All The Days of My Life (3 page)

Mary nodded at him gratefully.

“Well, I'd better be getting back,” said Jackie. “Now I've paid me call. Can't say I think a lot of the holiday so far.”

“Cor – 'ark at you,” said Ian Brent. “Cheerful Charlie. Come to cheer us all up, 'ave you?”

“Well – here we are, leaving home for Gawd knows where, to live with a load of swedebashers we've never seen before in all our lives, you don't want to believe all they tell you about fresh air and eggs and milk and that – there's got to be a snag somewhere.”

“What do you know?” said Ian Brent suspiciously.

“Only that things don't always work out like they say they will. That's the law of life, chum, take it from me.”

“Well, we're here now, so we'd better make the best of it,” said Cissie.

“Oh, yer,” said Jackie. “That'll get you a long way.”

“You can't do anything about it,” said Cissie. “You've got to put up with it, same as us.”

Jackie smiled. “If I don't like it, I'm going home.”

“Garn,” said Ian Brent. “How will you manage that, Tarzan?”

“Oh,” said Jackie, airily. “There's always a way if you use your brains, my boy. Well – I'd better be going, before he comes looking for me. – Chin up, Mare,” he added, “we're nearly there.” And, turning round, off he swaggered; shrimpy Jack, four foot six, nine years old, in boots too big for him, long grey flannel trousers reaching to his knees and an old black jacket, cut down from one of his father's.

“Reckons he's clever,” grumbled Cissie, when he had gone. “He'll find out.”

But he had cheered the little evacuees, for whom the long hot journey into the unknown had come to seem eternal, as if they would never go home and never arrive at their destination. Mary, suddenly refilled with hope and happiness, as if it had been poured in through the top of her head and had flooded through her body, right down to her toes, sighed, altered her position, and leaned back contentedly against the scratchy upholstery. Jackie could do anything. He could drown unwanted kittens in a bucket and climb up to the roof and sit by
the chimneypots shouting, “Look at me!” He could cheek Ivy and dodge out of the door laughing before she caught him a smack round the ear. Once he went for a ride on the district nurse's bicycle and left it down the railway sidings and came home, and no one knew who'd done it. Mary loved Jackie. She really felt miserable when she had to eat her egg, in secret, after he'd gone to school, so that he couldn't have a dip of it. She started to think about eggs again.

She was thirsty, though. The great ball of the sun, lower now in the west, still burned down over the moving landscape, a patchwork of small fields, some green with long corn, some pastures, marked off with hedges intersected by little brown pathways across or around the sides. Thick clumps of trees, oak and elm, stood in rises and in hollows. There was no noise now, except for the puffing of the train and its regular clacking over the rails. The children sat quietly. The world outside the windows lay still and glowing under the afternoon sun. The train puffed on.

Suddenly there was a cottage with a little garden hedged with blossoming rose bushes. Across the lawn a washing line billowed with clothes pegged out to dry. On one side there was a garden path leading down from the back door of the house to a vegetable patch at the bottom of the garden. Halfway down the path, her skipping rope sweeping over her head in arcs, a little girl was jumping. As Mary watched, the rope swung and the little girl jumped up and down in the sunshine, her gold hair bouncing.

The train took them past as Mary, turning round with her cheek hard against the window, just saw the kitchen door open and a small black and white dog bound out and race down the path towards the skipping girl. Then the train swung round a bend. Suddenly they were travelling between big embankments of black stones, covered with straggling grass and surmounted by rough bushes.

Mary now turned back to face Frank Jessop, sitting opposite her in the other corner and, with her hand suddenly over her mouth, uttered a small moan of loss.

The train swept them into another dark tunnel.

She sat there, rigid in the dark, feeling her heart thudding in her chest.

“It's a long way to Tipperary,” sang the others in ragged chorus. “It's a long way to go.”

“Oh Peggy – get your bloody hand off me – I nearly had a fit,” came Cissie's voice.

“It's a long way to Tipperary, to the sweetest girl I know.”

But Mary sat quietly, stiff and straight, feeling her heart pound and the blood pulsing in her head. As they came out into the light she said, in a meek voice, amid a chorus of moans, groans, boos and cheers, “Cissie, have you got a comb?”

“What?” said Cissie, pushing Peggy's bulk away from her. “Get off, Peg. You're all right now. What – a comb? What for?”

“I want to borrow your comb,” said Mary. “And then will you take me to the toilet?”

“Oh, Gawd,” said Cissie. “What with you and Peggy, there's no peace. All right then. Come on.”

“I want the comb,” repeated Mary.

“Comb it when you come back.”

“I want to comb it there,” said Mary.

“Whatever for?” said Cissie.

“I just do,” said Mary, trading on the knowledge that Cissie was used to the irrational obstinacies of small children. In fact she desperately wanted to comb her hair in front of the mirror she had seen in the lavatory. There was no mirror in the compartment, just the empty wooden space where it had once been. She had a perfectly good reason but she would not say what it was. She knew better than to do that. Instead she squeezed out a few tears and made a low moaning sound. Threatened by this, Cissie said quickly, “All right. Don't start crying. Here's the comb. Come on – I'll take you.”

At the door to the lavatory, Mary said, “Now, you go away.”

Cissie gave her a straight look and said, doubtfully, “Don't lock the door, mind.”

“Give us the comb, then.”

Cissie, handing to her half a pink Bakelite comb, said, “What're you up to, Mary Waterhouse?” Her only answer was the stupid look on Mary's face. She shrugged and walked back along the corridor, calling back, “Don't you dare lock that door.”

But she did not say why not and Mary, standing on her toes now, inside the lavatory, scarcely heard her. She did lock the door, leaning against it for support and flipping the metal bar over into the socket with the tips of her fingers. Once the door was locked she pulled up her dress, pulled down her dingy white knickers with the sagging elastic, peed, and pulled the knickers up again. Then she started. The little compartment was dim, for the windows were made of frosted glass, but, doggedly, as it rocked to and fro, she stood on her toes and pulled
up her dress and wetted the hem under the tap in the washbasin. She washed her face over with part of the damp dress and dried it roughly the same way, for there was no towel, not even any lavatory paper, in the compartment. She washed her hands and then rubbed them, clean but wet, over her face again and down her legs. Seeing the heavy smears of dirt up and down her legs which this process produced, and guessing that similar smears must still be on her face, she jumped on the lavatory seat and, as the tray swayed, looked in the glass. Then she got down, unlaced her black shoes, took off her socks and soaked one under the tap in the basin. She cleaned her face carefully with it. She dried it with the other. She stood on the lavatory seat holding both socks, which dripped down on to her bare feet. Craning forward, she looked again at her face in the glass. It was clean. Bending over in the rocking compartment, staggering from time to time, she washed her legs with the socks. Then she started to comb her fair, slightly unruly hair, which hung down to her shoulders. Oh, the pain of dragging that comb through the knots and tangles as the train tossed to and fro – the pain in her arm as she tugged over and over again at the same knots, shutting her eyes, which kept on watering with agony as she tugged. To think she was doing this to herself, instead of having Ivy do it to her. It seemed like hours and hours she spent there, in the little dim compartment, as the train hurtled them through a countryside she could not see because of the frosted glass in the windows.

But there were two ideas as sharp as arrows in Mary's head. One was that, for reasons she could not quite analyse, she must look like a good girl when she arrived. The other was a notion about a lady with long gold hair, a long white dress and a gold crown, walking through a meadow, full of grass and little white flowers. As she tugged and pulled at her hair, and, staggering continually against the moving walls of the compartment, tried to keep her feet in the small smelly room, her mind ran on these two things – the good girl with the clean face and the golden-haired lady. How often had someone turned to Ivy in a shop, or in the street and, glancing down at little Mary, said, “Oh, look at the little mite with her lovely hair – like a little princess.”

By now Mary knew she had not done the top of her head properly. She had not, somehow, been able to reach right up to the parting. But, from her ears down, her hair was as untangled as she could manage. She put on her shoes and reached up to undo the bolt on the door. She was becoming frightened, already, by the massive risk she was taking, involving using up a perfectly good pair of socks. She went cold all
over when, suddenly, she thought of the smacking she could get for that alone. Then she found she could not push the bolt up from its socket, and panic took over. Standing on her toes, with her heels out of the black shoes, wrestling with the bolt, she began to breathe hard and fast, on the verge of tears. She was trapped. “Oh –” she said to herself. “Oh –” thinking about Meakin Park, the gritty paths, tired London grass, with its heaps of dog dirt, grubby laurel – and “Oh –” she said again, seeing in her mind the great, green heath spread out in front of her. She fought the bolt, which was getting sticky under her fingers. Would she ever get out? What happened if you couldn't? Would all the others get out of the train and leave her behind?

“Oh, Mary,” wailed Cissie, outside. “You've gone and locked yourself in. I'll get the blame, now.”

Mary, in a panic with the tears stinging in her eyes, tears which she knew would make her helpless in a moment, cried, shakily, “No – I never,” and, fairly leaping in the air, managed to push the bolt up. Her heel came down painfully on to the edge of her battered, dusty, scraped black shoe. She yelped in pain as Cissie pushed the door open, knocking her on the forehead.

“At least you look cleaner,” said Cissie, with grudging approval. “There's a good girl. Now, come on back. Mr Burns says we're nearly there.”

She stood back for Mary to pass in front of her. Mary, still breathing hard, did not budge.

“Come on,” said Cissie, impatiently.

“You go first,” said Mary.

“Mary.”

But Mary just stood there. Cissie dropped her suspicious eyes slowly to Mary's feet. “What you done with your socks?”

“Washed my face with them,” said Mary.

“Washed your face?” Cissie said, her voice getting higher and higher. “Washed your face? You bloody little fool – what were you thinking about? Do I need to watch you all the time – oh, I could fetch you such a clout.”

She looked at Mary for a long, hard moment, then said, “Well – where are they?”

“On the floor,” said Mary.

“On the fl— oh – you haven't the sense you were born with. Here – let me get past you.”

And Cissie pushed in and picked the two dirty, soggy socks off the
floor. She put them in Mary's hand. “Get hold of these – you'll have to wear them wet. And give my comb back.”

Mary followed Cissie up the corridor and at the next open window, bent over, wiped her shoes over quickly with the socks, and tossed them out of the open window. Then, head down, with an obstinate but frightened look on her face, she followed Cissie along and sat down in the corner seat.

Cissie, settling back, said, “Get your socks on. Then I'll lace your shoes up. Bloody little fool,” she said to the others. “She washed her face with her socks.”

“Where are they, Mare?” asked James Hodges.

“What?” screamed Cissie. She craned forward to look at Mary's feet, then Mary. “What've you done with your socks?”

“Will you do up my shoes?” asked Mary.

“Not till you tell me where those socks are.”

“We're slowing down,” said Ian Brent. “Look, that's a signal box.”

“Do them up,” said Mary, urgently. “We're getting there.”

“Where are those socks?” said Cissie.

Mary was frightened. “Do them up, Cissie. Please. Please do them up.”

“First tell me where those socks are,” said Cissie. “Or you'll be left behind on the train when we all get out.”

Mary broke. “I threw them out the window,” she said.

Cissie looked at her. “Now I've heard everything,” she began but there was no time for more.

“I hope you're all ready,” said Mr Burns, looking in and passing down the corridor saying “Are you ready, Charles Grayson?” into another compartment. And, as Cissie furiously laced up the black shoes on Mary's bare feet, the train stopped at Framlingham.

Later, the coach driver, sitting outside the pub with his pint on the long wooden table in front of him, as a country twilight came down over the silent village street, turned to the postman and said, “I never seen anything like them evacuees when they come trooping through the barrier towards me. Nor'd old George, you could tell that from the look on his face.”

“Oh?” said the postman, encouraging him to say more.

The busdriver slapped at a midge and went on, “There wasn't a decent pair of boots or shoes among them. One lad had on a pair of boots you'd have sworn were his father's. And they've that pale and pasty look, you'd think they'd been brought up in the cellar. And the
smell of that bus when they got out – I had to open the windows for half an hour after they'd gone. Not a proper smell, just stale, sort of, I dunno – I dunno, bad-smelling. What we're to make of them, I'm sure. I don't reckon they've got any place here. Sooner they go back home the better, if you ask me. They mean trouble, one way or t'other.”