A Home in the Country Read online

  ‘Did it happen to you?’ I asked.

  ‘Crikey, yes,’ he said. ‘Cried two weeks straight, I did, first time I come on board. Captain said ’e never saw the likes, me bein’ all growed up an’ all, but s’truth. Couldn’t stop no matter ’ow ’ard I tried.’

  I felt ever so much better after he told me that and thought perhaps ’omesickness was something Escort must have forgotten about because she was so old. Or more likely, perhaps, because she didn’t even have half a heart.

  One evening in the lounge, Escort said, ‘We shan’t be singing songs around the piano this evening, children. We are going to write letters home to our parents instead. Won’t that be fun?’

  Of course not.

  Escort passed out pens and paper but because I had never written a letter before, I had no idea how to even start. Escort came to help. Sitting down opposite me, she picked up a pen, stifled a sigh, and waited. I did the same.

  Finally, ‘Well?’ Escort coaxed.

  ‘Tell her….’

  Escort frowned, ‘Tell who?’

  ‘My mother.’

  ‘And what about your father?’

  ‘Yes … I suppose…. My father, too.’

  ‘Sarah, if we are writing this letter to your mother and father, then we must begin it with “Dear Mummy and Daddy,” or how can they be expected to know who it’s for?’

  ‘Dear Mummy and Daddy,’ I said hastily, then stopped, uncertain again as to what should come next.

  I looked away from Escort – actually from the badge on her hat, which was what I always studied when she was at close quarters – and down at the paper. The blank paper.

  ‘Really, Sarah,’ Escort sighed, ‘what is it you want to tell Mummy and Daddy?’

  Taking a deep breath, I began. ‘Please tell them I hate the ship. It’s not at all the fun Mummy said it would be. It’s very frightening. Especially when we have to go on deck in the middle of the night because of the sirens and the submarines. And the food is nasty. Soup every day. I’m sick all the time and I don’t want to be here. I can’t stop crying for a minute and I do so wish they had let me stay at home where I would have been so much better off, as well as much safer. And … I’m ’omesick as well as the other sick and I can’t get the lovely pink pullover she knitted for me over my head no matter how hard I try. I just do so wish they had listened to me….’

  ‘Sarah! Really!’ Escort gasped. ‘You mustn’t worry your parents with things like that. Good heavens, there’s a war on, child. You must tell them how well and happy you are and the fun you have singing songs around the piano every evening. And about the stories we read. And then what about all the lovely food we have to eat with fresh oranges for pudding some nights? My goodness, they’d certainly want to hear about that.’

  Again the pen waited.

  ‘But I’m not happy,’ I protested. ‘And I’m not at all well. I can’t stop being sick.’

  Escort started writing. She read out loud as her pen moved across the paper. ‘I am very well and happy. Last night we sang songs around the piano and—’

  I interrupted, suddenly knowing exactly what to say to make them happy. ‘Please tell them that Alf says soon’s this bloody war’s over wiv he’s coming to fetch us and take us ’ome. Alf says—’

  Escort wasn’t writing. Instead, her mouth puffing like that of an angry dragon, she said, ‘What shocking language from such a little girl. And who, pray tell, is Alf?’

  ‘Alf is our friend. He’s a sailor. He’s very jolly and very brave. He makes us laugh. He says down with the ’uns and bloody old ’itler.’

  Escort sniffed. ‘I don’t think your parents want to hear that you have been spending your time with a common sailor, Sarah. Least of all a Cockney sailor.’

  She started to write, speaking the words as she went along, ‘I hope you and Daddy are well, too.’

  She handed me the pen, turning the paper to face me. ‘Now write, “love Sarah”,’ she instructed.

  Studying the floor, I wondered if love should start with a big ‘L’ or a little one? I made a big one in the air for her to see. ‘Like that?’ I asked.

  Escort snatched back pen and paper, wrote ‘love’, and left me to write my name. To be quite certain Mummy would know it was really me writing the letter, I wrote all of them, first, middle, and last. And then, even though Escort hadn’t said I could and might be cross, I drew a circle for the moon and filled it with Xs, trusting that Escort was far too old to know that Xs stood for kisses.

  Coming upon us one frigid day, huddled in a corner out of the wind, Alf danced a jig and said, ‘We’ll be in New York first thing in the morning, mates!’

  ‘Is it nice there?’ James asked. ‘We’ve been a bit worried we might not like it at all.’

  ‘Blimey, yes, New York’s nice,’ Alf said. ‘New York’s a bit of all right is what it is. In’t no war goin’ on there, see. No bombs. No blackout. No rubble. No sand bags. No bloody rationin’. New York’s all about bright lights and pretty girls and lovely grub everywhere you go. You’ll like it, see if you don’t.’

  In the lounge that same evening, Escort said, ‘There will be no singing around the piano tonight, children. And no stories. Instead you are to go straight to your cabins, pack up your belongings, make sure you have everything, and then you are to take baths. Won’t that be fun?’

  Hardly. Not with me still unable to get my lovely pink jumper over my head, it wouldn’t. I hurried off to find Alf.

  For once he was at a loss. ‘It wouldn’t be proper, like, for me to take it off and ’ave you runnin’ about the ship in your vest, now would it?’ he asked.

  Then he remembered there was a lovely young lady on the other side of the ship and off we went to find her.

  The lovely young lady accompanied me back to the entrance of our bathroom, gave my jumper a few good tugs and off it came. And a good thing, too, we decided. It was very grubby and stained with sick and we couldn’t imagine what Mummy would think if she saw it. She’d be too shocked to think at all, was what we decided.

  I was still very put out about taking a bath, though. I’d never had to take my clothes off in front of people I didn’t know and what if they stared at my bottom? Mummy always said that bottoms are very private and were to be kept covered at all times. I thought perhaps I wouldn’t take a bath at all but say that I had.

  Escort caught me sidling away from the door of the wash area, snatched off my clothes and plopped me down next to a big girl in a tub of very hot, very salty water. The big girl was furious at having ‘a baby’ like me thrust in beside her. She was so angry she stood up to get out and although I knew it was rude to stare, I was interested to see that she looked just like me with no clothes on except that she had freckles everywhere and her bottom was as red as the meat I used to see hanging on hooks in the village butcher shop.

  Thinking that if my bottom were that red I would certainly want to know about it, I told the girl about hers and that made her furious all over again. So furious, in fact, that she leaned over the tub and smacked the side of my face.

  Escort leaned in and smacked the other side, saying, ‘Not only are you the naughtiest little girl on the ship but you are quite definitely the rudest as well.’

  My face stung so badly my eyes watered and I couldn’t see either of them properly but I didn’t care. If, in spite of all my efforts to be good, rude and naughty was how they saw me, then I might as well be rude and naughty. Sticking out my tongue, I heaved great armfuls of water in their general direction and served them right.

  The next morning as we were finishing breakfast, Escort stood up and announced, ‘We’ll be getting off the ship within the hour, children! Make sure you have everything.’

  And wasn’t it odd? The moment she said that, James and I decided that the hated ship was really rather a nice place after all and we’d rather stay on it. We hurried off to find Alf.

  We told him we’d come up with a change of plans. ‘What if,’ we said, �
��you hide us somewhere so that we can go back to England with you? That way you won’t have all the bother of coming to fetch us when the war is over.’

  We went on to explain that we’d be as quiet as mice and nobody need ever know we were there. All he had to do was bring us a little food when no one was looking and the war was bound to be over by the time we got all the way back to England.

  ‘Get on wiv you!’ Alf said. ‘You’ve come all this way, mates, you’ve got to give it a go!’

  Perhaps he wasn’t such a wonderful friend after all.

  Before we knew it we were off the ship and in a bus on our way to the hostel place Mummy had told us about. Once there James was put in a dormitory just for boys on one side of the building and I was put in one for girls on the opposite side. What shocked me the most about all that was, although I’d never liked James the least little bit, when he turned away to go to the boys’ side, I wanted to call after him to stay with me, or else let me go with him. Anything rather than stay with the soppy-looking group of small girls all staring at me from one end of the corridor. I felt awkward and shy and longed, above all, for the comforting presence of my mother. I turned away quickly so no one would notice how much I wanted to cry.

  As it turned out, dormitories were nothing more than huge rooms filled with beds and everything in them was white: the beds, the bed clothes, the curtains. Even the ladies who looked after us wore white, shoes and stockings included.

  When I first realized that that big room had not one speck of colour anywhere, or anything else that looked the least bit friendly, the awful, empty feeling came back in my tummy and I thought, Surely I’m not going to be ’omesick all over again, am I? Really, I just can’t. It’s too awful. But, oh, dear … I do so wish Mummy was here beside me. Or Alf … or even James….

  While we had been waiting to get off the ship and staring up at the Statue of Liberty and the tall, grey skyscraper things that seemed to blot out the sky, James and I both had the overwhelming sense that any one of those tall, tall buildings could easily topple and come crashing down on top of us. We were just deciding where we should hide when Alf turned up and made everything seem safe again. He was laughing and he said, ‘Go on then, mates! Give it a go! It in’t ’alf as bad as it looks. And don’t forget, soon’s this bloody lot’s over wiv, I’m comin’ lookin’ for you.’

  Dear Alf. He was a good friend after all.

  All the children in our group were quite delighted when we learned that Escort hadn’t come to the hostel with us. Instead, the ladies in white who were called Matrons were to look after us. Speaking in a manner that baffled yet intrigued us, they said things like, ‘Quit that bawling!’ And, ‘You don’t eat you don’t grow. Then what’s your mudders and fadders gonna say, huh?’

  One of them actually thought my name was honey! She said, ‘Let’s go, Honey. Time to eat.’

  ‘My name isn’t Honey,’ I gasped. ‘It’s Sarah. Honey is something bees make. You spread it on bread. Like jam….’

  The lady laughed so hard she had to sit down. ‘Oh, honey,’ she wheezed, ‘I know your name’s not honey. It’s just you’re cute and sweet. Here, anybody cute as you gets called honey. You get it? Honey’s sweet, right?’

  ‘Oh …’ I said, somewhat doubtfully.

  ‘Tell you what,’ the lady went on. ‘If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll call you Sarah-Honey. Is that gonna be OK?’

  I said that would be all right. Actually, I quite liked it.

  All day and every day the Matrons kept telling us what lucky little kids – children, we quickly learned, were called kids in America – we were to have escaped the blitz and crossed the Atlantic Ocean safely in terrible times like these. ‘Although,’ they went on to mutter among themselves, ‘the way those British pack up their kids and send them away like they was last week’s dirty wash beats anything we ever heard tell about.’

  Every day at the hostel, children – kids – left to go to their new homes. I remember being very happy to see the hateful girl with the red, freckled bottom leave.

  In no time at all James and I were the last of the evacuees left. The matron in charge told us, ‘The reason you kids are the last is because we have to find a home that will take the both of you and that’s not so easy as finding a place for just the one kid.

  ‘Having to find a Catholic home isn’t helping things either,’ she’d gone on.

  A final reason Matron gave for us being the last to go was because we had a bad reputation. ‘A reputation,’ she explained, ‘is what people say about you when you are not there to hear them.’

  Our reputation was that we were the most uncooperative kids on the ship.

  We both thought that was horribly unfair.

  Matron said, ‘Don’t ask me. All I know is what I hear and I don’t want to hear no more about it. “Actions speak louder than words” is what I always say.’

  At last a day came when Matron announced, ‘A home has been found for you two out of state, thank God! I was beginning to think we’d have you here for the duration.’

  Right away James wanted to know what ‘out of state’ meant, but before Matron could answer he thought of another, more interesting, question. ‘What kind of car will our foster parents come to fetch us in?’ he asked.

  ‘You won’t be leaving in a car,’ Matron explained. ‘That’s because out of state means you are going out of New York, the state. I’m going to put you on a train that will take you there. The train conductor will keep an eye on you and see that you get off at the right stop where your foster parents will meet you, maybe with a car, maybe not, and take you to their home from there.’

  And, ‘No, I don’t know who your foster parents are or what they’re like or if they have kids of their own or a home in the country. A lady called Mrs Bennings from an organization that finds homes for orphan kids will be with them to introduce you and you can ask her.’

  THREE

  When a ‘kid’ is put on a train by a distracted adult and its destination is a meaningless name, it does not want to arrive. The train becomes a safe cocoon where there is no one to answer to, nothing is expected of you, and the kid’s most fervent desire is to travel thus forever.

  Certainly, as we relived those far-off days, James and I were unanimous in agreeing that was exactly how we had felt as we set off on the last leg of our journey, the one in which we would meet our foster parents, the very thought of whom filled us with dry-mouthed dread. Nobody had to tell us that those people would be around longer than any Escort or Matron, and certainly a lot longer than the kindly, black, Pullman porter, Harvey, in whose temporary care we had been placed.

  The very word ‘parent’, foster or otherwise, meant people who would tell us what to do, what to wear, what to eat and how to behave. But what if, as in the case of our real parents, they decided to pack us off to a place to which we did not want to go? Or what if they were of the Grimm variety? She a witch who cackled; he a giant who craved the blood of an Englishman? What would we, could we, do then?

  ‘I do hope she’s kind,’ I gulped to James as the train carrying us plunged into a tunnel, ‘not like poor little Cinderella’s. And I do so hope she’s pretty.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Our … you know. Our, um … stepmother.’

  James scowled and seemed to shrink in his already too large, bought-with-growth-in-mind, dark blue blazer.

  ‘Time to go to the dining car, kids,’ Harvey called.

  ‘Follow me.’

  The dining car? We exchanged uneasy glances. What would be expected of us there? Reluctantly we rose and followed our guide. Oh … a dining car was a dining room. A dining room on wheels. Fancy that. Was that why it was called a car? But shouldn’t it be called a dining carriage since everyone knows trains are made up of carriages, not cars?

  ‘Pick anything you want,’ Harvey said, handing us each a menu.

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ I said truthfully, pleased that I wouldn’t have to admit that I cou
ld scarcely read. James surprised me, saying he wasn’t hungry either, even though he was then nearly seven and knew perfectly well how to read.

  One forearm across his middle to support the elbow of his other arm, the hand of which stroked his chin, Harvey thought about that so long that both James and I, without consultation, adopted his pose and began stroking our chins.

  ‘Tell you what,’ Harvey said finally, finished with his thinking and stroking and thereby terminating ours, ‘let’s just skip everything on that menu except dessert. What say I bring you each a double-dip of chocolate ice cream? Sound good?’

  Our eyes widened at the thought and we nodded eagerly. But by the time the ice cream arrived, my mind had wandered back to wicked stepmothers and, after a mouthful or two, I set my spoon aside.

  ‘What shall we do if she’s cruel and hits us?’ I asked James.

  Lost in thoughts of his own and absent-mindedly stirring his ice cream into a soup, James didn’t answer.

  ‘If she hits me, you’ll have to make her stop,’ I told him. ‘Daddy said so. It’s your job to look after me.’

  Before he could reply, Harvey reappeared beside us and studied our barely touched ice cream in the same chin-stroking manner as before.

  ‘It didn’t melt, I’d save it for my grandkids,’ he said, shaking his head in sorrow. ‘They know what to do with double-dips of chocolate ice cream, believe you me. Come on now, I’ll take you back to your seats. We’ll be there in a couple more hours.’

  Oh, dear…. I turned to James and in a whisper, said, ‘What if she makes us eat fish? Or spinach? I know, let’s ask Harvey if we can live at his house! He’s ever so nice. Almost as nice as Alf. And we’d be very good. We could show him we know how to eat ice cream just like his grandkids and—’

  ‘Shut up,’ James growled.

  Harvey kept us in our seats until almost all the other passengers had left the platform before leading us, each clinging to one of his hands – those fascinating, pink on the inside hands – off the train.