Orphans of War. Leah Fleming
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1940
‘Can you pick up my knitting, dear?’ gasped Great-aunt Julia as she struggled with her two sticks across the hallway of Brooklyn Hall. Maddy wasn’t used to going at tortoise pace but she loved being useful to the old ladies in the drawing room who, wrapped in ancient fur wraps and shawls to keep out the draughts, were busy knitting for the Sowerthwaite Comforts fund. Everyone took it in turns to sit up close to Uncle Algie’s battery-operated wireless to catch the news as best they could.
Maddy couldn’t believe it was nearly Christmas, nearly three whole months since that arrival at Brooklyn Hall, when Sid had had his fit and Grandma had eyed her up and down with disappointment.
‘It’s hotting up in Greece,’ shouted Great-uncle Algernon across the room, resting his half a leg on a leather buffet as he strained to catch the bulletin. ‘Metaxas has said “No” to Mussolini and there’ll be trouble in the Balkans, mark my words…Oh, and Liverpool and Manchester had another visit from the Luftwaffe last night. Three of our planes are missing.’
‘Don’t believe a word of it, girls,’ shouted Grandma, looking up from her letter writing. ‘It’s all lies and propaganda. I don’t know why you want to depress us with such news.’
Maddy was glued to the six o’clock news every night. She had heard enemy bombers droning overhead at night on their deadly route across the moors, hoping that the searchlight on the field battery would be torching their path for the ack-ack guns.
Her parents were on their way back from Egypt, hinting in their letter that they were going the long route round Africa and there was fighting in the Mediterranean. They were coming home for Christmas, but Maddy would rather they stayed put if there was danger.
It was such an age since she’d seen them and so much had happened, so much to tell them about her new school and friends. How the Brooklyn seemed like a hotel full of shuffling old people, who played endless games of patience and bridge, who quarrelled and fussed over Ilse’s cooking and fought to get the best corner by the huge fireplace.
Besides Uncle Algie and Aunt Julia and her companion, Miss Betts, there was a distant cousin Rhoda Rennison and her sister, Flo. It was easy to lump them all together somehow in their grey cardigans and baggy skirts, darned lisle stockings and tweed slippers. Around them wafted a tincture of eau de cologne that almost masked a more acidic smell. The oldies melted into the walls of the Brooklyn between meals along with their ear trumpets, stringy knitting in carpet bags and shawls. Then when the dinner gong rang they appeared from the far recesses of the house, back to the table like clucking hens at the trough, pecking at their plates, too busy to talk to Maddy
Aunt Plum was worried about Uncle Gerald, who was waiting in barracks down south to be sent abroad soon. When she was upset she smiled with sad eyes and went for long walks over the hills with her dogs, when she wasn’t on duty at the Old Vic Hostel.
Maddy walked to the village school each morning with the two Conleys, who now lived in Huntsman’s Cottage with Mr and Mrs Batty. It was a funny arrangement: normal school lessons in the morning, mixing with the local children at St Peter’s C of E School, and then lessons in the village hall, crushed in with a gang of evacuee kids from Leeds, who were living the other side of Sowerthwaite. It was all very noisy and they didn’t do much work, just copying from the board until hometime. There weren’t enough teachers to go round.
It was not like St Hilda’s at all, and the first thing she’d done was to lose her elocution accent in favour of a Yorkshire one, flattening her ’a’s so she didn’t get teased, though it made Grandma Belfield furious if she said bath instead of baath.
‘The sooner Arthur comes and puts you in a half-decent school…You’re turning into a right little Yorkshire tyke. It’s no good Plum letting you mix so much with that village lot. They’re teaching you nothing but bad habits. I hear they’ve been up to their old tricks again on the High Street,’ Grandma sighed, looking up at Maddy’s glasses and then turning back to her letter writing.
Maddy smiled to herself as she sat with her arms out so Aunt Julia could unravel a jumper that smelled of mothballs. Peggy, Greg and Enid knew all the best wheezes. It was Enid’s idea to fill the cig packet with dirt and worms and then box it up as if it was new and toss it on the pavement. They hid in the little alleyway while the passer-by spotted the cigs and pounced only to jump back in horror. They filled blue sugar bags with horse droppings and left them in the middle of the road so the carters stopped, hoping for a present to give their wives, only for the smelly muck to spill out while the gang had to look, duck and vanish like the Local Defence Volunteers down the ginnel.
Everyone got a telling-off from the constable, and poor Enid was grounded for being the ringleader by Miss Blunt, but she complained they’d all helped so all of them missed the Saturday film show as a punishment except Maddy. Going on her own was not much fun.
Greg was out cleaning the Daimler and helping Mr Batty, and begging old wheels to make a go-kart from the salvage cart. There was always something happening at the Old Vic even though Miss Blunt was strict and didn’t like mess. They were busy making Christmas presents out of cocoa tins, painting them and putting holes in the lids to pull a ball of string through. String was very precious now. Aunt Plum took her down to the hostel to join in the crafts after school. They were turning dishcloths into pretty dolls and sewing dusters into knickerbockers with frills on to sell at the bazaar for War Comforts. Soon it would be time to make Christmas paper chains and tree decorations.
The Brooklyn was fine in its own way, but since Gloria and Sid had moved in with the Battys, Maddy felt lonely at night, the draughts whistling round the house like banshees. Aunt Plum and Grandma were always out at committee meetings; the Comforts fund, the WVS, the Women’s Institute and the Church Council, so she sat with the oldies listening to the wireless while they dosed after supper. Uncle Algie let her listen to the Light Programme, and the music that reminded her of Mummy.
Mummy’s letters were full of interesting places that Maddy dutifully looked up in the atlas with Uncle Algie’s help. They had sung in concerts in the desert under the moon and stars.
We’re so looking forward to Christmas and to being a proper family once more. We should never have left you behind, but we thought it was for the best. You have had to suffer because of us doing our duty but be strong and brave. Not long now, darling.
It was a funny war here, nothing much happened at all. There was a gun battery up behind Sowerthwaite, and the Local Defence Volunteers paraded in church. The town was bursting with kids from all over the place but no bombs and no big factories belching smoke were to be seen. It was a relief to wake up each morning to silence and the bleat of sheep but she still felt sad. In her dreams she went back to Chadley, chasing Bertie, singing round the piano with Uncle George, playing with the button tin, making corkscrew coils of knitting with Granny Mills. If only they were here with her for Christmas too.
Her biggest surprise was that the Yorkshire of her Jane Eyre heroine was so beautiful and wild, with hills and stone walls creeping in all directions, green grass and hundreds of sheep, cows and pigs in makeshift arks, chicken coops and duck ponds, horses ploughing up the fields by the river and gardens crammed full of vegetables and apple trees.
They were making an allotment behind the Old Vic and Mr Batty was helping the big children plant vegetables. None of them had known a fork from a spade before they started but they did now. Enid and Peggy complained their hands were getting blisters. It was all so peaceful and safe, as if she’d moved to another world, but at what a cost? Why couldn’t they all have come before the war to enjoy the scenery?
Maddy’s favourite spot was high up in the big beech tree that was planted right at the back of the Old Vic in the corner where the garden became a field. There was a swing rope up to a little wooden den in its branches. The tree was very old.
From their hide-out they could spy on German planes and hide if the enemy invaded. There was a password to climb up that changed every week.
Aunt Plum said the tree was planted long ago by subscription after some famous victory. No one could remember which battle it was but it had to be hundreds of years old.