A Family At War, page 12
Mum was not pleased. 'Find something better, then,' she said, 'if you're so clever.'
They've argued the whole weekend, and when he went to work this morning she said she was glad to see the back of him.
I've had a week off so as to help her unpack but now I've got to go to school. This will be the fifth time I've changed schools since the war started, which was one year and two months ago. I've worked it out. Mum says I'm getting quite an old hand at it. I think she's pleased because I don't make a fuss.
This one is quite a big school. It's called Manland and it's all on one floor except for the Headmaster's room and the staff room and the office. It's built on the side of a hill so it slopes downwards in the middle and you have to go down a little flight of stone steps to reach the classrooms on the lower level and up a little flight to reach the office rooms which are just above them. There's a playground and a field to play in and a big hall where we have assembly and the desks aren't in rows but arranged round the classroom like three sides of a square. My teacher says we have two tests every Friday, in writing and sums, and then we have to sit in rank order with the one who's got the highest marks in the first seat to her right and the one who's got the lowest in the last seat on her left. She says she'll find me a seat in the middle, just for the moment.
It's quite a palaver arranging us all after the tests. We have to put all our belongings on our desks, all neat and tidy, and take out our readers and wait quietly while the results are read out, five at a time, and people take their new positions. I've come top this Friday. I knew I would because the tests were ever so easy. I've got full marks for sums and writing and everybody gasps when my marks are read out. The lowest mark is two and that's a scruffy looking boy with a scowling face and terrible cross-eyes. They all jeer when his name's read out and he shuffles and kicks his chair.
I can't wait to get home and tell Mum how well I've done. But she isn't interested. 'Oh yes,' she says. 'Set the table will you. That damned child's been driving me mad.'
I'll tell her again in case she didn't hear. 'I came top of the class, Mum.'
But she isn't listening. She doesn't even look at me. She's got her complaining face on, her forehead all wrinkled and her mouth turned down. 'She's bitten into all the apples,' she says. 'Every single one. Now we'll have to use them up or they'll go mouldy.'
She does upset me sometimes. It wouldn't hurt her to praise me for coming top. I have earned it. I'll bet if any of the others had come top they'd go home to their mothers and be made a fuss of. She could at least be pleased. Being ignored makes me feel it doesn't matter.
Gran waddles into the kitchen with a tray full of apples. There's a small neat bite in every one. 'Naughty little thing,' she says. 'I knew it was a mistake to bring her, Ella. Didn't I say so?'
'She came with the car,' Mum says. 'I didn't have any option. We'll make a pie.'
Gran's looking in the cupboard. 'We're very low on fat,' she says.
That makes Mum cross. 'I know we're low on fat,' she says. 'You don't have to tell me. They only let you have your rations up here. It's not like Tooting. I can't get any extras.'
'We shall starve at this rate,' Gran sniffs.
'No we won't, 'Mum says, shaking flour into the mixing bowl. 'I've been thinking it out. I shall keep chickens. I can build a run at the end of the garden.'
I can't think where it'll be. The garden's really small, just a little oblong lawn with a flower bed all round it and a concrete path on one side that goes down to a little wooden gate that you go through to get out into the fields. There's a little rockery at the top end of the garden next to the French windows, with three little steps leading down to the lawn, but she could hardly keep chickens there. There wouldn't be room. I don't like to ask her about it though. She's been very touchy since we came here and I might get a whack. I shall find out soon enough.
I find out on Tuesday. When I get home from school she's down in the field building a chicken run from wire and wooden posts. There's a hen house in one corner of the run and a basket full of chickens underneath the trees, all squashed up together and looking sorry for themselves, and she's busy nailing the wire to the posts. Whack, whack, whack.
'Hold that,' she says to me, nodding her head towards a trailing length of wire.
So I hold it. And then I hold another, and another, and after a long time the run is finished. She picks up the basket and empties the chickens into their new premises. Six hens and a cock. 'White Sussex,' she tells me. 'Good layers. Now we shall be all right for eggs.'
They're all running about their new yard, squawking and flapping their wings, big white birds with spots of black round their necks and sharp yellow eyes and scarlet combs. Mum's got a sack full of corn and she takes out a handful and throws it at them. Some of it lands on their backs and they have to shake it off. 'That'll settle 'em,' she says. I wonder what Dad'll say.
He's back so late it's too dark for him to see anything so he doesn't notice until he comes down for his breakfast and pulls the curtains. Then he frowns and says, 'What's that in the field?'
'That's our new chicken run,' Mum says. 'I'm keeping chickens.'
His eyes bolt out of his head. 'You can't put a chicken run down there,' he says. 'That's private property.'
'I can,' she says, pouting. 'I've done it.'
'But it doesn't belong to you. It's a field. It belongs to someone else. One of the farmers. You'll get us into trouble.'
'Look,' she says. 'It's an empty field. Nobody's using it. It's just a waste bit of ground. Anyway, it might be ours. You don't know. He could have bought it, like next door. Their garden runs right down to the other field.'
It does too. It's twice the length of ours and all neatly laid out with rows of cabbages and Brussels sprouts.
'You'll get us into trouble,' Dad says.
'Well if I do, I'll deal with it,' she says.
I feel really proud of her. She's so strong. I think she could deal with anything.
There's a drawback to chickens. They lay lots of eggs, which is good. We go down every morning and evening to collect them, as soon as the hens start clucking, and they're all warm and lovely with little bits of straw stuck to them and just the right size to hold in your hand. But we have to feed the chickens every evening too and their food stinks.
Mum's put a bucket in the kitchen and she keeps all the waste food in it instead of taking it down to the pig bin - cabbage leaves, potato peelings, apple cores, egg shells, Pat's crusts, everything, even the old tea leaves. Then once a day, usually when I've just got home from school, she slops the whole lot into a preserving pan and sprinkles handfuls of meal into it and cooks it up on the stove. The smell goes all over the house. You can't get away from it. When it's done, she carries the pan out into the field and throws the whole lot into the run. The grass is all trodden away now and it's just mud, so the hens slip about and get covered in gobbets of mash. It must be jolly uncomfortable for them because it's still hot. I don't think I'd like to be a chicken.
I wouldn't like to be little Audrey either. She looks miserable all the time and I think she gets slapped almost as much as I do. At least I can get out of the house and go to school and get away from it, but she can't because she isn't old enough.
It's really nice at school. I've been top of the class for so many weeks I don't have to clear my desk on Friday afternoons because everyone knows I won't be moved. And I've got two best friends. Their names are Marie Matthews and Margaret Clements and we go around together at playtime and play out on Saturdays and everything. Marie lives at the top of our road and Margaret is just round the corner so we walk to school together every morning. This Saturday we're going up the hill as soon as it's light to pick mushrooms.
It's spooky to be out in the countryside when the light's coming up. There's a white mist this morning. It swirls along over the grass as we climb the hill and the hedges look as if they're threaded with white gauze and the houses down below us are all pale as if they're melting. I'm not quite so sure about all this now we're out here but I don't say anything otherwise they'll think I'm a scaredy-cat. The mushrooms are in a field where the cows graze and when they're close to cows are enormous. You can see their haunches sticking right out and they look really hard. I bet they could knock you flat if they ran at you. Marie and Margaret don't take any notice of them so I try not to either but it makes my heart jump a bit when they suddenly lumber to their feet and run away. But we find lots of mushrooms. You can see them quite clearly tucked in the grass.
When we've picked all the ones we can find, we have a share out and go home. The sun's just coming out and the fields are steaming. I feel really pleased with myself because I've provided the breakfast this morning.
Little Audrey's gone home. She was there this morning when I went to school but when I came back for dinner, her mother'd come to get her and she'd gone. Things happen so quickly in our house. Mum says she's glad to see the back of her and she was a nasty spoilt little thing but I don't think she was. At least she didn't grizzle and get me into trouble like little Pat. I shall miss her. But it'll be nice not to have to put all that horrible ointment on her every night.
Mum's in a bad temper. She says she spends her whole life queuing up for things and no matter what she does there's never enough food to go round. She's been down to the corn chandlers to buy some more meal for the chickens and they wouldn't let her have any.
'I shall have to go back home and see if Mrs Garnsworthy can get some for us,' she says to Gran. 'I shall have to pay over the odds for it because it'll be under the counter but we must have it. Beryl can come with me and help me carry it. I could get a few tins of things too. We could catch the workman's train. That'ud be cheaper.'
It goes at six o'clock in the morning. When we leave the house to walk round the corner to the station it's still dark, and the sun's only just beginning to come up when we reach King's Cross. It's an awful long journey, first the train to London and then down the tube and on the Northern line to Tooting. Mum explains it to me all the way.
'The Northern line's black,' she says, showing me where it is on a big map on the wall. 'You can remember that can't you. You're going south, so you don't take that side, you take this one. The train you want goes to Morden. That's what you'll see on the front of it when it comes out of the tunnel. Look! See! There it is. Morden. You can remember that.' It's almost as if I'm travelling on my own and she isn't with me.
But oh it is nice to be back in Tooting and to have one of Dardy's lovely dinners to eat. She's made us steak and kidney pudding and a trifle for afters with jelly and everything. And her kitchen's so warm and clean. All scrubbed and polished and not a bit of dust or dirt anywhere. It smells lovely.
When we've done the dishes we put our coats and hats on and go shopping. We buy all sorts of things. Thirty pounds of meal for a start which the lady empties into both our bags to even out the weight. Then she and Dardy have a conversation in whispers and she sells us a pound of butter and two packets of sugar and a tin of salmon and some condensed milk and all sorts of other things. Mum's so pleased she's licking her lips. By the time we leave the shop the bags are really heavy. But we haven't finished. Now we're off to the butchers to see what we can get there. It's sausages and liver and two big kidneys.
We go back to Harpenden in triumph. Mum puts the food away in the cupboards and Gran says it's really set us up.
'Yes,' Mum says. 'We did well, although I says so as shouldn't. It was a good trip.'
'Now you know it works you can do it again,' Gran says.
'Beryl will be able to go next time,' Mum says, 'now she knows the way. There's no raids in the daytime now. It'll be quite safe. You'll do it for Mummy, won't you darling.'
I say yes because that's what she's expecting me to say but it frightens me even to think about it. I can't go all that way on my own. What if I catch the wrong train and get lost? What if I can't find my way home? Maybe she doesn't really mean it. Anyway it'll be ages yet. She's got enough food to last for weeks and weeks.
It's next Saturday and I've got to go. When she means something there's no getting away from it. She's written down the times of the trains I've got to catch and where I've got to go when I'm down the tube and she says they're all depending on me and here I am on the platform with my ticket in my hand, waiting for the workmen's train to come in, feeling really worried.
I worry all the way to London. I can't help it. And going down the tube is dreadful because people rush about so and I can't remember where we went last time. I look on the map for the black line and follow the signs and think very hard about what I'm doing and where I'm supposed to be going. And after going the wrong way and having to go back again, I manage to get on the train to Morden and watch every stop until it gets to Tooting Broadway. I feel tired out by the time I'm at the top of the escalators and safely there.
It's a very cold day and the place smells of bombing, that peculiar familiar smell of brick dust and old wood and unlit gas and poo.
'It was bad last night,' Dardy says, when I ask her. 'Terrible in Balham. Still it's over now. No point dwelling on it. Let's have our dinner and then we'll go and see what we can get.'
By the time we've finished our shopping the bags are so heavy they pull my arms. As I go down the escalator I'm tempted to put them down for a rest but I don't like to in case I can't pick them up quickly enough when we reach the bottom. Besides I'm worrying about catching the right train. The Northern line goes in two different directions and I've got to watch out and catch the one 'Via City'. Luckily the right train comes in first so I squeeze into it among all the other people and squeeze out again at King's Cross, feeling quite pleased with myself. But I've still got to find the right train to get me home and that's more difficult. King's Cross is so big and there are so many trains and I mustn't get on the wrong one. Mum said to ask someone if I wasn't sure but the first person I try says, Sorry she doesn't know. Try a porter. So I do. And he tells me what platform my train will leave from. I ask the people in my carriage just to make sure and they say it's all right. And off we go.
It takes such a long time and I'm sure the stops we're passing are different from the ones I passed on my way here. They've taken away all the names so there's no way of telling. The porters call them out but I can't hear them properly. But they can't be the wrong places because we get to Harpenden in the end and I recognise where I am and struggle out onto to the platform.
As I walk down the little approach road and turn the corner into Crossways, I feel like a heroine. I'm nine years and ten months old and I've travelled all the way to London on my own. And back. I'll bet not many nine-year-olds can say that. The only trouble is she’ll make me go again now I’ve shown her I can do it and I’m not too keen on that.
CHAPTER 11
It's my tenth birthday today and I've got a present from Uncle Hubert. It came in the post and he sent a birthday card with it. He says now I'm into double figures he thinks I ought to have something special. It is too. It's a gorgeous doll, standing up in a box with a round window in it so that you can see inside even before you open it up. She's got dark curly hair, big blue eyes, pink cheeks and a tiny little mouth and she's fully dressed right down to a pair of black patent shoes and little white socks. I can't wait to get her out and play with her.
But I don't because I see little Pat looking at her and I know what she's thinking. If I take her out of the box it'll be grizzle, grizzle and 'Let me have a go' and I shall lose her. So I won't touch her. Gran’s given me a book. I'll read that instead. Pat’s not so keen on books. She'll scribble in them if you don't hide them well enough, but she doesn't want to read them because she can't even now she’s at school.
I've found a really good place for my doll. It's right on top of the wardrobe tucked down behind the top bit where no one can see it. I had to climb on a chair to put it there but it's safe now. She won't see it there. I shan't be able to play with it much but at least she won't have it.
Dad's had his call-up papers and he's in a terrible panic. He keeps running about, weeping and shouting at Mum, 'Ella! Ella! What am I going to do? I can't stand it!' I feel really ashamed of him.
Gran says he's yellow. 'Your Uncle Leslie didn't make a fuss like that when he was called-up,' she says. 'He just went where he was sent as good as gold.'
I didn't know he'd been called-up.
'Oh yes,' Gran says. 'He's out in Egypt. Your Aunty Ela had a letter from him only two days ago - she wrote and told me - with a snapshot so she says. Not that I shall get to see that.'
Perhaps they'll send Dad to Egypt too and give us all a bit of peace. But they don't. His office have decided he can be in a reserved occupation for another six months, so he doesn't have to go after all. I think that's a pity. They should send him out to Africa where they're fighting and see how he likes being shot at. Then maybe he wouldn't hit Mum so much.
He came straight back after they'd told him and sat down in his chair by the fire and lectured us about how disappointed he was to be deferred and how he'd have loved to have gone in the army, just as if he'd been begging them to let him go instead of running round the house weeping and saying he couldn't bear it. I really don't like him.
Now he's joined the Home Guard and they've given him a soldier's uniform. He keeps strutting about in it as if he's a real soldier and talking about how he's got to guard the railway and make sure that vital supplies get through. He's got a piece of a gun too, although I can't see what good it is without the other bits, and he's bought a bicycle so that he can ride to wherever it is he has to go. The first time he went off on it, me and Mum had to hold him steady because he couldn't find his balance. He said it was because of all the equipment he had to carry but I don't think he's any good at it. He wobbled all over the road and just as he was going to turn the corner, he fell off. We didn't go and pick him up because he was swearing and jumping up and down on the wheels and Mum said to let him get on with it. 'Pity they didn't call him up.'
