A Girl Can Dream (29 page)

‘She said she felt so sorry for the children, whose thin, pasty faces were drawn with fatigue, and the little boy looked scared to death. He was crying and his nose had been running and snot was smeared across his face where he had wiped it with his sleeve. The elder boy was pretty near to tears himself and the girl looked kind of bereft, Lily said, as if the weight of responsibility that had been laid on her shoulders was too heavy a burden. The sight of the three waifs made her feel it was selfish to refuse to take them in when she had the room. She said she thought of our lad off to fight, and the farm hands, too, and you girls leaving your homes and living elsewhere to work the farm in the place of men, and she knew she had to do her bit. And what an eye-opener she had.’

‘In what way?’

‘Well, that first night, she hadn’t facilities for three children, and she just had one single bed that she had for Stephen when he stayed over, years ago, and she topped and tailed the two boys in that, gave the girl her bed and slept in a chair. Next morning she found the boys under the bed. It turns out they’d never slept in a bed before. Anyway, the evacuation society got more beds and bedding to her the next day, and she left it to them to use them or not. They had never sat at a table to eat either, and even the girl didn’t know how to use a knife and fork properly.

‘The children were very dirty as well. Lily didn’t know how dirty till they all had a bath the next day and she had to scrape the muck off them, and their hair was crawling with lice. She had to go to the chemist for stuff to wash their hair with to get rid of them.’

‘And every week they look better,’ Meg said. ‘To see them now – well, they are not like the same children.’

‘Are they Catholics?’ Joy asked.

Enid shook her head, ‘No, they never went near any church, but as Lily said, she can’t leave them in the house alone, they might get up to all sorts, so they have to come with her.’

Meg thought that though Lily might have to have been coerced into taking them in the first place, she was the sort of person to do the job properly. Lily’s evacuees weren’t the only ones who had arrived with body and head lice, and a fair few wet their beds and swore like troopers. An appeal was launched in all the churches and Women’s Institutes for garments for some of the evacuees, who had come completely inadequately clothed for the autumn. They often didn’t have a wellington boot between them, and in fact a good few just had plimsolls lined with cardboard in a vain effort to keep the rain out.

The shopkeepers had to keep their wits about them, too, because some stole with nifty fingers that moved like lightning. Having more space and freedom than was possible in the industrial towns, and not knowing the ways of the country, they caused havoc by churning up farmers’ fields, or flooding them by damming streams, and they left farm gates open everywhere. Many of the village children resented the intrusion of these streetwise ‘city kids’, so fights were commonplace.

There was plenty of grumbling but, as Enid said, ‘I think it takes time for children to learn to live together.’

‘I think it was a massively optimistic to move half the country’s children to somewhere so different from home, and expect them to adapt to country life just like that,’ Meg said.

‘Yeah,’ Joy agreed. ‘I missed city life at first, if I’m honest, and I had the choice to come here. The evacuees didn’t and if you listen to them, they want the chippy and the pictures, the streets to play in, a kick-about down the park or the rec, and their nan living round the corner. It is all most of them have ever known, and they don’t care how unsafe it is.’

‘Well, that’s just it,’ Enid said. ‘It doesn’t appear to be unsafe, does it?’

‘No,’ Meg said. ‘Sending the children away from the cities was just some sort of knee-jerk reaction.’

‘Well, now,’ Will said, ‘I think that sending children away any time must have been a very difficult decision for parents. One that I am very glad Enid and I never had to make. I’m sure those who eventually decided to do it did so with the best of intentions.’

‘Oh, yes, I agree with that,’ Enid said. ‘Most parents strive to do their best for their children, and if the promised bombs had come I think that they might feel more justified in keeping them away. But as it is …’

‘I would think they can’t risk bringing them home now,’ Will said. ‘Maybe that’s what Hitler is waiting for them to do. We are dealing with an evil man and they can’t afford to take chances. Remember, the only evidence they have to go on is what the German planes did in the civil war in Spain.’

Meg nodded. She remembered the harrowing newspaper pictures she had seen two years before of an air raid on a small Basque town: the dead and dying, and the devastated town just a sea of mangled and crushed remains of what had once been shops, buildings and houses.

‘I think that was Hitler’s way of showing the world what he could do,’ Will said. ‘And what he did there he will do here sooner or later, mark my words.’

Meg gasped, for the thought of something similar happening in Britain didn’t bear thinking about.

The following day, Joy didn’t accompany the others to church. She said she’d have the porridge ready for their return, and so Meg went off with Will and Enid. She had seen the lines of children at the front of the church, boys to the right and girls to the left many times but she’d never taken much notice of them because they were always in church when she arrived and were the last ones to leave.

That morning, though, Will was talking to some fellow farmers about the rules the County War Agricultural Executive Committees, known as War Ags, wanted to implement, and it had got quite heated, for as one said, how were they were supposed to get a greater yield with less help?

Meg knew Will would try his best to do as they asked because he was worried. Only the other day he had said to her and Joy as they milked the cows in the chill of the morning, ‘We still bring in too much stuff from abroad; we’re not nearly self-sufficient enough, and in these times it is criminal to have a field lie fallow because it’s difficult to clear.’

Joy and Meg looked at him aghast. They knew what he was talking about, and that was the field at the far edge of the farm, complete with a derelict farmhouse. Will had told them it had belonged to a subsistence farmer who hadn’t even tried to do anything with the land after his wife and son had died of the influenza bug in 1919 that he had inadvertently brought back from the Great War. Will had bought the field from him because he felt sorry for him, but he had never done anything with it, for it was literally full of gorse, brambles, high wild grasses and nettles.

Will caught sight of the girls’ faces and said, ‘All right, I’ll not pretend that it will be easy, but it will be a lot easier than starving to death. Unless we all can grow more, Hitler could lay siege to Great Britain and starve us into surrender. Do you want that?’

No, of course they didn’t, and they knew they had to clear that field whatever it took. Will was arguing the toss now with other farmers, saying the War Ags weren’t the enemy, and Meg was idly listening to him as the children began filing out of the church.

‘Meg? It is you, isn’t it?’ said a voice behind her, and she spun round.

‘Miss Carmichael!’ she exclaimed. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I might ask you the same question,’ Kate Carmichael said. ‘To all intents and purposes, you seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth.’

‘But I wrote to you and Dad and the children as soon as I knew what farm I would be at.’

‘I got no letters,’ Kate said. ‘Did they write back?’

‘Terry did, but he is not a great letter writer,’ Meg said. ‘Why didn’t you get the letters I sent you?’

‘No idea,’ Kate said. ‘What did Terry say?’

‘Well, I asked him to let me know how things were, with Doris and all, and had she heard from the kids, and in his reply he said he never went near the house, so he didn’t know.’

‘But Nicholas went to the house and asked Doris and she said she had not heard from you. He wanted your address, you see, because he was leaving.’

‘Leaving?’ Meg repeated. ‘How do you know all this?’

‘Because he’s here,’ Kate said. ‘Well, in Rugeley, and I met him.’

‘So you’re in Rugeley? And what’s Nicholas doing there?’

Kate laughed. ‘One question at a time,’ she said. ‘You knew I was travelling with the school because I told you. We were allocated a school that we share with other Catholic evacuees in a place called Upper Longdon, a tiny hamlet midway between Rugeley and Lichfield. With all the children to find homes for, I ended up renting a room from a widow in Huntington, which is nearer to Penkridge than anywhere else. We have been given a loan of a bus and each Sunday we collect up the Catholic children from outlying areas and bring them to Mass.’

‘Oh,’ said Meg. ‘So how is Nicholas involved in all this?’

‘He isn’t,’ Kate said. ‘Not at all. Apparently he and his mother hightailed it out of Birmingham not long after war was declared. His mother has a sister in Rugeley and they are with her, and Nicholas is not best pleased about it.’

‘Then he should say so,’ Meg said impatiently. ‘He isn’t a child any more. And what about Uncle Alec?’

‘Ah, well, Nicholas said that’s what decided his mother,’ Kate said. ‘She’d been muttering about it for some time, but when his dad got his call-up papers, they were gone within a fortnight.’

‘Call-up papers, Alec?’ Meg said. ‘I sort of hoped that they’d take the younger men first. What about my dad?’

‘Nicholas said that they went together and they’re both in the Royal Warwickshire’s.’

Meg gasped in shock. ‘I … never had a chance to say goodbye.’

‘Your stepmother said they didn’t know where you were.’

‘She did,’ Meg said through gritted teeth. ‘I wrote.’

‘Nicholas said your father was really cut up about not seeing you,’ Kate said. ‘He went to that recruitment place for land girls but they would tell him nothing.’

‘Terry knew,’ Meg said. ‘He wrote back, so he knew my address.’

‘Terry wasn’t there either,’ Kate told her. ‘He and his mate had gone on a first-aid course.’

‘So he saw neither of us?’

‘That’s about the strength of it,’ Kate said. ‘Look, I must get the children back. Some have taken communion as I have, so they will be starving now.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Meg said. ‘Could we meet sometime?’ Kate’s eyes slid away from Meg’s as she said, ‘Maybe, but I am really busy now and so, I imagine, are you.’

‘Yes, but I get time off.’

‘Lucky you!’

‘Don’t you sometimes?’

Again there was that glance away from Meg’s face as she said, ‘I’m so tied up. You’ve have no idea.’

Meg couldn’t argue further, for she could see Will and Enid waiting for her.

‘I must go,’ Kate said. ‘But here,’ and she pressed a piece of paper into Meg’s hand. ‘Nicholas’s address, where he is now. He will be able to put you in the picture better than I will anyway.’

Meg had no option but to take the paper and make her way to Enid and Will, leaving Kate to chivvy the milling children into the waiting bus. To her surprise and horror she saw that sitting in the driver’s seat was Richard Flatterly.

Kate slid in beside him. ‘That was Meg Hallett,’ she told him.

‘I know, I saw.’

‘Why didn’t you come out and say hello?’ Kate asked. ‘You know her too.’

‘Oh, I know her all right,’ Richard said, as he started the engine and, under cover of the engine noise, he added, ‘When I used to collect the rents when my father’s rent man was sick, she gave me every indication that she wanted to know me better … in the biblical sense, if you get my meaning.’

‘You’re telling me that Meg Hallett—’

‘Came on to me,’ Richard said. ‘Yes, she did – and strongly. I know she was only young, but honest to God, she was offering it on a plate. It was really embarrassing and awkward, especially when she asked if she could she get money off the rent if she was “extra nice” to me.’

‘You didn’t do anything?’

Richard expressed utter indignation. ‘Crikey, Kate, what do you take me for? She was little more than a child. She kissed me once because she took me unawares, but I told her firmly that I wasn’t interested.’

Kate was stunned. ‘I never thought Meg Hallett to be that type,’ she said, but even as she spoke, she wondered how well she really knew the girl. She had barely seen her for two years. Her eyes slid across the cab to see Richard Flattery’s crestfallen face and her heart contracted; this man was becoming very important to her. ‘Poor Richard,’ she said. ‘I am sorry for even asking you, but it was just that I knew her so well when she was a child.’

‘Well, now you know how she has grown up,’ Richard said with satisfaction. He would teach the arrogant Meg Hallett a lesson she wouldn’t forget for repulsing his advances. ‘And don’t worry about me, I’ll live.’ And he smiled as the bus bowled down the country lanes.

As they were eating the delicious porridge Joy had ready for them, Meg filled them in about who Kate Carmichael was.

‘How strange to find you are nearly living in the same place,’ Enid said. ‘Nice for you, though, being so far from everyone and everything you knew.’

‘Yes, it is,’ Meg agreed happily. ‘I thought she might want to meet up today, but she said she has things on.’

Joy said, ‘Well, I suppose she didn’t know she was going to meet you, did she? And it is short notice anyway. Why don’t you write to Nicholas and arrange to meet him next week? I’m sure he’ll want to see you, and he might be able to tell you more about your brothers and sisters as well?’

‘Yes, I will.’

‘Actually,’ Will said, ‘I’m glad that you haven’t made arrangements for today.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes, because I am going to ask you a very big favour. It’s the beginning of October and you have just over a week with us before your training is officially over and you are due a week’s holiday. But I need to get that spare field ready for cultivation now, and if we leave it too late in the year the ground will be too hard for digging and ploughing. I really need your help, but it will mean you giving up your day off today.’