by John Wright
‘Next door was badly damaged an’ all,’ she added, ‘and because their front door wouldn’t open, Mrs Irvine passed her little girl Shirley out to us through the shattered front window. She is only four and she was really good and never cried at all, but mebbe that was because she was in shock. Renee, who is now working shifts as a trainee overhead crane driver at the Cargo Fleet steelworks, was having her supper after working a two till ten shift when the raid started and they were late sounding the siren. We’ve had to move into rented accommodation while the house is being repaired and our curtains, carpets, bedding and clothes will have to be replaced as they are impregnated with glass. We’re now living in rooms in a big Victorian house on Linthorpe Road next to our family doctor. We’ve got the downstairs rooms, and Granny Knights and your Great Aunt Maud and her three kids have the upstairs rooms – they were bombed out like us. We share the kitchen and we have electricity now but I don’t trust that new fangled stuff. There’s even an inside toilet and a bathroom, and we’re not used to such luxuries. Our houses are all boarded up now and quite a few of the houses on Laws Street were completely wrecked.’ I thought to myself, ‘I’m glad Mam’s at Grove House with our George.’
By late spring most of the trees had put forth fresh green foliage, but the ash buds were still clenched black and tight. Vigorous green shoots of young wheat had sprung up to hide the brown ridges and Mr Harris’s boss had said to him, ‘I must have the barley sown and the swedes and mangolds drilled by early May.’ The clover and hayseed had been broadcast soon after the harrowing was done and it gave them a feeling of satisfaction to accomplish these annual tasks. Scents of wild flowers and fruit blossom assailed their nostrils and Mr Harris was glad to be working long hours, as the destructive bickering with his wife was getting him down. The incessant nagging had done its damage; unhappiness and frustration had gradually taken root and had grown between them like some malignant flower. He always experienced a deep feeling of contentment when with his fellow farmhands. He found their slow, deep-toned and broad-vowelled banter comforting as they worked in the fields talking happily of simple things like pigmeal, mash rollers and fertiliser. The unhurried farming year had scarcely altered over the years but things were starting to change more rapidly now. Nearby Italian prisoners jabbered away in their excitable fashion while an armed soldier stood guard, and there were increasing numbers of Land Army girls in khaki jodhpurs.
It felt good to be out in the warm, fresh air away from the constrained atmosphere of home. Mrs Harris seemed to be permanently bad-tempered these days and he suspected that she was taking it out on us kids when he wasn’t there. She certainly took it out on the locals, playing hell with the nurse, the policeman, the postman and anyone else that crossed her path. Most people tried to keep out of her way. ‘The war affects different people in different ways,’ he thought, ‘and me and ’er seem ter ’ave little in common these days.’ He comforted himself with the thought of how relaxing it would be to plod on with the tilling and planting and he found that grinding up the mangolds for the steers helped him to unwind. He tried to put his wife, and the bloody war that seemed to be dragging on forever, out of his mind. At the end of each day he knew that pleasant feeling that often follows a spell of hard physical labour, but she always spoiled it for him when he got home.
Harry only had a few more weeks at school before he left for good. Recently he had started a Saturday morning job at the butcher’s shop on Front Street delivering the orders on a sit-up-and-beg bike that had a large wicker basket on the front. In between the deliveries he gave the neat and dapper Mr Atkinson a hand in the shop.
On reflection, the evacuation scheme seems to have been a rather hit-and-miss affair dependent on luck or the lack of it. George and I had been lucky at first, but that luck seemed to have run out since coming here. I was frightened by Mrs Harris’s loud voice and intimidating manner as she seemed to have a stone where her heart should have been. Her eyes were cold and she knew how to hurt us. Public Information Leaflet number three proved to be far from correct in our case as it stated that, ‘… clearly the children will be much happier away from the big cities where the danger will be greatest … They will be well looked after.’ It was only Jimmy’s friendship and caring presence, along with Mr Harris’s kindly nature, that had made being here just about tolerable. He was an undemonstrative and exceptionally nice man, but he worked long hours and was not always there to mediate on our behalf. When he was at home he bore the brunt of her anger but he tried his best to protect us from her increasingly angry and volatile behaviour.
Wartime anxieties and separations changed everybody to some degree and emotions tended to be heightened and intensified with nerves often stretched to breaking point. We found out the hard way that the choleric Mrs Harris had a cruel and nasty streak. We were now being punished more and more severely for minor misdemeanours or infringements of her rules. For example, I had recently been larruped with the belt for tearing my trousers on some barbed wire with the L-shaped tear being a sure give-away. On another occasion I was clouted round the ear for smirking and looking away while being told off. It was all down to nervousness and fear when she shouted straight into my face. ‘I will not have it. Do you hear?’ (Silence.) ‘I said do you hear?’ she screamed. ‘Yes, Mrs Harris,’ I whimpered in reply. I hated it when she exploded into action and grabbed hold of me. It was so humiliating to be held by the shoulders and shaken like a rag doll in front of the others and I often felt that my head would fall off.
Where does punishment end and abuse begin? Children should be trained not beaten. We had been separated from our loved ones at an early age and that was traumatic enough. We were old enough to know it was wrong to be naughty or to tell lies; especially to adults. But did we deserve this verbal and physical maltreatment just for being mischievous? We reasoned that she was an adult, therefore she must know best, as we had been taught to respect our ‘elders and betters’. We were no angels but we were being whacked on the legs or rapped on the head for what seemed trivial offences. Our shortcomings were many, it seems. She was losing her temper and resorting to violence more and more often. When she took down one of the belts hanging on the kitchen cabinet, I would flinch in anticipation of the first blow. As we shielded our heads with our arms, or hid under the coats hanging on the kitchen door, she lashed at the bare part of our legs below our baggy short trousers and showed no mercy. We were often left with red, stinging, raised weals.
It took a long time to shake off the image of her red, rage-distorted, moon-like face, and I shut my eyes as the belt whipped down on me over and over again. I can still picture her wobbling jowls and the gingery hairs that grew out of her flared nostrils as she lashed at me. Tight-lipped and scowling, she seemed to enjoy watching us cringe and whimper as we slunk away like puppies with our tails between our legs. It was not the bruises but the wounds inside that would take the longest to heal. She had created a deep dread and uncertainty in us. I vowed that one day I would write it all down, but for the time being I had to put up with it – but I would never forget. To make matters worse, the obsequious ‘Ducky’ Barrett, who was an out-and-out creep, hardly ever got hit.
Poor Dot, who was as thin as a rake, was cruelly punished for the slightest transgression. She was clipped round the ear or caned on the palms of her hands causing them to become red, puffed up and sore. I still remember the whooshing sound of the thin cane as it sliced through the air. When she had stopped crying she sat there in shocked silence, keeping her eyes averted so as not to anger Mrs Harris again. Maybe it was because she was not ‘the full shilling’ – as they said – that she was picked on the most. When this happened, Jimmy and I looked at each other with our teeth and our fists clenched. We felt bad and tears came to our eyes, as her hurting hurt us. We felt guilty at saying nothing but at the same time we were glad that it was not our turn to get it. Mrs Harris could wield sarcasm with deadly effect and she constantly told Dot that she needed her head looking at b
ut, in my eyes, by trying to degrade her she only degraded herself.
We were told that we were stupid, worthless and useless so often that we came to believe that it must be true and started to display symptoms of insecurity. The repeated beatings and the constant telling off lowered our self-esteem and we withdrew into ourselves more and more. It reduced our trust and faith in the adults around us and we felt that we had nobody to turn to for help and support. Even though school afforded some respite, we were too intimidated to confide in the teachers. Our reserves of resilience were almost used up and we instinctively said and did nothing in order to cope. We longed to be reassured but didn’t know how to tell them what was happening as we thought they would think we were making it all up. When Gran visited again we tried to tell her but Mrs Harris was always there. She was all smiles, hugging us and putting on a big act of kindness.
The more we were punished the more we came to expect it. We started to believe that we must be bad children and deserved everything we got. It is a strange quirk of human nature to feel guilt on being badly treated. Jimmy and I became introverted and withdrawn and began to lose hope, and I longed for Mam to hug and cuddle me and soothe my fears, but she hadn’t been to see me for some time. It seems that I subconsciously started to employ basic survival mechanisms. I learned to ‘switch off’ my mind and pretend that I wasn’t there when Mrs Harris beat me. I believe that the psychologist’s term for such a reaction is disassociation.
School provided a structure to our day and Jimmy and I felt safe among the crowds of children. For a time, Miss Francis, with her striking blue eyes and gentle, smiling presence, shamed me into making an effort. There was something about her that made you want to please her; an implicit trust that led to a certain restraint. After a lesson with her I felt better able to cope; she was like a second mother to me and her influence was more potent and lasting than if she had been a strict disciplinarian. Shouting and threatening are barren means of instruction. She taught me to read for pleasure, which enabled me to escape into another world, and was sympathetic when I desperately needed some kindness and understanding. The formerly mind-numbing class routine became a sanctuary in which I didn’t have to expend too much time thinking. I put up a defensive screen, joking and clowning to mask the emotional hurt that was holding me back. I became like the vulnerable, soft-bodied caddis fly larva in the pond; a little creature that protects itself inside an armoured covering composed of bits of hard stone that it glues together. I hid inside my own mind and learned to build barriers so that no one would hurt me again.
Miss Francis had said, ‘Don’t be afraid to ask if you get stuck on anything.’ But due to feelings of worthlessness and failure, I was not prepared to risk appearing silly in front of my peers. I would not ask when I did not fully understand something and never put my hand up to offer answers. I was so unhappy and I felt that I was not as clever as the other children in the class. A feeling of hopelessness was dragging me down and my schoolwork began to suffer. I got into trouble due to my increased lethargy and withdrawn churlish state. My emotions were kept bottled up until they came out in aggressive outbursts and I got into fights. I didn’t like hurting people but I found that a good fight helped to get rid of some of my pent-up anxiety for a time. At home in Middlesbrough we had been materially deprived, but here we were being emotionally deprived and the effects were to last a long, long time.
There appeared to be two sides to my nature. I was quiet, subdued and deep thinking, and needed solitude from time to time. Solitude is not the same as loneliness. Lingering in the silence of the countryside gave me a warm pleasant feeling and I became a watcher of people and things. Still painfully shy and inhibited in company, I dared not reveal my unspoken dreams. At other times I became a more primitive, rowdy boy who ran wild with Jimmy and the others. Recently we had started to take heart-stopping risks, as traumatised children tend to do. We dared each other to do dangerous things and often ended up in even deeper trouble. Those early Sunday morning walks to Torville’s shop were my brief periods of enjoyable peace and quiescence. These traits are apparently the two sides of the same coin: the yin and the yang of Oriental philosophy.
Life had become a fear and a mystery, and Jimmy and I were emotionally wounded and left with scars that would take many years to heal – and some never did. I had bad dreams and Mrs Harris, in trying to curb our exuberance and love of life, came very close to breaking our spirit. The human spirit can only take so much before it crumbles to dust, so we tried to avoid her, as she would give us a smack round the head for the slightest infringement of her rules. We even got a clout for getting in her way, but it was hard not to with so many of us in that small house. I cannot speak for the others, who also had their share of beatings, as I do not know how they turned out in later life, but Jimmy and I were being shaped by circumstances over which we had no control. It was time to do something about it. Jimmy and I started to think of running away.
The long-suffering and undemonstrative Mr Harris seemed to sense our unhappiness and tried to show us more affection to make up for his wife’s increasing carping and cruel ways. We appreciated his many small kindnesses but it was not enough. Children have indelible memories and our minds were made up. We waited for a suitable time to make our getaway but, in the meantime, we escaped into the great airy spaces of the countryside as often as possible. Our hearts were heavy and the lightness had disappeared from our step as we trudged to school day after day. We were content if we scraped through the day without further hurt, and indoors we moped and said nothing or stayed out of the way in our bedrooms. We had long discussions and we asked the others if they wanted to come with us. Dot and Thelma willingly agreed and Ducky, who was a wimp and a sucker up, reluctantly agreed but only after much persuading. He said, ‘It’s all right for you lot, but Newcastle is a lot further away than Middlesbrough. Ah‘d be on me own from there on.’ We thought we had better keep a close eye on him in case he gave the game away. We decided to go on the morning of Whit Monday, the first weekday of our half-term break.
Jimmy went into Mr Harris’s cluttered shed and found an old battered saucepan that he kept rusty nails and screws in and we washed it out in the pond. I stole a bottle of Camp coffee and chicory from the Co-op store that had an Indian prince and a kilted Scottish soldier on the label, which reminded me of what Dad had told us about his time in India. Consequently I suffered feelings of guilt and remember thinking, what if PC Manging found out? Would I be charged with larceny and put in a cell in York Jail? A picture of Dick Turpin in his cramped cell came into my mind. What would Mam think of me? The song It’s a Sin to tell a Lie kept going round in my head. Dot pinched some broken biscuits from Bryant’s and we hid them in a tin under the railway sleepers that formed the little bridge over the drainage ditch up Usher Lane. Thelma stole a teaspoon and a tin of Libby’s evaporated milk and we bought a few ha’penny Oxo cubes with our few coppers. The thought of going home lifted our spirits no end and we couldn’t wait for the big day to come. We thought that Middlesbrough and Grove House lay just over the ridge to the north of Strensall and that was the way we planned to go.
Whit Sunday was a day of changing cloud and sunshine as we put on our ‘Sunday Best’ ready for church. Mr Harris had built an arch of rustic trelliswork over the path that ran down the back garden and had trained climbing roses to twine around it. The young, almond-shaped leaves were reddish-tinted and, due to the warm weather, they were just coming into flower. The girls were wearing light-coloured dresses in honour of Whitsun and Mr Harris snipped off a few of the miniature, partly open buds and pinned one on each of the girls. He then put the stems of others through the buttonholes of our jackets. In church I usually tried to avoid being next to Ducky who always stood next to Mrs Harris. Creeps and unctuous people like him made my flesh crawl, and Jimmy whispered, ‘I ’ope he don’t say ’owt.’ So this time I made a point of standing on the other side of her so that I could hear what he said. I barely remember the s
ervice that day as my mind was on more important things.
That day the hands of the kitchen clock seemed to crawl round and, on going to bed, we were quiet for a change. Usually we argued and tiptoed in and out of each other’s bedrooms and Mrs Harris often had to shout up the stairs, ‘Get into bed or you’ll feel the belt around you! I won’t tell you again.’ Due to an excess of excitement, I lay awake listening to the sound of the rafters creaking as they cooled and slept only for short spells. Ducky was snoring and letting off as usual and the night seemed to drag on interminably, but finally the first faint signs of dawn began to filter around the blackout curtains. It was only six o’clock and too early to get up but eventually a chorus of birdsong greeted the start of the new day. Mr Harris was out and on his way to work as the rising sun bathed the houses in its warm gold-tinted light. It was a glorious morning and I thought to myself that by the time it set I would be back with Mam. This was the day we had longed for and we could scarcely believe it was here. We put on our old threadbare clothes to give the impression that today was nothing out of the ordinary, and I had on my ragged pullover that had holes at the elbows as if I was just going out to play.
How we contained our excitement I’ll never know. We ate as much porridge and toast and margarine as we could cram into our stomachs, and we kept back two of our mugs after Dot had done the washing up of the breakfast things. We hid them away in Thelma’s canvas knapsack while Mrs Harris was outside in the back garden hanging out items of threadbare underwear that had seen too many washes. Thelma was then sent on an errand to the shops. We were ready and eager to be off and tried to hide our excitement as we waited impatiently for her to come back. At the last minute Ducky chickened out, saying, ‘It’s a barmy idea and ah’m not coming with yer.’ We prayed that the oily creep wouldn’t give the game away. ‘Right,’ said Thelma when she got back. ‘Let’s be off.’ As we stepped outside the sun was well up but the air wasn’t too fresh, at which Jimmy exclaimed, ‘Phew! What a pong!’