The Evacuee Christmas. Katie King

had now surpassed her own by far, and Connie was very quick and rhythmical too in her sewing, which meant that all the stitches were a uniform size that already looked to be verging on the professional.

      The men of the Ross family weren’t getting away with sitting around idly either over the weekend, Barbara was making sure, as from the Friday afternoon there seemed a never-ending list of things that she wanted either Ted or Jessie, or sometimes both, to go and get from the shops or round about.

      It was the first time the children had gone a whole weekend without being let out to play, and they felt very grown up.

      They also wanted to stay close to Ted and Barbara, now that it was beginning to sink in that they really were going to be evacuated first thing on Monday morning, and by that evening they would be spending their very first night in beds other than at number five Jubilee Street.

      When the twins caught a moment together they couldn’t help but try to guess what it might be like, wherever they were going. Connie said she rather hoped their billet would have a dog for them to play with, while Jessie said he wished there’d be lots of food and not too many rules. Then they’d grow quiet, thinking of all the things they loved about their home and Bermondsey.

      According to Barbara, the purchases of the various things they needed to buy were to be allocated as follows:

       Toothbrushes and tubes of toothpaste for each child: Jessie

       Soap, ditto: Jessie

       Shoe polish, plus soft yellow dusters to shine the shoes, ditto (they hadn’t been asked to take this, but Barbara insisted a shoe-cleaning kit was ‘an essential’): Jessie

       Notebooks and pencils, ditto (again, not on the list, but Barbara was firm): Ted

       New combs, ditto: Jessie

       Postcards and stamps, ditto: Ted

       Knives, forks, spoons and tin mugs, ditto: Ted and Jessie

       Raisins and prunes, ditto: Ted and Jessie

       Large labels with string for their names and schools to be written on, along with their destination, ditto: Connie

       Two containers for the butter, ditto: Connie

      And so on, with Barbara’s list ending up quite possibly four times as long.

      Barbara and Ted, and Connie and Jessie were heartily sick and tired of it all well before they had sorted everything out that needed doing.

      Barbara and Ted felt especially snappish and worn out, although they tried very hard to mask this and to put on a cheerful and brave face for the children, so that the twins would have nice memories of their last weekend in Jubilee Street.

      Barbara was tetchy because she had been up well into the small hours on the Friday evening as she tried to finish knitting Jessie’s green pullover, which was a hideous colour to knit with by electric light, she’d been irked to discover, and so she regretted not getting after all the dove-grey wool as that would have been much easier on her eyes.

      Even later that Friday night, after stowing her knitting needles away in Connie’s Christmas present, Barbara didn’t go straight to bed but instead she spent a while agonising over writing a note for whoever would be taking in Connie and Jessie, as she set down a little about each child, with their likes and dislikes, and giving her and Ted’s fulsome thanks to the unknown hosts for the billeting of their children.

      As she finally lay down in bed, Ted’s soft snores not breaking their rhythm, she had worn him out so with her myriad errands, she could hear the first chirps of the wild birds’ dawn chorus and see a faint lightening of the sky over to the east of the city, and Barbara realised the last time this had happened to her was when she was still breastfeeding the twins. The pang in her chest was for the hopes she had had as she nursed her babies, and the loss of innocence that Jessie and Connie were almost definitely about to face.

      Ted was just as frazzled when he woke up, although probably a bit better-tempered about it than his wife, as he found it very difficult to get cross or frustrated about anything, being one of those perpetually sunny and even-tempered sort of chaps, a trait that Barbara found could be most infuriating if she were feeling niggled herself and all Ted could do was smile about whatever was aggravating her.

      Anyway, once poor Ted had finished doing all of Barbara’s not inconsiderable bidding, he then had to trot over to Peggy’s house early on the Saturday afternoon to do all that she wanted as regards what should be packed up of her and Bill’s possessions for storage, and what should be put to one side for her to take away for her own evacuation, as well as what should be given away to those more needy.

      Peggy looked tired and jowly, with dry skin and a heavy footfall, and so once he saw her diminished state, Ted was eager to help her as much as possible. However, he could have done without forgetting the large suitcase he’d asked to borrow from Big Jessie to pack some of the bits and pieces into, and so no sooner had he arrived at Peggy’s than he had to leave immediately in order to head over to Big Jessie’s to collect the case. All the houses were almost within spitting distance of one another, but still…

      Worse came a little over thirty minutes later, just when Ted was looking forward fervently to the time when he could have a few minutes to relax after he had completed his tasks. He longed for the moment he would sink into his favourite chair and put his feet up for a quiet hour (accompanied by a glass of stout from the hole in the wall at the Jolly, he fantasised).

      It was just at this moment that Peggy reminded her brother-in-law he needed to rustle up a handcart from somewhere to transport all the stuff over to his and Barbara’s, and also that he had to make a further trip to the church hall as the local vicar was making a collection of bric-a-brac to keep in case people got bombed out and needed things when their houses came tumbling down, and so she had put aside a pile of possessions that needed to be transported over there too.

      Ted groaned; after his silly schoolboy error with his memory failure concerning Big Jessie’s big suitcase, he could barely credit it that he’d also forgotten about the damn handcart. He blamed Barbara for his oversight, although he thought this prudent not to share with Peggy, as he knew how close the sisters were. Barbara had most surely sent him on too many errands, Ted decided, and his day had been so busy that now he could hardly remember where his backside and his elbow were.

      Then, the moment he had done the running hither and thither – and he had worked up quite a sweat getting all of Peggy and Bill’s stuff for storage piled in the parlour at Jubilee Street, after which he had to return the handcart to its owner (who, Ted discovered, had a couple of people standing outside the yard where the handcart was kept as they were waiting to borrow it too, as Peggy wasn’t the only local resident busy packing up a house for the duration and who needed various possessions moving around) – he set off on his return home clutching his longed-for jug of stout only to find Barbara insisting that before he sat down, Ted should take all of Peggy’s possessions for storage upstairs as she couldn’t have them cluttering up the (rarely used) parlour for a moment longer.

      Somehow the stack of Peggy and Bill’s possessions seemed to have multiplied in size, Ted thought, as he plodded up and down the stairs, and then, with Jessie’s help, hoicked everything up the stepladder and from there hoisted it all into the spot in the roof space where (Barbara’s instructions again) it had to be stacked neatly and finally covered with an old sheet tucked in all around to keep the dust off.

      Ted closed the trapdoor to the roof space with a sigh of relief… after which Barbara pointed out that he had to return the suitcase to Big Jessie as his brother had promised the loan of it to somebody else and that if Ted had had his wits about him he’d have taken it with him when he took the handcart back.

      Just for a second Ted felt the mildest of swear words almost bubble up, but he bit it back down, telling himself that his stout was going to be extra special when he could finally sit down to sup it.

      All in all, it was a very tiresome weekend at number five – nobody could remember a more trying couple of days, not even when Barbara’s parents had died. In fact, all of