Queen of the Mersey (10 page)

Then she went outside and joined the mothers clutching the railings, unable to take their eyes off the children who were being sent to live with strangers many miles away. She saw Queenie take the girls’ hands and hold them tightly, as if determined never to let go. Vera came outside and stood beside her, tears streaming down her cheeks.

There was a shout. The children froze and began to form in lines. They shuffled towards the coaches and climbed aboard, filling both. A few mothers rushed forward and banged on the windows. ‘Where are you, Johnny, lad? Wave tara to your mam,’ one screamed.

The first coach drove away, then the second. Laura looked frantically for Hester.

‘There they are!’ Vera nudged her sharply, almost breaking a rib. ‘They’re all together in the back seat. Wave, Laura, wave.’

Laura waved and waved until the tiny figures grew smaller and smaller and she couldn’t see them any more. It wasn’t until then she realised she was still holding the bag with the bottle of Tizer and the sandwiches she’d made.

There was a letter on the mat from Roddy when she got home. She opened it listlessly. He was in a place called Catterick, but she wasn’t to write back because he was about to be transferred elsewhere. ‘I’m being sent for officer training,’ he wrote. He finished by saying he hoped she’d made arrangements for them to be evacuated. For a while, they would have to correspond through Vera, as neither would know where the other was.

Laura folded the letter and put it back in the envelope. She must find a place to keep all his letters. One day, she might want to read them again, though this, the first he’d ever written her, was surprisingly impersonal.

The house felt unnaturally quiet and, for a change, the street was empty of children, many on their way to Wales or other parts of the country. For the first time in her life she was entirely alone and, although it was her own choice, she wasn’t sure if she could stand it. She switched on the wireless for the ten-thirty bulletin, which was due soon.

When it came, the news was chilling. Hitler had marched his troops into Poland, a country that Great Britain was bound by treaty to protect. Now there was no going back. To all intents and purposes, the war had already begun.

Chapter 4

The girls’ breathing was gentle now, steady, a sign that both were fast asleep.

Queenie sat, fully dressed, on the bed. Her head felt very strange, empty inside, as if her mind hadn’t grasped the remarkable things that had happened since Mam had gone, which was remarkable enough in itself. At first, when there’d been enough to eat, she hadn’t minded being on her own, not being screamed at and told she was as thick as two short planks. Then the food had run out as well as the few bob Mam had left, and she’d been terrified out of her wits, not knowing what to do. She supposed it was because she was thick. It had taken days before she could pluck up the courage to go downstairs and tell Laura, driven there by hunger and fear.

From that moment on, she’d been glad that Mam had gone and hardly missed her at all. It was lovely being part of Laura’s family. ‘I’m only seven years older, so you’re to think of me as your sister,’ Laura had said. As for Roddy, he was the nicest, handsomest man in the whole world and Queenie was a little bit in love with him.

For the first time in her life she hadn’t felt stupid. Roddy had said how well she read and Laura had admired her handwriting, whereas at school everyone had made fun of the way she wrote, her hand all twisted, and it had turned out shaky and misspelt. The teachers never asked Queenie Tate a question, assuming she wouldn’t know the answer, yet she nearly always did. She enjoyed lessons and had taken everything in. She could do fractions and knew what an adjective was and that Captain Cook had discovered Australia and Elizabeth I was the daughter of Henry VIII who’d had six wives.

But the lovely life with Laura had swiftly come to an end and now she was in a strange house in Wales with two funny little girls who seemed so anxious for her to like them. It was another new experience. Until then, no one had ever cared whether she liked them or not. Now, all of a sudden, her opinion on all sorts of things was apparently very important and it made her feel terribly confused, not sure whether she was an adult or a child.

All the way to Wales in the hot, smelly coach, which felt as if it was taking four days, not just four hours, they’d been vying with each other to capture her attention.

‘Queenie! Queenie! Look at that house,’ Mary had squealed. ‘It’s pink. I didn’t know houses could be pink.’

‘See that tree. Queenie, see that tree!’ Hester had nearly fallen off the seat in excitement. ‘It’s huge, like the spreading chestnut tree in the song.’

Mary had spied a castle, but Hester argued that it was just a big house.

‘Castles have big, round chimneys on each corner.’

‘Turrets,’ Queenie said. ‘They’re called turrets.’

‘That had turrets, didn’t it, Queenie?’

‘I didn’t see it,’ she’d said tactfully. She must make sure she treated them fairly. The truth was, she liked Hester best. Mary was a show-off and could be nasty if she didn’t get her own way. She could imagine an older Mary making fun of her arm as their Tommy had done all the time. Hester was a solemn, gentle little girl, until Mary provoked her, when she could very easily fly off the handle.

By the time they’d reached Caerdovey, the small town where they were to be billeted, half the children were fast asleep – Hester and Mary in each other’s arms – and the rest were in tears. Apart from the WVS lady sitting at the front, there were two other women, both with toddlers too young to have come on their own. One of the women was sobbing quietly. She wished she hadn’t come, she said, and wanted to go home. She didn’t like Wales. ‘It’s too big,’ she sniffed.

Queenie didn’t like Wales either. The scenery was too vast, too overwhelming.

The dark green hills blocked out the sky, and the deep valleys were choked with trees, untouched by the sun, not a human being, not a house in sight. She longed for Glover Street, for the safety of bricks and mortar. Most of all she longed to be back with Laura.

It had been a relief when the coach had turned off the road and they began to pass places where people actually lived, only a few at first on each side of the road; bungalows and cottages and large houses in their own grounds, but getting closer together all the time, until they came to little streets running off the main road, groups of terraced houses, shops, a church, Caerdovey Town Hall, a garage, eventually stopping in a little sun-scorched square with a war memorial in the centre.

The first coach had got there before them and was empty, most of the children having already been taken to their billets. Only a few stragglers remained, clutching their parcels of clothes and looking pathetic and lost. One little boy had wet his pants and was bawling his head off. The newcomers were shown into a hall with a plaque over the door proclaiming it had been donated to the town by Councillor Wilfred Jones in 1928. They were given a welcome drink of lemonade and a fairy cake while a lady with a lovely sing-song voice read out their names.

‘Here, miss,’ Queenie called, when she came to Queenie Tate, Mary Monaghan and Hester Oliver.

‘You’re to go with Mrs Davies, dears,’ the woman said. ‘She’ll drive you to the Mertons’ house.’

Mrs Davies came up. Her red face was streaked with perspiration and she smelled of mothballs. ‘Isn’t it hot?’ she gasped, but didn’t wait for an answer, ushering them back outside into a little black car, like a box on wheels.

Queenie sat in the front; the girls, wide-eyed and plainly terrified by now, got in the back.

She was the district nurse, Mrs Davies explained when they set off, but had taken the day off to help with the evacuees, seeing as she had a car. The billets had been arranged weeks ago, Caerdovey was very well organised, she said proudly. ‘Rather more children have turned up than expected, but I’m sure we’ll cope. Most people are only too willing to do their bit and take evacuees, but a few have had to be forcefully told where their duty lay, including Mrs Merton.

Mind you, she’s not Welsh,’ she added, as if this explained everything.

It didn’t bode well for the future, Queenie reckoned, if they were being placed with a woman who didn’t want them.

‘You won’t see much of her,’ Mrs Davies went on. ‘She owns a pottery factory on the other side of Caerdovey and she’s out most of the time. Mr Merton has never put in an appearance, so she might be a widow, or she might not. No one knows, not even Gwen Hughes, the housekeeper. Gwen lives on the premises and she’s the one who’ll be looking after you. You’ll find her a bit taciturn at first, but she’ll be fine once she gets to know you.’

Queenie didn’t know what tacky-turn meant, but got the drift. She noticed houses were getting sparse again. They must be approaching the other end of town.

‘Here we are,’ Mrs Davies sang, drawing up outside a large, grim, grey stone residence with small windows draped with blackout. Behind the rickety fence, there was a small patch of grass, yellow and parched, and there was a name, not a number on the plain, wooden door: The Old School House.

They followed Mrs Davies through a gate at the side into a large expanse of more parched grass surrounded by a high, grey wall covered with ivy. A small woman was unpegging washing off a line strung between two trees bearing hundreds of apples.

‘Gwen,’ Mrs Davies called when the woman appeared not to notice their arrival.

‘I’ve brought your evacuees.’

The woman turned. Her face was as grey as the house and her hair was gathered in an untidy bun on top of her head. The escaping strands had stuck to her neck with the heat. She didn’t look faintly pleased to see them, and approached, a mountain of clothes over her arm.

‘Mrs Merton was hoping we’d only get one or two,’ she said in a dull voice.

‘Tell her she’s lucky to only get three,’ Mrs Davies said brusquely. She clearly had no time for Mrs Merton. ‘She’s got six spare bedrooms, she could have been landed with twice or three times as many. And if you’d seen the state of some of the children, in rags and bringing not a stitch of clothing with them, poor little beggars, you can also tell her she’s lucky to get such nice, respectable girls. As you can see, they’re all wearing hats,’ she added as if this was the ultimate sign of respectability. ‘Now, I hope you’ve got some food ready, Gwen.

I bet they’re starving after that long journey.’

‘There’s a lamb stew on the stove and I’ve made a fruit cake,’ Gwen Hughes muttered.

‘Gwen’s fruit cakes are famous throughout this part of Wales, so you’re in for a treat,’ Mrs Davies told them as proudly as if she’d made the cakes herself. ‘Two more things, a priest is coming to the Councillor Jones hall at eleven o’clock on Sunday to say Mass, though poor Councillor Jones would turn in his grave if he knew, him being strict Presbyterian like, but there isn’t a Catholic church in Caerdovey. And school starts at nine on Monday in the same place.’

‘Thank you,’ Queenie said politely. Mrs Davies must have assumed they were all Catholics because they’d come on the St Joan of Arc bus. She didn’t bother to disabuse her, and Hester and Mary seemed to have been struck dumb.

‘You’d better come indoors,’ Gwen said in a surly voice when Mrs Davies had gone, remarking that she’d never known it quite so hot as it was today.

Mary found her voice and whispered that she wanted to go to the lavatory, so Gwen took them through a dreary kitchen with a tiled floor and roughly plastered walls, and up a narrow wooden staircase. She pointed out the lavatory, then showed them where they were to sleep, in a long narrow room at the back of the house with only two beds, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers.

‘I’ll fetch another bed down from the attic,’ Gwen said wearily. ‘It’ll only be a trestle, but it’ll have to do. Would you like the stew now, or would you sooner wait till later and just have cake and a cup of tea?’

They decided they’d sooner wait for the stew, so Gwen went to put the kettle on, Mary to the lavatory, and Queenie took off her hat – Laura’s straw boater that she’d worn for school, now trimmed with pink ribbon rather than the chiffon scarf, which had been thought to look too dressy. The ribbon matched her pink and white flowered frock, which had also been Laura’s. She looked down in awe at the white canvas sandals on her tiny feet – Vera had given her a bottle of white powdery liquid to clean them with. The transformation of her wardrobe, from one faded, too small dress and a pair of tatty pumps, to such a grand, modish outfit, was another of the remarkable things she was having difficulty getting used to. Mrs Davies had spoken to her as if she was a normal human being, as if she was no longer the Queenie Tate whom everyone had looked down on at school, an expression of disgust on their sneering faces.

Mary invited them to come and see the lavatory. ‘There’s a bath in there as well and it’s not tin like our bath at home.’

The bath was white enamel with claw feet and had a tap at the end. Hester recalled they’d once lived in a house that had a bath just the same. ‘But Mummy said the water was hardly ever hot enough.’ Her bottom lip trembled. ‘I think I want my mummy, Queenie. I don’t like this house.’

‘I think it’s all right, so there!’ Mary made a face and told Hester she was a cry baby but, that night, after they’d eaten the cake and, later, the stew and more cake, played catch in the garden with the ball they’d brought with them, after Gwen had suggested they go to bed, even though it was only half past six, and Queenie had obediently agreed because perhaps it was the sort of thing people did in Wales, it was Mary who collapsed into a paroxysm of tears. She wanted her mam, her dad, her brothers, her dolls, her own bed. She wanted to go home, she sobbed. She hated Wales, and in particular Caerdovey. She hated Gwen.

She hated the food, which had in fact been very nice, especially the cake, and she’d eaten every mouthful. She hated everything and everybody.

‘There, there,’ Queenie soothed, wanting to cry every bit as much. Then Hester had joined in the tears, and she’d had to flit from bed to bed, telling them they’d soon get used to it.