Beneath a Frosty Moon Read online

  The children bursting pell-mell through the back door cut short her musing, and it was her son who caught Nancy’s eye. His cut lip and bloodied nose told their own story, and as she glanced from him to Cora, her daughter said flatly, ‘He’s been fighting with Archie Chapman.’

  ‘Archie said we’re gonna be invaded by the Nazis and we’ll all have to speak German.’ Horace was fairly quivering with rage. ‘He said now the French have given up, we’re next, and Hitler’s gonna live in Buckingham Palace and we’ll all have to eat German sausages and do the Nazi salute, and I said he was a traitor.’

  ‘So Archie punched him,’ piped up Susan.

  ‘Aye, and I hit him back. Bawled his head off, he did, like a lassie.’

  Nancy shut her eyes for a moment. Wonderful, this was all she needed. Ten to one she’d have Beryl Chapman coming round screaming blue murder. Archie was an only child and the apple of his mother’s eye, Beryl having had him late in life when she and her husband had given up on a family. Everyone had been thrilled for Beryl at first, but as the baby had grown into a screaming, petulant toddler and then a thoroughly unpleasant little lad, enthusiasm had waned.

  Nancy drew in a long breath, then let it out slowly as she said, ‘Wash your hands and face, the lot of you, and then up them stairs. It’s already well past your bedtime.’

  Horace stared at his mother in surprise. He’d expected at the very least a clip round the ear for fighting. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, he was the first into the scullery to wash his face and hands with the hard blue-veined soap that never lathered, leaving the bowl of cold water in the deep white sink a pale brown by the time he’d finished.

  Cora was the last one to leave the kitchen, and she stood for a moment staring at her mother who was now sitting at the kitchen table with a pile of mending in front of her. Nancy returned her stare while her lips moved one over the other as if she was sucking something from them.

  ‘Will you –’ Cora paused, then tried again through the emotion that was blocking her throat. ‘Will you write more often this time? Not just every couple of weeks?’

  ‘Aye, lass. Aye, I will.’ The year before the two of them had had a barney once Cora and the others were home because Cora had accused her of not caring about them, citing the fact that she had written four letters to her mother’s one each time as proof. ‘Like I said before, I thought it best only to write if there was a bit of news or something.’

  ‘I don’t care about news. I just –’ Cora gulped hard – ‘I just like to hear from you.’

  ‘All right, hinny.’ And then as Cora’s face crumpled, Nancy said quickly, ‘Come on, lass, don’t cry. The others’ll cotton on something’s amiss. And it’ll be different this time. You won’t be with the Rileys for a start so that’ll be better, won’t it? Aye, course it will. You might even grow to like being in the country with the birds and animals and things.’

  Cora didn’t even bother replying to this absurdity. Instead she said, ‘The Rileys were told by the billeting officer that they had to censor our letters and destroy them if we said we weren’t happy. I had to smuggle out any to you where I spoke the truth. I think it’s disgusting that they can treat people that way, don’t you?’

  It was a loaded question, and Nancy was well aware of prevaricating when she said, ‘I suppose they were thinking it would be less upsetting for everyone concerned.’

  ‘Huh!’

  The exclamation had been loud and as the door banged behind her eldest offspring and Nancy was left alone, she sat for a moment staring into space. Then she stretched out her arms on the table, rested her head on them and let the silent sobbing shake her body.

  Chapter Two

  The headmaster of Rowan School had been in the building since six o’clock that morning, and he had run his hands through his coarse grey hair so many times it was now sticking straight up on his head like the bristles on a brush.

  This second wave of evacuation was perhaps even more of a headache than the first the year before, he thought wearily. Then the hundreds of thousands of women, children and disabled were bussed, trained, paddle-steamed or driven out of Britain’s towns and cities to the countryside over a period of four days, and on the whole, and certainly as far as the children from his school were concerned, the procedure had run relatively smoothly. In a purely statistical sense, he supposed Operation Pied Piper had been a success and certainly Whitehall had been pleased with itself, if the euphoria in the newspapers was to be believed. ‘Exodus of the Bible dwarfed: three million people on the move’, ‘A Great National Undertaking’, ‘Triumph of Planning’; he’d read them all. He shook his head. The chorus of self-congratulation had been all very well, but the government hadn’t taken into account the far-reaching emotional consequences on both children and parents, not to mention the foster parents and billeting officers on the other side of the coin.

  Clarence Wood stood up from behind his desk that was littered with piles of paper, all to do with the legalities of evacuation, and sighed loudly. Paper, paper, paper – he was drowning in it. Reports, timetables, surveys, maps, but the whole question of billeting his children was done on a numerical basis by those on high yet again; nothing had been learned from the first time. Profiling little ones and trying to match background and characters was apparently not even considered by those responsible for the evacuation, in spite of the heartache and distress caused last year.

  Walking to the window of his office, he pulled up the paper blind and stood staring out into the as-yet empty playground. When town met country and country met town the shock had been intense on both sides. From last September right until the present day a propaganda war about each other had raged. From the country had come a cry of horror that the mothers and children from the towns and cities were verminous, lousy, unsuitably dressed for the country and ill-mannered. From the town-dwellers had come stories about outside earthen lavatories, girls being used as unpaid maids, boys being kept back from school to work on farms, and children being forced to eat food to which they were unaccustomed and that had often been killed and plucked in front of them. Both sides had been pleased to see the back of each other when it had become clear that the predicted bombing wasn’t happening. And now it was going to start all over again.

  He glanced at his wristwatch. Seven-thirty. Within a short while the playground would begin to fill with those of his pupils whose parents deemed it right and proper to evacuate them for a second time. In the letter he had sent to each family he’d made it clear that if any parents did not wish to avail themselves of this opportunity, their children would not be expected at school until after lunch. This edict was with the benefit of hindsight. The year before it had added to the strain and awkwardness for his teachers attempting to keep control when those pupils staying put had been somewhat vocal to the ones leaving, saying their parents loved them too much to send them away and that country folk still lived in the dark ages. Such comments had been less than helpful, to put it mildly.

  He turned from the window and sighed again. He certainly wasn’t against the government-sponsored schemes to send little ones out of harm’s way to the countryside or coastal towns, or even to Canada, the USA, South Africa, New Zealand or Australia in some cases; the threat of invasion was all too real now France had fallen. And of course evacuation was voluntary, but enormous pressure had been, and was being, put on families to do the right thing by their children and allow them to go to the safety of the countryside and beyond, and he wasn’t sure if he agreed with all the propaganda involved. Government ministers making radio appeals imploring ‘responsible’ parents to get their children away from danger; the 1939 leaflet that had been sent to every home in the country claiming that ‘the main way to avert the enemy’s intention of creating panic and social dislocation is by removing children from endangered areas’; the poster campaign aimed particularly at women which featured a mother sitting beside a tree in the countryside with a town in the distant background,
and frolicking before her two happy, robust little boys, but behind her, in ghostly outline, Hitler in uniform whispering, ‘Take them back, take them back.’ The woman had been anxious and confused, and the caption along the bottom in blood red read, ‘Don’t do it, Mother. LEAVE THE CHILDREN WHERE THEY ARE.’ No, he hadn’t liked that or the implication that women would be regarded as traitors if they ignored official advice and brought their children home.

  Shaking his head, he said aloud, ‘Poor people,’ and he wasn’t sure if he felt sorrier for the children or their parents. He had never imagined before the war that he would be glad he and his wife had not been blessed with a family, but since September last year he’d thanked God for it. Their next-door neighbours had three sons and over the last couple of decades as he’d watched the lads grow up he’d had moments of bitter envy. But no longer; all three had been killed at Dunkirk and it had turned their poor mother’s brain. Even his Mary, the most dependable and level-headed of women, had announced that she no longer intended to listen to the news on the radio or read the papers, and he could understand why. The distress in Europe was horrific but worse still was the prospect of a German invasion, and fear of the unknown could dominate you if you weren’t careful. When the unthinkable had happened and France had surrendered, it had knocked everyone for six.

  But we’ll win, he told himself in the next breath. We have to. Britons couldn’t live beneath a brutal power; they’d rather die fighting than succumb to the life of a slave. His Mary had said that last night over dinner and he agreed with her.

  A knock on his door brought him out of his reverie and in the next instant it opened and one of the teachers popped his head in to say, ‘The first few children have arrived, headmaster.’

  ‘Right you are.’ He nodded briskly. No more navelgazing, Clarence, he told himself as he left the room. You’ve a job to do so get on with it. In times like this it was the only way, after all.

  Cora had had a wretched start to the day and it wasn’t getting any better. As she had expected, her sisters had wept and wailed when they’d realized what was afoot and Susan had made herself sick before they’d even left the house. And now on the train the two youngest were still snivelling although Maria had pulled herself together. Horace, on the other hand, was full of beans, which was only just less irritating than Anna and Susan’s tears.

  She had no idea where they were bound for. All one of the teachers had said when she’d asked was that it would be the country, which was a fat lot of help. This same teacher was sitting opposite, deep in conversation with an elderly matron wearing a badge stating ‘Rowan School Evacuation Assistant’. They were supposed to be whispering but Cora had no trouble hearing every word.

  ‘I couldn’t believe my eyes when I got that leaflet from the Ministry of Information,’ the older woman was saying in a tone of deep disgust. ‘I mean, what a load of old codswallop. If the Germans arrive by parachute like it said, it’d be no good trying to hide our food and bicycles and maps, or anything else. And “See that the enemy gets no petrol.” I ask you. And that picture showing a smiling mother in a housecoat secreting her biscuit tin at the back of the coal cellar made me laugh out loud, it did straight. Do them daft so-an’-sos in Whitehall really believe that a sweetly smiling little lady politely informing the Nazis that she can’t give ’em a biscuit will stop them beggars from doing their worst? My Eric’s nailed the pamphlet up in our kitchen; he says it’s better than a bottle of beer for cheering him up.’

  The teacher’s voice was lower than her companion’s but Cora could still eavesdrop as she pretended to look out of the train window. In a tone that suggested disapproval of said Eric, she whispered, ‘I copied out the speech Churchill made to the nation on the eighteenth of June and put that on my kitchen wall where I can see it every morning when I have my breakfast. Now that is worth having up. “The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’” I like that bit about broad, sunlit uplands. I can see it in my mind’s eye.’

  The other woman clearly hadn’t appreciated the covert criticism of her husband because her voice was distinctly frosty when she said, ‘Aye, well, be that as it may, it’ll be our English sense of humour that keeps us going rather than speeches by them as never gets their hands dirty. I’ve nothing against Churchill, and even my Eric says he’s the man for the job and it was high time Chamberlain went in May, but Churchill’s no friend of the working class, war or no war.’ She sniffed a very pointed sniff. ‘When the bombing starts and the Germans invade, it’ll be the ordinary man and woman fighting the beggars in the streets and on the beaches.’

  ‘Shh.’ The teacher had noticed Cora’s interest. Turning from her companion, she looked at Cora as she said brightly, ‘We’ll soon be there, and don’t you worry, you’ll be nice and safe in the country.’

  And what about her mam? Cora thought sickly. And her aunts and uncles who all lived in the town, and her grandma and granda, her da’s parents, in Monkwearmouth? They lived right by the docks; they’d be first in line when the Germans landed.

  For a moment she seriously considered jumping off the train at the next station and making her way back home, but then reason kicked in. Her mam would only send her off again, besides which she had to look after Maria and the others.

  Her thoughts drew her eyes to Horace who was sitting further down the carriage with a couple of his pals and Wilfred, their next-door neighbour. Wilfred was the same age as her and they had always been friends; she knew he was keeping an eye on Horace today to help her. He was like that. Last year when they’d been evacuated and she and Maria had been with the Rileys, it had been Wilfred who had persuaded his host family to let her and Maria come in out of the cold sometimes, and he’d surreptitiously stowed food away for her too because he knew they were hungry all the time. She’d hated the Rileys; at least they weren’t going back there, to the cold, cheerless house and Mrs Riley who had a permanent drip on the end of her thin pinched nose.

  Wilfred’s eyes had been waiting for her and now he smiled, raising his thumb and mouthing, ‘It’ll be all right.’

  She smiled back but it was an effort. Wilfred didn’t understand that she was more worried about her mam and the others at home than about being evacuated again, but then how could he? She knew full well what Wilfred’s mam and da were like. Evil, her mam had called them once when she hadn’t been aware that she was listening. She knew Wilfred’s older brothers had scarpered the minute that they’d left school and were earning enough to take lodgings, and everyone in their road knew why. You only had to look at the boys and see the bruises and marks their da regularly left on their thin, scrawny bodies. Her mam had said she didn’t know what was worse – Wilfred’s da knocking the living daylights out of the bairns at the drop of a hat, or their mam starving them. And her mam said the Huttons’ house was filthy; certainly their privy stank to high heaven if you were in the back lane.

  Anna and Susan had drifted off to sleep at last, lulled by the chugging of the train and exhausted with all their crying, and now Cora looked out of the window once more although she wasn’t really seeing the trees and fields they were passing. She was still thinking of Wilfred and what he’d said the last time they were evacuated. It had been on the day when she’d received the letter from her mam saying she was going to come and collect them and bring them home for Christmas, and, beside herself with happiness, she had gone straight round to Wilfred’s to tell him. He had stared at her in a strange way before saying slowly, ‘I thought it was too good to last.’

  ‘What?’ she’d answered, not understanding. ‘What’s too good to last?’

  �
�Being here.’

  ‘But don’t you want to go back and for everything to be normal again?’

  ‘No.’ It had been flat, stiff.

  ‘Well, you don’t have to go back anyway, not if you don’t want to. You can stay here.’ She had made to put her hand on top of his but he had pulled away jerkily, looking as though he was going to cry. ‘Wilfred—’

  ‘It’s all right.’ She could see the effort he had made to smile. ‘I shall come back with you. I – I wouldn’t want to be here without you.’

  The conversation had made her feel uncomfortable although she wasn’t sure why, but once they were home again the old pattern had re-established itself and the feeling had melted away. Wilfred was often at their place, more than his own, and her mam fed him along with them – she always had. He was the only one of her friends her mam allowed in the house and she treated him differently from everyone else, as though he was one of the family. And he was, he was one of the family, Cora told herself. Even though he was the same age as her he was like an older brother and she’d always been able to tell him anything.

  The teacher and her companion had started their whispering again but now it was about the payments made to host families. The teacher considered that the ten shillings and sixpence per week for the first child, and eight shillings and sixpence for each subsequent child, wasn’t nearly enough to cover board and lodging, but Cora thought it sounded like a small fortune. She soon lost interest as the two went on about the cost of clothes and shoes and medical expenses, and with Maria wedged at the side of her and also now asleep, her own eyes began to close despite her anxiety about the prospect ahead.