Katie King - The Evacuee Christmas

Although naturally both Ted and Barbara were very honest people, they could remember the Great War all too clearly, even though they had only been children when that war had been declared in 1914, and they could still recall vividly the terrible toll that had exacted on everyone, both those who had gone to fight and those who had remained at home.

This meant they felt that even though it would only be a matter of days, or maybe mere hours, before the twins had to be made aware of what was going on, the longer the innocence of childhood could be preserved for Connie and Jessie, as far as their parents were concerned, the kinder this would be.

Once Ted and Barbara started to speak with the children about Britain being at war, they knew there would be no going back.

Now that time was here.

Just before the children had arrived home from school, things had come to a head.

For schoolteacher Miss Pinkly had called at number five to deliver a typewritten note to Barbara and Ted from the headmaster at St Mark’s Primary School.

When Barbara saw Susanne Pinkly at her door, immediately she felt an overpowering sense of despair.

Without the young woman having to say a word, Barbara knew precisely what was about to happen.

By the time that Ted came in after the twins had gone to bed – Barbara not bringing up the topic of evacuation with Connie and Jessie beforehand as she wanted the children to be told only when Ted was present – Barbara was almost beside herself, having worked herself up into a real state.

Ted had just left a group of dockers carousing at The Jolly Shoreman. Ted wasn’t much of a drinker, but he had gone over with Big Jessie for their usual two pints of best, which was a Thursday night ritual at ‘the Jolly’ for the brothers and their fellow dockers as the end of their hard-working week drew near.

Now that Ted saw Barbara standing lost and forlorn, looking whey-faced and somehow strangely pinched around the mouth, he felt sorry he hadn’t headed home straight after he’d moored the last boat. No beer was worth more than being with his wife in a time of crisis, and to look at Barbara’s tight shoulders, a crisis there was.

Barbara was standing in front of the kitchen sink slowly wrapping and unwrapping a damp tea towel around her left fist as she stared unseeing out of the window.

The debris of a half-prepared meal for her husband was strewn around the kitchen table, and it was the very first time in their married lives that Ted could ever remember Barbara not having cleared the table from the children’s tea and then cooking him the proverbial meat and two veg that would be waiting ready for her to dish up the moment he got home. Normally Barbara would shuffle whatever she’d prepared onto a plate for him as he soaped and dried his hands, so that exactly as he came to sit down at the kitchen table she’d be placing his plate before him in a routine that had become well choreographed over the years since they had married.

‘Barbara, love, whatever is the matter?’ Ted said as he swiftly crossed the kitchen to stand by his wife. He tried to sound strong and calm, and very much as if he were the reliable backbone of the family, the sort of man that Barbara and the twins could depend on, no matter what.

Barbara’s voice dissolved in pieces as she turned to look at her husband with quickly brimming eyes, and she croaked, ‘Ted, read this,’ as she waved in his direction the piece of paper that Miss Pinkly had left.

At least, that was what Ted thought she had said to him but Barbara’s voice had been so faint and croaky that he wasn’t completely sure.

Ted stared at it for a while before he was able to take in all that it said.

Dear Parent(s),

Please have your child(s) luggage ready Monday morning, fully labelled. If you live more than 15 minutes from the school, (s)he must bring his case with him/her on Monday morning.

EQUIPMENT (apart from clothes worn)

• Washing things – soap, towel

• Older clothes – trousers/skirt or dress

• Gym vest, shorts/skirt and plimsolls

• 6 stamped postcards

• Socks or stockings

• Card games

• Gas mask

• School hymn book

• Shirts/blouse

• Pyjamas, nightdress or nightshirt

• Pullover/cardigan

• Strong walking shoes

• Story or reading book

• Blanket

ALL TO BE PROPERLY MARKED

FOOD (for 1 or 2 days)

• ¼lb cooked meat

• 2 hard-boiled eggs

• ¼lb biscuits (wholemeal)

• Butter (in container)

• Knife, fork, spoon

• ¼lb chocolate

• ¼lb raisins

• 12 prunes

• Apples, oranges

• Mug (unbreakable)

Yours sincerely,

DAVID W. JONES

Headmaster, St Mark’s Primary School, Bermondsey

The whole of Connie and Jessie’s school was to be evacuated, and this looked set to happen in only four days’ time.

Her voice stronger, Barbara added glumly, ‘I see they’ve forgotten to put toothbrush on the list.’

After a pause, she said, ‘Susanne Pinkly told me that not even the headmaster knows where they will all be going yet, although it looks as if the school will be kept together as much as possible. Some of the teachers are going – those with no relatives anyway – but Mr Jones isn’t, apparently, as St Mark’s will have to share a school and it’s unlikely they’ll want two headmasters, and Miss Pinkly’s not going to go with them either as her mother is in hospital with some sort of hernia and so Susanne needs to look after the family bakery in her mother’s absence now that her brother Reece has already been given his papers.

‘But the dratted woman kept saying again and again that all the parents are strongly advised to evacuate their children, and I couldn’t think of anything to say back to her. I know she’s probably right, but I don’t want to be parted from our Connie and Jessie. Susanne Pinkly had with her a bundle of posters she’s to put up in the windows of the local shops saying MOTHERS – SEND THEM OUT OF LONDON , and she waved them at me, and so I had to take a couple to give to Mrs Truelove for her to put up in the window and on the shop door. While the talk in the shop a couple of days ago made me realise that a mass evacuation was likely, now that it’s here it feels bad, and I don’t like it at all.’

Ted drew Barbara close to him, and with his mouth close to her ear said gently, ‘I think we ’ave to let ’em go. The talk in the Jolly was that it’s not goin’ to be a picnic ’ere, and we ’ave to remember that we’re right where those Germans are likely to want to bomb because the docks will be – as our Big Jessie says – “strategic”.’

They were quiet for a few moments while they thought about the implications of ‘strategic’.

‘I know,’ said Barbara eventually in a very small voice. ‘You’re right.’

Ted grasped her to him more tightly.

They listened to the tick-tocking of the old wooden kitchen clock on the mantelpiece for an age, each lost in their own thoughts.

And then Ted said resolutely, ‘We’ll tell our Connie and Jessie at breakfast in the mornin’. They need to hear it from us an’ not from their classmates, an’ so we’ll need to get ’em up a bit earlier. We must look on the bright side – to let them go will keep them safe, and with a bit of luck it’ll all be over by Christmas and we can ’ave them ’ome with us again. ’Ome in Jubilee Street, right beside us, where they belong.’

Barbara hugged Ted back and then pulled the top half of her body away a little so that she could look at her husband’s dear and familiar face. ‘There is one good thing, which is that as you work on the river, you’re not going to have to go away and leave me, although I daresay they’ll move you to working on the tugs seeing how much you know about the tides.’