Child from Home (18 page)

That is the land of lost content,

I see it shining plain,

The happy highways where I went

And cannot come again.

A.E.Houseman (1859–1936)

Children are very resilient and soon bounce back, and by the time we reached Pickering I was my usual pestering and attention-seeking self again. My normal ebullience returned and I was forever asking, ‘Can I (this)?' and ‘Can I (that)?' As we had to change trains here, we had a mug of strong, stewed tea and a hard rock cake in the refreshment room, as a bitterly cold, piercing wind blew along the covered platform. Mam bought some Liquorice Allsorts, one of my favourite sweets, for the journey and suggested that we should sit for a little while by the warmth of the open fire in the Ladies waiting room.

Eventually, we clambered onto the train for Malton, which steamed through the tiny, quaintly named Marishes Road station, as thick flurries of snow blurred the telegraph poles that raced past the carriage windows. After a flat, six-mile journey south, the track linked up with the main Scarborough to York line at Rillington where the line turned west through the Derwent valley. In the wan winter sunshine the meandering river, which was seldom out of sight, looked like a silver serpent as we clattered along beside snow-blanketed fields. We pulled into the station in the small market town of Malton, which Mam said was called Derventia in Roman times.

The train to York was packed full of soldiers and airmen. Mam had somehow obtained permission for us to leave the train at Haxby station, which was normally closed to passengers but, since it had to stop there to deliver certain items, they could see no problem in us getting off. Several soldiers (‘sojers' to me) got into our carriage. Their shiny black boots clattered on the floor as they carried in their rifles and bulging kit bags. Removing their forage caps, known as cheesecutters, they shoved them through the shoulder tab of their battledress blouses. As they lifted their bags and webbing packs onto the overhead netting of the luggage rack, the naps of their uniforms, which were wet with snow, started to curl up. The soldiers lit up their Woodbines and after a while the carriage reeked of smoke, so one of them opened the window a crack to let it out. Animal heat rose from the dampness of their uniforms as they slowly dried out. As we continued our journey, still following the course of the river, two of the soldiers, their coarse khaki uniforms feeling rough to the touch, made a bit of a fuss of me and gave me a boiled sweet to suck.

The train (and the soldiers) steamed on as we crossed and re-crossed the snaking Derwent, passing through the oddly named Huttons Ambo station and skirting the bare woodlands and the snow-clad parkland of the vast Castle Howard estate. Without stopping we passed through the pretty little stone station within a loop of the river that had solid and chunky chimneys. As we passed we caught a glimpse of the domed colonnaded family mausoleum that stood on the top of a snow-covered hill in the distance.

The piercing train whistle sounded as we continued our journey with the swaying of the carriages making us lurch from side to side as we clattered over the points. The smell of the men's warm, damp khaki uniforms pervaded the carriage as we passed through other tiny stations with quaint names such as Crambe and Flaxton. Every mile was taking me away from all that I loved and I resented it but, by then, the snow had stopped and the sky had begun to clear. We stopped at a place called Strensall where the soldiers put on their forage caps, heaved their bulging kitbags on to their shoulders and waved goodbye to us as they got down from the train.

We crossed the River Foss on a narrow railway bridge that had a wide iron pipe running alongside it, and after a further two miles or so we drew in at the small, neat station on the eastern side of Haxby. Mam put on my mitts and pulled my woollen balaclava helmet over my head before crossing the long, hand-knitted woollen scarf over my chest and tucking it under my armpits. She pulled my coat collar up round my ears and we stepped down onto the frost-rimed slabs of the platform. A smiling, thickset, middle-aged man wearing a baggy, flat cloth cap and a thick brown overcoat came forward to meet us. I noticed that he had a pronounced limp and he introduced himself as Harold Mann, explaining that he was a close friend of my new foster parent. ‘Ah'm sorry,' he said, ‘but Mr Harris couldn't come as 'e's 'ad ter work on t'farm. 'E asked me to come and tek yer t' t'ouse.'

Mam thanked him for coming and he took hold of my small, scuffed and scratched cardboard case and we followed him along the white-edged platform. He led us through a white-paled wicket gate and over the shining metal of the twin railway lines. The low, sallow afternoon sun was making no impression on the rime of frost that twinkled like stars on the heavy wooden sleepers. As elsewhere, the station name boards had been removed, so as to make it more difficult (in theory) for the enemy (should they arrive) to establish their whereabouts. A wooden rest shelter stood on the up platform and nearby there was a row of white painted wooden palings and a small ticket office.

An old station house with an elegant Georgian entrance porch stood by the gates of the crossing. The countless steam trains that had passed close by for nearly a hundred years had turned its old stones black, and behind it there was a long-established and well-frequented coal yard. Beyond that was an elevated metal water tank that had a wide tubular arm with a canvas sleeve that could be swung out to refill the steam engine boilers. The wide, white-painted, five-barred gates were still shut and Mr Mann's pony and trap stood at the other side, with his horse, Monty, having a nap with one rear hoof, slightly bent at the hock, resting on the other. Mr Mann lifted my case up through the little door at the rear of the small open carriage and helped us up the iron step. We sat on its shiny, wooden-slatted seats that ran parallel with the panelled sides.

We sat in the little carriage wrapped in thick woollen blankets. The shaggy-coated pony trotted along very gingerly as the road was treacherous with a thin, glass-like layer of ice above compressed, frozen snow. Monty flared his nostrils and snorted from time to time and his warm exhalations hung like clouds of steam on the cold winter air. The pony's long, shaggy mane was blown about by the icy, cutting wind as Harold turned right onto Usher Lane immediately after passing a very large house on the corner. We stopped at the gate of a semi-detached house that had a small front garden behind a low privet hedge and, like its neighbours, it had a thin layer of frozen snow on top. Below its square-bayed windows was a small, snow-covered rockery, and on the wall to the right of the front door was a wooden plaque that read ‘Lenmuir'.

Mrs Harris came out with a thick coat round her shoulders and carefully picked her way along the ice-covered path beside the house. Harold handed us over without much ado. As she led us slipping and sliding along the path past the coalhouse door, Mrs Harris instructed us that her evacuees were never allowed to use the front door. We went through a wooden gate between the corner of the house and the shed and, turning left, went up three steps and in through the kitchen door. Mrs Harris seemed to carry her own chill into the house with her along with a blast of icy, wintry air. Inside, on the left, a door led into a large walk-in larder and a second door opened into the bathroom. Due to the long journey and the effects of the cold, the pressure on my bladder was unbearable and I was ‘dicky-dancing' as I desperately needed ‘to go'. I couldn't wait and I dashed into the bathroom to go to the lavvy, which was tucked away in an alcove behind the larder. Above it a chain with a wooden handle hung down from a cast-iron cistern and opposite there was a white-enamelled, claw-foot bathtub with two shiny brass taps, which stood beneath the sloping ceiling below the stairs.

From the bathroom I could hear muffled talking and on going back into the kitchen, Mrs Harris seemed remote, forbidding and glacial in the cold wan light of that chilly winter afternoon. She had a pallid complexion and a blotchy face that reminded me of the poisonous foxglove bells in the woods at Grove House. She was wearing a faded, washed-out pinny over her ample bosom. Her face and arms were freckled like a bird's egg as she peered down at me through her heavy horn-rimmed glasses and when she shook my hand her limp, flabby fingers, which looked like pork sausages, felt cold and clammy. There was no smile and not a glimmer of warmth in her greeting.

To the right of the back door there was a cast-iron gas cooker and next to it a square, vitreous china sink, and a wooden draining board stood below the kitchen window. In the centre of the room was a table covered with a cream-and-blue-checked oilcloth. When the stiff formalities and the minor pleasantries were over, she made tea in a large brown pot placing a knitted tea cosy over it. The tea was poured into half-pint mugs and she invited us to help ourselves to the broken biscuits that lay on a chipped and cracked plate. The square table was slightly wobbly and a piece of cardboard had been stuffed under one of its legs to balance it. The oilcloth was covered in a network of tiny fissures and fine cracks that matched the mugs and the wooden forms that stood along three of its sides.

Mrs Harris seemed old to me and I heard Mam say in a tremulous voice, as she handed over my green ration book and National Registration Identity Card, ‘I trust that you'll take good care of him.' To me, Mrs Harris's congeniality lacked conviction and she seemed formidable and icily polite as she studied the items in her podgy, nicotine-stained fingers. Mrs Harris then told Mam, ‘He will sleep in the back bedroom with Donald and Jimmy. Don't worry about him Mrs Wright, he'll get the same treatment as the others.' This could have meant anything.

She then led us up the stairs by way of the front room, which was kept as a ‘best room' only to be used for special occasions. It had a wooden picture rail high up on its faded, print-papered walls from which a couple of gloomy-looking pictures hung on long cords. There was a settee and two armchairs beside a small, tiled fireplace, and on the chimneybreast a round mirror with bevelled edges hung on a long chain. In the rectangle formed by the bay window was a sturdy wooden table covered with a velvety, maroon cloth with tasselled edges. In the centre of the room lay a threadbare rug with a margin of brown, bare floorboards around it.

Wooden stairs led up from the small entrance hall to a landing covered by a timeworn runner held in place by tarnished brass rods. To the left an open door led into the front bedroom. To the right was the door of the tiny box room, and straight ahead a door led into the back bedroom that contained a bed, a chair and a plain wooden wardrobe. The floor, which was covered with lino, had just one small clippy rug by the bedside, and a glass-shaded electric light bulb hung on a length of brown flex. A thin, decorated, paper frieze ran round the top of the distempered and stippled walls. Mrs Harris started to unpack my case, saying coldly, ‘this is where you will sleep.'

In what seemed like no time at all there was yet another sad and tearful parting. Mam hugged me to her as if she would never let go and it hurt to see the pain and anguish in her eyes as she smoothed down my hair with a bit of spit, as it tended to stick up at the crown. She wiped the tears from my cheeks with her hankie and gave me a kiss, softly whispering, ‘I must go now. Be a good boy. Jimmy will look after you and I will see you again very soon. Bye-bye sweetheart.' At that she was gone. She had to hurry to catch the bus into York and once there she would have to get the train to Darlington and hope that she did not miss her connecting train to Middlesbrough. Train journeys were slow and tedious at that time with many unscheduled stops and delays. She loved reading but the use of faint blue lights now made this almost impossible.

No sooner had she gone than Mrs Harris's false good cheer disappeared and she became brusque in her manner. She said, ‘I will not tolerate any rudeness or cheek. I expect you to be quiet at mealtimes and to speak only when spoken to. Children should be seen and not heard and there is to be no swearing, shouting or running in the house. You must abide by all the dos and don'ts listed on the door of the cabinet in the kitchen or there'll be trouble.'

My feeling of well-being dissipated as quickly as the smoke that drifted up from Mrs Harris's seemingly ever-present cigarette. Not long afterwards, Jimmy, Donald, Thelma and Dot came in from school and I was introduced to them. I barely recognised Jimmy, who I had not seen for eighteen months, as he had grown a lot and was now a good-looking young lad. He had soft, light-brown hair that was combed back and parted on the left with a soft, wavy quiff topping his high forehead. Eighteen months is a long time at that age. Promising that he would look after me, he took me up to our bedroom to show me his toys and comics to take my mind off Mam's departure. I cried for a long time as we sat on the bed huddled together like a couple of street urchins. I felt lost and frightened in this strange, unfriendly and terrifyingly new place.

I was slow to settle in as I was very shy and I always felt ill at ease with the obsequious Donald, whom everyone called Ducky. He had clammy hands and shifty, darting eyes that always seemed to be watching me. Dot was a thin, droopy girl with short dark hair and a fringe cut just above her eyes. She seemed a bit dopey and slow-witted. I liked the congenial, lively and no-nonsense attitude of Thelma straight away and we got on well from the start. She was a good-looking, bright sort of girl with a small heart-shaped face and intelligent brown eyes.

When Mr Harris came home from work, I took to him immediately. He was a smallish man with muscular arms that had a thin covering of fine fair hairs. A smiling, ruddy-faced, down-to-earth man who smelled of soil and sweat. He said, ‘'Ow do, lad. Welcome to our 'umble abode. Mek yersel at 'ome and don't be frightened ter ask for anything.'

Wives always gave the working men the largest portions in those days and they were all hungry, tucking in to a meal of rabbit stew and dumplings with thick slices of crusty bread. I picked and fiddled with my food as I didn't like the tiny bones in it and my shyness and the strangeness of my surroundings had taken the edge off my normally healthy appetite. There was only room for the two adults and the two big girls on the home-made, wooden side benches, so Ducky, Jimmy and I sat, squashed together, on the bench at the front of the table. Mrs Harris was not given to kind words and she always seemed to wear an expression of displeasure and was very strict. She made it crystal clear that the house, and particularly our bedrooms, were to be kept neat and tidy at all times, saying, ‘I'm not here to run after you lot or to pick up your discarded clothes,' before adding, ‘and Jimmy you had better keep John right or you'll have me to answer to.'