Brave Faces

by Mary Arden

  Everything went smoothly right up to the last scene but then suddenly there was a dull thud as the star fell off the pole and landed on Joseph’s head, nearly knocking him (Bridget) out in the process and as she bumped into me I tumbled over and dropped baby Jesus but fortunately William must have seen what was happening and grabbed the doll one handed like a cricket ball before it landed on the floor.

  ‘Oh well caught that Shepherd!’ yelled Henry and everyone laughed.

  When it was time for our neighbours to leave, Edward Derwent noticed some mistletoe hanging from the light in the hall and pulled Bridget under it to give her a long lingering kiss. Then he turned to me and gave me a gentle peck on the cheek, as he and his brother Robert usually did to say goodbye, so when Henry bent down to do the same thing I was a little surprised when he whispered in my ear, ‘I’ll give you a real kiss when you’re sixteen!’

  ‘Like they do in the cinema?’ I whispered back, blushing.

  ‘Oh I think I can do better than that!’ Henry teased in his husky deep voice, ‘Don’t let anyone else kiss you, I want to be the first, promise?’

  ‘Who would want to kiss me?’ I asked innocently.

  ‘All the boys will Goldilocks, you’ll be fighting them off just you wait and see.’

  After they had all left Jane came up to me and asked, ‘What was Henry whispering to you about?’ She sounded jealous, ‘That man is the most gorgeous being I’ve ever seen, and in his RAF uniform, I could swoon and let him kiss me without the help of any mistletoe.’

  ‘Jane!’ I said, shocked, ‘He’s far too old for you.’

  ‘I don’t mind how old he is,’ Jane insisted. ‘Surely that isn’t the same little boy that we used to play Hide ‘n’ Seek with in the garden, and whose mother lives in France?’

  ‘It is,’ I confirmed. ‘He has become rather nice looking hasn’t he?’

  It was lovely to spend a few days with my cousins and my family over the Christmas period and after they had left to go back to London the house felt very empty, and quiet. A few days later it was my sixteenth birthday. My mother had said she wanted to buy me some clothes but what I really wanted was a new bicycle. When I came down for breakfast on my birthday, my parents were sitting at the table but there was no sign of my brothers who I thought must be sleeping in. Suddenly the front door bell rang and my father asked me if I would mind going to see who it was and when I opened the front door Peter and William were standing there holding a brand new bicycle with a large basket at the front. I was so excited that I squealed with delight. My mother, who was now right behind me, wished me a happy birthday and gave me a hug and then my father and my brothers joined in and we nearly toppled over, which made us laugh. It was a very special moment that I knew I would treasure forever, whatever happened.

  I rode my new bicycle straight over to the Derwents to show it to the boys, or more importantly to Henry, but none of them were there, so Henry’s promise of a proper kiss when I turned sixteen would have to wait for another day.

  CHAPTER 2

  1940

  Rationing was introduced on 8th January 1940. It didn’t matter how wealthy you were, any available food was shared equally at fair prices, so my family, like everyone else’s, had to adjust to the privations of war, putting up with the shortages of food, standing patiently in long queues at the butchers and fishmongers, sometimes for up to two or three hours at a time. My mother told me that while they all waited, they discussed ways and means of making their meat rations go further, like adding dough-balls or dumplings to stews, or adding canned beans and slices of apple to a curry.

  A week later I was back at school, and although rationing applied here too, which meant that we had to use less butter and sugar than usual, the only thing I really missed was sweets. The first morning in our classroom, we all swopped stories of what we had been up to over Christmas and there was a lot of laughter in the classroom but then one of the teachers came into the room and told us that the head girl and her sister wouldn’t be coming back this term because their father had been killed in action. The room went so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. The reality of war had suddenly hit us all.

  That term my head was crammed full of revisions for the upcoming exams and the only light relief was when we were rushing up and down the games field playing lacrosse against other schools.

  By the next holidays, I felt so tired and stressed that I burst into tears as soon as I got home. My mother was obviously worried about me and tried to help me feel better by saying, ‘Only one more term, darling, and then I promise you we’ll send you to the Finishing School we’ve been planning for you but unfortunately, it is no longer in Florence because of the war.’

  ‘So where is it?’ I asked.

  ‘They have rented a house in Eastbourne,’ my mother replied, ‘You’ll learn to sing, improve your languages, cook and study art there, as well as learning how to curtsey for when you ‘Come Out’,’ She then curtseyed to me, which made me laugh and then laugh even louder when she pretended to fall over.

  After I had been at home for a week, we received a call to let us know that Kay had given birth to a baby boy. I was thrilled to bits and cycled straight across the park between Kay’s and our house to see her baby whom she had named Richard.

  Holding the baby in my arms I said to Kay, ‘He’s lovely! I want to have twelve babies one day, six boys and six girls!’

  As I snuggled Richard to my chest, I asked Kay if it was difficult to feed a baby.

  ‘It’s not difficult exactly, but it can be rather embarrassing at times, as I have so much milk that I feel like a cow!’ Kay said smiling. ‘What are you planning to do during the holidays Mary?’

  ‘Well I’m thinking that I could help at the YMCA, make sandwiches for the soldiers, and help write letters home for them, that sort of thing, but I could still come and help you with the ironing if you like?’

  ‘Thank you, Mary, we’ll see about that but at the moment I’m managing fine.’ Kay then touched my arm and said in a serious tone, ‘Do be careful what you say when you are writing the letters for the soldiers.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Well the first thing you need to do is to find out whether the letter will be for their mother, father, sister, girlfriend or wife, and then adjust what you write accordingly. What they really need you to do is to give who ever they are writing to some reassuring news from them like: ‘I am very well’ or ‘the food is very good’ or ‘I have made some new friends’, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Oh I see, that makes sense,’ I nodded. It was good advice and less than a week later I was helping my first soldier write a letter thanking his family for a parcel they had sent him and the next one wanted to tell his little sister about a film he’d seen. After that I got the hang of it and was soon in big demand.

  Alice, our housemaid, had now left us to join the ATS but she’d left a pile of magazines behind full of soppy love stories, which I used as inspiration when a soldier wanted help writing to his sweetheart. I took sentences straight off the pages like, ‘How I miss you my darling and cannot wait to hold you in my arms,’ and ‘The memory of the sweet smell of your hair makes me long to be home’. I really enjoyed helping to write these letters for the soldiers and they seemed very happy with the results. One of them gave me the biggest smile I had ever seen and said, ‘Coo Miss, she won’t ‘arf love that!’

  I decided that it might be a good idea if I brought some of my schoolbooks with me next time so that I could teach some of the men the rudiments of reading and writing, as I had been surprised by how many of them couldn’t. I asked Kay’s advice, and she lent me some of her old Froebel books. I only had two takers the first day, as the other chaps were most probably too embarrassed to be taught by such a young girl, but a week later when they realised I wasn’t being judgmental, I had enough men to make a small class.

  The following week, my mother surprised us all by joining the local Red Cross so that sh
e could then pass her nursing exams and learn to drive an ambulance. We were amazed at her willingness to do such a thing and felt very proud of her. It made me determined to do my bit too and become a nurse, as soon as I was allowed to.

  At the end of that same week, we heard on the radio that Germany had invaded Holland and Belgium and that Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister, had stepped down. Winston Churchill had now been asked to form a coalition government, which pleased my father, as he liked Churchill and thought that he was ‘just what this country needs.’

  The next morning he took me to one side to show me how to use his First World War pistol, telling me that this was ‘just in case the Germans invade England and walk into our home’. I was shocked and felt sick at the thought that I might have to defend myself by taking another’s life.

  I was still feeling sick the next day and woke up with a sore throat and a rash all over my body but this was a real illness.

  ‘It’s German measles,’ our family doctor announced. ‘No school for you for two or three weeks young lady.’

  Reprieve! I thought, and then started to panic when I realised that this enforced time off might mean I’d fail all my exams, as I hadn’t revised everything I should have. However, my father came to the rescue and decided to take the train to my school in Haslemere to collect some of my schoolbooks for me so that I could keep revising while I was convalescing.

  As I lay in bed recovering, I wondered why it was called ‘German’ measles and was concerned that it might be something the Nazis had concocted so was relieved when my mother told me that the virus’ real name was Rubella and that it was only called German measles, as it was German physicians who had first described it.

  After two weeks of being indoors all the time my mother told me that I could now go outside for short bicycle rides to get some fresh air into my lungs. In between bike rides I helped Bullen in the garden, planting peas and beans, and he told me that although he was too old to fight in this war he was more than willing to do his bit and ‘Dig for Victory’.

  One day as he and I were sitting in the warm sunshine having a cup of tea together, he said ‘We be ‘avin’ some fowls Miss Mary next time you be home.’

  ‘Fowls?’ I asked, not understanding.

  ‘‘ens Miss, so that Nancy can go on bakin’ them cakes she does so well ‘afore she gets called up,’ Bullen chuckled, taking a big mouthful of cake that Nancy had served with our tea.

  ‘Where will you put the hens?’ I asked.

  ‘Your father said he would remove the swing and see-saw, Miss Mary, as you be growing up, and can give ‘em to Mrs Kay for when ‘er nippers are bigger.’

  That evening as I sat on the swing, the swing that I had sat on hundreds of times since I was a small child, I realised that the war was making everything different and even my beloved swing was going to have to make way for a hen run. A tear trickled down my cheek: I now understood that my childhood was over and it was time to grow up.

  Very early the next morning I heard the telephone ring and after a couple of minutes I heard my mother yelling at me to get up straight away. I had no idea what was going on but could tell by her tone that something wasn’t right and did as she asked. When she came into my room she told me that she was urgently needed at her first-aid post, as hundreds of wounded soldiers were being evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk and that they needed to be taken to hospitals that had empty beds like the one she worked in. She explained that she would be busy all day, and that as my father wouldn’t be back from the War Office until the evening I would have to fend for myself for the day. I told her that I would be fine, as I needed to swot up on my French verbs.

  ‘Well, if you do go out anywhere,’ my mother instructed, ‘be sure to let Nancy know where you are, just in case there’s an air raid.’

  Nancy had worked for my family for eight years, so I had known her for half of my life and was very fond of her. She was due to marry her fiancé, who was in the Royal Navy, that summer and she had cried when she told my parents she would be leaving us after she was married and had promised to do her best to find a replacement, and swore that she’d write to us all often, as she thought of us all as her family. I got dressed and went to the kitchen to ask her if I could help her peel some potatoes but just as I got there the telephone rang.

  ‘I’ll get it!’ I called out to Nancy. It was for my mother so I explained that she was out on an emergency call to drive the ambulance.

  ‘Is that Mary who writes letters for the soldiers?’ a lady’s voice on the phone asked.

  ‘Yes, that’s me. Who is speaking please?’

  ‘This is Betty Albright, dear. I did so hope your mother would be able to help us out at Woking station today, you see, we have dozens and dozens of our troops returning from Dunkirk in a very bad way and they all need refreshments and a cheery smile before going on to London or wherever. It’s a bit of a shambles, I’m afraid to say, but there’s nothing like tea and buns to cheer one up, and we need help urgently.’

  I knew Lady Albright as she often came to the YMCA to supervise and check everything was going satisfactorily. She would always smile at me kindly and ask how I was doing with my letter writing for the troops.

  ‘I could come and help instead, Lady Albright,’ I suggested, ‘I know how to serve tea and buns and I don’t get tired like my mother does when standing on her feet, so I’ll be just as useful, if not better!’

  ‘Well dear, I don’t know, your mother should really give you permission first but hold on a minute while I have a word with Mrs Brown.’ I heard whispering at the other end of the telephone, but couldn’t make out what was being said.

  It was Mrs Brown came on the phone this time. ‘Hello Mary. If you don’t mind doing the washing-up and fetching and carrying things, so that one of us can keep an eye on you to make sure you’re alright, then I’m sure your dear mother would have no objection to you helping out. Come as soon as possible and report to me in the car park where you’ll see our YMCA van, and oh, please wear comfortable shoes, dear, as you’ll be on your feet all morning.’

  I felt excited to finally get a chance to do ‘my bit’ of war work at last. I ran upstairs and changed into my most comfortable shoes – my summer sandals – grabbed a cardigan, and then rushed into the kitchen to let Nancy know where I was going and that I didn’t know what time I’d be back, but if I was late, not to worry.

  When I arrived at the station car park, I propped-up my bicycle in the bike racks and went looking for Mrs Brown. When I found her she said, ‘Go to Platform Three, dear, and report at the station café where the WVS has taken over.’

  The cafe was like a madhouse: dirty trays everywhere, half-empty milk bottles and packets of sugar lumps, all mixed up with bags of buns waiting to be buttered and loaves of bread waiting to be made into sandwiches. No wonder Lady Albright had been desperate for extra help. Middle-aged women in green WVS uniforms were doing their best to restore order and I couldn’t help admiring them. One of the ladies asked me to take over the washing-up, which I did happily.

  Having restored a certain amount of order to the washing-up area, I then wiped the trays and put the teaspoons in the cups ready for the next train of returning soldiers to arrive. I filled all the kettles and put them back on the gas stove, but I didn’t touch the urn, as I had no idea how to work it; I presumed it would need filling up though and hoped that one of the WVS ladies would see to it. Then I looked to see if there was anything to fill the sandwiches with and saw several tins of bully beef, spam and a rather sticky bottle of tomato chutney. I was rummaging about in a drawer for a tin opener and a bread knife when one of the WVS ladies entered the café and said in a rather loud voice, ‘Good girl, you’ve done what I should have done half an hour ago!’

  ‘Can I help you with the sandwiches?’ I asked her.

  ‘Yes you certainly can my dear,’ the woman replied with a smile, ‘We are going to need to make a mountain of them, as many of the soldiers won�
�t have eaten anything for days.’

  Five minutes later we were both spreading some rather soft and strange-looking butter onto the bread slices and putting some very thin slices of meat and a dollop of chutney between them to turn them into sandwiches.

  ‘What’s your name?’ the woman asked me.

  ‘Mary Arden,’ I replied, ‘what’s yours?’

  ‘Just call me Joy, ducky. Oh give me an ‘and with the lid of this urn will you, luv?’ she asked cheerfully, ‘It’s bleedin’ ‘eavy and hot!’ We lifted the lid with a dishtowel and refilled the urn with the kettles of boiling water.

  ‘Was it you that refilled the kettles love?’ Joy asked and when I nodded she continued, ‘Well you’d better fill ‘em up again, as there’s another train expected in five minutes and there will be many more after that.’

  An hour later my back was already starting to ache so I was relieved when I was asked to go to Platform Three to collect any dirty cups and bring them back to wash-up before the next train arrived, as it gave me the chance to stretch my legs. On the way there, an empty porter’s cart caught my eye and I thought it would be much quicker and easier if I piled all the dirty trays and crockery onto that but before I had time to do anything about it, another train arrived.

  I could see half-naked men leaning out of the windows, their faces filthy and unshaven and one of them was staring into oblivion, as if he had been to hell and back. Perhaps he had, I thought. Another man’s face was so dirty he looked like a chimney-sweep and another had blood running down the side of his cheek, but when they saw the WVS ladies coming with tea and buns, they all cheered and blew kisses, which brought tears to my eyes. I had no idea what these poor men must have gone through but realised that all of them must be in pain, whether physically or mentally, or both.