‘Kathleen, darling, I have some bad news.’ Her mother paused, made a small gasp. ‘About your father.’ Then her words came in a rush. ‘His ship has been…torpedoed. In the Atlantic Ocean. About five hundred miles from Ireland.’
‘Oh.’ Kathleen’s knees felt suddenly weak. ‘Is there any…I mean…’
‘Not yet. His tanker was in a convoy. There are– were – Royal Navy ships around, so there’s hope.’
‘I wish I could be with you, Mum.’
‘I too.’
‘Have you moved back into our house?’
‘No, not really. As I said, it was badly damaged.’ Again she paused. ‘It had to be pulled down. The whole street was hit. Sorry, darling.’
‘Our things?’
‘There was fire, too. So.’ Her mother sounded tearful. ‘I’ll let you know more as soon as I hear, and Kathleen, give Joey a hug from me as you tell him about Daddy. Darling, I’m calling from a public telephone box. It’s the only one in the street that’s still working, and there’s a queue.’
‘Yes, you must give others a chance. Bye, Mum. I love you.’
‘You, too. And Joey.’
Kathleen hung up and found Mrs Aintree at the living-room door. ‘That was a bad-news call, Kathleen? Yes?’
Kathleen could only nod. Mrs Aintree held her arms wide, the best thing she could have done.
***
On Monday morning, Henry Hall delivered the telegram to the Reverend Aintree, who opened it, although it was addressed to Kathleen. Henry waited to see if there was to be a reply. Instead the vicar said, ‘Let me have your bicycle, Henry. I’ll bring it back later.’
Kathleen and Joey had insisted on going to school, saying they weren’t the only ones to receive bad news.
The Reverend Aintree also borrowed Henry’s bicycle clips, then swung his leg over the saddle and pedalled off. He owned a car and was allowed a petrol ration for it, because of his work. But the tyres were quite bald, so it was dangerous to drive.
Mr Boyce, the headmaster, had assembled the entire school in the hall to give a lecture on the danger of unexploded bombs. Joey had somehow left his own class group to work his way closer to Kathleen.
All the windows in the school had been reinforced against bomb blasts with criss-cross strips of sticky brown paper. Even so, it was possible to see through the glass, which was how Kathleen saw the vicar pedalling into the school grounds.
Her heart gave a leap and she hugged Joey. It seemed to take an age before the Reverend Aintree burst into the hall.
Kathleen stood and asked, ‘Is there news?’
The vicar waved the yellow envelope. ‘The best.’
Late on a Saturday afternoon two years later, Vinnie came into the kitchen of Netterfold House. Mrs Greenwood looked up. ‘So, how was your wedding?’
‘Oh, sort of emotional. More than the others.’
‘That must have been, let me see, your fourth? Or fifth?’
‘Fifth. The bride’s a welder at Gibbinsons. She looked nice.’
‘Nice? That’s all you can say, is it? The girl goes around begging clothing coupons from all and sundry so she can look her best, and you say she was – nice.’
‘You know what I mean. The groom was invalided out of the Royal Engineers. Lost a leg, but no way was he going to sit through their wedding ceremony, or use crutches. She supported him, and that was amazing.’
‘Ah, well.’ Mrs Greenwood busied herself at the kitchen table for a moment. ‘Yes, Vinnie, one way or another, they’re coming back, the men and the women.’
‘And flags are everywhere,’ Vinnie agreed. At first it had been one family put one out to welcome their own soldier home. Then another household did it. Their flags stayed up, and now it was the whole village.
‘All of Britain will be like that. And no more blackout.’
Vinnie made for the kitchen door. ‘I’ll just put my music away, Mrs Greenwood, then give you a hand here.’
‘No, Vinnie, Miss Armstrong has asked to see you.’
‘We’re not having a lesson, are we? Not on Saturday?’
‘Well, go and find out. Don’t keep the woman waiting.’
***
Miss Armstrong greeted him warmly from her chair. ‘Come in, Vinnie. You played well for the wedding?’ Then without waiting for his reply, she went on, ‘Of course you did. Of course you performed well. So, sit, and let’s talk.’
He sat at the Steinway, but more nervously than he usually did. I’ve been at ease here, in her music room. She has given me confidence; I am not who I was. There had been times Miss Armstrong just sat nodding as he played. That made him secure. I am here and this is mine. Sometimes she closed her eyes and listened, only murmuring a gentle instruction: ‘Legato, Vinnie, that passage, legato.’
Miss Armstrong said, ‘Well, Vinnie, it would be so easy for you to stay here. I’ve enjoyed being your mentor over these years. You have repaid me in ways that you’ll never realise, nor can I properly explain.’
Vinnie knew there was a ‘but’ coming. He’d been dreading this. For weeks now, as the war moved to an end, it had begun to hang over him. Every Allied victory made it more certain.
In this room they’d laughed together, teased each other, such as when he’d added a postman’s knock at the end of a Mozart rondo.
And at times they’d flared up in sudden frustra-tion. ‘What are you?’ she’d once demanded. ‘A pianist in the making, or some honky-tonk pub tinkler?’
‘Used to be,’ Vinnie had snapped back. ‘It’s where I came from.’
‘Well, you’re not there now. And don’t forget it!’
So they’d simmer, Vinnie at her piano, Miss Armstrong in her chair, her hopeless hands grasping the walking stick. Then, without being asked, Vinnie would play, and when he was well in command of the piece, he’d say over the music, ‘I’m sorry.’
And he’d known there was a ‘but’ to come, so he said it now: ‘But you want me to go?’
‘You have to go, Vinnie. You have outgrown your mentor. It is what happens to those with talent. Your friend Isaac was your first mentor; I’ve been your second. And as you progress in music, you will outgrow others. It’s a natural thing. And that time has come.’
‘I thought it would go on. Here, I mean.’
‘This is a backwater. You need to be in the middle of things.’ Miss Armstrong showed him a letter. ‘I had Mrs Greenwood type this, Vinnie. And if you knew what an effort it was between us.’ She cleared her throat. ‘It’s to a man in London. His name’s on the envelope—’
‘Will he have a piano I can borrow?’
‘I should think he’ll have several. He’ll also help you find a place to stay.’
Vinnie glanced at the envelope and read the initials ‘lram’ after the man’s name. ‘Is this a railway?’
‘Vinnie, you can be such a dunderhead. It’s the London Royal Academy of Music.’
***
Dobbs knew his own D-Day was coming – Departure Day.
He and Mrs Hall were having tea in the kitchen of the post office. ‘There’s to be a special train for all you vaccies,’ Mrs Hall said. ‘And oh, the place won’t be the same without you, Dobbs. Watching your gawky legs pushing that bike around the village, like a daddy longlegs on wheels.’
‘You’ll need to get a stepladder. When I’m gone. I’ll come back in five years and find the same stuff on those top shelves.’
‘And you’ll write, won’t you? Tell me how you get on in London. Because I want to know.’
‘I will write. Not every day, mind, but I’ll write. And it’ll be hard when we get to the station. There’s going to be tears, Mrs Hall. Crying and blubbing till the train pulls out.’
‘Then make sure you’ve got a very big hanky, yo
u great soft lump.’
***
At tea in the vicarage dining room, Kathleen broke the silence. ‘The flags are lovely.’
‘It’s happy and sad,’ Mrs Aintree said. ‘The thought of what they mean to different people in the village.’
The Reverend Aintree added, ‘You’ll be another loss to us, Kathleen and Joey.’
‘We’ll visit,’ Joey offered.
‘And we may come to London,’ Mrs Aintree suggested.
The Reverend Aintree asked, ‘How long has it been since you were with your mother?’
Joey said, ‘Too long.’
Their mother had had war work, so she hadn’t been able to get away to visit them in Netterfold, not even once. It was sort of secret, what she was doing. She couldn’t tell them; still couldn’t. Not for fifty years.
‘Some of the evacuees who came here,’ Kathleen said, ‘have lost both parents. Father overseas, mother in the bombing.’
‘I hope they’ll go back to relatives, at least.’ Mrs Aintree sighed, then sat nodding.
‘And aren’t we a cheerful lot?’ The Reverend Aintree seemed to rally. ‘The war’s over and we have a whole world to rebuild.’
***
At Netterfold Railway Station, there was only one carriage and a small tank engine to haul it to the main line where it would join the London train. The evacuees said their last farewells to the people who’d looked after them. The elderly porter went along the length of the carriage, ushering passengers into compartments.
Dobbs sang the first line of ‘Now Is the Hour’, then ushered Kathleen in. He followed and put her bag in the luggage rack. Joey came aboard and swung his case up too, then flopped into a window seat facing the engine.
Vinnie took a last look around the station and waved to Mrs Greenwood. He’d already said good-bye to Miss Armstrong. Her letter was folded in his pocket.
The guard waved a green flag and blew his whistle. The locomotive chuffed and spun its wheels angrily, then got hold of the carriage and eased it out of the station.
Joey said, ‘We’ve been here before.’
‘Centuries ago,’ Kathleen agreed. ‘All we need is Ralph and his chum; then the gang’s all here.’
‘What was the chum’s name?’ Vinnie asked. ‘I never found out.’
‘Algernon or Cedric,’ Joey guessed. ‘Marmaduke.’
Dobbs asked, ‘Vinnie, do you still have your mouth organ?’
‘Harmonica.’
‘So give us a tune then, maestro.’
Vinnie took out his harmonica, knocked the dust out of it, then began to play ‘Beautiful Dreamer’.
At some time in mid-September 1939 I became an evacuee, like the children in this story. While Vinnie, Kathleen, Joey and Dobbs are fictional characters, for thousands of boys and girls it was very real. My family lived in Glasgow, which at the time was a large industrial city with factories everywhere and shipbuilding taking place along the River Clyde. The Clyde is where those famous ships the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth were built. So with all that industry, Glasgow and other nearby towns and cities were expected to become prime targets for German bombs.
My father had been a soldier in the First War, so he knew what high explosives could do to people and buildings. My family became private evacuees, meaning that my parents arranged it. So we moved with our crockery, pots and pans, blankets and clothes to a smaller town about fifty-six kilometres to the south of the city, on the coast. Those children whose parents couldn’t organise a safe billet became public evacuees and often had no idea where they were going or who’d look after them. Evacuees were given luggage labels with their names on them, which they tied on to their clothes with string.
Evacuations took place all over Britain, with children moving from large cities to small rural towns and villages. For many young people who were used to city life, it was a whole new experience to live in the country. Sometimes entire schools were uprooted, so that students travelled with their teachers and settled in different classrooms and dormitories, then picked up their studies where they’d left off. A wartime feature of school life was the criss-crossed paper tape that was stuck over glass windows. This was to prevent the windows being blown in if a bomb fell nearby. For this same reason, my school had tall brick ‘baffle’ walls built in front of ground-floor windows.
After that first 1939 evacuation, things were quiet for a while. They called this time ‘the phoney war’, meaning that it wasn’t like a war at all. The Germans weren’t coming, or so it seemed. Many parents began bringing their children home again, but then in early September 1940 there came the first of many air raids. This was the start of the Blitz, as people called it. ‘Blitz’ is a German word meaning ‘lightning’ and comes from the term Blitzkrieg, or ‘lightning war’ – a very fast war. So the period of heavy German bombing over British towns and cities became known as the Blitz.
During the war, there was always the fear of a gas attack, so everyone in Britain was issued with a gas mask, which they had to take with them everywhere. The government supplied the gas mask in a cardboard box with a string for carrying it over your shoulder. It was usual to see a long queue of people waiting to get into the cinema with every single person carrying a gas mask in its box. There were special gas masks for smaller children, such as one that made the child look like Mickey Mouse. For babies, the gas mask was a large affair where the infant was sealed up inside it.
To prevent German bombers finding out which town they were flying over, a blackout was in force everywhere in Britain. It was an offence to show a light from any building at night-time. People had to buy dark cloth curtains or black paper screens for their windows to stop stray light spilling out. Buses and trains also had their windows covered, and there was no lighting in the streets, shop windows or railway stations. There were many accidents during the blackout, because on dark, moonless nights people couldn’t see where they were going. Sometimes when a train came into a railway station, passengers accidentally got out of the carriage on the wrong side, then fell on the other railway tracks.
Cars, buses and trucks, and even ordinary bicycles, were able to use their headlights at night, but each vehicle was fitted with cowls that directed the light beam downwards. Drivers painted a white strip around their mudguards so their vehicle could be more easily seen. One shop sold luminous flowers that glowed in the dark and stopped people bumping into each other as they walked along the pavement.
ARP wardens patrolled the streets at night to check that no lights showed. ‘ARP’ means Air Raid Precautions and wardens, when they saw a glimmer from a window, used to shout, ‘Put out that light!’ If a person failed to observe blackout regulations, they could be fined. ARP wardens also directed people to special shelters when there was an air raid.
Some people dug their own air-raid shelter in the back garden. They were known as Anderson Shelters, named after a British politician. These shelters were made of sheets of curved corrugated iron, which formed the walls and roof of the structure. The idea was to dig a large hole in the ground, then stick the corrugated sheets in so that they made an arch to form the roof. The earth and turf that had been dug out of the ground was used to cover the roof of the shelter, to provide extra thickness. Many people built bunks inside their Anderson Shelter, because they had to spend many long nights there when air raids were on. Because they were built over a hole in the ground, the Anderson shelters often flooded with rainwater. At other times they were cold and damp places – frightening, too, as bombs exploded in the distance, or sometimes nearby.
The government also built street shelters, using reinforced steel for extra strength, but these air-raid shelters were still often destroyed and their occupants killed. Schools used their coal cellars as shelters, and children had to carry out regular drills so that everyone knew what to do in an air raid. In London, some underg
round railway stations were used even when there wasn’t an air raid on, because they were deep underground and considered to be safe. As soon as trains stopped running for the night, people would leave their houses and go down to the station platforms with their bedding and blankets. In the morning, when the first underground trains started running, people packed up again and went home.
All over Britain, there was a particular siren sound that signalled when an air raid was to take place. Usually German bombers could be spotted before they reached a major city, so a warning could be given in time. Later in the war the Germans began using rocket bombs, which were harder to see com-ing, so they took people by surprise. These were known as flying bombs, but Londoners called them doodlebugs. Later, the Germans began using bigger rocket bombs called the V-1 and V-2. All of these flying bombs simply reached the skies over London, then ran out of fuel and began falling to earth. The last V-2 rocket landed in March 1945, only a few weeks before the war ended.
During an air raid, people longed to hear the ‘all clear’, which was a different siren sound. Then they could leave the shelters and go back to their real beds, but in many cases, people discovered that their house had been hit by a bomb or that half of the street had been flattened.
Britain imported much of its food from overseas, but because of the war it became increasingly difficult to do this. German submarines, or U-boats, hunted in packs, sinking ships that brought supplies into British harbours. The government began to ration food, to make sure every person had enough to eat. Everyone had a ration book that allowed them to buy limited amounts of sugar, butter, tea, meat and so on. Compared with today, it was a very basic diet. The government established a Ministry of Food to help make the best of what food was available. From time to time, recipes were published in newspapers or broadcast on the radio, and even shown in cinemas between movies. These demonstrated ways of making food rations go further.
A famous wartime recipe was Woolton Pie, named after the minister for food, Lord Woolton:
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