Katie King - The Evacuee Summer - Heart-warming historical fiction, perfect for summer reading

KATIE KINGlives in Kent, and has worked in publishing. She has a keen interest in twentieth-century history and this novel was inspired by a period spent living in south-east London. She is the author of The Evacuee Christmas , the first in the Evacuee series.

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Katie King 2018

Katie King asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © July 2018 ISBN: 9780008257583

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter One

The day that Milburn came to Tall Trees rectory seemed to take forever to arrive.

And no sooner had Milburn been installed in the freshly whitewashed stable and given a metal pail of cool water to drink from, than there was an enviable trumpet of flatulence from underneath an extravagantly lifted tail, followed by an impressively large mound of droppings deposited in the corner of the stall, combining to make the children crowded over the stable door giggle in glee.

Milburn’s little chestnut ears flicked nervously forwards and backwards at the unfamiliar noise they were making.

The Rev. Roger Braithwaite, Tommy’s father, announced in a proud voice, ‘Just what the vegetables need’, to which his wife Mabel replied in a tone much less proud, ‘Don’t be such a daft ’apporth, Roger – it’s got t’ rot down first.’

Nobody said anything for a moment or two, and then Tommy asked Roger in a deceptively innocent voice, ‘Phew, phewee! Pa, do ponies fart a lot? And do they do much sh—?’

‘Tommy!’ his mother quickly cut in.

Milburn turned to peer at Tommy with such a comical look of shock that the children could only laugh with more abandon than they had already.

The fun and games had begun a few days before.

‘We’re going to have a pony and trap,’ Roger had announced grandly, bustling back to the crumb-strewn breakfast table after answering the telephone. ‘What do you all think of that?’

Everyone who lived at Tall Trees looked at the rector in bemusement as the thought of him driving something as old-fashioned as a trap was comical. As wonderful a clergyman as he was, they all knew that the general practicalities of life, and Roger, were not easy bedfellows.

Roger pretended not to notice the joshing expressions of those sitting around the kitchen table, reminding everyone instead that although he was able to keep a car, petrol rationing meant it wasn’t for everyday use. And probably no one needed reminding (they didn’t!) that he kept losing the bit of the engine he’d regularly remove – was it the distributor cap? Roger couldn’t remember – when he left the vehicle immobilised at night in accordance with the authorities’ instructions that all vehicle owners take something out of the engine when parked up, in order to make it as difficult as possible for Jerry to use if he were to invade. It was a good thing to do, obviously, but it was trying for everyone to keep tabs on where Roger had put the ‘thingymebob’.

Every single one of them had, at various times, helped Roger find something that he had put down somewhere and promptly forgotten about, usually because he placed his woolly, or his newspaper, or a tea towel on top, or because it had got buried by the muddle of papers on his overflowing desk in the study. More than once Peggy had found herself sitting down at the kitchen table only to jump up again immediately when she’d eased herself down on top of Roger’s favourite Swan fountain pen, the one he used to write his sermons. Only the week before she’d sat on his horn-rimmed reading spectacles that had been missing for over a day. Of course Mabel was always on at Roger to be more tidy, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she was just as bad at failing to put things in their proper place. In fact, it was only Peggy’s eye for detail and workman-like attitude for sorting things out, and using the scullery as a hiding place for the mountains of washing, that prevented the large, stone-flagged kitchen descending into chaos.

‘So, from now on, for ordinary parish business it’s going to be pony- (as opposed to horse-)power, with the car being reserved for real emergencies. What do you all think of that?’ Roger asked the table, encouragingly.

‘Madness.’ Mabel’s reply was eloquent in its brevity. She knew her husband well, so she didn’t think much more needed to be said.

‘I don’t like ’orses much,’ said Tommy, not that he really knew anything about them but this didn’t daunt him, ‘anyways, not as much as machine-guns like the…’, the words dying on his lips under Mabel’s stern look. She was trying to encourage her eleven-year-old son to think a bit less about weapons than he did, but it was an uphill battle as the Tall Trees boys did love to make competitive lists of guns or bombers or tanks, and they would spend hours carefully tracing photographs they saw in the newspaper and colouring them in.

Gracie added her bit with, ‘I’ve never taken to them – ’orses – either. Their big yellow teeth put me right off.’

‘Sounds like their mummies haven’t made them brush their teeth,’ joked Connie as she, quickly followed by her twin brother Jessie, bared her teeth, pulling her lips back with her fingers as far as she could, which of course the other children had to copy immediately too, accompanied by lots of sniggering.

Roger, Mabel, Peggy and Gracie dramatically rolled their eyes up to the ceiling, which made the youngsters do it all the more.

Despairing of the table manners of her niece and nephew but not wanting to spoil the moment, Peggy was surprised too about the pony arriving. Tall Trees was a very splendid rectory certainly, with massive windows and generously proportioned rooms. Although a sizeable amount of the large garden had been given over to the chickens and the vegetable plots, she supposed there was still quite a lot of lawn and patches of grass a pony could nibble. But this wouldn’t get around the fact that Harrogate was a bustling place and it seemed odd to Peggy for Roger to be contemplating having a pony and trap in a relatively built-up area. Then she reminded herself how spacious, grand and grassy Harrogate had seemed when she and ten-year-old Connie and Jessie had arrived to their new billet on their evacuation from London the previous September, so used were they to Bermondsey’s tightly packed terraced streets and the River Thames flowing silently out to sea only a stone’s throw away from where they lived. ‘How did the offer of the pony and trap come about?’ Peggy asked Roger.