The Girl With No Name (27 page)

‘I apologise if you think I misled you, Miss Everard,’ said Avril, keeping a tight rein on her temper, ‘it was entirely unintentional; but now we have to be sure that she’s in a home where she’s welcome.’

‘Well, she is,’ insisted Miss Everard, ‘and I want her to stay.’ Perversely, she found it was indeed so. She had come to complain about the situation, but as soon as the vicar’s wife said she was removing Charlotte from her care, Miss Edie discovered she wanted her to stay. ‘I’m happy to have the girl,’ she said, now furiously back-pedalling, ‘it’s the lack of courtesy, the lack of communication, that I was complaining about.’

‘Very well, if you’re sure,’ Avril agreed, biting her tongue to remain civil, ‘but if you change your mind at any time, or if things ever become difficult, please tell me at once and I shall move her in with us at the vicarage.’

‘I’m sure that won’t be necessary,’ Miss Everard said stiffly, adding, ‘Is there anything else I ought to know about her?’

‘She doesn’t like small spaces, doesn’t like being shut in. She will go into a shelter if she has to, provided she feels she can get out in a hurry, so we usually sit her near the door.’

Miss Everard nodded. ‘I’ll remember,’ she said, and turning, stalked away.

‘I hope we’ve made the right decision,’ Avril said to her sister. ‘It’s not going to be easy for the child.’

‘She’s tougher than you think,’ Caroline assured her. ‘Don’t know what her past is, but it’s clear it hasn’t been easy and she’s come through it all.’

‘What was all that about?’ Nancy Bright had seen the confrontation and had wandered over to discover what was going on.

‘It’s just that we think Charlotte Smith is probably half German, or possibly a German refugee, and Miss Everard is up in arms because we didn’t tell her so.’

‘You’ve fostered a German girl with Edith Everard?’ Nancy stared at Avril in disbelief.

‘Well, why not?’ Avril was disconcerted by Nancy’s incredulity.

‘She lost her fiancé at the very end of the Great War and it turned her peculiar. She’s never forgiven the Germans for killing him. She’s lived alone since her parents died and quite frankly I think she’s a bit potty.’

‘Good gracious,’ cried Avril, ‘why on earth didn’t you tell me?’

‘Well, I’m not one to gossip,’ Nancy replied, perfectly straight-faced, ‘but I’d have assumed you knew. Anyway, I didn’t know that Edie had offered to take in a vaccie and I didn’t know the child was German.’

‘We don’t know she is,’ cried Avril in frustration. ‘We don’t know who she is and nor does she, poor kid. God, I wish we’d just made room for her at the vicarage.’

‘Leave her for now,’ Caro advised. ‘She’s been moved from pillar to post enough; but keep a strict eye on her.’

After the meeting Edith and Charlotte had left together and later, both had come back for the party. As soon as she got there, Charlotte sought out Clare who had already devoured one bun and was licking every last speck of jam from her fingers.

‘Hey, Charlotte, you should have one of these. They’re ever so good.’

Charlotte and Clare discussed the homes where they had been billeted. Clare, now living with Mr and Mrs Prynne and their daughter, Sandra, was fairly philosophical.

‘Could be worse,’ she said. ‘We listened to the wireless last night. Sandra’s not coming to school with us yet. She’s not eleven till the spring.’

‘At least you got a proper family to live with. I only got Miss Edie,’ Charlotte said.

‘Is that what you call her?’ asked Clare, intrigued. ‘Miss Edie? Bit of a mouthful, ain’t it?’

‘What do you call yours?’ Charlotte asked.

‘She said to call her Ma, like Sandra and Mr Prynne both do. Easy that.’

‘What d’you think this school will be like?’ wondered Charlotte. ‘We got to go on the bus and have our dinner there.’

‘Be all right,’ Clare said. ‘I like school.’

Suddenly there was the sound of a bell and Mr Hampton moved into the middle of the room.

‘Right, you lot,’ he said. ‘We’re going to play some games now. Miss Mason’s going to play the piano and you can all play musical bumps.’

Miss Mason settled herself at the piano and began to play. The older children looked on with disdain as the younger ones rushed into the middle to join in. Charlotte and Clare watched. They wouldn’t have minded joining in, especially when the winner was given a twist of liquorice, but by then it was too late.

It was cold outside, but it didn’t stop them going out to run races across the village green. Mr Hampton, Dr Masters and the vicar put them all into teams, being careful not only to mix up the St Michael’s children with the Wynsdown ones, but to mix girls with boys. They had laid out a track, marked with bean bags, and for half an hour the noise on the green was raucous as the children screamed their team-mates home in relay races, three-legged races and lastly, a sack race.

Charlotte found herself in a team with Teddy Baker and little Valerie Dawson from St Michael’s. Another older boy from the village was chosen as the team leader. His name was Billy Shepherd. He was tall and muscular with fair, curly hair and deep-set blue eyes. He looked round his team and, seeing little Val standing to one side, went across and bending down to her said, ‘Hallo. Who are you?’ Val cowered away from him and Charlotte said, ‘That’s Val. She’s only five. She doesn’t know who you are.’

‘I’m Billy Shepherd and I live at Charing Farm on the hill. Who are you?’

For the first time since she had left the hospital Charlotte did not say she didn’t know. Looking up into Billy’s wide friendly face she answered, ‘Charlotte Smith. I come from St Michael’s.’

‘I know that,’ he said. ‘I been watching you.’

Charlotte looked startled. ‘Have you? Why do you watch me?’

‘Don’t know,’ Billy replied, scratching his head. ‘Liked the look of you, I suppose.’

Somehow an unacknowledged link had been forged. Billy organised his team carefully, making sure everyone was included. When little Valerie Dawson was running in the relay race, he encouraged her with raucous cheers, and when Charlotte was tied to a local girl, Emmy Gripton, to run three-legged, he led the applause when they won.

However, when the races were over and the last of the liquorice awarded, the children quickly returned to their two groups, locals on one side of the hall and evacuees on the other; each group eyeing the other with suspicion.

‘They’ll soon sort themselves out,’ Michael Hampton assured Caroline Morrison when she commented on this. ‘Children are very tribal, you know, but they’ll soon shake down together. See that child over there?’ He pointed to a small red-haired boy standing with the village children. ‘That’s Sidney Morgan. He and his twin, Stephen, came with the first batch of evacuees, but, as you can see, he regards himself as a local now.’

As the evening drew in and the chill of the November day slipped towards freezing, the villagers gathered up their families and new charges and hurried home to the warmth of their own firesides.

Miss Edie set the usual brisk pace as she and Charlotte left the village green and it wasn’t long before they were back at Blackdown House with Miss Edie again attacking the recalcitrant stove.

‘I’ll put the pie in the oven,’ Miss Edie said. ‘I pulled some leeks earlier, why don’t you clean and chop those?’

‘Please, Miss Edie, what’s leeks?’

Miss Edie seemed about to snap out an answer, when she thought better of it and said, ‘Here, I’ll show you.’ She reached into a bucket at the back door and pulled out a bundle of leeks, mud clinging to their roots. She banged them against the side of the bucket to get the worst off and then put them on the draining board.

‘Here,’ she said, ‘watch.’ With the sweep of a sharp knife she cut one lengthways and showed Charlotte how to clean out any mud from inside, rinsing the leek clean in the sink before chopping it into rings. She passed the knife over and returned her attention to the cottage pie. Charlotte picked up a leek and was soon chopping and cleaning as if she’d done it all her life. When she’d finished Miss Edie handed her some carrots. Charlotte didn’t need lessons in peeling carrots, she simply picked up the knife and began to pare away the skin.

‘Well,’ said Miss Edie, ‘you’ve obviously done that before. Perhaps you used to help your mother in the kitchen.’

Charlotte was about to say ‘I don’t know,’ but Miss Edie interrupted her. ‘I know you don’t think you know, but it’s snippets like these that will help you remember. You’ve made your bed, you’ve washed the dishes, you’ve helped lay the table. Clearly you’ve done this at home.’

‘Yes,’ Charlotte agreed slowly, ‘yes, you must be right.’

Supper was a much easier meal than the night before. Now she had got over her shock about Charlotte’s probable nationality, Miss Edie found that she was intrigued by the girl. Clearly she didn’t remember anything about her family, but she did certain things as a matter of course. Certainly she was intelligent; she spoke two languages. And she was courageous, too, confronting her, Miss Edie, this morning, taking the initiative and threatening to leave when she realised that she was unwanted. It was probably this show of courage and determination that had changed Miss Edie’s mind; she had indeed been going to demand that Avril Swanson take the girl back, but on the point of losing her, she suddenly realised that she wanted her to stay.

Monday morning saw the older children waiting on the village green for the school bus. Charlotte stood with Clare and the four other St Michael’s children, a separate group from the locals. Charlotte recognised some of the children who had been in her team at the party, but none of them seemed to notice her. When the bus rumbled round the corner it already carried a few children. The Wynsdown children clambered aboard, the locals loudly confident, St Michael’s almost silent and apprehensive.

The journey was noisy, with children from another village added to the load and when they arrived at school the children poured out of the bus and into the school yard, leaving the newcomers standing outside.

‘Come on,’ said Malcolm Flint, taking charge, ‘we’d better go in.’

It wasn’t easy, but once they’d been allocated to classes and the actual school day started, they began to find their feet. Charlotte, Clare and Molly were in the same class, so at least they had each other, staying together when they went out at break times and at dinner time. Their class teacher, Miss Davis, spoke to each one, taking down her name and address to pass on to the school secretary. When she came to Charlotte, Charlotte simply said, ‘Charlotte Smith, Blackdown House, Wynsdown.’

The trouble began the next morning, waiting outside the Magpie. As the bus drew to a halt, one of the village boys, Tommy Gurney, shoved Fred Moore aside as he tried to get on to the bus and said, ‘Vaccies go last.’ Fred, in the same class as Tommy, had been taunted with ‘Vaccie’ all the previous day and now he’d had enough. He smashed his fist into Tommy’s face and Tommy found himself on the ground, blood streaming from his nose. Immediately, Tommy’s mates turned on Fred and there was a free-for-all. Sam, the bus driver, clambered out of his cab and came round to try and sort it out, but by this time fists were flying in all directions, the village boys being cheered on by their sisters. Jack Barrett, landlord of the Magpie, saw what was happening and he and his wife, Mabel, stormed out of the pub and into the fray. Mabel, a large woman whose strong arms were used to hefting barrels, grabbed hold of the girls who were standing, watching in horror, and pushed them on to the bus.

‘You kids get on the bus and stay there,’ she ordered before turning back to grasp two of the younger boys.

Once Jack had managed to pull Fred off Tommy and hold them apart and Sam had collared Malcolm, who’d immediately gone to Fred’s aid, the fight fizzled out.

‘On the bus, sharpish!’ roared Sam, still holding Malcolm in a vice-like grip. The other boys, encouraged by cuffs from Mabel, scrambled on to the bus and only then did the two men release the three boys. Tommy’s nose was still bleeding and Mabel stuffed her handkerchief into his hand.

‘Here,’ she said gruffly, ‘mop yourself up.’

‘You,’ Sam said to Malcom, ‘you sit on the seat behind me.’ He turned to Tommy. ‘You go to the back, and you, troublemaker,’ he pointed an accusing finger at Fred, ‘get in there, next to her,’ and he pushed Fred into the spare seat next to Molly. Then he got back into the driving seat. ‘I don’t want to hear a sound from you lot,’ he bellowed down the bus, ‘or swelpme God, I’ll put you out in the road.’

‘It was the vaccie what started it,’ said a girl’s voice from somewhere near the back of the bus.

Sam glared in her direction and said, ‘One more word...’ before he let in the clutch and the bus moved off.

News of the Wynsdown fight spread like wildfire round the school. All those concerned were called into the headmaster’s office and all returned, chastened, to their classrooms. Notes were sent home to the parents of the three main protagonists, and they were dealt with there as well.

Peter Bellinger listened to Fred and Malcolm’s side of the story before he gave them both a severe warning about the beating they would get if they started any more fights. He and Marjorie had a sneaking sympathy for the boys, whom, they realised, had been ganged up on, but they were determined to nip such behaviour in the bud before it got out of hand. Fred and Malcolm accepted their warning without a word. They both knew that they had a very good billet at the manor and neither of them wanted to risk losing it.

Tommy Gurney’s dad, Bert, a labourer at Charing Farm, said, ‘Well, you got a bloody nose for it and serve you right. Make sure you win next time, boy. Don’t want them vaccies to get too big for their boots, do we?’

For the next few days there was a stand-off outside the pub as they waited for the bus to arrive, but there were no further scuffles. As the weeks went by, Malcolm was discovered to be a first-class footballer and the Wynsdown children were very proud of him when he made the school team. Fred, who was no mean footballer either, lived in his reflected glory. A sort of wary truce existed between the vaccies and the local children. They met about the village at weekends and the boys joined the scouts. Sid Slater, a bachelor farmer who lived with his mother on a smallholding just outside the village fence, was the scout master, and every Thursday evening they met in the church hall. Once the evacuee boys had been integrated into the troop and worked together on various projects round the village, the antagonism between the groups almost disappeared. The odd shout of ‘Vaccie!’ was sometimes heard across the village green, but all the children gradually shook down together. If there was any rivalry with the kids from another village, there was no doubt that the Wynsdown children were united in the defence of their own.