The war effort weeks had done much to make things more interesting too, and I had enjoyed being out and about with other children.
In contrast, Mum seemed to like things being back to normal and redoubled her efforts to ensure that I did everything exactly as she wanted and as fast as possible. I was also back to bed early, whether in the shelter or in my room, and once more was not allowed to get up in the holidays until Mum called, which was often so late in the morning.
Looking back now, I find it difficult to imagine how I amused myself in bed from six in the evening until about ten the following morning, with no books or drawing equipment, dolls or teddies, and no drink of water. The window overlooked the garden, but once in bed I had to lie still and was not allowed to sit up to look outside. There were no pictures on the walls; in fact, the only way that anyone would know that it was my room as opposed to anyone else’s was that my hairbrush was on the dressing table. Otherwise the room could have been empty—unoccupied.
Even the bed had to be made so carefully that it did not look as though anyone had slept in it. There were no duvets; we had sheets and blankets with an eiderdown for cold nights. I almost preferred the shelter because it was darker, and so I think I went to sleep more quickly, and occasionally, in the morning, Tig might wander in from the garden.
Perhaps it was the contrast between the bustle of the full house (in a way, I had mattered more then and felt properly useful) and the return of the old routine that made me particularly aware of a kind of dreariness, a hopelessness. Nothing was ever going to change.
How I wished I were still a five-year-old with a ‘real’ Mummy. If only the last five years had not happened at all and I was that little girl who had been loved. I don’t know that I thought it all out exactly like this, but this was the gist of my ramblings. I remembered that Mum had said that no one would want me when I grew up, and I supposed that was just the way it was going to be. It did not occur to me that she might be wrong.
I began to wish that I knew how children ran away. You heard stories at school about such children, and they always ended up somewhere wonderful or came home to loving arms.
Suddenly, for no reason, I remembered the stories that Mummy used to tell me. I had completely forgotten about them. It made me realise that no one had ever read to me since her death.
I was now able to read for myself and enjoyed the books at school, but the only books I had at home were girls’ annuals, which seemed to be about the sort of girls who were pretty and clever, lived in big houses and had wonderful toys. I had never met anyone remotely like these girls. I also had Rupert annuals, which I loved—probably because they were about animals, imaginary animals. They are the only fantasy type of book that I have ever liked; tales about fairies were silly, I thought, and yet I did not think Rupert so. Not very logical … Eventually I began to be given Enid Blyton books and much, much later Arthur Ransome books. These seemed real, as they were about children who had adventures. How I envied them!
Since my grandparents and Harry had left, my life had become dreary again, and I was suffocated by all Mum’s restrictions. I longed for company, but I had to play by myself in the other room.
In there were two big cupboards built either side of the chimney breast. The left-hand one was divided so that the top part had crockery and such things in it and the bottom part was my toy cupboard. It was deep and came up to the height of the mantlepiece. It had a shelf, and the floor was like another shelf. With the doors wide open, I played with dolls, dressing and undressing them, giving them a ‘life’, pretending that the shelf was their home, while I sat on a small stool in front of the cupboard. If I wanted to draw or read my annuals, I put all the doll things on the floor under the shelf and spread my books, pencils and drawing paper out on top, but it was often rather dark in the corner and there was not enough light to see properly. I once asked if I might sit on the settee and do my drawing on my lap but was told that I would only spread all my things about and that would make the place untidy. I was so … what was I? Fed up? Low? Depressed? I didn’t know. And I didn’t know these words, either—I was just the way I was.
One of the things that happened about then was that I only just saved all my dolls from being given away. I knew I should give toys to poor children who had been bombed out and had none, but I only just got home in time to save Margaret from the pile that Mum had collected while I was at school. All my dolls were in a heap on the settee when I got back.
‘We are going to give them to Barnardo’s. They are appealing for toys.’
I was aghast! ‘Please, please may I keep Margaret? And … and Baby?’
I held my breath, as Mum thought for a moment. ‘Well, I suppose you could. And that other baby doll is not worth sending.’
Tiggy had chewed the doll in question when he was a puppy, but I was glad to add her to the other two.
I was so relieved. ‘All the rest can go,’ I said, ‘and the farm animals and the annuals.’ I rushed to give all sorts away. I was sorry for these children and wanted to give them things, but I just loved these three dolls—they were a part of the time before my mother died. I was sure that Mum would have given them all away had I not returned from school just in time.
Then there was something else. Something that hurt more than anything else because it was not Mum being mean; it was Dad.
On my way into the house after school one day soon after the doll episode, I glanced into the greenhouse. My doll’s house was missing! It was small—only about a foot across—but Mum had never allowed it in the house: it stood against the back wall of the house in the lean-to greenhouse, so I only played with it if the weather was not too cold or too hot. But I loved to wallpaper the tiny rooms, build stairs from matchboxes, make little bed covers and bring the miniature dolls to life.
‘Mum, where has my doll’s house gone?’
Mum was cooking. She did not usually even look round when I came in, but today she turned round and looked directly at me. She took a big breath.
‘I’m afraid your dad has sold it. I didn’t know or I would have stopped him.’
I was stunned. ‘Why, Mum?’
‘Dad’s selling the car. A man came to see it and said he would buy it if Dad included the doll’s house. By the time I knew, it was too late. I know you still play with it.’
I cried then. I felt bereft. I had loved that doll’s house. How could Dad do this to me? One good thing was that Mum was on my side for once, but she was cross with Dad and that was not good.
She sighed and said, ‘I’m sorry.’ Here was Mum saying ‘sorry’ to me! For Dad, I supposed. I thought Dad would have said ‘sorry’ too, but he said nothing until the next day.
‘I didn’t think you played with that doll’s house,’ he said. ‘It’s always in the greenhouse.’
At first I didn’t understand. It lived in the greenhouse. It was never anywhere else.
‘I play with it there,’ I said.
‘I didn’t know that. Why?’
‘That’s where it lives.’
Dad had never noticed that the doll’s house never came into the house … that I played with it in the greenhouse. I didn’t know what to think or feel. I was so unhappy that he had done this to me: that mattered more than the loss of the doll’s house itself.
I brooded for the rest of the week. I wanted things to be different, but how could they be? I didn’t know. And what was the alternative? Some children ran away. How did they do that? I had no idea. I spent time dreaming and planning … planning what exactly I could not have said, but when I set off for Sunday school that week I stopped before reaching the gates to the church and turned off into the fields. I was crying, frightened about what I was doing, but a little bit excited, too. I walked to the first gate and into the next field. There were cows there. I liked cows, and these were quietly chewing their cuds and watching me with their big, soft eyes. I went near them and talked to them. One of them mooed back, and I sat down on the grass an
d looked at them all. Then I looked at the fields, stretching away into the distance. I thought of the trouble I’d be in if I ran away and was brought back—and I knew I’d be brought back because I had no idea how to go about this business of running away. I had nowhere to go, no one near enough to go to and, in any case, they would just send me home.
I got up and turned back. I was a failure: I knew that. It had been a silly idea, anyway. Had I only been pretending? I wondered. I would never have had the courage to go through with such a plan. Plan? There was no plan.
I skulked near the church until I saw the children come out. I waited until they had dispersed and then ran home. Until now, no one has ever known of my pathetic attempt at running away.
Prisoners of War
I knew that Dad had been having great difficulties at the Works. He only had three of the original twelve men to do all the work, and the bombing in Bath and its surrounds meant extra hours overseeing new pipework or repairs, involving many trips into the city. He employed a tiny old man who had retired from the Works several years earlier but was glad to ‘get out missus’s road’. Dad gave him the easier jobs and found him useful, but the maintenance of roads, trees, hedges and verges could not be fitted in, and the bomb blasts had shattered a lot of windows, which needed to be repaired.
The ‘powers that be’, Dad said, would have to find him some more men from somewhere. And, apparently, they did.
One morning—it must have been holiday time—an old army lorry trundled past the house on the way to the Works.
‘What the …?’ Dad was into his jacket and on with his hat and after it in no time.
A while later, he came back to say that the corporation had sent him some German prisoners of war to do some of the heavy work.
Mum was nervous. ‘Are they all right? Not dangerous?’
Dad said that a soldier with a gun was in charge of them but seemed to think that they would not be a problem.
All Mum could say was ‘Hmm.’
‘What do they look like, Dad?’ I asked.
‘Just like anyone else,’ he replied. ‘Did you think they might have two heads or something?’
He was only joking, but I didn’t like it when Mum or Dad made fun of me. Perhaps it was because I was not usually given the chance to explain what I had meant—as now. I had wondered if they were huge or ugly, if they had bandages on, if they had horrible tempers or if they smiled. I couldn’t think that they would smile—they were prisoners, after all, weren’t they?
The next day Dad appeared at the back door with one of the prisoners.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, and he told us the man’s name, though I don’t remember what it was. The man was light-haired and not very tall. He looked young for a soldier—more like a senior schoolboy. He had two pairs of slippers in his hand. They were made from several different colours of string. He offered the small pair to me. I shrank back, thinking that I would not be allowed to take them. But he jabbered something and smiled, and then he kind of bowed to Mum and gave her both pairs. He bowed again and went out of the door. The soldier, ‘one of our Tommies’, was waiting for him with his rifle slung over his shoulder on a strap. The rest of the prisoners were in the back of the truck.
They had all been allocated jobs the day before and shown what needed doing, and now they were to be set to work again. Dad said they were good workers, but he didn’t seem very happy. Evidently people in the village did not like having the prisoners nearby and blamed Dad, saying that he was being unpatriotic. Dad was furious and had what he called a ‘set-to’ with a few of the village men who did not seem to realise that the scheme was making good use of prison labour.
‘You’d think they would be glad to know that these POWs were doing something to earn their keep rather than sitting on their bottoms at our expense!’ Dad raged on.
The prisoners made the slippers and other things and sold them for pennies to buy cigarettes. I was surprised at first that Dad was willing to give them money, but I suppose we needed slippers, and these would not be on coupons. They were surprisingly comfortable and lasted a long time.
We rarely, if ever, heard the word ‘Nazi’—to us children the Germans were known as ‘Huns’, ‘Crouts’ or ‘the Axis’ (with the other countries fighting against us), ‘Hitler’s lot’ or just plain ‘the enemy’. Now, when the Second World War is mentioned, we talk about Nazis, or Nazi Germany, but during the war years local people did not make any distinction between the German people and the Nazis. There was really no distinction to be made, as the Nazis had such a stranglehold on the German nation that decent Germans had no voice at all. It was only after the war, when we watched films or documentaries or read wartime history, that we understood this.
The prisoners’ work enabled Dad to catch up on all the jobs that had been left unattended, but his relationship with the village was strained. I was not aware of this personally, but Mum and Dad worried about it. I don’t remember how long the Germans stayed, but I think it was only a few weeks, and, apart from the man with the slippers, I only caught glimpses of them as they were driven past.
Mum was uneasy and said that she didn’t want them anywhere near the house. Dad tried to understand them (they spoke a little English) to see why they were fighting for a man like Hitler. He said that some of them didn’t seem to know why they were fighting at all but that one had started to shout ‘Heil Hitler’. The Tommy raised his gun and pointed it at the man and told Dad not to talk to any of the prisoners at all in future in case there was trouble. Dad was relieved when they went but wondered how he would manage without them.
A Wartime Birthday
Obviously, I must have had birthdays during the war, but, apart from one—perhaps my tenth—I do not remember them. I think most parents tried to make children’s birthdays special, but it was not easy. Birthday cakes, if made at all, would have to be eggless and almost sugarless; icing was just not possible, as the sugar ration was meagre, and candles were a thing of the past. Jelly was still available, and, as long as you had milk, you could make custard. Pastry took rather too much fat, so fancy tarts were out of the question for parties—mine, anyway (pastry was for apple tarts and other filling puddings). About the only sandwich fillings were fish paste or spam. This strange meat was fairly readily available, and all the youngsters liked it. Granddad S. said it ‘was not fit to eat, as you didn’t know what was in it’. I think there were many foods on the market during and after the war, including horse meat and whale meat, that were labelled as something else.
I was as keen as any other child to have a party until I really thought about it. All the others had some sort of ‘tea’, so I wanted to be seen to have one, too. But I was always on edge in case one of my four or five school friends said something to get me into trouble.
I always felt more freedom in school and often broke some of Mum’s rules about putting on my hat and coat for playtime or keeping the elasticated legs of my knickers down almost to the hem of my skirt. I pulled them up out of sight as soon as I was anywhere near school. The teasing would have been too awful! Or perhaps I played with some child whose parents Mum and Dad didn’t like. There were all sorts of things that my friends might have talked about within Mum’s hearing, and I wonder now that I was so keen to have a ‘tea’. I suppose it was worth the risk just to be like everyone else.
When we went to each other’s houses for a tea (or a proper party sometimes), we took our slippers. This was always the done thing: a small present and your slippers. At the end, the host child would say, ‘Thank you for coming and don’t forget your slippers.’
‘Thank you for having me and I’ve got my slippers,’ we would reply. It was always the same: rather stilted but polite. Quite different from the way we communicated in the playground!
I believe everyone takes home ‘party bags’ these days, but there was no such thing then. We did not decorate the house for the event either, but it is possible that some folk had a few balloons, thoug
h they were almost unobtainable once the war came. Any rubber that ‘got through’ (on the ships) was needed for army lorry tyres, we were told.
We played very ordinary games—hunt the slipper, hide-and-seek, statues (if someone could play the piano) and pin the tail on the donkey. Donkeys were of the oddest shapes, as the child concerned drew and painted it herself. Pass the parcel was nearly all wrapping, with a tiny present, perhaps an apple, inside. In our house, we had to have ‘hunt the thimble’ because our games were confined to the ‘other room’, so something as large as a slipper would soon have been found. Hide-and-seek was only possible in good weather, but my birthday was in the winter.
Mum kept stern watch over the tea table but cleared up and washed up afterwards, leaving us to play in the other room.
‘You are so different when your mother is around,’ a friend said.
‘No, I’m not,’ I answered, in my usual prickly way.
I so wanted to be like everyone else that I deluded myself. The girl concerned was probably only being friendly or was genuinely puzzled.
When the party was over, the children would have trudged off along the dark lane to their homes in the village. The country was a much safer place for children then than it is now, but Dad worried about the river if there had been a lot of rain, as there had been on this birthday: the lane was prone to flood very quickly. So he piled all the children into the car (no seat belts in those days) and drove them up the hill and into the village, where they all got out and dispersed. I would have liked to have gone too, but I had to clear up.
There were a number of fish-paste sandwiches left over, as they were not a favourite, so I had to eat them for breakfast the next morning. I did not tell my friends that. My breakfast was usually a jam sandwich, but now and again we had porridge, which I loved. Dad kept bees, and so we had honey on the porridge instead of sugar. It was very tasty.
The Country Nurse Remembers Page 15