The Keeping of Secrets
Alice Graysharp
For my sister
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
PART ONE: WAR
1: Evacuation
2: Bill
3: The Phoney War
4: Encounter
5: Birthday
6: Midsummer
7: The Battle of Britain
8: James
PART TWO: SECRETS AND LIES
9: Winter
10: Spring
11: Jon
12: Jon’s Story
13: Buzz Bombs
14: Official Secrets
15: Truth
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
Copyright
Prologue
There are always days in one’s life that remain forever fixed in the memory. The first day at school, the birthday when the dream of a special toy came true, the day our dog Peggy arrived, the day my father learnt of his brother Barry’s death in that evening’s paper.
I am Patricia Adela Roberts and Saturday 2nd September 1939 was the day my war began.
PART ONE
WAR
Extract from a letter to ‘the parents of children who have been removed with their schools to places of greater safety’.
Dear Sir or Madam,
As you know, the Government have made arrangements under which a very large number of children have moved out of the crowded towns for their greater safety from air attack. The children are being provided with board and lodging, and arrangements have also been made for their medical attendance…
… a scheme has been drawn up by which parents will be asked to make a reasonable payment towards the cost of keeping their children who are away from home…
… the Government have decided to fix 6s a week for each child as a sum which would be accepted as full discharge of this liability…
… I am confident that in the great task which lies before us we can rely upon your co-operation and goodwill.
Yours sincerely
Walter E Elliot
Minister of Health
1
Evacuation
‘Good mo-or-ning, Pat, dear.’ My mother’s soft sing-song voice from the doorway woke me from a sleep disturbed by vague dreams of gas masks, suitcases and a ranting little man with a moustache. ‘It’s nearly a quarter to five and I’ve finished making your packed lunch, so hurry and get ready and we’ll have time for a little breakfast before you go.’
I was suddenly awake and alert, tense like the spring in my wind-up toy, anxieties bubbling up like lava. I looked around my room. Laid out on the chair at the foot of my bed was my school uniform, carefully ironed to a crisp, crease-free finish by my mother the day before. My dressing table stood against the wall opposite my chair, devoid of its usual clutter which was swept up into the case standing open on the floor below the window, ready for my toothbrush and other last minute items. Except for my gas mask case, crudely yet lovingly made by my mother a year ago, a solitary sentry on the dressing table mat. Like me, I thought, alone. To the left of my dressing table stood my wardrobe like a towering sentinel, dark wood casting a shadow from the landing light.
Reaching out, I switched on my bedside lamp as no discernible daylight edged the blackout curtains. The room sprang into focus and I hastened out of bed, grabbing my dressing gown, and tiptoeing along the landing and in through the kitchen door to the partitioned-off toilet.
Vacating the toilet, I moved into the tiny kitchen created from the remainder of the original bathroom of the house. A wooden grooved draining board, on which my mother had stacked last night’s dishes, sloped from the toilet room wall into a deep stone rectangular sink, beneath which lay a freestanding cupboard for pots and pans; to its left, jammed in between the sink and the board-covered bath, stood a small square table on which sat my father’s bread tins. The wall between the door and the foot of the bath boasted the gas cooker with low cabinets either side providing further storage space. At the foot of the bath itself a cabinet had been hung on the wall.
I loved this miniscule kitchen. It was a step up from our previous lodgings where we’d made do with a Kitchener set in the hearth of the living room. A real kitchen created the illusion of permanence. My childhood was constantly peppered with moves from one kind of temporary accommodation to another. Maybe evacuation will give me a proper home with a front door that I won’t have to share with other tenants, I thought, and somewhere to live until the coming war’s over without being constantly uprooted. A cottage in the country with a white picket fence and roses around the door.
Setting my fantasy aside, I smiled wanly at my tall, slim, brown-haired mother scrambling eggs vigorously behind me as I washed hands and face briefly in the kitchen sink. Returning to my room, dressing, brushing and shaping my shoulder-length wavy chestnut brown hair, I stopped as I was about to stoop to cram my hairbrush into my case.
My reflection looked solemnly back at me from the mirror on the wall above the dressing table. High cheekbones, my father’s blue-grey eyes and my mother’s beaklike nose. I pursed my lineal lips, the top one relieved by two tiny peaks. I wondered if anyone would ever find me attractive and whether I would ever believe them if they said I was. I remembered a girl, aware of my presence, mocking me loudly to her friends the other side of the protruding rows of coat hooks in the changing room. ‘That Patricia Roberts, she’s so stuck up and ugly, what boy would ever take a fancy to her, and with that nose…!’
Trust no one and you won’t be disappointed, was my motto. Although acquainted with girls at school, I had no close friends there. I did not dare get too close to any, partly because I feared they would ultimately let me down (after all, my parents had let me down when I was a child and they were my parents) and partly because there were family secrets my mother was determined should not be shared with anyone, and so discouraged me from pursuing school friendships in case I inadvertently let the cat out of the bag. I felt isolated. I hated my face and I resented my mature figure with breasts that had filled out alarmingly by the age of thirteen, envying slender, fashionably willowy girls at school. At least my waist is fairly small, I conceded, but that only makes my bust and my bottom look proportionately larger. Still, none of that matters either way as don’t want to step out with a young man. Well, not until I’m, oh, at least twenty-five and in a teaching career and earning decent money so I’m not beholden to anyone. And on the shelf, far too old.
My mother called from the doorway of the living room, ‘Breakfast’s on the table.’ She returned to the kitchen. I shook my head clear of my thoughts, shoved my hairbrush into my case and moved towards the living room.
The door between my room and the living room opened and my grandmother’s silvery topped head peered round.
‘So this is it, my dear,’ she said, her square, heavy-jawed face creased with concern. ‘Nearly time to go.’
‘So sorry, Nan,’ I said, moving towards her and hugging her in a dance of good morning and good bye. ‘I didn’t mean you to be disturbed.’
As tall as me and solidly built, Nan enveloped me with her affection.
‘D’you think I could sleep well, knowing you’re off to God knows where?’ she demanded. She paused. ‘I’ll share a cuppa with you before you go.’
Grabbing her dressing gown Nan followed me into the adjacent room which, with a shared function of sitting room and dining room, was something of an obstacle course when the drop down table was opened out in the centre of the armchair circle. Peggy, a brown cocker spaniel and dachshund mix, now an old lady in dog years, yawned and stretched her front leg
s, then trotted over from her basket near the fireplace to nuzzle me as I slid onto a dining chair on the far side, and Nan took one opposite me. My mother followed us in and settled a brimming teapot on its little stand, covering it with the green and pink crocheted tea cosy, last Christmas’ present from Nan to my parents. The tea cosy was reasonably sympathetic to our best pink rose tea service, but clashed a little with the functional yellow dinner service set out for breakfast. As a budding artist, colour coordination mattered to me. A crocheted mat of the same two bright colours stood on my dressing table, Nan’s last Christmas present to me, and I made a mental note to add it to my case to take a special token of my world away with me.
I felt a little nauseous at the sight of the scrambled eggs and bacon mounted on toast, my stomach churning at the day ahead. I thought of my only friend Bill, most likely also getting ready for evacuation with his school right now. He wouldn’t be nervous but, rather, excited about it, his zest for life and his love of the dramatic feeding the adrenaline. Bill was the nearest I had to a brother. We grew up alongside each other and whenever our respective parents got together he and I were left to entertain ourselves. Only six months older than me, he was in the same school year and when I was younger I sometimes pretended to myself that we were long lost twins. I loved looking at his Boys’ Own magazines and playing with his tin train set. Although I had a doll, I always thought that Bill’s toys were far more interesting than mine. As a young child I was convinced that when I grew up I would be able to choose whether to be a woman or a man, and I wanted to be the same as Bill. I was eight years old when I learnt to my horror that I was stuck with being a girl forever. It seemed to me that the boys had all the fun and the girls were expected to cook and clean and stay at home, whereas I loved to play with mechanical gadgets and longed to travel and visit all the exotic countries revealed by the pages of Bill’s Boys’ Own and my own set of the Children’s Encyclopaedia. And I was comfortable with Bill in ways I didn’t trust girls or grownups. He didn’t demand emotional commitment or a swapping of secrets and confidences. Despite the endless practical jokes he played on me, or perhaps because of them, I grew to feel safe in a boy’s world, so much less complicated than girls’ endless petty arguments and friendships that waxed and waned according to mood.
‘Come along, eat up, dear,’ urged my mother, cutting across my thoughts. ‘It’ll be a long time to lunch.’
Ever the dutiful daughter I forced down breakfast and sipped my tea, and made a fuss of Peggy. ‘Goodbye, old girl,’ I said, stroking her head, and I slipped away to finish packing. Just the toothbrush now, and the dressing table mat, and, kneeling on the case, I forced the lid down just enough for the locks to catch and strapped my thin blanket roll to its side.
It was a little after half past five and time to set off. Nan kissed me and pressed a small silver sixpence into my hand, forcing it back as I mutely tried to return it. ‘Never look a gift horse in the mouth,’ she ordered, adding, ‘I’ll say goodbye up here,’ and, holding back Peggy, shooed me and my mother towards the stairs.
As I turned at the stair head I looked round towards the back room, my parent’s bedroom, chosen when we moved into the upper floor of the house so that my father could sleep through the daytime at the rear undisturbed by the clatter of trams at the nearby junction of Brixton Water Lane and Effra Road. I said a mental goodbye to him, at that moment finishing up another gruelling night’s work at Nevill’s bakery in Herne Hill.
My mother accompanied me down the stairs and out to the front gate and I turned to hug her goodbye. In the dingy drab half-light of the forthcoming morning I shivered, the chill of the hour exacerbated by the parting from all I knew. I thought I would cry, my mother catching her breath too and we looked at each other like conspirators determined to defeat the enemy of fear. Yes, I told myself, I will see Mummy and Daddy again soon and, no, we might not all be dead before then. Hugging my mother in a last embrace as she smiled tremulously at me, her blue eyes glistening, I smiled back, picked up my case and stepped out in the cool pre-dawn morning air.
Turning right from the end of Brixton Water Lane towards the foot of Tulse Hill, I gave my mother one last wave, gripping my little suitcase more firmly, settling my gas mask case – hanging from its long shoulder strap across my body – against my right hip, checking my packed lunch in a bag hanging over my right shoulder, and setting my face to the future.
Halfway up the hill I saw my father in the distance returning from his night’s work. I knew he would be exhausted from standing baking loaves for London’s hungry mouths and he could have caught an early tram home, taking a different route along the side of Brockwell Park. But he’d chosen the more circuitous option, knowing this was his last opportunity to see me before I disappeared into the unknown, his last chance to say goodbye. Beneath his short dark brown slicked back hair his grey eyes seemed brighter and bluer with unuttered emotion.
‘Well, my girl, chin up and good luck, I’ll see you again soon.’
Yet we knew neither when nor where that would be. I patted my pocket in which resided a blank postcard for me to send home my new address – when I had one.
‘I’ll write straight away, I’ll let you know where I’ve slung my hammock,’ I said a little breathlessly.
Daddy smiled at this metaphorical reference to his adolescent seafaring days about which he had regaled me through my childhood. An inch shorter than me now, his wide smile gave him a larger presence.
‘Off you go, don’t be late,’ he chivvied. We embraced briefly and parted, moving off in our different directions, and I paused further up watching his figure fading down the hill. I raised my hand in a last wave as he looked briefly back. Swallowing the lump in my throat and blinking back my tears I carried on up to school.
Travelling away from home on my own was not a new adventure. Only a week ago I had returned from a visit to my cousin Jane in Hythe on the Kent coast, a trip foreshortened by the threat of war, my father telephoning to say that schoolchildren were being recalled from the summer holidays early. Fighting my way through the pandemonium of Hythe bus station, journeying alone to a different London bus terminus than usual, I considered myself, at fifteen years of age, a seasoned traveller. But today, I felt, was different. Although I would be travelling with my classmates, I felt alone, facing a future devoid of shape and structure, looming menacingly, like a deep, dark cavern.
Reaching school, I joined the throng of girls making their way indoors.
‘Line up, girls, into your new classes, then we’ll sort you into groups of ten pupils each,’ Miss Landing, the Headmistress, directed at the milling crowd of parents and offspring in the school’s grand, elegant main hall left unlit as there was no blackout at the high windows. The girls moved into ranks like soldiers on parade, spectres in the gloom of the soft dawn light, and the parents retreated to the hall’s perimeter. I felt envious of the girls whose parents were seeing them off, but this morning my father needed his meal and his sleep.
St Martin-in-the-Fields school, proud of its 1699 foundation, had relocated in 1928 from its Charing Cross Road location, near its mother church at the edge of Trafalgar Square, to the leafy and spacious acreage of Tulse Hill and was honoured by its official opening there by the Queen, at that time the Duchess of York. The school was fronted by an elegant Georgian mansion with the new classrooms and school hall bolted on behind, all now to be abandoned to the vagaries of war.
I looked around at the portraits of the bewigged founders hanging along the side wall, and up at the portrait above the entrance door of a young girl in the brown uniform decreed at the time, cuffed sleeves ending just below the elbow, bodice overlaid with a deep rectangular split white collar, floor length skirt protected by a white pinafore and head topped with a white lace cap. She was holding a book in her right hand, her other arm and forefinger extended, as if pointing to the future. I wondered what my future held. As I moved into line with my classmates I batted away unhappy memories of e
arly years’ antipathy from paying girls wearing older siblings’ hand-me-downs who resented me for the shiny new uniform of a scholarship girl. Despite the down times this school was my second home and I would miss it. This will be my last year, I thought, before School Certificate exams next summer. Four years here gone already.
Distantly I heard Miss Landing reminding the class teachers to check all pupils had their gas masks and blank postcards before we could set off. Gas masks were issued to us all a year earlier by Government instructors who demonstrated how to put them on and breathe through them. Claustrophobic and smelling of new rubber, the eye glasses of mine misting over, I had felt a sense of rising panic within an enveloping darkness. I looked down at my homemade gas mask case. The school’s notification required waterproof lining material, suggesting American cloth or Woolworth’s waterproof sheeting, the case to be light in weight, and be worn on a long strap over the shoulder, in order to leave the hands free. My mother made it with the Woolworth’s waterproof sheeting. For a year my gas mask had personified the threat of war, yet now that war was virtually upon us there was a sense of unreality, as if I was in caught in the grip of a dream from which I would suddenly awake and find myself lying in my comfortable bed breathing a sigh of relief.
Miss Landing’s address to the assembled pupils jerked me from my musings.
‘Girls,’ she declared, her voice well practiced with the art of projection, her gnarled hands clasped dramatically in front of her, her grey, bun-topped head held defiantly high, ‘today is probably the most momentous day for our school since we were honoured with the presence of Her Majesty. For today you will become ambassadors for St Martin-in-the-Fields in a new place and in new circumstances that will test every fibre of your being. Separation from home may not be easy for some but we must all play our part in the coming war. Your fellow pupils will be your family and our teachers will do their best to provide you with the parenting care and advice you may need. Be kind to those who miss their homes and encourage each other to apply yourselves to your work so that you may emerge stronger from the new life upon which you are about to embark. Be polite to those strangers who are taking upon themselves the daily task of caring for you in their homes. I am confident that you will all be a credit to our school. Live up to our school motto, mind measures man. Work hard to learn as much as you can but also use your common sense in caring for those around you.’
The Keeping of Secrets Page 1