A cold shiver passed through me. When I opened my eyes I was four feet tall and standing in the middle of a mass of giggling boys and girls. One girl with curly blonde ringlets gave the shoulder I was attached to a push. I felt her pinchy grip.
“What’s your name then?” She demanded with a lisp.
“Leighton Cavendish,” I heard my brother’s voice reply.
“Are you goin’ on your own?” The girl asked.
I felt a little dizzy as my brother shook his head.
“No I’m with my sister, Kit,” he explained, “she’s back in the other part of the carriage.”
“Oh yeah,” said the little blonde girl, who I was beginning to think was a rather nasty piece of work. She screwed up her piggy face and shoved Leighton again. I felt the jab harshly. She had hurt him. “Where are you goin’ then? I bet it’s not as good as my place. I’m going to An-jel-see.”
Anglesey, I thought, but I tried my best to keep it to myself. Leighton was fidgeting with his lapels, confirming my worst fears when he dropped his head down to look at them. Through his eyes I saw the pin that should have been holding his green paper label.
“Oh, um,” he stammered, starting to look around.
I followed his gaze in deep concentration, trying to ignore the piggy girl’s laugh as I helped him search the floor of the crowded carriage. I could feel the tension building in his little body, like he knew how angry I might be at him for losing his paper after all the warnings Mum had given him that same morning. His glances became more erratic and harder to follow as he twirled around, but I caught a flash of something in a pea green shade on one of his twists. But I couldn’t make him move back to it and he didn’t seem to want to turn that way again.
Frustrated I thought harder, pushing myself deeper into his head, until I could hear him fretting so loudly in my skull I thought my head would burst. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding, trying just to whisper the words in my mind.
Behind your left shoe.
Leighton turned, looking to see where the voice had come from.
Left’s the other way.
He turned again and to my relief he immediately saw the paper on the ground. As my brother bent to retrieve it I let him go, sinking back into a dizzying blackness for a few seconds until I could see my own hands over my eyes. I let my arms drop, taking a lungful of oxygen in desperately. My head ached and my arms were limp at my side, but I smiled at the sight of Leighton skipping back up the corridor towards me with the slip of green paper in his hand.
“Kit, this came off,” he said as he waved it in my face, “Can you pin it back on please?”
“Perhaps I’d better keep it until we get off,” I suggested, after which he immediately handed the paper over. I didn’t miss the look of relief on his face.
***
Most of the children had settled into sleepy little heaps by the time we finally crossed the border into North Wales, which gave me some time to recover from my little trip into Leighton’s head. I wasn’t supposed to do things like that in public places. Nobody had ever told me so, exactly, but then nobody else knew what I could do. I just knew that the closed-eye deep breathing thing would look odd to me if I saw someone else doing it, and God only knows what I looked like when my mind was otherwise engaged.
Probably like some great gawking ape, with my bristling curly hair the colour of ginger biscuits flying out in all directions, my indigo eyes dark and dead to all in my immediate space. I laughed to myself silently so I didn’t disturb the sleeping masses. If those kids had seen me use my ability, then they were likely to forget it, perhaps write it off as teenagers just being odd and doing strange things. So long as no-one important ever caught me, I’d be safe.
The train guard re-entered the carriage with the jangle of keys, stepping gently down the central aisle and shaking his head at the carpet of labels under his feet. He caught my eye and gave a “Tsk, tsk”. I just nodded politely whilst he approached.
“We’ll be at your station in a few minutes, Miss Cavendish,” the kindly old guard informed. He had a voice as smoky as the puffs passing the train window. “You’d best wake your brother and I’ll help you alight.”
“Thank you sir,” I said with a small smile.
I could feel the tremble in my chest as I gave Leighton a little push. He was curled up on the seat beside me with his head in my lap. He unfurled himself like a cat and rubbed his sleepy blue eyes as I told him the news from the guard. When he’d got himself together he nodded and climbed off of the seat so I could shuffle over to the edge in preparation. Sure enough the train slowed a moment later and the watchful guard crouched down beside me.
“If you’ll pardon me, Miss,” he said as he put one hand under my knees. I said nothing, feeling terribly awkward as I put my arm around his shoulder, letting him lift me out of the seat. “Come along young Mister,” the guard said to Leighton in haste, “you’ll have to carry the chair.”
The strong old guard took me down the steps from the carriage onto the platform. Over his shoulder I watched Leighton scrambling down in pursuit of him, clanking my poor metal wheelchair along behind him. It hit every step on the way down, making me shudder.
“Can you stand for a moment Miss, whilst I work out this fancy folding chair of yours?” asked the guard with a patient smile. I panicked instantly. Stand? Fall was far more likely. But Leighton saved me with an outburst.
“Oh it’s easy!”
Leigh was already well away attacking the chair, pushing it to and fro until he could slam down the middle and put the tubular frames in the right places. The old guard looked relieved and impressed at the same time as he set me down into the seat. I felt the redness rising in my cheeks at his kindness. He patted me on the head and straightened up.
“I’ll fetch your bags Miss,” he said with a smile, “You wave those green tickets about until the billet man sees you.”
I looked around the dirty, smoky railway platform into the mass of unlabelled children now wandering aimlessly along in clumps. The billeting officer wasn’t hard to spot at all; he was the tall one in the middle of a particularly large clump of younger children, most of whom were crying. The billet man looked like he wanted to cry too. He was an older man, though not as grey and bristly as the train guard and as the bawling children were shuffled to and fro I realised that he was wearing a policeman’s uniform under an open beige jacket. I waved my green label towards his field of vision just as the train guard said, but he didn’t notice us. The green was supposed to signal us as a special case because of my chair. He should have been looking out for us, but now I could see he was too busy in the throng of cry-babies to even look up.
Eventually we were introduced when the guard took us and our one suitcase over into the eye of the child storm. I was wet from the explosion of tears instantly, pulling a handkerchief from the pocket of my knit jumper to wipe my face. It was always awful being at the same eye level as small children and large animals. On this occasion I would have preferred the large animals over this noisy mess of kids who had just realised they wouldn’t be seeing Mummy again for a while now that their train adventure was over. I couldn’t hear a word that the billet man said over the din, but eventually he took control of pushing my wheelchair and made off for the station exit.
I turned weakly in my chair to wave goodbye to the kind old guard, feeling the noise of the busy platform fade away. My head felt normal again at last.
“I’ve just got to transfer my duties to Officer Jones, then I’ll be accompanying you two up to the village.”
His accent was a terribly thick Welsh one and it was actually several minutes after he had gone back to the station before I could translate exactly what he had said and tell it to Leighton again. We were in a little car park where a cold wind nipped against my stockings, making my knees ache under my pleated skirt. I should have worn something warmer. Mum was always telling me to worry about the weather more. But then she wouldn’t have abandoned me in a car par
k in the first place.
The flustered officer assigned to help us on Evacuation Day was Officer Lewis. When he returned, I was wheeled into the back of a large hospital car especially built for the purpose. I had to admit the shiny white car filled me with a little excitement. When Leigh came to sit opposite me on a bench inside the back of the vehicle, he looked around him with a big smile.
“Nice this Kit,” he mused, “Do you think it means the people looking after us are rich?”
“No such luck young man,” said Lewis from the front passenger seat, “This is the doctor’s private car, this, you’ll only see it when you’re going up his office.”
Again it took some time to translate, the way Lewis mashed all his words together into a melodious jangle was hard on our London ears, but I got enough words from the mix to know I shouldn’t expect a chauffeur. Although I probably would be in this car quite often, given the circumstances. The pin in my jumper where the green label clung to me was starting to itch. I took it off gently, saving the pin against the fabric strap of my gas mask holder and tried to read the address we were destined for.
Ty Gwyn, Bryn Eira Bach
That was it. No borough, no postcode, not even a house number. I stretched forward to give the paper to Leighton whose little eyes were craning to see it. A lot of good it’d do him. He scrumpled his face at the address.
“Tie goy-un?” he asked, “What kind of address is tie goy-un?”
Lewis curved his head round his seat, looking at the paper over Leigh’s little shoulders.
“Tie indeed,” he tutted, “That’s Ty Gwyn that is. Lovely big farm house on the edge of the village. You’ll love it there.”
He said it as Tee Gwin. I tried to remember it, murmuring it on my lips. It would be so rude to say it wrong to the people who were kind enough to take us in for the duration of the threat in London, perhaps even for the duration of the war. Tee Gwin. The thought of a farm house didn’t appeal in the least to me, all I could think of was how cold and drafty it would be in the winter months, but Leighton was all over the idea, scrambling up the bench to turn and talk to Officer Lewis.
“A farm!” he squealed, stamping his feet, “Will there be pigs and chickens and things to chase around?”
“I don’t know if they’ll appreciate you chasing ‘em much, bach, but yes there will be animals about the place.” Lewis’s round face smiled at Leighton before he turned his brown eyes on me. “Oh it’s a lovely village this, you’ll have everything you could ever want in Bryn Eira Bach.”
I felt a bitter taste in my mouth, but I smiled back before I looked out of the window. Unless this distant village could somehow make me able-bodied again and then give me a handsome young chap to go dancing with, I knew that Lewis’s promises, and my hopes, couldn’t ever come true.
The doctor’s private car took us an awfully long way from the station, over sparse grassy hills and down little brown roads that led to yet more hills. We had gone over so many bumps that I could feel the restraints on my chair starting to loosen, but just as I began to worry that I’d be flung out of my seat at the next bend, the car finally stopped. Out of one window I saw a mass of misty fields with the vague shadow of mountains in the background. From the other I just caught sight of a lot of out buildings ranging in shape and size. Barns and things, I supposed.
Ty Gwyn was straight ahead of us, so I didn’t see the huge white building until I was properly out of the car. Officer Lewis started to wheel me up to it over the bumpy gravel path, jarring my spine with every pebble. I tried to keep smiling and made sure my clothes and hair were neat as we approached. When Lewis rang the doorbell the ancient sound echoed out of the cracks in the wood around the window panes. A few birds roosting in the eaves of the big white farm house suddenly took flight, making Leighton jump. He shuffled from foot to foot, biting his little pink lip.
The tiniest girl I had ever seen answered the door. She was short and willowy with huge blue eyes and tawny brown hair sticking up at funny angles. Her plain little dress was stained with something that looked like blueberries. She clung to its hem as she looked up at Officer Lewis, then she suddenly broke into a great beaming smile, showing off her stumpy white teeth.
“Ble mae Mam?” Lewis asked the little girl.
I tried to pick out the English as usual, but this time I couldn’t. Leighton gave me a wide eyed look, scrunching his nose.
“Yn y gegin yn paratoi cinio,” the little girl replied. I marvelled at the complex language falling out of such a tiny mouth.
“Dod â Mam yma!” Lewis added with a flick of his hand.
The little girl scampered away, leaving the door wide open. I would have waited, but Lewis seemed to take that as the invitation to go inside. He wheeled me in over the bumpy threshold of the wide farmhouse door and into a big reception space, adjusting Leighton until he stood up straight beside me. Everything in this part of the house was either black or white. Black tiles lined the cold stone floor. White lacy doilies covered the shelves of an old black dresser in the corner, next to an even older metal coat stand that was ready to fall over with the amount of coats flung upon it.
I looked at the steep, black stairs fearfully. If I was expected to climb them every day and night, I would surely die before I even reached breakfast tomorrow. My joints ached at the very prospect of it.
“Nawr te, who do we have yur then?”
The woman’s accent echoing down the corridor was thankfully much clearer than Lewis’s. She almost sang the words as she appeared from under a white doorway right in front of us. The woman had a rosy face and the same tawny hair as the little girl, though hers was pulled back into a more practical style. She was older than Mum but younger than Granny, with a cooking apron tied over her broad, rounded figure. She had the kindest smile in the world as she approached, rubbing her coarse hands together excitedly.
“Oh aren’t you just lovely, the pair of you!”
She dropped to her knees before us and pulled my shoulder forward for a hug. My chair gave me a little space at least from her lovingly iron grip, but Leighton had no such luck. He was pulled straight into her ample chest where he could hardly breathe from the warmth of her embrace. He emerged red-faced a moment later, stumbling backwards.
“Leighton, Catherine,” Officer Lewis explained, “This is Mrs Gladys Price, your new guardian.”
“Call me Mam if you like,” she added, “Everyone does round yur.”
Mam stayed at eye level with me, crouching on the floor with her warm hand on my knee. She smelled like cakes and biscuits and her voice had a soft melodic note, like there was music in every word she spoke.
“Thank you Mam,” I said and Leighton repeated me. I was embarrassed at how stiff my voice sounded, but Mam didn’t seem to notice.
“Well come in, come in!” she said, yanking herself up to her full height, “You must be starving after that journey!”
The mention of any kind of food had won Leighton over immediately. He bounced on his heels as Mam circled him to take the back of my chair. We said goodbye to Officer Lewis as he doffed his hat, then suddenly we were off at Mam’s brisk pace down a dark corridor until we emerged into a massive kitchen. A huge oval table made of dark wood sat in the centre of the space, already laden with cakes, sandwiches and a big jug of fruit cordial. Leigh’s jaw dropped to the ground.
“Oh sit down love, tuck in,” Mam said to him as she wheeled me up to the near end of the table. I could already see the space where a chair had been moved away to accommodate me.
My little brother wasted no time in heeding her. He took off his cap as he dropped into a wooden chair near me and reached out for a sandwich the size of a doorstop, taking an impossibly large bite compared to the size of his mouth. Mam sat herself down just opposite me and the tiny little girl who had answered the door came running up to her. Scooping her up with warm, wide arms, Mam set the girl on her knee and caught my eye.
“Is this your daughter?” I asked, giving the
little girl a grin. She shied away, but she was smiling too.
“Yeah,” Mam nodded proudly, “this is Vanessa. We call her Ness Fach. My little miracle she is!” She cuddled Ness close before setting her down again.
“What do you mean?” asked Leighton with a mouthful of bread and cheese. I made a point of remembering to tell him off for bad manners later.
“Well yur’s me with three grown up children, then suddenly Ness comes along out of the blue! I didn’t even know I was pregnant for a while!”
Mam sat back with a happy sigh, watching Ness Fach, who was eyeing Leighton with interest. She put her nose up to the edge of the kitchen table and stood on tiptoe to look at him.
“Do you speak English?” Leighton asked her.
“Yeah,” she said unsurely. I could see the fascination in her little face. Girls always liked the look of Leighton. It was going to be a problem when he got older, I knew. “How old are you?” Ness mumbled.
“Ten,” Leigh replied, “What about you?”
“Three,” she said more strongly.
“You’re a tall girl for three,” I observed with extra enthusiasm, and she turned and beamed at me. “This is Leighton, and I’m Catherine.” Ness nodded her tiny tawny head. “And my friends call me Kit. If you like, we can be friends, then you can call me Kit as well.”
Ness Fach took a moment to take in the proposition.
“Kit,” she said shyly.
“That’s right,” I replied.
Ness suddenly scampered off again, disappearing out of the kitchen door and back down the dark corridor. Mam watched her go, shaking her head.
“She’ll be getting her Dolly to show you now,” Mam explained, “Everyone has to meet Dolly. You haven’t touched your food yet love.”
I started to fill a small plate with food, feeling my heart settle like it was being laid on a fluffy pillow. The situation could have been so beastly for Leigh and me, but things were definitely on the up. I wanted to be as polite and likeable as possible for Mam, hoping that Leighton’s evident delight in her cooking was enough to ingratiate him for the moment.
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