War Orphans

by Lizzie Lane

  Elspeth had tolerated Lottie while her father was around, but once he was called up to serve his country, her stepmother took to throwing the cat out even during the day.

  ‘It’s just a mangy cat,’ she snarled at Joanna.

  Joanna was brave in the defence of Lottie, her little chin firm and her eyes bright with intent. ‘My dad brought her home for me.’

  ‘Well,’ snapped Elspeth, pushing her face close to Joanna’s so there was only a hair’s breadth between them. ‘Your dad is not here. He’s off fighting in the war. Animals are of less importance now than they’ve ever been. The whole lot of them should be put down!’

  CHAPTER TWO

  The first Joanna knew that something was horribly wrong was as she was walking home from school up The Vale. Her friend Susan was with her, prattling away about her day in school as though she were the only one who went there.

  Joanna heard her but didn’t really take it in. Going home today, the first day of school since her father had gone to war, had left her feeling very apprehensive.

  All the way up the hill red-brick houses sat behind privet hedges. The houses had been built in the late twenties and early thirties for people who had been moved out from the city centre when their homes were demolished to build a chocolate factory. Some of the privet hedges framing the handkerchief sized front gardens were neatly trimmed. Others were left overgrown until the occupants were shamed into taking action by their neighbours. People took pride in their gardens as much as they did their houses. Her father had been no exception. He’d taken care of his garden.

  Joanna admired the little gardens and particularly liked the smell of the privet flower, its blossom a sign that hedge trimming time was imminent, the perfume hanging in the air as the shears did their work. She wondered who would take care of theirs now her father was away fighting in the war. Elspeth hated gardening, saying it destroyed her fingernails. She resolved to do what she could, though because the shears were so heavy cutting the grass and hedges was out of the question.

  Although it was September, the smell of privet flowers still hung in the air, resurrected by the crisp freshness of the first month of autumn.

  Normally Joanna would be elated, but the thought of going home to a house without her father’s presence made her subdued. When she got home only Elspeth would be there, and as soon as she walked in the door, she’d tell her to get her own food, that she was too busy to bother with the demands of a child.

  Joanna’s only solace would be that her cat would be there, greeting her with a purr the moment she entered the garden gate.

  The Vale had been bustling for days with people delivering sandbags and Anderson shelters. Some people whose back gardens were bigger than average had been ordered to have a block-built shelter erected for the benefit of those who didn’t have room for an Anderson or were too old to or incapacitated to install one.

  Joanna forced herself to tune in to what Susan was saying.

  ‘That Miss Hadley told me I should think more before I read aloud,’ Susan said petulantly. ‘I don’t care for reading. I don’t care if I never read another book ever again.’

  Joanna laughed. She didn’t understand Susan’s reluctance to read. She herself loved books and Miss Hadley had commended her on how well she read.

  ‘I like her,’ said Joanna.

  ‘I like her too,’ Susan admitted grudgingly. ‘It’s the books I don’t like.’

  Joanna’s attention had shifted to Mrs Goodson in number 15, a formidable woman most of the time, the sort who refused to give a ball back when it bounced into her garden. She was leaning on the garden gate, crying into her handkerchief and blowing her nose.

  ‘What’s up with her?’ muttered Susan.

  Joanna had never seen Mrs Goodson be anything but fierce; never, ever had she seen her crying. She couldn’t help but stop and ask her what was wrong.

  Mrs Goodson’s glare of recognition that these were some of those badly behaved kids was short-lived, riddled by sobs. ‘It’s the war. The filthy war! How would I have been able to feed him?’

  ‘Clarence? Do you mean Clarence, Mrs Goodson?’

  Clarence was a Pekinese with short legs, a snub nose and sharp teeth. Just like his owner, he didn’t like children, and the children didn’t much like him, but old Mrs Goodson had doted on him. Joanna had even glimpsed her feeding him a square from a Fry’s Five Boys chocolate bar.

  Joanna glanced over the garden gate to the front step where Clarence usually lay stretched out with his eyes closed, until somebody chanced to walk past. At the sound of footsteps he was always up, racing to the gate and yapping until the intrusion on his territory had passed by. Once he was sure no threat lingered, he went back to lying on his step.

  ‘Is he dead?’ Joanna asked. She had got used to his noisy ways, his squashed face and his needle-fine teeth.

  Mrs Goodson dabbed at her eyes. ‘The man from the Animal Committee told me he’d be found a home in the country, a place of safety, he said. He pointed out that with a war on I wouldn’t be able to feed him and also the noise of bombs falling and guns firing might send him mad.’

  Joanna felt Mrs Goodson’s pain. The old lady had loved her dog. ‘I hope he’ll be happy there,’ she said.

  Impatient to be going, Susan tugged at her arm. Together they continued the long trek up the hill.

  ‘Imagine living in the country,’ said Susan. ‘I know our Bertie would like it. He chases cats and if the cats get moved to the country he’ll chase them there.’

  ‘I’m not letting Lottie go to the country,’ Joanna said adamantly. ‘She’s staying with me. We’ll both get bombed together!’

  Her tone was defiant, but inside she was scared. And her fears were intensified when she saw the van outside John Baker’s house. John, a freckle-faced lad with a thatch of auburn hair, was in the same class as her and had a scruffy old dog named Dandy. He and his mother were standing by the gate, looking sad.

  Joanna’s heart almost stopped when she saw Dandy being led to the van. The van shook and echoed with barking of dogs. Joanna glimpsed a cage, saw the man reach in and open it. Dandy was loaded into the cage. From the heart of the frenzied interior she glimpsed the fear-filled eyes of caged cats and dogs, staring out at the world where they’d wandered free.

  ‘Come on. Hurry!’

  Joanna tugged at Susan’s sleeve. The two girls quickened their pace and caught up with John.

  ‘Is he going to country?’ Joanna asked him.

  John shook his head sadly. ‘He’s a bit too old to move so they say it’ll be kinder to put him to sleep.’

  The knot of fear Joanna had been feeling inside grew tighter.

  They were running now, Susan lagging behind and calling for Joanna to slow down. But Joanna was desperate to get home to Lottie as fast as she could.

  The van caught up with them. Breathless from running and fear, Joanna saw it pass, a black shape swaying from side to side. A sick feeling of dread swept over her as it stopped outside her house. Elspeth, her stepmother was at the gate, a closed cardboard box in her arms.

  Lottie hated Elspeth as much as Elspeth hated her. Somehow her stepmother had lured the cat into that box and taped down the lid. Joanna ran faster.

  ‘No!’ she shouted. ‘I don’t want Lottie to go to the country.’

  ‘Take no notice,’ Elspeth said to the man to whom she gave the box. It wasn’t lost on Joanna that her stepmother was giving the man her most winning smile. But most of all her heart was breaking. She could hear Lottie mewing pitifully from within the cardboard box.

  Susan, who had always feared Elspeth Ryan, backed away. Joanna was vaguely aware of her saying she would see her in school tomorrow.

  She lunged towards the van, but firm hands dragged her backwards. Sharp nails dug into her shoulders. Her stepmother jerked her back before she could attempt to snatch the box from the man’s hands.

  ‘Now now, young lady,’ he said, his thin lips stretching into a lax smile
. ‘It’s all for the best. There’s a war on and it ain’t fair for animals to be in the city. Your cat will be fine.’

  Elspeth smiled at the man and pressed more forcefully on Joanna’s shoulders. ‘This gentleman represents the National Air Raid Precautions Animal Committee. It’s his job to take animals to places where they’ll settle away from the chance of being bombed.’

  ‘Can I go with her?’

  Her stepmother gave her what was supposed to be an affectionate shake. ‘Of course not, silly.’

  Joanna knew her stepmother well enough to know that she’d get more than a shaking of shoulders when they were indoors. Likely she’d be sent to bed with no chance of getting herself supper. But she didn’t care. Not if Lottie wasn’t there.

  The doors slammed shut and the van eased away from the kerb.

  Joanna sobbed as she saw the van carry on up The Vale, stopping to collect a dog here, a cat there, even a guinea pig from the Connor twins at the top of the hill.

  ‘Inside, young lady.’

  Joanna almost tripped over the front step as she was pushed into the house. Once the door was closed she was spun roughly round to face her stepmother. Elspeth’s eyes were narrowed and her teeth were showing between her bright red lips, a sure sign that she was very angry.

  ‘You will learn to do as you are told, young lady. Do you hear me?’

  Elspeth shook her far more violently than she had outside the front door. Once they were in the house and without Joanna’s father around, she was capable of doing anything.

  ‘I want Lottie!’ Joanna cried out.

  Her shoulders were gripped even harder, and there was a pleased smirk on her stepmother’s face. ‘Well, you can’t have her. Do you hear me? She’s gone and that’s that!’

  ‘I’ll tell my daddy about you,’ Joanna cried, her face wet with tears, her whole body shaking from the force of her sobs.

  Elspeth pursed her red lips, her eyes blazing. ‘You do that, little miss, and you will rue the day you were born! Off to bed with you and no supper for a start.’

  ‘I don’t want any supper!’

  Elspeth let go of her shoulders and placed her fists on her hips.

  ‘Then go without. Now get out of this house.’ She clouted Joanna’s ear as she reached for the catch and opened the front door. ‘I don’t want to see you until bedtime. And even then I don’t want to see you. Straight to bed with you. Now get out of my sight.’

  ‘It’s raining.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  One more smack across the back of her head before Joanna gladly ran from the house, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  She ran unseeing down The Vale, heedless of anyone who called out to her. She ran past the rank of shops at the bottom of the hill before skidding dizzily into Gibbs Lane and onto the stony path leading to the allotments bordering the railway line.

  Lottie was gone! No longer would she snuggle up to the comforting furry bundle lying beside her. No longer would she hear her cat’s satisfied purr as she whispered about her day at school or confided her fear and loathing for her stepmother and her sincere hope that the war would end and her father would be home soon.

  Her rain-soaked hair flying out behind her, Joanna headed downhill past the allotments with their neat rows of vegetables and tall canes supporting the last plump runner beans of the year. The path was steep and grew more slippery but she couldn’t stop running

  Stones slid out from beneath her feet and she was running so quickly only the fence bordering the railway line at the bottom of the slope stopped her from tumbling out onto the track.

  A train hurtled past, steam billowing from beneath its wheels and out of its stack, its brakes hissing and clanking as it slowed on the approach to Bedminster Station.

  Breathless and totally despondent, Joanna squatted down between the bushes that grew there and buried her head in her hands. Lottie, with her soft black-and-white fur, had been the only way she could bear life with her stepmother.

  A sudden rustling of bushes and a sprinkling of water startled her. She looked up to see the cheeky grin and tousled hair of Paul Green.

  He slid down beside her, wrapping his hands around his dirty knees. ‘What’s up then, Jo?’

  Paul was her best friend. He wasn’t the tidiest of boys, being from a family of seven children – six boys and one girl. He was the youngest boy, so the clothes he wore, hand-me-downs from his older brothers, had seen better days. His sister was a year younger. It was a tight squeeze in their three-bedroom council house.

  Joanna sat with her arms slouched across her knees, her head bent forward. Paul’s cheeky grin and freckled face were usually enough to make her smile, but not today.

  Paul attempted to cheer her up. ‘Come on. It can’t be that bad.’

  Joanna rubbed at her eyes. Although she attempted to stifle her sobs, they kept coming. ‘Lottie’s gone. A man came and took her.’

  Paul’s grin wavered then vanished. ‘Is that so?’

  Joanna nodded. ‘He took Mrs Goodson’s dog too. And Dandy.’

  Paul’s eyebrows rose in surprise. ‘Good riddance to Clarence, but Dandy?’ He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Who would ever have thought it?’

  ‘The man said that he was taking them to the country to be rehomed.’ She turned her tear-filled eyes on Paul. ‘Do you think they would let me visit her?’

  Paul swallowed. Joanna wasn’t to know it but when she turned her big eyes on him his insides turned to mush. She was the only girl in the street that he really liked. He’d do anything to make her smile again.

  ‘I knows where they takes them,’ he said, his accent as careless as usual. ‘How about I go there and see about gettin’ her back? I mean, she’s yer cat, not yer stepmother’s.’

  Joanna managed to stifle a sob. Her eyes were wide with pleading.

  ‘Could you really do that? Do you really know where she is?’

  Paul had only an inkling of where Lottie might be but he was desperate to help. ‘Leave it with me. I’m like a cat meself, you know. Can climb and go anywhere I please without anyone noticing.’

  Paul’s father was ‘away’, as neighbours whispered to each other, and not in the army. Rumour was that he was a cat burglar, so to Joanna it followed as only natural that Paul should be following in his father’s footsteps and rescuing a cat.

  Despite the sorrow still gripping her heart, Joanna smiled through her tears. Paul had given her hope.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Victoria Park Junior School had been built at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was a red-brick building surrounded by a large playground segregated into infants, junior boys and a separate school and playground for junior girls. Boys and girls were segregated once they reached eight years old.

  The infants entered through the gate on Raymond Road. The entrance to the girls’ junior school was on St John’s Lane and the boy’s entrance was further along.

  Miss Sally Hadley had only been at the school for two years, but to her it was like coming home. She’d grown up around here and attended both the infants and junior schools before winning a scholarship to Colston’s Girls’ School. Having obtained a degree in English at Bristol University, followed by a teaching course at St Matthias Teacher Training College, she had completed a few student teacher assignments before acquiring the situation at her old school.

  In some ways the school had remained the same as it had when Miss Hadley went there, and so had the children attending it. Some were very badly off and lived in the old Victorian terraces close by, some in the bay villas surrounding Victoria Park. The remainder lived in red-brick council houses built in the twenties and thirties on what had been a green hill.

  It had been a long hard day in a long hard week, and although she firmly believed in keeping her worries at home separate from those in school, she didn’t always succeed.

  Worrying about her father was like a toothache, throbbing and untreatable. When would he be his old self again? Why c
ouldn’t he see how much she worried about him? She sighed. No matter how much she’d tried to help him, he just would not be helped. He would not adjust to life as it was now.

  Her mother had died sixteen months ago. Grace Hadley had been a fine figure of a woman, very typical of the late Victorian and early Edwardian age in which she’d come to womanhood. And yet, her fine physique didn’t stop her from collapsing on the street one day when she was out doing her shopping. It was instant, the doctors told Sally and her father, she would have been dead before she had even hit the ground.

  She missed her mother a great deal, but had steeled herself to get on with life. Unfortunately, her father was still in deep mourning for his beloved wife. He barely spoke, ate little and sat staring into the distance, an unlit pipe in his mouth.

  No matter what Sally did, she could not get him to snap out of his despair and get on with his life. He was retired and had no interests, nothing to fill his days.

  Before her mother died he’d loved his garden and a piece of allotment down near the railway line. Seb and Grace Hadley had gardened together, growing the most beautiful flowers, enjoying the exercise and the effort, and working side by side.

  He still went down to the shed down there. She’d assumed he would resume his gardening, looking after it as well as he had done so when her mother was still alive. Hoping it would be so, and keen to encourage him, she’d taken him some sandwiches and a Thermos flask. To her profound disappointment she’d seen nothing had been done. Where once brightly coloured blooms had grown there were now only straggly plants, their flowering long over, their leaves brown and tangled with woodbine. Other weeds besides woodbine grew in profusion, thistles and nettles thrusting and spreading between rotting flower stems. The allotment hadn’t been touched for a very long time and nature was claiming it back as its own.