THE SECOND CHAPTER

Yesterday, I wrote about ten-year-old Charlie Slater, my favourite character in my book “The Invisible Piper”.  He’s an endearing, but difficult child who comes from the East End; a very deprived part of London during World War II. Charlie forced me to rewrite my plot as he wanted a larger role in the novels.  He told me clearly one night as I was writing him out of a scene that he wouldn’t go!  We meet him for the first time in the second chapter where he turns the life of Rob’s middle-class family up-side-down.

Chapter 2

‘Evacuees have to accustom themselves to separation from family and friends, householders to sharing their homes with strangers …’

Ernest Bevin

from a pamphlet entitled

Government Evacuation Scheme, 1939

It was a sunny morning in September 1939 and ten-year-old Charlie Slater was going on holiday for the first time in his life. He had a boxed gas mask around his neck, a brown paper parcel with a change of clothes hanging from a belt around his waist and a name-tag tied to the lapel of his short brown coat. He didn’t notice the mothers fighting back their tears at Victoria Station as he was going to the seaside and had a slab of chocolate clutched in his sticky hand given to him by a woman on the evacuation committee. A whole slab. He charged up the steps of the train with eighty other children, desperate to get a window seat. He had never been on a train; had never seen the sea; had never eaten chocolate. The children cheered as the train steamed off. The mothers waved from the platform; some of the children remembered to wave back.

The train arrived at Hastings after a long, noisy journey. The teachers who had volunteered to accompany the children were exhausted after cleaning up vomit and urine from travel-sick and chocolate-gorged children. On top of this, they had to deal with a barrage of questions fired at them by children with strong stomachs and good bladder control:

‘What’s in that field, Miss? Is that a cow? Ugh! – ain’t they ugly? – What’s them dangly bits hanging like that for? Get a butcher’s at the black one! What’s she doin’ on that cow’s back, Miss?’ ‘Bit like me old man after the boozer,’ piped up an older boy. ‘Cor – look at all them white sheeps jumpin’ about – how many lambs do they have a year?’ ‘Where can I have a Jimmy Riddle, Miss?’ ‘How long before we has a butcher’s at the pigs you was telling us about?’ ‘Where’s the houses and smoke gone, Miss? – there’s nothin’ here but grass!’

None of the children had ever been away from the streets of London for a day.

It was raining as a curve of children meandered down Havelock Road towards the new underground car park, following the middle-aged ladies who’d been sent to meet them. Suddenly the air was full of the anguished wail of an air-raid siren. Everyone started screaming. In the chaos that followed, many children tried gluing their bodies to wet pavements, while others stood in rigid shock, their fingers star-fished with tension. Only a handful of children, chocolate-smeared faces uplifted to the cutting edge of rain, stood in fearful excitement, desperate for their first sight of a large, black swastika on the side of an enemy aircraft. Charlie was one of them. Suddenly, they were all swept down the road by the adults and herded towards the safety of the underground car park. In the distance they saw an ARP warden wobbling towards them on an old bicycle shouting: ‘False alarm! False alarm!’ This false alarm, everyone discovered later, had been repeated all over England.

The children gasped as they walked into the car park: trestle tables lining the walls were piled high with food: tins of corned beef and spam, condensed milk and more slabs of milk chocolate. The air-raid warning was forgotten as they were each given a precious carrier bag full of food to take to their new homes.

They were steaming by the time they had walked from the car park to a large reception centre in a school hall where a committee of ladies were waiting with glasses of milk and Marie biscuits to welcome them. Charlie didn’t like the smell of the hall; it reminded him of books. After the women had recovered from the shock of seeing eighty steaming children, most of whom were undernourished, sickly-looking and smelt, the hall slowly emptied as the host families took their evacuees. Only Charlie and a handful of equally scruffy boys were still there. He scanned the room, slanted with light from its six high windows, looking for someone in charge. He spotted a tall, thin, nervous woman who looked like a greyhound he’d seen racing in the dog track he’d gone to with his old man. She was standing in the corner of the hall, directing operations and twitching her hands in his direction. He walked over to her.

‘Where’s this woman’s what’s looking after me, then?’

Mrs Fraser, the billeting officer, forgot the fact that the Council had set up an extremely efficient evacuation scheme in which she was only a small cog. She’d watched five trainloads of children disgorge themselves into this hall for three days; she had worked extremely hard to ensure that all those children had a suitable family with which to be billeted. She was satisfied that she had everything sorted out satisfactorily – she had managed to make most families willingly agree to take an evacuee, but it had been difficult to convince others that they really needed one in their house. However, the fact that the government would pay 10/6d for one child under fourteen; 12/ 6d for one between fourteen and sixteen, and 8/6d each for two children, had obviously helped some of them change their minds.

She hadn’t realised, of course, that the children would talk like Charlie or be quite so dirty.

‘You listenin’? Where is she?’

She blinked in amazement at the boy and then looked quickly at his label. Charlie Slater: 114 Farleigh Road, Deptford. London. To: Dr & Mrs Adams: The Beeches, Pevensey Road, St Leonards-on-Sea. E. Sussex.

Oh dear, that couldn’t be right. ‘Er … hello, Charles. I’m afraid not all the ladies have arrived yet.’

‘It’s Charlie – why not?’

Mrs Fraser was horrified to see a small boy, at the other end of the hall, urinating down his leg onto the parquet floor.

‘Why not?’ Mrs Fraser repeated, blinking rapidly at the urinating child before rushing off to see if she could find Mrs Adams. She wasn’t in the hall so Mrs Fraser went outside. There was Mrs Adams walking up the hill towards the school. Mrs Fraser tried to intercept her before she came into the hall.

‘Yoohoo – Mrs Adams!’

Mary looked across the wet road reflecting the September trees and saw a very flustered Mrs Fraser standing at the entrance of the school hall. She crossed over just as a watery sun broke through the clouds.

‘Sorry, I’m late, Mrs Fraser, but I’ve been very busy. My husband was on call again last night.’

‘Oh, I quite understand – that’s no problem, Mrs Adams – no problem at all.’

‘Have the children arrived safely?’

‘Oh yes, the children are safe all right, but … but …’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m afraid … I’m afraid … to be blunt, Mrs Adams – they’re not what I expected.’

‘What did you expect?’

‘Well … nice children.’

‘And aren’t they?’

‘Well – I’m sure some of them are, but… oh, you’ll have to see for yourself.’

As they walked into the hall Mary was assaulted by the smell: although the hall had emptied considerably, the sour odour of damp, unwashed children still lingered in the air. Fierce battles were being fought between Stukka and Spitfire pilots as boys flew around the room blasting tracers at each other.

Mrs Fraser hopped from one foot to the other in embarrassment as she shouted above the noise. ‘I’m terribly sorry, Mrs Adams. But I’ve been most dreadfully busy… I know you asked for a little girl, but all the little girls have gone, I’m afraid –’

Mrs Fraser spoke, Mary thought, as if she was trying to catch words that were running away from her.

‘– if you could have come earlier this afternoon… you could have chosen… as it is… I’m afraid… er… Charles – the boy over there…’

Mrs Fraser pointed nervously at Charlie who was dive-bombing a Stukka, ‘somehow has your name on his label and there aren’t many children left and you did agree, didn’t you?’

Mary looked from Charlie to Mrs Fraser in silence.

‘Charles!’ Mrs Fraser called across the room. Charlie roared towards the women, dive-bombing two more enemy in his path before taxiing to a noisy halt in front of them.

‘Charles – I’d like you to meet Mrs Adams – your new foster mother.’

Mary looked in disbelief at the Cockney urchin standing in front of her who had a tuft of dingy looking hair sticking up from the back of his head: he was undersized, dirty and ragged, one of his eyes was almost closed with a large stye and his flesh had the grey, limp look of malnutrition. He reminded her of the Artful Dodger. She watched a trail of dirty snot drip down his upper lip. He licked it as it reached his mouth. Mary shuddered.

‘I ain’t Charles! – I’s Charlie!’ The boy peered up at Mrs Fraser who twittered at his side. ‘You don’t half talk funny.’ He snorted with laughter as the women swallowed air.

Mary could feel a pulse throbbing at her left temple and unconsciously pressed her hand against it as she looked in amazement at the child. If indeed, he was a child.

‘Are we goin’ or what? Me legs is hurtin’.’

Mary could feel her mouth lock in an open position.

Mrs Fraser drew Mary aside. ‘I’ve got nowhere else to take him, Mrs Adams… You can’t imagine how difficult it is to place all the children we’ve been sent… I don’t know whether I’m coming or going…’

‘Mrs Fraser – I told you I wanted a little girl. Not a…’ Mary couldn’t think of an adequate word.

‘So did everyone else, Mrs Adams. But the committee has been saying all the afternoon – “oh Mrs Adams will cope. Mrs Adams copes with everything.” You always do, don’t you? I don’t know how you manage what with this and that. Between you and me, Mrs Adams, I really don’t know why I agreed to take this job – it’s really –’

‘Mrs Fraser!’

The woman blinked rapidly at the staccato of Mary’s voice and whispered. ‘Please take him if only for a week or two until we can sort something out… Please!’ Mrs Fraser clutched her arm tightly. Mary could feel her trembling at the thought of having to look after the boy herself.

‘Oh, all right – a couple of weeks. But only a couple of weeks. Rob’s coming home.’

Mrs Fraser almost danced the quick step. ‘Oh thank you so much, Mrs Adams. I just knew you would.’ She fluttered off down the hall, anxious to escape.

How could Mary have known that the boy would change her life for ever?

Charlie looked in awe at Mary’s detached Victorian house with its impressive array of windows, black against the setting sun. ‘Blimey – how many families live here, then?’

‘Just one. Us.’

‘Must have a lotta kids. Me Mum had six. Two’s dead. How many you got?’

‘One,’ said Mary, completely out of her depth.

Charlie was almost speechless. ‘One! With a house like this! You’re havin’ me on.’

‘No,’ Mary said carefully. ‘I’m not. Now wipe your feet before you come in.’

But Charlie was looking at her front garden; at the beautiful russet beech trees, surrounded by a profusion of flowers: tall yellow hollyhocks, red and white carnations and pink roses.

‘What’s that pong?’

‘My flowers.’

‘Blimey – this your garden, then? – I thought it were a park or something. You must have a bob or two.’

Mary remembered her deep breathing exercises from her relaxation classes. She breathed deep from her abdomen. ‘Come in, Charlie and meet Dr Adams.’

*

The Adams house was ruptured by Charlie’s arrival; in one day he’d turned Mary’s world upside down. Her husband John had shown her, she, who had never seen one nit before, approximately 2,000, all nestled in Charlie’s hair.

‘You can crack the big fellas with your nails. Me and me brother used to have a bet on who could crack the most in five minutes. I always won.’ Mary looked at John in despair.

‘I thought this sort of thing had died out with Dickens, John.’

‘I’ve not seen such a crop since I was in the trenches.’

They sent Charlie outside to play in the garden while John contacted Mr Bruce, the Medical Officer, and warned him that they’d have to supply chemists with large quantities of Keatings to combat the vermin.

John was worried. ‘What did the other children look like? As dirty as Charlie?’

‘Well, it’s difficult to tell – most of them seemed covered in quite a number of things.’

‘Oh Lord – I think we’ve got a health crisis on our hands. As if I haven’t got enough to cope with. We’ll have to bath the boy straight away.’

‘We? I can cope with most things, but not verminous children, I’m afraid.’

‘Verminous? He’s the “bud of the nation.”’

‘What are you talking about?’ Mary asked.

‘Our Minister of Health, Ernest Brown, my dear, on the wireless the other night, talking about the advantages of having an evacuee in one’s home.’

‘Oh really – I wonder how many he’s got in his house.’

‘And I thought you could cope with anything.’

‘Yes, well – don’t gloat or you won’t have any dinner.’

‘Is that a threat or a promise?’

Their cook Betty had just enlisted in the ATS so Mary, who was a mediocre cook, was forced back into the kitchen. John was still trying to digest last evening’s meal of uncooked potatoes and over-cooked pork.

Mary went into the kitchen to wrestle with a new recipe of corned beef and cabbage while John took Charlie upstairs. She suddenly heard the boy screaming at the top of his voice and went running up the stairs to the bathroom. He was rigid against the wall with tears pouring down his face.

‘He’s tryin’ to drown me, he is! He wants me to take me things off and then – and then – he’s goin’ to push me under the water. I heard about men like him.’

The boy was shaking with fear and holding on to his threadbare clothes as if his life depended on it. He stared at the water as if mesmerised. Mary’s eyes followed his fear.

‘He’s never seen a bath before, John.’

‘What?’ John looked at her in amazement. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

Mary knelt down in front of the boy, although his rancid smell made her feel nauseous.

‘Charlie – Dr Adams and I go in the water once a week to get off our dirt.’

Charlie dragged his eyes away from the water to Mary’s face.

‘But you ain’t got no dirt.’

‘That’s because we have a bath every week … If you had a bath you wouldn’t have any dirt either.’

Charlie looked stunned by this sudden knowledge. ‘You mean he ain’t tryin’ to drown me?’

Mary stopped herself from smiling. ‘No, Charlie. He’s trying to get you clean.’

‘But I’s always dirty – and me Mum’s sewed me up for the winter.’

‘Sewed you up?’

Charlie shivered as he opened his thin shirt; underneath they could see a layer of brown paper next to his skin. Mary and John looked at each other.

‘Yeah – bugs can’t get through the paper see. Me Mum says.’

‘I’ve got something better than paper to stop the bugs getting you, Charlie.’

He stopped shaking. ‘What’s that then?’

‘It’s called a vest.’

Charlie looked at her dubiously. ‘Yeah – but can it stop you coughin’ up blood? I never coughed up none ’cos I’m sewn up, see – but me brother – Mum didn’t have enough paper so he weren’t sewn up – and he died.’

Mary could feel her eyes pricking as she walked out of the room.

Charlie shouted after her. ‘So he ain’t gonna drown me, then?’

‘No, Charlie – he’s quite safe,’ she called back.