The Evacuee Christmas. Katie King

• 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.’

      There was another pause, and then Barbara leant against his chest once more, adding in a voice so faint that it was little more than the merest of murmurs, ‘I’m scared, Ted, I’m really scared.’

      ‘We all are, Barbara love, an’ anyone who says they ain’t is a damned liar,’ Ted said with conviction, as he drew her more tightly against him.

Chapter Three

      Three streets away Barbara’s elder sister Peggy was having an equally dispiriting evening. Her husband Bill, a bus driver, had received his call-up papers earlier in the week, and he had to leave first thing in the morning.

      All Bill knew so far was that Susanne Pinkly’s brother Reece was going the same morning as he, and that after Bill and his fellow recruits gathered at the local church hall, all the conscripts would be taken to Victoria station and from there they would be allocated to various training camps in other parts of Britain, after which at some point he and the rest of them would leave Blighty for who knew where.

      Bill was packed and ready to go, but he was worried about Peggy, who was four months pregnant and was having a pretty bad time of it, and so Bill wanted her to hotfoot it out of London as soon as she was able as part of the evacuation programme, as pregnant women as well as mothers with babies and/or toddlers were amongst the adults that the government advised to leave London.

      ‘It’s daft, you riskin’ it ’ere in the interestin’ condition you’re in,’ he told her.

      ‘Interesting condition’ was how they had taken to describing Peggy’s pregnancy as they thought it quaintly old-fashioned and therefore a phrase full of charm.

      ‘I want to go and fight for King and Country knowin’ my little lad or lassie is out of ’arm’s way, an’ ’ow can I do that if I know you’re still stuck ’ere in Bermondsey? Those docks will be a prime target for the Germans, you mark my words, Peg,’ Bill added.

      Deep down Peggy knew there was sound sense to Bill’s argument. They had been childhood sweethearts and had married at twenty, and then had had to wait ten agonisingly long years before Barbara pointed out to her big sister that Peggy wasn’t getting plump as she had just been complaining about, and that the fact that her waistband on her favourite skirt – a slender twenty-four inches – would no longer do up as easily as it once had was very likely because Peggy had in fact fallen pregnant.

      Peggy was dumbfounded, and then thrilled.

      A fortnight later Bill actually passed out, bumping his head quite badly, when Peggy showed him a chitty from the doctor that confirmed what they had spent so many years longing for, and which they – or Peggy at least – had completely given up hope of ever happening.

      Until the doctor had confirmed all was well to Peggy, she hadn’t dared say anything to Bill, knowing how many times he’d been cut to the quick when a missing or late period, or Peggy having a slight bulge in her normally flat tummy, hadn’t gone on to lead to a baby. Perhaps now they could get their marriage back to the happy place it had once been.

      Understandably, their relationship had struggled as the childless years had mounted, and as everyone around them had seemed to be able to have a baby every year with depressing ease. Peggy had often had to bite back bitter tears in public when she’d heard a woman complaining about being pregnant again.

      She would have given anything to be pregnant just once, while Bill had sought solace in the bookies or the pub, and occasionally over the last year or two, Barbara had begun to wonder if he hadn’t taken comfort in the arms of another, not that she ever dared raise the issue.

      Being barren was bad enough, Peggy felt, but to be barren and alone, which could well be an inevitable consequence if Bill