The Evacuee Christmas. Katie King

slight concern as Barbara climbed precariously up onto a stool to lift off the high mantelpiece above the kitchen hearth a slightly battered and dented metal biscuit barrel that commemorated King George V coming to the throne in 1910.

      Peggy remembered this biscuit barrel with fond thoughts, as it had sat in their parents’ kitchen throughout her and Barbara’s childhood. Although Peggy was the oldest daughter, and therefore in theory should have had the first dibs on their parents’ possessions, when it came to closing up their house after they both died within months of each other, Peggy did a magnanimous act. It was just before Barbara and Ted’s marriage, which meant it was a year after Peggy and Bill’s own nuptials, when their mother succumbed to influenza and their father died not long after of, they liked to say, a broken heart. With only the slightest of pangs as she had always loved the biscuit barrel, Peggy had allowed her sister to stake, claim to the majority of their mother’s possessions, including the biscuit barrel, as Barbara was poised to set up her own home and Peggy had just about got herself and Bill comfortably fitted out by then.

      Now, Barbara clunked the barrel down and onto the table, the number of large pennies in it adding considerably to its apparently hefty weight. She loosened the lid with her nails until she was able to work it off, before tipping the contents onto the maroon chenille tablecloth that adorned the kitchen table.

      Peggy had long teased Barbara about her beloved tablecloth that had to be removed whenever the family ate, or when anything mucky was being done on the table. Barbara could be very stubborn if she chose, and so she resolutely refused to accept the tablecloth, with its extravagant fringing, was anything less than practical. Now, at long last, it came into its own as it turned out to be a good place to sort the pile of money that had been in the tin as the chenille prevented the coins rolling around too much, and it cushioned too the several notes that had tumbled from the biscuit barrel.

      Barbara counted out five pounds and replaced them in the barrel.

      Then she totted up what was left. It was a small fortune: a whole £37 15s. 7½d. With a raise of her eyebrows Barbara put another £20 back in the kitty, and then a handful of silver half-crowns and florins, and then she clambered laboriously back onto the stool to return the biscuit barrel to its home on the mantelpiece.

      ‘Goodness,’ said Peggy enviously, as her and Bill’s rainy day money had never broken the £10 barrier. ‘I had no idea.’

      ‘Ted’s been doing overtime, and of course I always try and put away all of my wages. But I won’t deny that a lot of scrimping and saving has gone into that blessed tin,’ said Barbara. ‘We’ve been saving extra hard ever since the children started school and we had even been wondering about a proper holiday next year, and a mangle for the washing and a new bed for Jessie. But now I want Connie and Jessie to be evacuated looking as if they are loved and cared for, and as if we think nothing of sending them away in new clothes. I think that might help them get a better class of family at the other end, don’t you think?’

      Peggy wasn’t certain that would be the case, but she decided to keep quiet.

      Some Bermondsey families would be hard-pressed even to give their kiddies a bath or to send them off in clean clothes, she knew, and so it could be that some of the host families would take pity and choose those clearly less advantaged first. She knew too that some of the children were persistent bed-wetters, and so she hoped that wasn’t going to cause too many problems further down the line.

      Peggy made a decision not to ponder any further on this just then, as it seemed too loaded with opportunity for fraught outcomes. Although, of course, she hoped that Barbara’s view was the correct one, rather than hers.

      After one last cup of tea and a final peruse of Barbara’s list, the sisters decided they would head up to Elephant and Castle to see what they could buy.

      Barbara carefully placed her to-do list in one pocket and her shopping list in the corresponding pocket on the other side of her coat front, and then she tucked her purse away out of sight at the bottom of her basket, hidden under a folded scarf.

      Peggy took the opportunity to spend a final penny before slipping into her lightweight mackintosh, as these days with the baby pressing on her bladder she needed to go as often as possible.

      And then the sisters left for the bus stop so that they could make the shortish ride to Elephant, as the area was known locally.

      At school meanwhile, Susanne Pinkly was experiencing a rather trying first lesson of the day.

      Understandably, none of the children had their minds on their timetabled lesson for first thing on a Friday, which was arithmetic; even at the best of times that was never an especially pleasant start to the final school day of the week.

      This particular morning, all the whole school wanted to do was talk about the evacuation, and what their mothers and fathers had told them about it.

      Susanne could completely understand this desire, but she wasn’t utterly sure what she should say to the children as she didn’t want to make a delicate situation worse, or to make any timid pupils feel even more fearful about the future than they would be already.

      Susanne always kept an eye out at playtime for Jessie Ross, as she knew the bigger boys could be mean to him. She had a soft spot for Jessie as he was one of the few children who patently enjoyed their lessons (very obviously much more than his sister did, at any rate) and who would try very hard to please his teacher.

      Jessie was lucky to have a sister like Connie to stand up for him, Susanne thought, although just before the Easter holidays Ted had requested to headmaster Mr Jones that Connie be moved to the other class for their forthcoming senior year at St Mark’s as he and Barbara felt that Jessie was coming to depend too much on his twin sister fighting his battles for him.

      Sure enough, at the start of this autumn term the twins had been separated and now were no longer taught in the same class. Susanne had suggested she keep Connie, and that Jessie would be moved in order that he could be taken out of Larry’s daily orbit, but Mr Jones said that he thought that might make Jessie’s weakness too obvious for all to see, and that the likely result would be that Larry’s bullying would simply be replaced by another pupil becoming equally foul to Jessie.

      Generally, the teachers didn’t think Larry was an out-and-out bad lad as such, because when he forgot to act the Big I Am, he seemed perfectly able to get on well with the other children, Connie having been seen playing quite amiably with him on several occasions. The teachers believed that he had a troubled home life, as his park keeper father was well known for being a bit handy with his fists when he was in his cups, while Larry’s mother bent over backward to pretend all was well, despite the occasional painful bruise suggesting otherwise. The days Larry came in to school looking a bit battered and with dried tear tracks under his eyes was when he was prone to go picking on someone smaller than him. It was rumoured that Larry’s father had been dismissed from his job the previous spring, and Susanne was sorry to note that there had been a corresponding worsening of Larry’s behaviour since then.

      Having just spoken with Peggy made Susanne think afresh of Jessie, as she knew Peggy adored her niece and nephew, but that Peggy always wished that Jessie had an easier time in the playtimes and lunch breaks at school than in fact he did.

      So Susanne had been intending to pay special attention today to see how he was faring now that he would be getting used to not having his sister nearby at all times. But now Susanne had to put that thought to the back of her mind as she had just had a brainwave.

      She would acknowledge the forthcoming evacuation but in a more oblique way than discussing it openly. She would do this by talking about some London words and sayings that might not make much sense to people who came from outside the confines of Bermondsey.

      After making sure Larry was sitting at his desk directly in her eyeline so that she could keep tabs on him, Susanne got up from her seat behind her desk at the front of the class, smoothing her second-best wool skirt over her generous hips and checking the buttons to her pretty floral blouse were correctly fastened (to her embarrassment, she’d had a mishap with a button slipping undone the day before, and had the chagrin of catching