The Other Child (12 page)

We stood in front of the smoking ruins for a moment and were wondering to ourselves with some apprehension what had become of all the people who had lived here, when young Miss Taylor came out of the neighbouring house. A small section of its ground floor was still there, and roofed. She came from a village in Devon and had come to London to try her luck; she worked at a laundry. She was leading a small boy by the hand, who I recognised as Brian Somerville. He was seven or eight years old and was reckoned to be rather dense.

Miss Taylor's face was chalk-white.

‘That was an inferno these last three nights,' she said, and I saw her lips were trembling violently. ‘It was … I thought …' She wiped her free hand over her brow, which in spite of the cold morning was wet with sweat. Mum said later that she had been suffering from shock.

‘I'm going to see if I can doss at a friend's place,' she explained. ‘She lives a little further out, and I hope they aren't being bombed as much there. Anyway, it's going to be too cold to stay in this ruin. And I can't bear it all any longer. I can't bear it any longer!' She started to cry.

My mother gestured to little Brian who was staring at us with giant, shocked eyes.

‘What about him? Where are his parents?'

Miss Taylor sobbed loudly. ‘Dead. All dead. Even the sisters. All of them.'

‘All of them?' exclaimed Mum, shocked.

‘They dug them out,' whispered Miss Taylor, who had probably just realised what an effect this conversation might have on the already traumatised child holding her hand. ‘Yesterday, all day long. Everyone who was living in the house … or rather, what was left of them. The house was hit the night before last. They said nobody could survive it.'

Mum pressed her hand to her mouth in horror.

‘And then last night he suddenly appeared at my place.' Miss Taylor nodded at Brian. ‘Brian. I don't know where he came from. I can't get a word out of him. Either he was buried in the rubble, but managed to survive and free himself, or he wasn't at home that night. I mean, you know …'

We knew. Sometimes, when Mr Somerville was completely out of it, he just did not let his children into the flat. Often one of them had asked to kip in a neighbour's place, and on summer nights they had sometimes camped out on the street. When I was younger and more foolish, I had sometimes envied them their freedom.

‘Where should I take the little tyke now?' wailed Miss Taylor.

‘Can you take him to your friend?' asked my mother.

‘Never. She works all day too. Neither of us can look after him.'

‘Does he have any relatives?'

Miss Taylor shook her head. ‘I chatted with Mrs Somerville sometimes. She always wanted to leave her husband, but she said she had no family she could go to. I'm afraid Brian … is now alone in the world.'

‘Then you have to hand him over to the Red Cross,' Mum advised and looked pityingly at the pale boy. ‘Poor lad!'

‘Oh God, oh God,' moaned Miss Taylor. It seemed the situation was too much for her.

And then my mother did something that was to have far-reaching consequences, something that was not like her at all. She was not by nature someone willing to lend a helping hand. She would always say that it was hard enough keeping our own heads above water, and that we could not afford to take on other people's problems too.

‘All right, I'll take him,' she said. ‘I'm just taking Fiona to the train station. She's being evacuated. I'm sure I'll find someone there who can help me, one or other of the Red Cross nurses, for example. Then I can hand Brian over to them.'

Miss Taylor looked as if she wanted to hug my mother. Before you could say Jack Robinson, Mum had two children at her side: her own eleven-year-old daughter in a thin summer dress with a cardboard suitcase in her hand, and an eight-year-old boy in trousers stiff with dirt and a formless, sack-like sweater which, to judge by its worn condition, had already served whole generations of children as an all-purpose item of clothing. The boy moved as if in a trance. He did not seem to take in what was going on around him.

In this formation we arrived at the train station, at the very last minute as we discovered. Either Mum had got the times wrong, or we had been dawdling, held up by Brian's ambling along. In any case, most of the children were already on the train. Clusters of them were squeezed at the windows, waving to their parents standing on the platform. Many of them were crying. Many mothers looked as if they would really have liked to climb onto the train themselves. Various children were screaming that they wanted to get off and go home. All of them had little badges, on which their names were written. Red Cross nurses and other helpers were scurrying here and there with clipboards and lists in their hands, trying to keep track of everything in the chaos.

Mum approached one of the Red Cross nurses determinedly. ‘Excuse me. My daughter was registered for this train.'

The nurse was a tall, large woman. She had such an unfriendly face that I felt quite afraid. ‘You're late!' she barked. ‘Name?'

‘Swales. Fiona Swales.'

The nurse looked down her list and ticked off something, no doubt my name. She fished a little card badge out from under her clipboard.

‘Write your daughter's name on this. And her date of birth. And your address in London.'

Mum found a pencil in her handbag and squatted down to rest the name-badge on her knees as she wrote. The nurse stared at Brian.

‘And what about him? Is he going too?'

Brian reached for my hand, frightened. I felt sorry for him and did not pull my hand away, although I would have liked to.

‘No,' said my mother. ‘He's an orphan. I don't know where to take him.'

‘And I'm supposed to know?'

Mum stood up and fixed the badge to my cardigan's lapel.

‘You are from the Red Cross!'

‘But I'm not responsible for orphans! Can't you see all that I have to do here?' And with those words she hurried onwards, to snap at a little girl who, in tears, was trying to get off the train and was screaming for her mother.

‘You have to get on the train, Fiona,' insisted Mum nervously.

Brian held onto me with both hands.

‘He's not letting go, Mummy,' I said, surprised at the strength in Brian's little hands.

My mother tried to separate Brian from me. The conductor blew his whistle. In the blink of an eye, a wave of people had carried and pushed us to the carriages. There were children who had not been able to tear themselves away yet, parents who wanted to reach through the windows one last time and touch their children's hands or cheeks. The farewells around me were heart-rending. I was determined mine should not be. I was angry with Mum for sending me away, and I was sure that I would never forgive her. I reached the iron steps of the carriage. Brian was still clinging resolutely to my hand, although I was trying quite brutally by now to shake him off. A wall of people pressed us onwards from behind.

I turned around. ‘Mummy!' I shouted.

I had lost her in the turmoil. I heard her voice coming from somewhere, but I could not see her. ‘Get on, Fiona! Get on!'

‘Brian's not letting go!' I screamed.

A father standing right behind us lifted his daughter up into the carriage. Then with one arm he grabbed hold of me and with the other arm Brian, and in a second we were both on the train too.

‘Close the doors!' shouted the conductor.

I pushed my way down the passageway, pulling Brian behind. He did not let go for a moment.

Well done, Mummy! Now I'll have to see how to get rid of him!

‘I can't believe how stupid you are!' I snapped at him. ‘You're not supposed to be here! They'll send you back straight away!'

He stared at me from his huge eyes. I noticed how white his skin was and how clearly you could see the web of blue veins under his temples.

He had no badge, no suitcase and no gas mask. He was on no list. They would send him back in no time. It was not my fault that the man had just lifted him into the train.

I found a free seat on one of the wooden benches and sgueezed on beside the other children. Brian tried to sit on my lap, but I pushed him away. In the end he stood nearby.

‘Don't be so mean to your little brother,' said a girl of about twelve who was sitting opposite and eating a delicious smelling pâté sandwich.

‘He's not my brother,' I replied. ‘I don't even know him!'

The train started to move. I had to swallow hard in order not to break into tears. Many children were crying, but I did not want to be one of them. We slowly left the train station. The sun had still not managed to break through the fog and the day was grey and dark. My future did not look any brighter. Grey, dark and uncertain, as if the damp, impenetrable fog lay over it too.

I felt that the end of my childhood had come. Without any tears, but with my heart as heavy as lead, I said goodbye to it.

3

It was late afternoon by the time we reached Yorkshire. The train timetable had been thrown into disarray, because our train had unexpectedly come to a stop a few miles outside London, where it had to wait three hours. The previous night's bombs had caused two large trees to fall on the tracks. The clean-up work was already under way when we reached the spot. The nurses and teachers accompanying us on the train made an effort to keep us calm and in good spirits. Some organised games in little groups, others distributed paper and colouring pencils. The sun did finally break through, scattering the banks of mist and bathing the autumnal landscape in a gentle light. We were allowed to get off the train and stretch our legs. Some of the children started to play ‘it' immediately. Others squatted down, leaning on trees, and began to write their first letters to their parents. Some were still crying. I kept to myself, unpacked the sandwiches my mother had made for me, and started eating.

Brian stuck to me like my shadow. He looked at me fixedly from his large, horrified eyes. I found him creepy and tiresome, and although on the one hand I was happy that he was not – on top of it all – chatting away to me, I found his complete silence rather irritating.

‘Can't you say anything?' I asked.

He looked at me fixedly. Somehow he awoke my pity. After all, he had lost his whole family and now, by a big mistake, he was stuck on a train for Yorkshire. He seemed like a lost little animal to me. But I myself was only eleven, and was confused, scared and in pain at having just been separated from my mum. Where was I to get the energy to look after this helpless being? I did not even have a clue how to cope with my own situation.

I gave him a piece of bread, which he ate, chewing it slowly. Even as he did so, his eyes did not leave me for a moment.

‘Can't you stop staring at me?' I asked, irritated.

As was to be expected, he did not reply, nor stop staring at me. I poked out my tongue at him. It did not seem to make any impression.

When we arrived in Yorkshire, darkness was already falling. Soon pitch-black night would hide the countryside from view. The sun was long gone. We rolled into Scarborough station, got out of the train with stiff joints and shivered in the cold as that autumn afternoon drew to its end. The lively chat, which the more robust of the children had kept up for most of the journey, had now petered out. Now that it was dark, everyone's fear of what was coming, and of which they knew nothing, gained the upper hand. And we all felt how homesick we were. I think that every one of us would have thought nothing of further nights in an air-raid shelter under a shower of bombs, if we had been allowed to stay with our parents. Later, as an adult, I read essays on the topic of the evacuations. There are academic articles and PhD theses that deal with them. Almost without exception they suggest that the traumatisation which many children suffered as a result of sudden separation from their parents and maltreatment in the host families was worse and had a much more damaging effect on their further lives than the considerable trauma of the nights of bombing.

Personally, I have never in my life felt more miserable and wretched, more unprotected and helpless than I did arriving in this unknown place with an uncertain future ahead of me.

A man was waiting on the platform. He talked to the nurse whom I had found so unpleasant in London and who was obviously in charge of our group. We had to line up in twos. The question of whose hand I should hold was quickly solved. No sooner had we got out than he latched on to me again. We looked like brother and sister: a big sister and a somewhat younger brother. Well, I thought, not for long. Tomorrow morning at the latest they would send him back to London.

I almost envied him, but then reminded myself that he did not have a mother waiting for him like I did. If what Miss Taylor said was true, and he had no living next of kin, then he would end up in an orphanage.

Poor devil, I thought.

We followed the man through the station to where a number of buses were parked and waiting. We were asked to get into the buses. It did not seem to matter who ended up in which bus. Only a very few children, whose names were on a separate list, were assigned individually to particular buses. As it later became plain, they were the lucky ones who were to be put up in their relatives' homes. Their destinations were already clear, while the destinations of the rest of us were still undecided. The buses left for various villages, many deep in the countryside. The bus I was in – and Brian, still holding my hand – was the only one that stayed near the coast and dropped its passengers off in the area around Scarborough. The town of Scarborough itself was no longer a
Reception Zone
, but the villages around it had been approved. Their beds were needed urgently.

No one had checked us as we got on the bus. No one had noticed that the little boy holding my hand did not have either a badge or luggage. We were shooed on in a hurry, so I did not dare to speak to one of the adults. It might sound surprising that I was not able to act sensibly, but you have to think how scared and unsure of myself I felt.