The Other Child (13 page)

Once we had left the town behind and were driving through the countryside, there was absolute silence in the bus, except for the quiet sobbing of two little girls who tried in vain to suppress the noise they were making. No one said a word. Everyone was afraid, tired and hungry. I believe all of them felt like I did: we were afraid that if we opened our mouths we would burst into tears.

I pressed my face against the glass. I could still see some of the outlines of the landscape. No houses, rolling hills, few trees. The sea must be somewhere. I was very far from London.

The bus stopped abruptly at the side of the road, and when the instruction came to get off the bus I was confused. Here, in the middle of nowhere? Were we to spend the night on the ground between one meadow and the next?

After we had got off the bus and again lined up in the obligatory twos, I saw a beam of light some distance away. The nearer we came to it, the clearer the silhouettes of buildings could be made out against the night sky. They were two- and three-storey houses that seemed to have been dropped here in the middle of nowhere. Nevertheless, they promised light and – more importantly – warmth. It had grown disagreeably cold, and I was freezing in my summer dress, cardigan, and socks that slipped down.

In front of the buildings we had to stop and wait. They appeared to be a tiny shop and two residential houses, as far as I could see. One of the nurses motioned for us to wait outside, and we spread out on a meadow opposite the shop. Although we had not walked far, most of us sat down immediately in the stubbly grass, which was already covered in the night dew. We were exhausted. Our fear had drained us.

I could not stand the cold any longer. I opened my little suitcase and fished out the sweater with the sleeves that were too short and pulled it on. I also put one of the pairs of socks my mother had knitted for me on top of my other socks in the hope that my icy feet would warm up a little. I saw that Brian did not have any socks on, and reluctantly sacrificed my second pair of new socks. They were too big for him, but as he did not fill his shoes we could fit the extra wool in too. I suspected that he had inherited the shoes from one of his older brothers and, as I expected of the Somervilles, there had been no attempt to see that they fitted him. For the first time since we had left London, he looked away from me. He looked at the socks, and stroked them again and again with an almost reverent look on his face.

‘Listen, they aren't a present! I want them back!' I warned him.

He did not stop stroking the wool.

The door of the little shop opened, as did the doors of the buildings next to it. A crowd of adults rushed out. They all seemed excited and angry. They were talking frantically at our escorting nurses. From what I could gather, they were angry about our late arrival. They had reckoned on us arriving much earlier by train in Scarborough and therefore also earlier there. They were annoyed that they had spent half the day waiting here with nothing to do.

A girl sitting next to me poked me with her elbow. ‘Those are the families you are going to live with,' she hissed. ‘The host families!'

‘I worked that out already,' I replied haughtily.

She gave me a short sideways glance. ‘I'm going to be picked up by my aunt. What about you?'

‘I don't know who's picking me up.'

Now she looked sorry for me. ‘You poor thing!'

‘Why?' I asked. I tried to sound curt, but my heart was beating hard.

‘Well, one hears such terrible stories,' the girl next to me replied with palpable pleasure. ‘One can end up in quite awful families. You might have to work hard all day and barely be given any food. And they treat people badly. Very badly. I heard that one time—'

‘Rubbish!' I interrupted, but inside I was much more shocked than I let on. What if she were right? And some hell were awaiting me? Then I would run away, I decided, even if I had to walk to London. I was not going to stay in a place where I was treated badly!

The adults assembled in front of us and one of the nurses began to read out names on her list. The children who were named had to come to the front and were handed over to their new families. In most cases, they were obviously related, while in some cases there seemed to have been another reason for agreement and allocation beforehand. I dearly hoped that these people had honourable motives such as pity and a wish to help, but I had my doubts. Auntie Edith had told me that families who took in evacuees were given money from the government. I remembered that my mother had been annoyed with Auntie Edith and told her off for ‘her big mouth'. My mother had not wanted me to hear about the money. It put a question mark over the pure intentions of the host families.

The girl next to me was called up. She rushed forward and with a happy squeak fell into the arms of a young woman who held her tight and seemed close to tears. Her aunt. I envied the girl bitterly. In the past I had never thought about why – apart from Auntie Edith and her brood in London – I had no relatives, but now in this circumstance it suddenly seemed like a painful gap in my life. How nice it would be to cuddle up to someone who knew me and loved me.

Instead I was sitting in a field somewhere in Yorkshire, in the dark except for the weak light cast by oil lamps that had been brought outside. I was far away from everything I knew and had no idea what my future would hold. A small traumatised boy was at my side, continuously stroking the socks I had put on his feet. He seemed determined to never leave my side again. And now those people who had not yet been allocated a child came towards those of us who had not been called up. They went down the rows slowly, shining torches or stable lamps in our faces and choosing whom to take with them. We were examined and assessed, then either rejected or picked out. Even today, as I write this, I can feel how small, humiliated and helpless I felt. Today such a procedure is unthinkable. In twenty-first-century England it is unimaginable to think of children sitting in a field being more or less auctioned off like animals at a country fair. But it happened in the exceptional circumstances of those years. The virulence of the German air raids on London had taken everyone by surprise, and the number of victims exceeded people's fears. The aerial defence of London, undertaken with a woeful lack of equipment, had proven to be inadequate. The aim of bringing children to the safety of the countryside was a top priority, no matter how. There had not been time to organise everything perfectly. One could not worry about the children's psychology. They would have to cope.

A woman stopped in front of me, bending down towards me. She did not look much older than my mother and had a friendly face with finely chiselled features. She smiled.

‘So, what's your name?' she asked and then answered her own question as she read my name badge: ‘Fiona Swales. And you were born on 29th July 1929. So you are eleven.'

I nodded. For some reason I could not say anything. She held out her hand. ‘I'm Emma Beckett. I live on a farm not far from here. I heard about the evacuation from London on the radio and wanted to help. Would you like to live with us for a while?'

Again, I nodded. She must have started to think I was mute. She seemed really nice, and I realised I could have had it much worse.

A farm … I had never been on a farm in my life.

She looked at Brian. ‘And this is your little brother?'

Brian, who was still fixated by his socks, knew that we were talking about him. He clung to my arm. I tried to shake him off, but he would not let go. ‘No.' Finally I had found my voice again. ‘I don't have a brother. This is a neighbour's child. He is … he shouldn't be here.'

‘No? Do his parents know he's here?'

‘His parents are dead,' I explained. ‘And his brothers and sisters. The whole family is, except for him. The night before last a bomb fell on their house.'

Emma Beckett looked deeply distressed. ‘But that's terrible! What are we to do with him?' She turned around and beckoned for a young woman to come over, to whom she explained the situation in a few words. The woman began to breathe heavily in panic and seemed completely out of her depth with the situation. She leafed through her lists wildly.

‘He's not on the list?' she asked. ‘What's his name?'

‘Brian Somerville,' I replied.

She leafed through them again and shook her head. ‘He's not listed!'

I had just said that. I told her how he had been given to us and how he then suddenly ended up in the train with us. The young woman beckoned for a Red Cross nurse to come over. I stood up. I did not want to crouch down so small in front of the three excited adults who were now surrounding Brian and me. Brian stood up immediately too. He held onto my arm tightly.

As was to be expected, the nurse could not find his name on her list either.

‘He shouldn't have got on the train,' she stated, although it was rather too late to correct the error.

‘What's to become of him?' asked Emma Beckett once again. Brian started to shake. His little hand clasped mine so hard that it hurt.

‘He should really go back to London with us,' said the nurse.

‘But he obviously has no one to go back to!' cried Emma.

‘There are orphanages.'

‘And bombs too! He's much safer here!'

The nurse hesitated. ‘I can't just take an unregistered child from London. I'd get in trouble and—'

‘We could take him to the home in Whitby,' the young woman suggested. ‘That's where the children are going who don't find host families here tonight.'

Emma Beckett squatted down and looked closely at Brian. ‘He's in shock,' she said. ‘I don't think he should be separated from Fiona right now. She's all he has right now.'

Oh, wonderful! Somehow I had guessed it during the journey: Brian Somerville and I would continue to stick together. The adults debated back and forth, but in the end our escorts agreed to Emma Beckett taking Brian to her farm too.

‘We'll sort things out in London,' said the nurse and scribbled Emma's name, address and a few more notes down on her notepad. ‘You'll hear from us.'

‘Fine,' said Emma with relief. She took my suitcase. ‘Come on, children. We're driving home.'

Her friendliness and attempt to make the situation easier for us annoyed me a little.
We're driving home!
Did she seriously believe I would see her farm in the middle of nowhere as home, just because she wanted me to? My home was with my mummy in London. Nowhere else.

Brian and I trotted along behind her, Brian holding my arm tight. I had almost grown used to this weight that I had been dragging around for about twelve hours now. We went back down the path, then turned left along the road for a stretch until we saw a church on the left. An all-terrain vehicle was parked by the side of the road. It had two open benches at the back. A large stable lamp on one of the benches provided some light for the scene. As we approached, a shadow peeled away from the driver's door. Someone had been leaning against the car, waiting for us. A big boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old, stepped into the circle of light thrown by the lamp. He was wearing long trousers and a thick sweater, was chewing something (a blade of grass, as I saw when I was right next to him), and had a crabby expression on his face. Unlike Emma, he did not seem to be pleased with our sudden appearance.

‘This is Chad, my son,' said Emma, swiftly stowing my suitcase on the floor of the back part. ‘Chad, this is Fiona Swales. And this is Brian Somerville.'

Chad stared at us. ‘I thought you wanted to take in
one
child. Now it's
two
!'

‘I'll explain later,' said Emma.

I stretched my hand out to Chad. After some hesitation he shook it. We had a good look at each other. There was something dismissive in his look, but also interest.

‘Chad doesn't have brothers or sisters,' Emma explained. ‘I think it could be nice for him to have other children in the house for a while.'

Clearly Chad did not think so, but the topic must have been discussed so often and heatedly already between his mother and him that he did not dare to be too vocal about his opinion right now. He mumbled something and then swung himself up onto the bench.

‘Take the two little ones up front, Mum,' he said.

I was annoyed that he called me ‘little', and incensed that he lumped me and Brian together. In my eyes Brian was still almost a baby.

‘I'm eleven,' I said defiantly, jutting out my chin to look a little bigger.

Now Chad grinned. He looked down at me from the height of the car.

‘Already eleven? Fancy that!' he said and even I realised that he was making fun of me. ‘I'm fifteen and I don't want to have anything to do with you or the little boy holding your hand. All right? You leave me alone, I'll leave you alone, and we'll just wait for the Germans to lose the war and for everything to go back to normal!'

‘Chad!' said Emma, in an admonishing tone.

We got into the car. Although Chad had been so rude to me, he was the first person that day who had managed to lift my mood somewhat. I did not know why. As we drove off from the church and into the darkness and uncertainty ahead, my heart was a little lighter. I felt some curiosity about what was awaiting me.

Sunday, 12th October

3

Leslie woke with a banging headache and wondered, once she had collected herself enough to remember the night before, how wretched she would be feeling now, if she had not taken those two aspirin.

She forced herself to get up, and swayed out of bed. She was terribly thirsty. Her mouth and throat were dry and burnt. She went into the kitchen, turned the tap on, bent down and let the ice-cold water run into her mouth. Then she splashed water on her face, to wake up.

When she straightened up, she was feeling a little better.