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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
Life for Maisie Jackson has been far from happy for a number of years - ever since her mother re-married after her beloved father's death, and her new stepfather and stepbrother moved into their small terraced house in Armley, Leeds. Suffering abuse at her cruel stepbrother's hand, and mercilessly tormented by her stepfather, Maisie dreams of escaping to a new life far away. And it seems her dreams are about to come true.It is 1939 and war is suddenly looming dark on the horizon. For many, with memories of the 'war to end all wars' still fresh in their minds, this is a horrific and frightening prospect. But for nine-year-old Maisie, it represents her longed-for chance of freedom - maybe she'll be evacuated to the countryside, to one of the places her father used to tell her about? As the the small market town of Middlebeck in the Yorkshire dales prepares for the arrival of the evacuees, many of the villagers ponder on how they will cope with this sudden influx of visitors. But they are all determined to pull together and welcome the strangers with open arms, eager to 'do their bit' for the war effort. In this time of trouble, when life suddenly seems so precious and vulnerable, true and lasting friendships are formed and love blossoms as the dark cloud of war eventually clears to the bright blue sky of a hopeful future.
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Seitenzahl: 727
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
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Above the Bright Blue Sky
MARGARET THORNTON
Dedication
To my husband, John, with love, thanking him once again for his support, encouragement and understanding.
A special mention for Christopher, the youngest of my five grandchildren, who was puzzled as to why he was not included in some of the earlier dedications.
And to my agent, Dorothy Lumley, and Lara Dafert, my new editor at Allison and Busby; my thanks to you both for having faith in me.
Contents
Chapter One
Maisie crouched halfway down the stairs, her ear pressed hard against the bannister railings, listening to the conversation that was going on between her mother and her step-father. It was developing into more of a row though, now, than a conversation, but that was nothing fresh. Sidney Bragg spent a good deal of his time shouting, either at her mother or, sometimes, at his son, Percy, or – most of all – at her, Maisie. Not so much, however, at his two younger children, Joanie and Jimmy, aged three and two, the ones who had arrived on the scene since he had married her mother four years ago. The little kids were learning to keep out of his way as much as possible, just as Maisie herself had soon learned to do when he came to live with them.
She knew she would get a clout across the ear, or, even worse, what he called a ‘bloody good hiding’ with his leather belt if he were to find her eavesdropping. She knew that that was the proper grown-up word for it – Maisie loved words and what they meant – but it was usually thought of as ‘nosy-parkering’. But she had a right to know what was going to happen to her. Her mum would tell her nothing any more; she was too scared of him, no doubt. Although Maisie knew that once, a long time ago – so long ago it seemed that she could scarcely remember it – her mother had used to tell her all sorts of things; and she knew her mother had used to love her very much… But that was before Daddy had died.
Maisie hated Sidney Bragg with an intensity that frightened her at times. She knew it was wrong to hate people. The vicar from the big church down the road who came into school sometimes to talk to the children had told them so. He had even said they should try to love their enemies. But Maisie shut her mind to that. In fact, she was not sure whom she hated the most, Sidney Bragg or his son, Percy.
It was Sidney who was speaking now. ‘The kid’s got to go, Lily. I keep telling yer. I’ve told yer till I’m blue in the face. It’s for her own good.’
‘It’s because you want to get rid of her, you mean.’
‘Don’t talk so bloody stupid! Get rid of ’er? Why should I want to do that, eh? She’s got her uses, when she can be bothered to take her nose out of her bloody books. She fetches me ciggies and me paper, an’ I know you rely on her to mind the two nippers. Oh aye; that’s why you want to keep her here, i’n’t it? I gerrit. You’re scared you’re gonna lose yer little nursemaid. You won’t have so much time to sit around on yer fat backside…’
‘Give over, Sid,’ came her mother’s plaintive voice. Maisie knew she was well accustomed to her husband’s insults and clouts across the head, so much so that she scarcely bothered to retaliate any more. ‘I look after our Joanie and Jimmy as best I can; you know I do. And why shouldn’t the lass help me out now and again? I’ve got me hands full, what with me job and you on shift work, and your Percy an’ all.’
‘Oh, stop yer bloody whining, woman! And leave Percy out of it. He’s a good lad, our Percy, an’ he pays his way. Anyroad, it’ll be one less mouth to feed with your Nellie out of the way.’
Nellie! The little girl detested the name she had been called by ever since he had moved in with them. Her full name was Eleanor May Jackson, and her mother, and her daddy, too, had used to call her by her proper first name, Eleanor. But Maisie had been Daddy’s pet name for her. ‘My little mayflower,’ he had called her, often shortening it to Maisie. Daddy had been a country lad, so he had used to tell her, from a village in the Yorkshire Dales. He had loved the coming of the spring every year, and the sight of the frothy white may blossom in the hedgerows, he said, had been a sure sign that spring had really arrived. Eleanor May had been so christened because both her parents had liked the name Eleanor, and because she had been born on the first day of May. That had been in 1930, and she was now nine years old.
But Sid Bragg had laughed and poked fun at her. Eleanor was far too pretentious – or swanky, as he had termed it – for a kid from a terraced house in Armley. He had decided she would be Nellie from that time on, a good sensible name, and her mother had had no more sense than to go along with his decree. It was then that the little girl had started to think of herself as Maisie, although to her family, her teachers and the children at school, and her neighbours – almost everyone, in fact – she was known as Nellie Jackson. Only her mum, occasionally, called her Maisie, when she remembered that that was what she preferred, and when Sid was nowhere around. One blessing, she supposed, was that she was not called Nellie Bragg, as she might have been. Her step-father had never suggested that she should have the same name as the rest of the household, probably because he considered her to be of little importance. And the dislike was mutual.
‘You’re always going on about not being able to make ends meet,’ Sid was saying now, ‘although God knows why. Yer’ve got yer charrin’ job, ’aven’t yer?’ There was barely enough left over when he had paid his nightly visit to the pub down the road, or his dinnertime visit if he happened to be on late shift, thought Maisie, but she knew her mother would not have the courage to say so; or to remind him that she was forced to go out to work because he left her short of money.
‘I would miss her,’ said her mother. ‘She’s my little girl. Of course I know you’ve never taken to her…’
‘I’ve never said that…’
‘You don’t need to, Sid. It’s quite obvious you don’t like her, and the child knows it, I’m sure she does.’
‘Huh! All the more reason for her to go then, if she hates me so much…’
‘I didn’t say she hated you,’ replied Lily. (But I do, thought Maisie, I do, I really do…)
‘She’s quite a pretty little thing, I suppose,’ said Sid, to Maisie’s surprise. ‘An’ I know our Percy thinks so. I dare say the lad’ll miss her, but he’ll have to get used to her not being there, same as you will.’
‘Percy hardly ever bothers to speak to her,’ replied Lily. ‘The child might as well be a fly on the wall for all the notice he takes of her.’
‘Oh, you’d be surprised,’ said Sid. ‘I’ve a feeling he’s rather taken with her.’ He laughed, a nasty sneering laugh, just like the one Maisie had heard Percy make when he crept into her bedroom at night.
He knows! she thought. Her step-father actually knew what Percy was doing to her when the others were fast asleep, his hand over her mouth so that she did not cry out. Percy had threatened her that she would get a good belting, worse than any she had ever had, if she were to tell, if not from his father then from Percy himself. It sickened her to think that Sid might even have been egging him on, and now was laughing about it.
‘But she’s only a kid, ain’t she?’ Sid continued. ‘My lad’ll have to wait till she’s grown up a bit, eh, Lily?’
Lily did not answer that. ‘I don’t see the need for her to be evacuated,’ was what she said. ‘We’re not even at war yet.’
‘Bloody close to it. Only a matter of days, they’re saying.’
‘Aye, well, that’s as may be. If we lived in London, happen I could see the sense of it. But not up here in the north of England…’
‘Don’t talk so bloody daft! Liverpool’ll cop it when Hitler starts dropping ’is bombs, an’ Manchester an’ all.’
‘But we’re in Leeds. I can’t see as there’ll be much danger here…’
‘Then that shows how stupid you are, don’t it? It’s a big city, ain’t it? So is Bradford an’ Hull an’ York. An’ there’s factories an’ mills an’ munition works an’ God knows what else. Look ’ere; the Government’s started this evacuation lark, and Nellie’s school says as how they’re going…’
‘They won’t all be going, Sid…’
‘Give over butting in, will yer? Nellie’s going and that’s that. What’s the matter with yer? Don’t you want her to be safe?’
‘Of course I do, but if she’s in danger staying here, then so are our Joanie and Jimmy, and me an’ all. And you and Percy.’
‘Yeah…well; we can’t all go running off, can we? We’re doing vital work, me and our Percy, at t’ mill.’
‘There’s nothing to stop me going though, is there, Sid? Me and the little ’uns. They won’t let kids under school age go on their own, but they’re encouraging mothers and babies to get away as well as schoolchildren.’
‘What the hell are you talking about, woman? Who’s gonna look after me and t’ lad if you go gallivanting off into t’ countryside? No; you’ll stop here. Somebody’s got to keep the ’ome fires burning. So that’s settled, right? An’ I don’t want to ’ear no more about it. Now, you go an’ gerron with yer washing up, and I’ll fetch me ciggies from upstairs. I’m going down to t’ pub…’
At the sound of her step-father getting up from his chair, Maisie scuttled silently up the stairs and into her bedroom. She leapt into bed and pulled the covers tightly around her, closing her eyes and feigning sleep. It was doubtful that he would come in and look at her… Him, Sid, her mother’s husband. She could never think of him as her father and never, in all the four years he had lived with them, had she called him Dad or Daddy; she had managed to get away with calling him nothing at all. But he might cast a glance at his own two children, Joanie and Jimmy, fast asleep in the double bed at the other side of the room.
Fifteen-year-old Percy had a room to himself, little more than a large cupboard really, but he had flatly refused to share a room with two ‘snivelling smelly brats’ as he put it. He had had the larger room to himself at first, when Sid had married Lily Jackson and they had come to live there. It was only right, as he was by far the older of their two children, Sid had decreed, and Lily, even then, had not had the courage to argue with him. So Maisie had slept in the box room, not much caring where she was, only knowing she was unhappy and all mixed up inside herself since those two awful bossy males had taken over their household.
Now she was back in the bigger room again, so that Percy could have the privacy he demanded, but it was very much changed from the time she had slept there four years ago. Percy, in fact, was quite right when he declared that Joanie and Jimmy – half-brother and -sister both to him and to Maisie – were smelly brats. So they were. Jimmy, at two years old, was still wearing nappies, and Joanie, one year older, still wet the bed frequently. Maisie knew that her mother had a difficult job trying to keep up with the washing. It was often skimped on, the sheets being dried hastily and put back on the bed just as they were, making the whole room stink of stale urine, or worse, at times.
Her mother was a different person since she had married Sidney Bragg. Maisie was well aware of the change in her, although it had come about gradually. She often wondered what had happened to the pretty happy lady with the curly brown hair and laughing eyes whom she remembered from the time when she, Maisie, had been a very little girl. The person she lived with now was slovenly and careworn with lank greasy hair, and all the sparkle had gone from her silver-grey eyes. They did not chat and sing and laugh together as they had used to do. It even seemed, at times, as though this person that her mother had changed into did not love her little girl any more. And then, occasionally, Maisie would catch a glimpse of the old mummy in a smile or a kiss or a sudden hug, and she would tell herself that her mother must still be the same person deep down, beneath all her cares and anxieties.
The bedroom was shabby now and not very clean. The net curtains hung in tatters at the windows; neither they nor the faded draw curtains had been washed for ages, but, from what Maisie had gathered, they would soon need to be replaced by blackout blinds. The wallpaper was dirty and hanging off in places where the two younger children had pulled at it. It had been drawn on, too; a scribbly mess of red and blue wax crayon that would not come off. Maisie had been taught, as a little girl, to take care of the few possessions she had and she would never have dreamed of scribbling on the wallpaper. But Joanie and Jimmy, it seemed, could get away with all sorts of dreadful behaviour. Joanie ran wild in the street with the neighbours’ children, with Jimmy usually not far behind her, and Maisie knew they were regarded as a couple of ruffians with their dirty faces and habitually running noses.
They were big children for their age, but then Sidney Bragg was a giant of a man, over six feet in height and hefty with it; and Percy was of a similar build. The children had inherited, too, the straw-coloured straight hair and pale blue eyes of both Sidney and Percy; and Maisie, whenever she looked at them, could see no resemblance to either herself or her mother. Which was, no doubt, the reason that she could not like her half-sister and -brother very much.
Sid went downstairs again without entering the bedroom, to Maisie’s relief, and soon afterwards she heard the door banging; he was off on his nightly visit to the pub. She relaxed her tensed-up limbs and thought hard about what she had heard. She knew about the evacuation scheme, of course. They had been told about it at school. They had been back only a few days since the long summer break, but already some of the kids had got their cases packed, awaiting the signal that it was time to go. Maisie had taken the official letter home that they had been given at school, but her mother, after giving it a cursory glance, had shoved it behind the wooden clock on the mantelpiece, where the few items of mail they received always ended up. She had been pleased to hear her mother say, a few moments ago, that she would miss her, and Maisie knew that if she were to be evacuated, then her mother would be the only person she would miss at all. But she knew, also, with a tiny stab of guilt, that she would not miss Mummy nearly as much as she would once have done, when she had been the happy and bubbly young woman of her memory.
What odd words they were that had recently come into their language. Evacuation, evacuated, evacuee… Maisie said them over to herself several times to get used to them. And she would be an evacuee. Where would they go? she wondered. And how would they get there? On a train or on a bus? Or a charabanc, as they were sometimes called. Maisie remembered, in what seemed to be the dim and distant past, going on a ‘chara’ once with her mum and dad to a place called Scarborough, by the sea. She vaguely recalled the castle up on the hill – they had stayed near there in a boarding house – and she had made sand pies on the beach and paddled at the edge of the sea; and Daddy, with his trousers rolled up to his knees, had paddled too, holding her hand, whilst Mummy had sat in a deck chair. That was the only holiday she could remember. Since her mother had got married again and had the babies – it had seemed no time at all before the house was full of babies and bottles and nappies – they had not been anywhere together, not even for a day. Maisie had been on Sunday School outings to Kirkstall Abbey and to the grounds of a big house called Temple Newsam, but those places were only a few miles away and the trips were only once a year. And just lately she had not been to Sunday School at all; she had been too busy helping her mother with the babies and the endless washing.
Yes; Scarborough, she mused… Wouldn’t it be just great if they were to go there; she and the rest of the kids from her school? Probably not all of ’em though. It was quite a big school and no doubt a lot of the mums and dads would not want their children to go away. Not like Sid, whom she knew could not wait to get rid of her. Well, she could not wait, neither, to get away from him and his horrible son. She made up her mind, in that minute, that if Percy came to her room that night, then she would scream out and wake everybody up. She had nothing to lose; she would be far away from them all in a few days time, with a bit of luck.
She pushed the thought of Percy to the back of her mind again; the memory of him mauling at her beneath the bedclothes; touching her legs and other, more private parts, that she knew you shouldn’t let anybody touch, and his wet red mouth slobbering all over her. She shuddered, and concentrated instead on how nice it would be to get away. It might not be to Scarborough, of course. She knew that was quite a long way. Perhaps it would be to the countryside. There were lots of lovely villages in Yorkshire. Her dad had lived in one called Grassington before he had moved to Leeds to find work. And it was then that he had met her mum, when they had worked at the same woollen mill.
She closed her eyes, thinking of the black-and-white cows in the meadows, munching at the grass and the golden buttercups, the white mayblossom in the hedgerows, and, above it all, the sun shining from a clear blue sky. It had always been a gloriously sunny day, or so it had seemed, on those infrequent trips to the countryside. Here in Leeds, particularly nearer to the city centre, the sky was more often grey than blue, the sun obscured by the smoke from the chimneys of the myriad factories and mills.
How lovely it would be to live in the countryside with woods and fields all around, instead of rows and rows of red-brick houses which all looked alike, thought Maisie. But would she, perhaps, find it all too quiet? said a small voice inside her. This, after all, was her home. She had known nothing else but this humble house surrounded by factory chimneys and built almost in the shadow of Armley Jail. The only green she saw was in the nearby cemetery, and across the main road, near to where the posher people lived, there was a park. The kids from Maisie’s area, though, were not encouraged to play there. They were chased away by rival gangs whenever they ventured near and fights sometimes ensued. Maisie had learned to keep to her own neck of the woods.
She would miss her mum, she told herself now, feeling ashamed that she had thought, for a moment, that she might not do so. But perhaps her mother would be able to come and visit her, if she was not too far away. And, she reminded herself again, it would he heaven to get away from those other two, her step-father and Percy. And maybe, by the time she returned from wherever she was going, a miracle would have happened and they would no longer be there… But what she had in mind she was not quite sure.
She made herself think of pleasant things – of woods and fields, trees and flowers – and at last she fell asleep. But thoughts of the dreadful Percy and the fervent hope that he would not disturb her that night were not far below the surface of her dreaming.
Lily, also, was thinking of her step-son, Percy, and the remarks that her husband had made.
Sid, after fetching his cigarettes from upstairs, had gone out immediately to the Rose and Crown down the road. He would not be back until after closing time and, if he followed his usual procedure he would expect – or, more likely, demand – what he called his marital rights, whether she happened to be awake or asleep. Lily was usually awake, waiting for his lumbering steps on the stairs, or sometimes the sound of him stumbling and crashing around, if he had had too much of a skinfull. If that was the case, she would breathe a sigh of relief. It meant that he would be incapable of making love to her, although his abuse of her could in no way be credited with such a name. There was nothing in his almost nightly routine that resembled love, or even tenderness or respect, nor had it done for almost as long as she could remember. Sometimes he didn’t even make it up the stairs, then she would find him crashed out on the sofa in the morning, his clothes and the cushions stained with his own vomit.
What was that remark he had made? Lily pondered, as she sat by the burnt out embers of the fire; that Percy had taken quite a fancy to Nellie – or Maisie, as she liked to be called – but that he would have to wait until she grew up a bit. Over my dead body! she thought with feeling. It wasn’t the first time she had heard Sid hint that the lad was taking an interest in the little girl, but she had, until now, not taken a great deal of notice. As far as she was concerned the two of them – step-sister and step-brother, as they were in actuality – ignored one another as much as was possible and their dislike seemed to be a mutual thing. Now she began to wonder. She recalled Sid’s sneering grin and the sardonic gleam in his pale blue eyes when he mentioned his son and her daughter; and, she recalled, she had seen the selfsame mocking expression on Percy’s face, too. And it was true that Maisie did, at times, appear afraid of the lad. Lily had sometimes seen her cast nervous glances in his direction, unaware she was being noticed.
But why, then, had the child not said something, if the boy was tormenting her…or worse? Or had she, Lily, become so apathetic, so bogged down with her own concerns that she had failed to notice that her daughter might be in danger? Suddenly, a paroxysm of anger seized hold of her. If he ever lays a finger on my little girl, then – God help me! – I will kill him, she vowed.
She stared unseeingly into the faintly glowing cinders, then, as her rage subsided a little she began to consider – as she had done so many times before – however she had come to be in this pathetic and parlous state. Married to a husband for whom she had no feeling whatsoever other than contempt and, sometimes, fear; with two toddlers who resembled him, rather than herself, in all ways, and for whom, to her shame, she found it hard at times to summon up any maternal feelings; a step-son who treated her with indifference; and a house which had become a prison rather than a home, and a not very clean one at that. Set against all this, of course, was her first born child, Eleanor May, whom she and Davey had loved so very much. Lily still loved the child – of course she did – but she seemed to have lost her, gradually, as all her anxieties and hardships threatened to submerge her. And now, if she allowed her to go away as an evacuee, she would lose her completely.
She knew it was futile to look back, remembering the few happy years she had spent with Davey, then cursing her foolishness in getting married again. She had been desperately unhappy and lonely after Davey had died, as the result of influenza turning to pneumonia – it had happened so suddenly – and she had found herself in dire straits, too. She had been obliged to go out to work to pay the rent, taking Eleanor May with her, as the child was not then old enough for school. She had gone cleaning at some of the posher houses near to the park, and it was on one lunchtime break that she had met Sidney Bragg.
Such a tall, swarthily handsome man he had been, well built, with yellowish hair and rather prominent blue eyes; and how pleasant he had seemed. He had taken a fancy to the young widow, and he had been friendly towards her little girl, too, which had pleased Lily. She had soon learned, as he continued to meet her each day in the park – he was between jobs, he told her – that he was a widower, seventeen years older than herself. Lily was twenty-three at that time. His two eldest children had ‘flown the nest’ as he put it, and now there was only himself and his younger son, Percy, living in temporary lodgings. He led Lily to believe he had owned his own house; it was only later that she learned he had been evicted from a property, very similar to the one in which she lived, for non-payment of rent.
She could not have explained to anyone how, or why, it had happened, and so quickly, too. But she had married him, and he and his son had moved in with her and Eleanor May; soon to become Nellie, and destined to become a drudge, which was what her mother had very soon turned into.
Sid managed to find a job in another woollen mill – she was to learn, also, that he had been sacked from his previous employment, although she never knew why – as did Percy when he left school. Lily, in less than two years, had two babies, as well as a growing girl, to say nothing of two males who could eat whatever she put in front of them twice over, and then ask for more. She found it hard to make ends meet, particularly as a large share of Sid’s weekly wage went into the coffers of the Rose and Crown. She was forced to go out cleaning again when the children were old enough to take with her, sometimes to the annoyance of her employers. But they found that Lily Bragg was a hard worker who took a pride in making the furniture and paintwork, the glass and silverware in the houses of her affluent clients gleam with care and attention.
So much so that her own home, of which she had once been so proud, had deteriorated. Lily was often too tired and dispirited to give the place more than a cursory wipe with a duster or floor cloth. The furniture and wallpaper, the carpets and curtains all became shabby and soiled, but there was never enough money to buy replacements. Nor did Lily feel any incentive to do so.
A glance in the mirror, something she seldom bothered to do, told her that she looked older than her twenty-eight years. She had put on weight since having the babies and no longer had the slim waistline and hips of which she had used to be so proud. Her dark hair was already greying slightly at the temples and it no longer curled alluringly as it had done when she was younger. It hung now in greasy strands to her shoulders, or sometimes she pinned it back with a few kirby grips. It was such a palaver to wash her hair at the kitchen sink, which was why she did not now do so as often as she knew she should; although it had never seemed any bother to keep her hair clean and shining when Davey was alive, she recalled. She was still meticulous, however, about keeping her body and face clean, and she had a strip-wash by the sink every day when Sid and Percy were out of the way. And once a week, again making sure the menfolk were nowhere about, she took the zinc bath down from the nail on which it hung outside the back door. She then filled it with buckets of water from the kitchen tap, plus a few kettlefuls of boiling water heated on the open fire, and luxuriated in a long soak, washing herself well all over with pink carbolic soap. This was when the two little ones and Nellie had gone to bed.
The children shared a bath on another night of the week. Nellie used the water first – she was by far the cleanest of the three of them – followed by her two siblings. This was the only time during the week when Joanie and Jimmy could be said to be really clean. The rest of the time it was an uphill struggle to keep their noses wiped and their bottoms clean or to wash their continually grubby hands and faces.
Fortunately the house had an outside lavatory with what was known as a tippler system, flushed by water that had been used previously in the house. This was a vast improvement on Lily’s childhood memory of the Corporation ‘dirt cart’ coming once a week to empty the night soil and the ash-pit. She longed at times, pointless though she knew it was, for a proper indoor bathroom and lavatory, such as the ones in the houses she cleaned; with gleaming white tiles and a tablet of lavender-scented soap in a shell-shaped dish; that, indeed, would be luxury beyond measure.
What Sid and Percy did about their ablutions she neither knew nor cared. She guessed they visited the public baths occasionally; but Sid washed and shaved every evening when they had finished their meal, standing over the kitchen slop-stone splashing and puffing, and cursing whenever he cut himself with his open razor. The sight of him in his grubby vest with his braces dangling down revolted her.
Thinking of him now, Lily found herself wishing that she, too, could get away from it all; escape to the countryside, or wherever, with Nellie. Poor Nellie – Maisie – tried her best, her mother knew, to keep herself nice and clean. But many of the children in her school lived in far worse conditions than did her own family, so it probably didn’t matter too much to her if she was rather less than sparkling bright. And just recently the poor lass had caught head lice from the girl she sat next to in class. Lily had been forced to cut her dark hair very short, and she knew she had not made a good job of it either. It stuck out from her head in uneven spikes and Sid had laughed tauntingly and told her she looked like a hedgehog. Lily knew, though, that nothing could detract from the child’s true loveliness. Maisie had an inward beauty that shone from her deep brown eyes and lit up her rosy complexioned face when she smiled. Her smiles, however, had been all too rare of late. Lily found her thoughts returning again to Percy. Yes, she vowed, if I ever find him touching my child I will kill him; I really will…
No sooner had the thought formed in her head than the door burst open and her husband entered the room. He was far earlier than she had expected; she liked to be in bed, feigning sleep, if possible, before he came back from the pub.
‘You’re early,’ she said bravely, trying to force a smile to her lips. He was not as drunk as he usually was; in fact he seemed quite sober.
‘Aye, so I am. Pleased to see me, are yer?’ He leered at her, but she looked away, not answering.
‘Get yerself upstairs then…my Lily of Laguna.’ He gave a sardonic laugh. That was what he had used to call her when they were first married; a term of endearment that she hadn’t heard on his lips for a long time. ‘I thought we’d have an early night.’
She glanced at him apprehensively, thinking she might see a glimmer of affection in his eyes, but, as she had feared, there was nothing there but lust and a mocking smile.
‘Where’s…where’s Percy?’ she asked.
‘Why? What’s it to you?’
‘Nothing…I just wondered if he had got his key, that’s all.’
‘Of course he’s got his key, you silly cow. But he won’t be needing it. He’s going home with his mate, young Bertie, and he’ll be staying there the night, so he says. They’re three sheets to the wind already, the silly young divils.’ Sid laughed good-humouredly. Under-age drinking did not worry Percy, nor, it seemed, did it bother his father or the landlord.
‘Put t’ bolt on t’ door and get yerself movin’, lass. Ah’m as randy as a dog on heat tonight…’
Lily did as she was bid. Her little girl would be safe for tonight at least, but as for herself… She dreaded what was to come, knowing that, tonight, Sid was not likely to be hindered by his customary inebriation. The thought of escaping from everything was becoming even more tempting.
Chapter Two
‘We’re goin’ tomorrer,’ said Esme, the girl who shared a double desk with Maisie. ‘You know – on that evacuation thingy. I’m dead excited, me. I can’t wait to gerraway, can you?’
‘How d’you know we’re going?’ asked Maisie. ‘They haven’t said so yet, not definitely. Anyroad, I don’t know whether I’m going or not. Me mam hasn’t made up her mind.’
‘I ’eard two o’ t’ teachers talking in t’ yard at playtime,’ replied Esme. ‘Aye, it’s right. We’re goin’ in t’ mornin’. You’d best tell yer mam to make up ’er mind quick, or else you’ll be bombed to blazes. That’s what me dad says. Old ’Itler, he can’t wait to start droppin’ ’is bombs on all t’ cities.’
‘Esme Clough and Nellie Jackson, stop that talking at once!’ yelled Miss Patterdale, their teacher. ‘Have you finished writing out the list of spellings on the board?’
‘No, Miss.’ Both girls shook their heads.
‘Then get on with it, and in silence. I’ve told you all, I don’t want to hear a sound.’
Maisie put her dark head down and resumed her task. She didn’t want to talk to Esme Clough anyway. She was the one who had given her nits, but Miss Patterdale had not seen that as any reason to separate the pair of them. Several of the children in the class had head lice. Maisie didn’t like Esme very much. The girl was a cheat and a telltale and, because of that, was not popular with a lot of the girls – and the boys as well – who had their own code of honour. You didn’t try to get others into trouble, nor did you snitch at other kids’ answers. Maisie was surprised that Miss Patterdale had not cottoned on to the fact that Esme frequently copied the answers to her sums, not because Esme was a ‘thickie’, to use the common idiom, but because she was too lazy to think for herself.
Or maybe Miss Patterdale was not a very good teacher… Maisie had sometimes seen her reading a copy of Woman’s Weekly behind the teachers’ desk whilst the class was occupied in composition or sums. She was sure that this was ‘not on’, and she had once seen the teacher quickly cover the magazine with the class register when Mr Ormerod, the headmaster, had unexpectedly entered the room.
‘I ’ope she’s not goin’ with us, the miserable old cow!’ Esme ventured another whispered remark under cover of the desk lid, to which Maisie just gave a brief nod. It was a good job Miss Patterdale had not noticed, or Esme might have got the cane.
Maisie, in point of fact, agreed with Esme. She hoped, too, that their own class teacher would not be going with them to…wherever they were going. Maisie had already made up her mind that she would tell her mother that she wanted to go. She did not want to miss out on the adventure, as well as her desire to get away from the two awful menfolk in the house. She felt worried, though, about what Esme had said about the bombs. If her mother was left behind then she would be in danger, and so would the little ’uns, Joanie and Jimmy. Still, Esme was known to exaggerate; more than that, she told whopping big lies sometimes, so it might not be as bad as she made out. Anyway, they still hadn’t been told definitely that they were going tomorrow. That might well be another of Esme’s yarns.
At the start of the afternoon session, however, all the classes were summoned into the school hall where the headmaster, Mr Ormerod, told them that the evacuation scheme was to be put in force the very next day. Those children whose parents wished them to go were to be at school by half-past eight, with their luggage, of course, and then they would be taken by bus to Leeds City Station.
‘Where are we goin’, Sir?’ piped up one of the smallest boys on the front row. Maisie thought he was very brave. It was not done to shout out like that in assembly, especially to Mr Ormerod, who, at six feet tall, with a beaked nose and a glowering expression, was not someone to mess around with.
However, it seemed that today might be an exception, because the headmaster actually smiled. ‘That I can’t tell you, laddie,’ he replied, ‘because I don’t know myself. All will be revealed to you in due course. Now…will you all return to your classrooms, quietly please. Any talking about this can wait till playtime…’
Maisie’s class was normally subdued, under the eagle eye of Miss Patterdale who did not allow talking in lesson time. Only occasionally, when the children were engaged in more recreational pursuits, such as drawing – very seldom painting, because Maisie guessed their teacher would think that too messy – or sewing (or raffia work for the boys) they might be permitted to talk very quietly. This afternoon was one of those occasions, it being Friday and a time for a slightly more free and easy mood. Miss Patterdale had placed a few brightly coloured dahlias in a vase on her desk and instructed the children to make a drawing of them, which they could then colour with the pencil crayons. This was quite an event; very rarely did the crayons leave the big tall stock cupboard at the back of the room. But this, apparently, was a day on which to relax the usually strict environment of the clasroom; to enable the children to forget what was to happen on the following day, maybe.
Esme continued to say, to all around her, that she just couldn’t wait to go. Some of the boys, too, seemed very excited about the adventure that lay ahead.
‘Hey, ’appen we’ll go to Blackpool,’ Maisie heard a lad called Billy say to his mate. ‘It’s dead good there. There’s a bloomin’ big tower, miles ’igh, and sticks o’ rock, and fish and chips you can eat in t’ street. I went there once wi’ me mam and dad.’
‘Course we won’t go to Blackpool,’ scoffed Arthur. ‘Don’t talk so daft! It’s bloomin’ miles away. Anyroad, you can eat fish and chips ’ere. You don’t ’ave to go to Blackpool to do it.’
‘Aye, but me mam says it’s common to eat in t’ street. It’s different when yer on ’oliday.’
‘Quietly now,’ said Miss Patterdale, but without her usual severity. She appeared to be in a thoughtful mood, staring out of the window at the uninspiring view of the concrete playground and the stunted bushes that grew around it in the barren earth.
Maisie, too, was quiet and thoughtful. She had found out at playtime that Dorothy, the girl she was most friendly with, was not going to be an evacuee after all. If things got bad, she said, then she and her mum might go to a place called Skipton where her uncle had a farm. And Sheila wasn’t going, nor was Beryl. Joyce was going, but Maisie was not particularly friendly with her; she was just one of the crowd she sometimes played with.
She glanced across the classroom to where Joyce Randall was sitting. She shared a desk with Audrey Dennison, a girl whom Maisie did not know very well. Audrey was what Maisie thought of as ‘one of the posh kids’. She lived in a semi-detached house across the main road, on the fringe of the park, in a much more salubrious part of Armley than the one in which Maisie lived. It was the area where her mother went cleaning, and she was glad that Audrey’s mother was not one of the ladies that she ‘did’ for, or Audrey wouldn’t half look down her nose at her, Maisie. At least, she suspected that she might – most of the kids in that locality thought they were ‘it’ – but she had to admit that Audrey might be different. She seemed nice enough, but there was an unwritten rule that there were two quite separate entities, those who lived near the park, and those who lived in the shadow of the jail, and seldom did the twain meet.
Audrey Dennison was a quiet and diligent girl who was nearly always ‘top of the class’. Maisie’s group of friends tended to dismiss her, and others of her ilk, as ‘clever clogs’. But Maisie was a clever girl, too; she worked much harder at her lessons than did most of the children in her particular crowd, simply because she enjoyed doing so. Most especially she loved reading, and writing compositions. Once or twice she had nearly made it to the top of the class, but had been just pipped at the post by Audrey. Very shrewdly, Maisie had come to the conclusion that Miss Patterdale had wangled this with a slight jiggery-pokery of the marks. Audrey Dennison was something of a teacher’s pet because she was so quiet and polite…and clean; much more worthy of her position as top pupil than Nellie Jackson, who sometimes had too much to say for herself and was, moreover, an untidy scruff of a girl. But this, in all fairness, was not Audrey’s fault, thought Maisie, and she had often wished that she might get to know her a little better.
She watched the girl now. Audrey was not making any attempt at the drawing of the flowers, but was sitting very still and quiet, with her hands in her lap. She was a pretty girl with pale golden hair which she wore in a neat page-boy bob. Her skin was pale, too, almost like porcelain, with a pinkish tinge to her cheeks, like a china doll, Maisie thought. But she knew that was not entirely fair to Audrey because china dolls with their big blue eyes looked vacant, quite stupid really, and Audrey certainly didn’t. She had blue eyes, but they were full of intelligence and eagerness most of the time. Sometimes, however, they seemed to hold a trace of sadness. Maisie could not see the girl’s eyes now, but as she observed her secretly, she saw Audrey lift a hand to her eyes as though she were brushing tears away. Then, as though suddenly aware that she was being watched, she glanced across the room and her eyes met those of Maisie. Audrey looked at her, so very sadly, for a moment, then she gave a wan fleeting smile and looked away again.
Maisie’s heart went out to her. She did not know for sure what was the matter, but she guessed that Audrey was to leave her home the next day, as an evacuee, but that, unlike Maisie, that was something she was not looking forward to at all.
‘Mum, they’re going tomorrer,’ Maisie shouted as soon as she entered the house that afternoon. ‘You know – them that are going to be evacuees. We have to be at school by half-past eight in the morning… Can I go with ’em, Mum?’
Lily looked at her in surprise. ‘You really want to go, do you, Nellie?’ The girl nodded. ‘Well then, that’s quite a relief I must admit, because I’d decided meself that it’s best for you to go. I thought happen you might be upset, though?’
‘No, why should I be?’ retorted Maisie. ‘I can’t wait to get away from here…’ Then, aware of the sad look that had appeared so suddenly in her mother’s eyes, she hurried on to say, ‘I mean…I shall be sorry to leave you, Mum. I shall miss you…and Joanie and Jimmy,’ she added as an afterthought. ‘Where are they, anyroad?’ She glanced around the untidy living room strewn with their somewhat meagre selection of toys – building bricks and battered cars and one or two ragged looking dolls – but there was no sight or sound of the children.
‘Upstairs, both of ’em; having a sleep, I hope,’ replied her mother. ‘From the sound of it they must have dropped off. They came in as black as the ace of spades, both of ’em, yelling ’cause a big lad down the street had chased ’em. Jimmy had fallen down and grazed his knee; he didn’t half make a hullabaloo. Anyroad, I gave ’em both a quick wash – just a lick and a promise, mind – and left ’em to play nicely with their toys. Next minute they were chucking bricks at one another, so I says, ‘Right – upstairs, the pair of you…’
Maisie, in all honesty, would not be too sorry about leaving those two little brats, but she knew she must pretend that she would. ‘Mmm…I shall miss ’em,’ she said, somewhat half-heartedly, ‘but I shan’t miss Percy and…and Sid,’ she went on, ‘not one little bit.’
Lily sighed. ‘No, I know that, love. I know you haven’t been very happy just lately, and I’m sorry. There isn’t anything you want to tell me, is there…about Percy, or…anything?’
‘No, why should there be?’ Maisie answered quickly; too quickly because her mother gave her an odd look.
‘Are you sure?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, ’course I’m sure. I just don’t like him, that’s all.’ There was no point in telling her mother now because she was going away the next day and she wouldn’t need to see Percy or Sid ever again; well, not for a very long time at any rate. ‘What made you change your mind, Mum, about me going?’ She decided to change the subject. ‘I thought you didn’t want me to go.’
‘How did you know that? We hadn’t even talked about it, Nellie, because I didn’t even want to think about you going away and leaving me.’
‘I heard you and Sid talking about it last night,’ said Maisie. ‘I sat on the stairs, listening. He can’t wait to get rid of me, I know that.’
‘Oh, Nellie, you silly girl! You know what Sid has said about you earwigging. It’s a good job he didn’t catch you.’
‘I made sure he didn’t.’ Maisie grinned. ‘Why did you change your mind though? Is it because of what he said? Because he said I had to go?’
‘No, not really…’ said Lily. Then, ‘No, of course not,’ she repeated, more firmly. ‘If I wanted you to stay here, then I would make sure that you did. I just think it might be for the best at the moment. Like I said before, I know you haven’t been too happy.’
Whilst they had been talking Maisie realised that she would, in fact, miss her mother very much. She had seemed, in the last few moments, much more like the person she remembered from a long time ago; loving and caring and wanting to talk to her little girl.
‘I shall miss you though, Mum,’ Maisie said again. Then she looked away as tears started to mist her mother’s eyes, making them appear silvery-grey, as she remembered them, not lacklustre and careworn as they had been so often of late.
‘Yes, I know,’ said Lily, sniffing a little. ‘But don’t worry, love. I’ll be able to come and see you. I could come on a day trip, happen, and bring the little ’uns with me. They’d like that. Anyroad, what are we worrying about, eh? This ’ere war hasn’t started yet, and if it does, then it might not last for very long, eh? Cheer up, Nellie. Let’s go and put a few things together, shall we? I’ve made sure you’ve got a clean vest and liberty bodice and knickers to take with you, and a couple of pairs of socks. They’re a bit holey, though, so happen I’d better darn ’em tonight…’
‘Mum,’ Maisie interrupted. ‘You keep on calling me Nellie and you know I don’t like it. It’s what they call me, Sid and…Percy. You did say you’d try to remember…and now I’m going away I’ve decided that that’s what I’m going to be called. I shall tell everybody me name’s Maisie. I hate Nellie, I really do! I hate it!’
‘Very well, love. I won’t forget.’ Her mother smiled, then she put an arm around her and kissed her cheek. ‘That’s what Daddy used to call you, didn’t he? Maisie, my little mayflower… Oh, come on, love; let’s get upstairs and sort yer things out, or else we’ll both be crying, and that’ll never do, will it?’
Lily led the way up the narrow staircase between the living room and the kitchen. The carpet was threadbare, worn into holes in parts, and the wallpaper was greasy and peeling off in places, especially where it had been helped along by grubby little hands. ‘Those two little demons are quiet, aren’t they? But I don’t suppose it’ll be for much longer. They’ll be waking up, the pair of them and then they’ll…’ Lily stopped dead on the threshold of the children’s bedroom.
‘Oh! Oh…you little devils! I thought you were too quiet. Just wait till I get hold of you! I might have guessed you weren’t asleep. Joanie, Jimmy, come ’ere, you naughty pair!’ The room was full of feathers, greyish white feathers, fluttering in the air and clinging on to every surface where they could land; carpet, counterpane, the tops of the dressing table and cupboard, and on the clothes and in the hair of the two children who were trying to disappear under the double bed. An empty pillow case lay on the floor, a pile of feathers, those that had not already been scattered by grasping little hands, lying at the side of it.
‘Come ’ere, come ’ere, you little devils!’ Lily yanked them, one at a time, from under the bed, pulling roughly at their arms and then laying into them, shaking them and trying to smack their bottoms whilst they danced and yelled and pulled away from her. She did not make a habit of smacking her children, although oftentimes they deserved it. She was usually too weary and dispirited to do much more than threaten them and tell them they were naughty; even now she was hitting out at them mainly through despair and frustration and sorrow. Her beloved eldest child, Maisie – whom she was now realising she loved far more than she loved these two terrors put together – was going away in the morning, to goodness knows where and for goodness knows how long. This was the very last straw. How could they do this to her?
Her blows held little weight and after a minute she let go of Joanie and Jimmy, collapsing on to the bed and burying her head in her hands. ‘Whatever have I done,’ she moaned, more to herself than to anyone else, ‘to deserve a pair of little horrors like these two?’ The pair of horrors were not crying or making any show of trying to do so, nor did they even look cowed or repentant; they were grinning impishly at one another and at their big sister. But Maisie was just as horrified at their behaviour as was her mother.
‘Just wait till your dad comes home and I tell him what you’ve done,’ Lily was saying, but not very convincingly. Maisie knew that this was an idle threat. Sid, more than likely, would just laugh or would find a reason to blame their mother rather than the children, that was if she even bothered to tell him at all.
‘Come on, Mum,’ she said. ‘I’ll help you clear it away. I’ll get the dustpan and brush, an’ I’ll give this bed cover a good shake in t’ backyard. That should get rid of most o’ t’ feathers… Just look what you’ve done, you two!’ Maisie turned on her brother and sister. She had never been able to summon up much affection for them, but now she almost felt as though she hated them, just like she hated their father and elder brother. ‘Just you sit there, the pair of you!’ She plonked both of them roughly on their bottoms in a corner of the room, ‘and don’t you dare move an inch until we’ve got rid of all this mess!’ She wrinkled her nose. Jimmy, as usual, smelled very unpleasant. ‘And you need yer nappy changing, Jimmy, but you’ll have to wait. An’ I just don’t care. You’re a wicked boy, and so are you, Joanie, a very naughty little girl.’
She scowled at them and, for once, they did not grin back at her. Jimmy stuck out his lower lip and glowered at her, whilst Joanie stuck out her her tongue as far as it would go. Poor Mum, thought Maisie. She began to feel very sorry at the thought of leaving her mother behind with these dreadful children. Sid did not give her any help with their upbringing, except to yell at them occasionally or give them what he called a ‘clip round the ear ’ole’.
A thought struck her as she and her mother struggled to brush away the feathers that had stuck fast to the carpet and curtains. She had heard some of the kids in the playground saying that their mothers were going with them on this evacuation thing, but only those with babies and young children. Those of school age were considered old enough to go on their own. Perhaps her own mother could go. Maisie was sure that she, too, would be only too happy to leave Sid and Percy behind. It would mean taking Joanie and Jimmy of course, but maybe they might not be so badly behaved if they got away from this neighbourhood. There were a few older kids – older than Joanie and Jimmy, that was, but still not old enough for school – who ran riot in the streets, and it was from them that the ‘Bragg brats’, as they were sometimes called, had learned many of their unruly ways.
‘Mum, why don’t you come with us tomorrer?’ she said. ‘They’d let you go, y’ know, ’cause you’ve got two little ’uns. And they might learn to behave themselves if they got away from here.’
Lily gave a deep sigh. ‘Don’t imagine I haven’t thought about it, love, because I have. It would be heaven… But Sid won’t hear of it. No; he’s adamant that I have to stay here and look after him…and Percy. An’ I suppose he’s got a point. He’s my husband when all’s said and done, and we can’t all go swanning off dodging our responsibilities… Don’t you dare mention it to him, Nellie – I mean Maisie,’ she went on, as Maisie continued to look at her thoughtfully. ‘He’d go barmy, he would really. He nearly went off ’is ’ead when I said before, casual like, that perhaps I could go an’ all. No, love… Let’s just hope and pray that things turn out for the best. Happen those two’ll learn to behave ’emselves when they start school.’
‘That’s a long time yet, Mum…’
‘Aye; I know that, Maisie…’ She turned away, shaking her head sadly. ‘Come on, laddie; let’s be ’aving you. Let’s get this mucky nappy off.’ She picked up Jimmy who was sitting sullenly in the corner – at least he had stayed put – and plonked him on to the bed. ‘Maisie – go and put the kettle on, there’s a good lass. And happen you could peel a few spuds. Those two’ll be home before I can turn round.’
Tea was late, inevitably, and Sid was not best pleased when he had to wait for several minutes whilst Lily and Maisie set the table and dished up the meal. Maisie usually had her tea – bread and jam, more often than not, as she had had a cooked meal of sorts at midday – before the menfolk came home, but this day was an exception. With all the commotion she had not had time to eat, so she sat at the table with her mother, Sid and Percy to eat the hastily prepared meal of sausages, chips and Heinz baked beans. Lily, at her wit’s end with the younger two, had bundled them into bed when they had eaten their jam butties.
Sid coughed and spluttered when he had swallowed a mouthful. ‘What the ’ell’s this?’ He spat out a half-chewed morsel of sausage on to his hand. ‘That’s a feather, woman! A bleedin’ feather! ’Ow the ’ell did that get there? I might have choked to bloody death.’
‘Oh dear…’ Lily began.
‘Don’t blame me mum,’ said Maisie. ‘It’s not her fault. It was Joanie and Jimmy. They took all t’ feathers out of a pillow and chucked ’em around, didn’t they, Mum?’
