A Childs War (8 page)

When they were home, Joyce tried to stop herself laughing at what had happened, and found two of the eggs undamaged in spite of everything. Edna had a wash down and put on clean clothes. The bag was assiduously cleansed and left hanging out on the clothesline for the rest of the week in order to remind Alex of his misdemeanour.

When George arrived home on Friday night, he produced three full egg boxes in mint condition from his case and one of them was opened on Saturday morning. Alex had forgotten how nice a soft-boiled egg tasted eaten with soldiers of toast dipped into it. Nothing was said about Monday's fiasco in his presence, but George's knowing wink as he took away his eggcup when Alex had finished let him know that what he had done was not held against him. Just then, Edna appeared with a large newspaper parcel. She gave it to George and quietly said to him,

“Thanks for seeing to this for me.”

George took it from her, and went out quickly.

He was back after half an hour or so.

“They'll be ready on Thursday,” he said. “Here's the receipt. Don't go paying twice.”

Edna took the shopping bag from the line and put it in the dustbin.

Towards the end of June Alex came to the breakfast table one Sunday morning to hear his father and honorary uncle excitedly talking about the war. There was nothing new in them talking about it: it was the excitement that was different.

“He's bitten off more than he can chew this time!”

“So much for non-aggression pacts made with him!”

“Yes, but the important thing is what the papers say Winnie said.”

“You mean, ‘any man or state that fights the Nazis has our aid'.”

“Yes. I never thought we'd end up in cahoots with Uncle Joe.”

“Any port in a storm, George. Any port in a storm.”

This discussion was brought to an end by Joyce calling out from the scullery,

“Do either of you want another piece of fried bread?”

As Alex climbed on his chair and put a large tea towel round his neck as was required of him, he tried to decipher what seemed to have happened. He knew who “Winnie” was from the impressions of his speech often made at this table: he went about smoking a cigar and making a gesture with his fingers that Alex was not allowed by Edna under any circumstances to imitate for fear that his version might be imperfect and therefore misinterpreted by the respectable. What a non-aggression pact might be eluded him, as did the possible identity of “Uncle Joe”. And someone else had his mouth too full of food that he could not swallow, which had some bearing on the war.

All that became insignificant when Joyce brought his porridge in for him. He was relieved that he did not have to chew porridge, or he might end up like the unfortunate subject of his father's remark.

Before he actually needed to ask, George explained to him that Hitler had unexpectedly sent his army into Russia in force and this meant that Great Britain was no longer fighting him and the Italian Fascists on her own. Edna had not come downstairs yet so it was all right to produce the Sunday paper, breaking her rule against reading at the table, and George showed Alex the map of the invasion and explained it to him.

“No one has ever been able to invade Russia successfully,” George said. “You see: this will make a lot of difference. Napoleon was defeated after he reached Moscow. Lenin was able to impose peace on the Kaiser in the first war when the German generals found they could not win a war fought on two fronts. Nobody expected what has just happened because one of the worrying things has been that Hitler and Joe Stalin . . .”

“Oh,” put in Alex, “Then that's ‘Uncle Joe'!”

“Yes. Swore that they would never attack each other only two years ago and this left Hitler free to keep his attention on us. Now he's turned round and gone the other way. If only the Americans would do a bit more than lease us a few of their old destroyers we could see him off while his back's turned.”

“He's still got his U-boats though, George,” put in Graham.

Alex noticed that the two men had changed their rôles. George was saying all the hopeful things with Graham putting a damper on him, whereas always before it had been the other way round. But the interesting grown-up men's talk soon stopped when George heard Edna on the stairs and quickly folded the newspaper to make it disappear. He got up and offered her his place, since there were only four chairs at the table and the other one was Joyce's if she wanted it. He went to get his wife a cup of tea from the pot warming on the kitchen range as she came into the kitchen.

Alex said,

“Hitler's invaded Russia, Mum.”

“Never mind about that. Just eat your porridge.”

George shook his head with a smile at his boy and went off to devour the rest of the paper in peace.

“Morning, Edna,” said Graham. “Things have taken an unexpected turn, though. George seems quite hopeful that it will make a difference.”

“Yes. Dad says it means we haven't got to fight Hitler on our own anymore.”

“It will be a good thing when you go to school and you won't have to fill your head up with things that are beyond you.”

This thought about school was to be reiterated constantly over the next three months, hanging over Alex and assuming the proportions of a threat greater than he could imagine. He knew where the school was. He knew that everyone just a year older than he had to go there. But what they did inside that great big building in Ferry Hinksey Road, and why they had to take their gas masks with them every time, were questions he could not answer for himself and was afraid to ask his mother.

Later on in the day he asked George about the purpose of going to school.

“They'll teach you how to read,” he told him.

“But I can read. Can't I?”

“Not quite yet,” said George, “And there's counting and writing to learn as well. You might as well take what they are offering. Come to think of it, you could read to me for a change.”

Edna and Joyce came in at this point, and Graham soon followed. Alex realized that it was time for the great Sunday afternoon snooze and went out to the garden, stopping at his cupboard in the sitting room for some balsa wood off cuts that John had given him and bits of wire and lengths of string. He went into the garden, where he manufactured a fully rigged and armoured warship. Alex saw what he had made as H.M.S. Exeter taking on the Graf Spee, which he had been told about ages ago. Some dirt off the inspection cover made it the right grey and some of the spills used to light the gas oven were fetched and became, in small pieces, signal flags and, in long ones, its main armament. He came in for two cotton reels he knew he had and these became the fore and aft turrets. When it had finished its battle, it limped home and was put into his pie dish, found where he had hidden it behind a scruffy rose in the corner of the garden, and now metamorphosed into a dry dock in which the ship underwent its refit before going on to further triumphs, perhaps to bring help to the Russian navy...

After an hour of self-absorption, he took the whole thing in, pie dish and all, to his waking father, who rubbed his eyes and said what a parent never must: “Hullo, that's good. What is it?”

He had the presence of mind, however, to ask Alex less curtly to explain to him what it was, thus restoring self-respect on the boy's part. When Alex had gone, Edna said,

“You oughtn't to pander to that boy's fancy world so much.”

“I don't know. You're not lonely for long if you've got a good imagination.”

And there they both left it because George had to go to Gloucester Green for the coach in another two hours and they did not want to be in dispute before that happened. It was important to both of them that the smiles as they parted at the front door each week were unforced so that they could remember them and keep them in focus until the following Friday. Edna prided herself on being practical and left imaginative thoughts to George and, reluctantly, to Alex.

“I'll make a cup of tea,” she said and asked Graham and Joyce if they would like one.

When older people talked about “before the war . . .” with a wistful look on their faces, Alex did not understand what they meant at all. He had come to consciousness of reality while the war was beginning. He had emerged from babyhood in an Anderson shelter and he was just about to go to school with others of his age who could not imagine a world without ration books, or in which new clothes and furniture did not conform to a standard of utility which was serviceable but not elegant, and where everything was marked with two circles with a segment cut out of them and the number forty-one.

Edna always looked elegant when she was in her better clothes. She still had many of her pre-war things, since George had brought up a great suitcase the weekend before the house was destroyed. Clothes were worn to destruction if they were liked. In the summer, Edna often wore a thin black coat with appliqué embroidery around the collar and on its facings, held together in front by a row of small covered buttons fastening into loops over her new pink silk dress trimmed at the neck with lace. The hat she wore with this coat was nearly all covered in black feathers over its crown and brim, with a large crimson feather over her forehead resembling a maple leaf. Sometimes she wore the spotted veiling that went with it and sometimes not. The coat was what she had on when she and Alex arrived in Oxford last year and it would see out each wartime summer before it was discarded. She only stopped wearing it then because she could no longer get it on over her increased weight once she had decided to be a matronly figure at the age of forty-three. Alex associated it in his own mind with another garment she often sang a song about, not realizing that he was listening, or she never would have:

‘My sweet little Alice Blue gown,

I so often wore it to town:

I wore it and wore it,

Till some blighter tore it,

My sweet little Alice Blue gown.'

George had three suits of increasing age, not bought at the store on his discount but from Montague Burton, as all his braces buttons announced. He also had what he called his sports coat - a fashionable jacket with a half belt at the back and a pleat from waist to neck - and flannels and a selection of collarless shirts, each with at least one spare collar. It was Alex's responsibility most weekends, if his father was wearing one of these, to find his back collar stud when he dropped it from behind, having forgotten to put it in place before he drew the shirt on. As summer warmed up, George more likely wore one of his less formal shirts, even with no tie. All his shirts were coloured. When Alex asked him why he did not wear white ones as many men did, he replied that he always had to wear white ones in the Navy and now he didn't have to he didn't want to. Edna knew this, but made sure that Alex, when dressed for best, always had a dazzling white shirt. Alex was not old enough to wonder why. It was some time before he saw his father wearing the clothes in which he did his work as an engineer.

Alex himself was invariably dressed in a pair of short trousers. He had dark brown corduroy shorts for October to May - one pair on and one in the wash - and three pairs of lighter ones for spring and summer. If more than one pair needed to be washed at once it meant going to bed early - usually to atone for having got them dirty. In days of double summer time this was irksome because no one ever thought of drawing the blackout curtains until it really was lighting up time and the canary thought it was incumbent upon it to sing a protracted evening serenade. On these occasions he would be told by his mother, after she had decreed the punishment, that she was not looking for work and was not going to run round after him when he was so thoughtless. Her attitude to grazed knees was often similar to the one adopted for dirty clothes, depending upon the mood she was in.

On weekdays, a boy in a respectable family wore a jersey with a collar, which usually carried a single line of decoration. The favoured colour for this garment was grey or brown so as not to show the dirt. It usually itched, especially as the underclothes issued with it on colder days were also made of wool.

When it was time for his Aertex vest and pants in spring, Alex considered that day to be a foretaste of the heaven he had been told about in which all our gallant airmen who had been shot down and the sailors from ships in the Atlantic food convoys sunk by U-Boats were to be found in bliss.

“What's bliss, Auntie Joyce?”

“Feeling happy for ever, Alex.”

“That would be nice.”

In September the time came when Alex going to school was no longer a topic to be talked about but one that was actually going to happen. Edna took him across Botley Road and then along Ferry Hinksey Road until the large building familiar from their endless promenades appeared behind high trees. Over two entrances next to each other were carved stones, which Alex could read for himself. One said Girls in beautiful letters, and the other Boys. He soon discovered the redundant nature of these signs since the children were taught all together now and had been for some years, though the coming of international conflict and the registration of increasingly older men for the services had meant that the education of the nation's rising generation was entirely in the hands of women.

The Headmistress was Miss Cook, a stout lady of a certain age at all times dressed in what was then called a costume: a well cut jacket above a skirt nearly to the ankles, beneath which appeared lisle stockings and severe shoes with a strap over the instep buttoning on the outer side. Her ensemble was completed by a silky white blouse, sometimes embellished with a cameo or some other brooch, and sometimes with a necktie. She had a loud voice and did not look very kind, but her looks were deceptive as Alex soon learned.

After a few minutes' discussion about things like the vaccinations Alex had undergone and the unfortunate loss of their home in “the suburbs”, as she called the place where Alex's family used to live, the Headmistress took Edna and her son to meet Miss Hill, who was the teacher in charge of the infants' class. She was surrounded already by a number of mothers with their new entrants to the school and while Miss Cook moved away to meet the next pair in the queue outside her own classroom, Edna and Alex had to wait their turn sitting on a large tiled step that went right round the inside of the room. The primary function of this step was to allow the children to reach the slates set into the walls on which they were encouraged to draw from time to time with coloured chalks. Edna found it cold to her posterior, and said so, and was displeased when Alex said out loud that his bum was cold too. The whispered altercation about this was still going on when Miss Hill, from her raised desk, called his name out and added, “You must reply: ‘Yes, Miss Hill.'”