‘Well, not necessarily,’ I replied ‘There are Germans living near me at home who’ve escaped from Hitler’s thugs.’
‘D’you want to know Helga’s story?’
I had always been told by my parents not to be inquisitive, not to stare at people and not to give anything away, and my natural curiosity warred with habit. Curiosity won. I sat up in bed. ‘Yes.’
‘Helga’s Jewish,’ started Daisy. Out of politeness I refrained from telling her that I had already worked that out.
‘She lived in a flat and one night about a year ago she was invited to visit friends in the flat below hers. She had a friend about the same age as her. She stayed with them overnight.’
Daisy leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘During that night her parents disappeared. They were taken by the Nazis and haven’t been heard of since. The friends from the flat where she stayed hid her until they could put her on the Kindertransport.’ Daisy sat back. ‘Do you know what the Kindertransport is?’
Where on earth does she think I have been living this past year? I thought, irritated, but replied evenly,
‘It’s what the train’s called that’s full of Jewish children fleeing to other countries from the Germans’ oppression of the Jews. The parents have to put money in a bank to show they’ll pay for the children to go back home when the troubles are over.’
‘Yes. Helga’s parents had disappeared and the money was sent by the family who hid her. They knew someone who finds families to take these poor children in.’
Daisy lowered her voice further so it was barely audible. ‘Mrs Fox has tried to find out what’s happened to Helga’s parents, and Mr and Mrs Fox hope to adopt Helga if her parents can’t ever be found.’
I lay on my bed later trying to sleep but all I could think of was how Helga had lost her parents and how lonely and angry and scared Helga must be feeling. I was missing Mummy and Daddy terribly. But at least I know they’re safe, I reflected.
Fiona and Helga occupied another room which was femininely decorated with wall fabric of a pink feather-shaped design. The Fox’s house was palatial; not only did Mr and Mrs Fox’s bedroom have an en suite bathroom, but at the end of the landing there was an entrance to a domestic’s flat containing bedroom, living room, bathroom and kitchen. Downstairs was an enormous lounge/diner with dividing doors. Later I realised that Pachesham Park was not so much the name of the house but the exclusive private estate in which it was situated.
Mrs Fox was a lovely lady and fed us well. She had a big-lidded glass jar full of golden syrup which she shared out on huge slices of fresh bread and butter. Sitting at the head of the table and looking round with a satisfied smile, she’d say, ‘Eat up. My girls are growing girls and there’s plenty here for you all.’ She frequently said ‘my girls’ as if proud of us and I felt a warm sense of belonging. I thought I had truly landed on my feet, especially after the hunger pangs of my first billet.
But only ten days into my stay I discovered Mrs Fox in angry tears in the hall, clutching a letter. ‘My husband’s relatives are all moving in from London at the weekend,’ she sobbed. ‘I am so, so sorry, I’ll have to house them here which means I’ll no longer have room for my girls.’ My heart sinking and my stomach lurching, I tried telling myself it wasn’t her fault, but deep down I was angry and blamed her for not standing up to her relatives, or finding a corner for me to stay on in her mansion too. It was surely big enough. She took us on and said she’ll be responsible for us and I liked her and next she discards us when it doesn’t suit. Another adult who’s let me down.
‘Well, Patricia, it seems you have itchy feet,’ joked Miss Greaves the following day, although I didn’t find it particularly funny. ‘So far two homes in barely four weeks. Let’s hope it’s third time lucky. I’ve arranged for you to go to a home in Cobham Road this afternoon.’ I clearly looked puzzled for she added, ‘On the way to Fetcham.’
‘Well,’ I said to Becky as we ate our lunch, ‘it’s the third point of the compass. I’ve already been south with you and north at Pachesham Park. Now I’m going west. Let’s hope I am not truly going west!’
‘Oh, Pat,’ sympathised Becky, ‘I hope it’s the last time you have to move.’
‘How’re you finding your billet now?’ I asked her.
‘Well,’ said Becky, ‘if you don’t mind being kept awake by old Mr Hibbard snoring the other side of the bedroom wall, or the cat bringing in a mouse a day and leaving it on my bed, or trying to do my homework with an eight-year-old boy playing noisy planes, trains or cars at your feet, I suppose it has worked out all right. It’s just a shame we couldn’t have moved somewhere together.’
‘Next time I move,’ I joked, ‘I’ll make it an absolute condition that you move in with me and I’ll refuse to go there without you!’ And we both laughed at the absurd idea of standing up to Miss Greaves and the equally absurd idea that I would be moved on a third time.
At lunch the next day Becky quizzed me about my latest abode. ‘Oh, Becky, it’s a disaster,’ I said. ‘I thought I’d grown another head when I arrived. First Mr Haye looked at me in horror, Mrs Haye did too, and then their daughter Janice just snorted and laughed when she came downstairs to greet me. They hustled me into the dining room for tea and kept looking at me most oddly. Their other daughter Jillian arrived back from the hair salon where she works and kept rolling her eyes at Janice.’
‘But why? Tell me,’ Becky demanded. My face crumpling, I took a deep breath to compose myself.
‘The bed. They put me in to share with Janice, so I was looking around for the spare bed but the only extra one was a short child-sized bed. Janice said that they’d expected evacuees to be children, so her father built the bed for a child.’
‘Oh, no,’ exclaimed Becky. ‘I’m so sorry. What did you say?’
‘I lied. I said it wouldn’t be a problem.’ Tears smarted as I recalled retreating to the bathroom with my washbag and sitting on the toilet pressing my fist against my mouth to stifle the sobs threatening to wreck my composure. I had longed desperately for my home in Brixton and the comfort of my own bed. ‘My choice of sleeping posture alternates between curled up on my side or stretched out on my back with the lower half of my legs dangling off the end.’
I sniffed and, trying to lighten the moment, added, ‘I almost felt nostalgic for Mrs Briggs’ divan and scratchy blanket!’
The term rolled on towards Christmas. I looked forward to sleeping in my own comfortable bed and catching up with my childhood friend Bill. On the Wednesday morning before Christmas I packed to go home for the holidays, my first time home since before war was declared. Not even the angry, hissing swans standing like spectral wraiths across the fog-swathed millpond footpath deterred me from reaching my goal of the station, the train and the arms of my parents.
2
Bill
I emerged from a long sleep punctuated with the distant rattle of tram, the honk of delivery truck horn, the clip clop, rumble, rumble of horse and cart and the undulating aural landscape of distant voices. Indoors all was silent. The contrast with my crowded, bustling billet and its silent sheep strewn surroundings could not have been greater.
‘Pat, dear, are you awake?’ My mother’s head emerged around the opening door, and I remembered my last awakening here before evacuation. ‘Daddy’s asleep and I’m sorry to leave you to fend for yourself on your first day but I’m just popping down to Brixton market. Can you see to your breakfast? Nan’s out this morning but’ll be back by lunchtime. You were sleeping so soundly we didn’t like to wake you earlier.’
I blinked myself fully awake and nodded. ‘Not to worry, Mummy, I’ll be fine.’
Mummy smiled, retreated and gently closed the door to my room. I yawned and stretched, hearing the soft closing of the front door downstairs just below. Pulling on my woollen cloth dressing gown and pushing into my knitted homemade slippers, I padded to the toilet.
I paused to wash my hands and part-filled the kettle, placing it on t
he hob of the cooker. Striking a match and turning one of the low gas taps, a childhood memory flashed of turned black taps emitting a soft hissing sound, and a suffocating, gut-wrenching smell, and my mother dashing in, turning the taps off, throwing open the window, dragging me screaming from the room and smacking my hand sharply several times. My mother protested over the intervening years, ‘How can you possibly remember that, you were barely two!’ She was even more amazed at my recollection of a burning bread board accidentally left on the top of a lit hob. ‘You were only eighteen months old! You must have heard us talk about it.’ But I knew I hadn’t and I grew to resent her for never seeming to take my pronouncements seriously. Falling into the childish trap of wanting to trust her, I often felt let down. A mother who said to her six-year-old, ‘Close your eyes and I’ll pop in something nice,’ only to place a lump of soda on my tongue and laugh uproariously at my disgusted reaction was not one to engender confidence and trust.
Shaking off my depressing recollections, I dived into the bread bin on the left side low cupboard and cut myself a slice of slightly stale white bread, deliberately left to dry out to make cutting thinner slices easier and the bread appear to go further, and placed it under the grill. Juggling a pot of tea, I rescued the toast just in time, retrieving a sliver of butter and a jar of marmalade from the little cabinet at the foot of the bath. Placing my breakfast on a tray I proceeded carefully to the living room. Munching my toast, Peggy whining as she slept, stretched out on the hearthrug, I decided that a brisk walk with Peggy that afternoon to Brockwell Park would be just the ticket.
The front door closing heralded Nan’s return. I smiled as I recalled her warm embrace on my return the previous day. ‘Well, I do declare,’ she’d said on first sight of me for nearly four months, ‘you’ve got thinner but made up for it by topping me!’ My sharp-eyed, upright grandmother, whose brisk and purposeful demeanour disguised a life of underlying sadness and regrets. It was Nan who chose my name, Patricia, in memory of Patrick, the only man she truly loved but who she gave up because of the untimely return of her injured fiancé from the Boer War. She felt duty bound to nurse my grandfather, Huw Caddock, back to health, but his drinking and gambling and consequent aggressive behaviour led to her fleeing London ten years later with her two young children, only possible because they were never married, and hiding in Kingston upon Thames for eight years, returning to her London roots after his death. Born to her unmarried mother by an unknown father, hiding behind her mother’s subsequent marriage to her stepfather, William Warner, she kept her own children’s illegitimacy hidden behind the false title of Mrs Caddock. Secret family history we kept firmly under wraps.
Later, after returning and offloading her shopping, perched on a chair and sipping the cup of tea I made her, Mummy announced, ‘I saw Maud Whitshere at the market. Bill’s just arrived back from Reading, so I’ve suggested they all pop round early on Saturday afternoon for tea and a few hands of whist.’
The next morning, I got a letter from Becky. Dear Pat, she wrote. I shall miss our lunches during the holidays. Shall we meet up on Christmas Eve morning? I wrote back straight away suggesting a time and place and caught the mid-morning post.
Apart from the blackout blinds at the windows and the hot topic of conversation being the government’s proposals to start rationing food the following month, it seemed unreal that Britain was at war. The newspapers had little to report and much was made of the Royal Navy’s attack on the German pocket battleship Graf Spee on 13th December in the South Atlantic. In September people had daily expected to hear of aerial bombings but the Government’s precautions now seemed excessive and an untroubled London settled down to enjoy the season’s festivities.
The following afternoon Bill came with his parents. As Bill, following his parents upstairs, reached the top, he produced a book from his pocket with a ‘Ta-da!’ flourish and held it high where I could not see the title.
‘What’s that?’ I asked, curious. Bill waved it triumphantly.
‘Picked up a copy this morning,’ he said. ‘One guess.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I huffed, slightly exasperated. ‘Cricket?’ I knew he was not especially keen on rugger or football.
‘No, no, much closer to home,’ Bill replied. ‘What’s seen but not seen, what can you read but not read?’
‘Stop talking in riddles,’ I scolded. ‘Show me.’
‘The Little Book of Blackout Fun of course,’ Bill replied and thrust it into my hands. I took it excitedly.
‘I’ve heard of this,’ I said, ‘but I haven’t had a chance to hunt one down. It was only published last month.’
I opened a page at random and, scanning quickly, picked out a paragraph. ‘“The Senses Game. As the sense of sight is denied by the blackout, test your other senses instead. You need a blacked-out room, a tray pre-prepared by the games master containing a variety of items that test the senses, and a torch taped to show a thin beam of light for assisting the gamesmaster only. Examples of items can be a dish containing scraps of a variety of foodstuffs for tasting, sealed containers containing items such as tea leaves or lavender soap for smelling, obscure lines from famous poems read out for guessing the poem and everyday items for identifying by touch”.’
I grimaced and looked down to the final line. ‘“To reduce the temptation to cheat, bindfolds may additionally be used”.’
I looked up. ‘Under no circumstances will I play such a game with you as gamesmaster,’ I said sternly. ‘I know you too well. I don’t trust you to not put something truly horrid in my hand!’
Bill struck a pose and thumped his hand across his chest. ‘Perish the thought!’ he declaimed grandly.
‘Perish the idea,’ I retorted tartly. ‘I don’t mind most things but I am not going to risk you producing something squishy and squirmy and alive!’
Bill roared with laughter – no doubt, like me, recalling incidents from our childhood, primarily him chasing me with all manner of creepy crawlies in his clenched fist, and me running away squealing and shrieking. I was not laughing now either, but I softened when he sobered a little, hung his head and said, ‘I must have been truly horrid when I was younger, and now I repent.’ Bill had a slightly dramatic way of speaking sometimes and I was not always sure whether he was entirely sincere, but it was nearly Christmas and I had not enjoyed his company for over four months, so I was prepared to forgive him.
A phrase struck me. ‘Perish the thought?’ I queried. ‘That’s a new phrase you’ve not used before, where did you read that?’
‘Picked it up from a chap I’ve become friendly with at school just this term,’ Bill replied. ‘Found myself billeted with him. Jon’s a very jolly sort. He’s taught me quite a few new phrases.’
I put on my best schoolmistress look and said, ‘You shall desist from repeating them as I am sure they are quite unsuitable to teach to a young lady!’
Our stair-top banter was interrupted by my mother who emerged from the kitchen juggling teapot and milk jug.
‘Pat, dear,’ she said with a slight edge in her voice, ‘When you have quite finished I would appreciate help with the tea.’
Diving into the kitchen I grabbed and conveyed plates laden with sandwiches, Bill following me with the Victoria sponge.
We settled down for an afternoon of fun, much enlivened by the puzzles set in Bill’s new book. As the afternoon progressed the adults turned to reminiscing while Bill and I trounced each other at cards. Later on, my mother called for me to accompany a singsong with my piano playing. I looked out of the window at the gathering gloom.
‘It’ll soon be dark,’ I said, looking at Bill and his parents in turn. ‘What about the blackout? Won’t you want to get back safely before it’s totally dark?’
Reginald Whitshere, a bluff, stocky, older balding man with a bushy moustache, leaned towards me from his armchair and said, ‘Good of you to think that, but I think we’ll take our chances, don’t you, Maud?’
This last, turn
ing to his wife, who nodded her agreement, which did not surprise me. I had never heard her raise her voice against her husband or make any objection to his pronouncements. Much my parents’ age and a good ten years younger than her husband, she was the antithesis of a Bright Young Thing. Her colourless personality was matched by her colourless looks: short, mousy hair above a forehead marked with anxious frown lines, her clothes always drab in contrast to my mother’s bright frocks, and a slightly stooped stance as if she was constantly rushing to do her men’s bidding. I found her eagerness to please irritating, used as I was to a grandmother who called a spade a spade and bent others to her will, and to a mother who constantly argued with my father and who as a child had been nicknamed ‘Miss Contrary’ by her step-grandfather.
‘I can probably dig out a spare torch,’ my father offered, but Reginald waved him away.
‘No, don’t worry, I brought one myself, it’s in my overcoat pocket. Thought we might want more than just the afternoon to catch up on all our news,’ he said. ‘So, Ted, after our singsong how about a tot or two along with a hand or two of crib? Eh? Unless,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘you’re off to work tonight?’
Daddy shook his head. ‘Not tonight. I’m just in the bakery tomorrow night as usual.’
‘Through Christmas Eve night into Christmas Day?’ Reginald was incredulous, raising and dropping his hands onto his knees. ‘Even the bank will be closed on Christmas Eve. It’s a Sunday, for crying out loud.’
Reginald started in the bank as a very junior office boy, rising through the ranks to the lofty position of Branch Manager. Which was how he had been able to afford the fees for Bill’s attendance at Archbishop Tenison’s school in Kennington as Bill, unlike me, was not a scholarship pupil. Despite his star rising since first taking my father under his wing at the Clapham Cricket Club when I was a baby, Reginald maintained his friendship with us lowly souls, although I sometimes wondered whether that was primarily to remind himself of how far he had travelled from his humble beginnings, but then I would feel uncharitable and shove away the cynical thought.
The Keeping of Secrets Page 4