that he would get a really good hiding from Mrs Harris, but she, surprisingly, felt sorry for him. It seems that she had a bit of a soft spot for him, and the canes and belts remained untouched on that occasion. She was, apparently, just greatly relieved that he was all right and none the worse for his icy ducking, and decided that it was best to say nothing and let it pass. Shortly afterwards she turned on me, saying, ‘Just look at the muck on your bum.’

  I foolishly replied, ‘I can’t see my bum from here.’ At which she clouted me round the ear, saying, ‘And that’s enough cheek from you!’ Stars danced before my eyes and my ear rang.

  Several people had accidents on the icy roads and Harold Mann was often late in delivering the milk as his shaggy pony, Monty, had difficulty keeping its footing on the hard-packed, frozen snow. Snow fell from the milky sky on ten consecutive days, piling up in deep drifts by the hedgerows. Mrs Harris and the other women still had their milk ladled into jugs, as glass bottles were hard to come by, and it was not until the end of March that winter loosened its icy grip, with the snow finally thawing leaving heaps of dirty slush at the roadsides.

  By this time cooked dinners had become available to the pupils of both schools, which was a real boon to parents that worked. The meals were served from the counters, hotplates and gas ovens newly installed in the corner of St Mary’s hall, and the ovens helped to keep the place warm on cold days. The meals were brought by van from the cookhouse at Strensall army camp. The overcrowding meant that the dinners had to be served in two separate sessions and we were pleased to learn that we would have to finish our morning lessons a little earlier to allow time for the hall to be prepared.

  The milk was delivered in aluminium crates with the one-third-of-a-pint bottles stood in wire compartments. They were stacked outside in the playground at the back of the main school, and when playtime arrived we often found that they were partly frozen, with plugs of solid cream standing about an inch above their necks. We sucked on them as if they were creamy iced lollies. During the long spell of snow and icy weather the crates were brought into the classroom a little earlier and placed near a green cast-iron radiator to thaw out. The bottles had thick, waxed paper seals that had an indented portion that you pushed in with your thumb. At playtime Harry, Ducky and their pals made slides on the icy playground and had great fun adding a few more bruises to the collection that they had already acquired.

  Earlier in the year, the army had set up a searchlight in a field on the western side of Moor Lane opposite the Home Guard blockhouse. We went up there to help fill the sandbags and, when we were given a penny for our troubles, we were thrilled to bits but we soon tired of it. It was too much like hard work and there were easier ways of earning a penny to spend on sweets. Harold Mann often gave us a penny for helping him on his milk round.

  Sometimes we heard distant explosions from up Moor Lane way, where the Home Guard were practising lobbing live hand grenades into Beresford’s pond. At first they had no Mills bombs, so they used potatoes or large stones instead and, on finding out, Mrs Harris retorted, ‘It’s a waste of good potatoes if you ask me!’ Their ammunition was stored in corrugated-tin huts on the grass verges alongside Cross Moor Lane, and these were guarded and kept well padlocked at all times. We would have liked to watch the action but they had closed off the road with Home Guard men manning the roadblocks.

  At the end of March, we learned that Uncle John was home on yet another embarkation leave. He had been vaccinated again and issued with a khaki drill uniform (KD), so it looked certain that he was going to see active service; but this time in a hot, desert region. There were rumours that they were to join the Middle East Force (MEF) in Egypt. All their equipment and stores were packed and they were ready for the off.

  In January the amount of meat allowed to each adult per week had been reduced, and it was then reduced further to only one and tuppence worth (nearly 6p). In February the off-putting, muddy-looking wholemeal bread – the so-called National loaf – was introduced. It was a heavy blow when jam, syrup, marmalade and treacle were put on ration in March; collectively a total of 8 ounces (227g) per person per week being allowed. Rationing was at its lowest level so far and it was even officially forbidden to feed crumbs to the birds. From that time onwards Mrs Harris would only let us have margarine or jam on our bread – never the two together! The margarine was thinly scraped on and off again and we seldom tasted jam or syrup. We lived mostly on bread, lumpy potato, heavy suet dumplings or we had rabbit meat made into stews or pies as it was not rationed and was readily available. We were growing kids and were always ravenous so we ate whatever was put in front of us or we stayed hungry. After every meal our plates were always shiny and clean, as we soaked everything up with bread or even licked the plate when Mrs Harris had her back turned.

  Nature Study at school now took the form of walks beside the piebald ploughed fields armed with bags, nets and a wide variety of containers. We skipped along in pairs, with the girls hand-in-hand with their best friends, and we added our spoils to the cluttered-up nature table. Drawing things, which I enjoyed, helped me to remember details of shape, number of legs, parts of an insect’s body and suchlike, and I was to find this approach invaluable later in life. In March, when the weather turned slightly milder, we collected frogspawn and watched the tadpoles hatch out to hang on the stems of the pondweed in their fish tank. The tiny frogs lost their tails and were then obliged to leave the water, feeding on aphids by shooting out their very long, sticky tongues, which happened so quickly that it could not be seen by the naked eye. They had, by that stage, to breathe through their newly formed internal lungs. At this point we trooped along to Widd’s pond and released them back into the water, which had become churned up and made murky by the dabbling, beady-eyed ducks and the shy and furtive moorhens.

  Some of the older boys at the main school were kept busy digging, planting and weeding on the school allotments. This backbreaking activity had assumed much greater significance as many vegetables were now in very short supply. A certain group of older boys, who the headmaster classed as thickheads or numbskulls, had to take care of his garden and woe betide them if he saw any of them messing about. He used to give them a crack on the back of the neck with the end of his RAF swagger stick. He thought that these lads would be more gainfully employed out of the classroom where a close eye could be kept on them. They were quite happy to be outside away from the soul-destroying syllabus, averring, ‘School’s a bloody waste o’ time any’ow. It stops us gettin’ on wi’ t’real work on t’farm. Yer can’t learn farm jobs from books!’

  Mrs Harris always seemed to send us on errands just as we were planning to go out to play and, when I came back empty-handed, Mrs Harris shouted in my face, ‘Are you completely empty-headed or what?’ Due to daydreaming I often forgot what I had been sent for, and after getting a clip round the lug I had to go back with a written order.

  Chalked drawings had started to appear on walls and doors in the village showing the top half of a face of a bald-headed character, with a question mark growing from the top like a single hair. He had big round eyes, a long, blobby nose and the fingers of both hands showing over the top of a brick wall. Remarks like, ‘Wot no jam!’ (or any other commodity) were written beneath it. This little character
, known as ‘Chad’, became a symbol for the increasing wartime shortages.

  Poor Dot was made to clear out the fire-grate every morning and reset the fire for the day. She would put loose paper on the grate, place screwed-up newspaper and small sticks above it, before adding a few lumps of coal and lighting it. When the fire took hold she would prop the shovel up and cover it with an opened-out sheet of newspaper to make it draw. Sometimes the sulky fire went out and at other times the newspaper caught fire sending bits of black, charred paper floating everywhere; either way, Dot, who just stood there looking blank, got an earful and a clip round the ear from the irascible Mrs Harris. She was told to put yesterday’s ashes on the flower borders and to spread the cinders on the garden path, as Mr Harris said they kept the weeds down and helped kill slugs and snails.

  Mr and Mrs Winterburn, a childless couple, were our next-door neighbours and had a succession of airmen billeted with them. On Saturday mornings Jimmy’s chore was to stand in the queue for bread; it was the custom that only regular customers could have it put aside for them. It seemed that every time Jimmy left the house Mrs Winterburn would stop him and ask him to fetch her bread. He willingly obliged but, after a time, he got fed up with it as he suspected that she must be hiding behind her net curtain waiting to waylay him and she had never given him a penny for saving her the time and effort of going for it herself. So, one Saturday, when he had been waylaid for the umpteenth time, he went to the bakery for our bread and told Mr Rowland that Mrs Winterburn was not happy with the bread and that she did not want any more from him. When the angry Mrs Winterburn told Mrs Harris of this, she was furious and made her husband punish him. Reluctant to do so, but not daring to oppose her, he took Jimmy up to the bedroom where he administered half a dozen whacks with his thick leather belt. One landed on his backside, but five of them ‘accidentally’ landed on the bed, and he told Jimmy to cry out at each stroke so that Mrs Harris would be none the wiser.

  The lend-lease system with the USA was agreed, as the country was on the verge of bankruptcy, and a relieved Winston Churchill made one of his more eloquent and stirring speeches in which he said: ‘Give us the tools and we will finish the job.’ The loan was needed to provide these tools as well as food and weapons. Rowntrees was one of the factories involved. Single women aged twenty to twenty-one years of age had recently been ‘called up’ by Ernest Bevin, the Minister for Labour, so that more men could be released for active service. Thousands of women chose to go into the works and factories but married women with young children were still exempt. Men aged over forty-one years of age, who were exempt from military service, were also involved and they were paid a basic wage of £3.0.6. (£3.02p) a week, while the women received only £1.18.0. (£1.90p) for doing the same work.

  The outside of the huge chocolate factory was camouflaged in green and brown, and the windows were blacked out making the atmosphere inside claustrophobic and the lights were kept on all day. The Rowntree family held anti-war convictions like all Quakers, but this did not prevent them from forming a new company under the innocuous-sounding name of County Industries Limited. Under the umbrella of this company the upper floors of the building, which had formerly produced Rowntrees Fruit Gums, were being used to pack and arm 37mm shells, with only a small part of the factory now making chocolate. The fuses were inserted into the nose of the shells on the top floor behind a protective screen. It was a highly dangerous occupation, but the workers were prepared to do it if they felt they were making a significant contribution to the war effort, and the factory was in full production twenty-four hours a day, six days a week.

  They worked twelve-hour day shifts for two weeks, then night shifts for the next two, and as a precaution they were obliged to rub a clear, red, jelly-like barrier cream called Rosalex onto their hands to reduce the risk of dermatitis, as some had developed red and itchy skin rashes in the early days. They were entertained, during the long boring work hours, by means of a Tannoy system that blared out popular music and songs recorded by the stars and the big bands of the day. The BBC broadcast Music While You Work twice a day, especially for war workers, and a new variety show called Workers’ Playtime was relayed at lunchtimes. Big names of the day, like Vera Lynn and Flanagan and Allen, broadcast from a factory somewhere in England – the place never being named for security reasons. These broadcasts were received in households all over the country and were very popular. Mrs Harris always had her wireless on.

  The factory had installed a huge reservoir of water on the roof, the contents of which could be released to dowse any fires that broke out. Royal Observer Corps members on the roof worked shifts round-the-clock, straining their eyes searching for the tiny specks in the sky. It was not easy to identify enemy planes when there was cloud cover and so they kept in contact with a linked network of military tracking stations; these relayed messages informing them of the whereabouts and numbers of enemy aircraft sighted while a small army of girls worked below. They were still producing the famous Rowntrees milk chocolate bars, fruit gums and pastilles, and the air was full of the sickly sweet smell of cocoa and chocolate. A great deal of the dark chocolate was used in aircrew rations and it was an important component of their escape kits, along with maps, a compass, a razor and a rubber water bottle, only to be used if they crashed or had to bail out in enemy territory.

  At least once a week our Jimmy took me to Bryant’s shop to buy sweets with our bit of pocket money. We liked the black liquorice bootlaces and the round, penny-sized Pontefract cakes the best and, for some reason, we always called them Pomfret cakes. Bryant’s shop no longer housed the post office, which had been taken over by Mr Eric Rowland and his family and set up in what had been the bakery. Where the post office counter had been there was now a wooden framework with rows of biscuit boxes fitted into it. Broken biscuits could be bought quite cheaply.

  The large and fast four-engined Halifax bomber had only recently been brought in to service and we heard on the grapevine that a squadron of them had arrived at Linton-on-Ouse airfield. We often saw them over the village and new aircraft were being delivered every few days. The exhaust flames from the cowlings of their Hercules engines could be clearly seen at dusk, and their vibration rattled the ornaments and plates on our shelves. It seems that they were to replace the relatively slow and obsolete Whitleys that were by then nobody’s friend. In the early months of the year the newspapers reported that Halifaxes of Bomber Command were attacking targets on the French coast.

  The air-raid warnings had increased in recent weeks and one night in early March the mournful wail of the siren sounded yet again. Just after 9. 30 p.m. we were rushed downstairs to lie under the front room table, which had been pushed against the wall as directed. The girls were with Mrs Harris in the cupboard under the stairs but the long sustained note of the all-clear was not sounded until quarter to four in the morning. We trooped wearily back to bed, but at least we didn’t have to start school until ten o’clock that morning. In the darkness of those winter mornings we sometimes saw the returning bombers briefly lit up by the beam of the local searchlight, which was flicked on and off to show that the aircraft had been recognised. Our sleep was often disturbed and we turned up at school dull from the lack of it.

  On my sixth birthday Mam, with her gentle ways and winsome smile, paid us a short visit, and whenever she appeared it felt as though the sun had just emerged from the clouds. Before she left she gave us a few coppers to buy sweets and a comic, and Jimmy still had a bit of the money that his mother had given him on his seventh birthday two weeks back. We thought we might try another visit to Torville’s little shop, as Bryant’s was always busy and crowded. It was set back behind the wide grass verge that bordered the south side of the main road and the front door was a bit difficult to open, as its wooden frame tended to swell after a spell of wet weather. On this occasion, Jimmy gave it a hefty shove with his shoulder and it burst open, and we startled the customers as we staggered in amongst them accompanied by the loud
clanging of the bell above the door.

  The wooden counter was almost hidden beneath newspapers, magazines and comics. It was owned and run by a small, busty spinster called Miss Susanna Torville who was going grey, even though she was probably only in her fifties. She seemed like a real old biddy to us and her parents had bought the shop before the turn of the century and it had not changed much in all that time. Miss Torville weighed our sweets in the large, gleaming brass pan of the Avery scales with extreme care, even to the point of taking off three small sweets and replacing them with two slightly heavier ones to make sure that the weight was absolutely spot on and not a fraction of an ounce over. There was a step towards the rear of the old shop, which led to her private living quarters, and in the gloom of the interior customers, including us, had a habit of stumbling down it. After that we went to Bryant’s for our sweets as they were not so fussy if the sweets weighed a little more than our few coppers justified, and they always put them into a conical-shaped paper bag twisted at the top to close it.

  Comics were very popular with children in those days before there were any television sets, but many of them, such as Tiger Tim’s Weekly, had been forced to close down due to paper shortages. The Beano, which cost tuppence (less than 1p), had previously had twenty-eight coloured pages, but now it was smaller and only had eight with coloured print only used on the cover pages. The comics were now full of war themes, with spy stories and tales of unexploded bombs, and every day, while we waited for our tea in the kitchen, Thelma would read to me out loud the rhyming couplets under the Rupert Bear cartoon strip in the paper. I really looked forward to this as I loved the adventures of the little bear in the red, high-necked jumper, yellow scarf and large-checked trousers.