All The Days of My Life Read online

  “Now come and sit down and behave yourself, Peggy,” ordered Cissie, the oldest child of a large family. Peggy, the slow-witted child, father unknown, of slow-witted Marge Jones, who lived over the stable in Meakin Street where old Tom Totteridge kept his horse and cart, did as she was told. She said, “I want my mum.”

  “Oh, my Gawd,” said Cissie.

  “CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES,” Frank Jessop read, slowly and stonily, from the advertisement opposite him, above Mary’s head.

  The train went, for a long, dark time, through a tunnel. In the blackness, in the acrid stench of soot, Peggy began to cry. There was a thump in the corridor outside, and a cry of pain.

  “It’s all dark,” said Mary, frightened.

  “It’s a tunnel,” said Ian Brent. “I went through one before – on the way to the seaside.”

  “Does it stop?” asked Cissie.

  “Course it does. It’s a tunnel, ain’t it.” Nevertheless in the banging, snorting, pitch black carriage he was uncertain. “Here! What’s that?” he cried in alarm as the thumping started again in the corridor.

  “It’s me,” came a voice, Mannie’s. “I’m trying to get in. I can’t find the door. Why’s it gone all dark? Is it an air raid?”

  “No,” said Ian. “Here – I’ll stick my hand out the door. See if you can grab hold of it.”

  They were blinded by sudden light. Ian Brent was there with his hand out. Cissie licked her lips. Mannie stood there in the carriage door, uncertain of his reception.

  It was Peggy who half shouted, “Wetpants. Wetpants. Mannie is a wetpants,” but the others, whose fears had all been increased by the sudden and unexpected darkness, ignored her. They were in no mood, now, to turn on each other.

  Win Hodges, who had been up the best part of the night, doing her own and her brother’s washing, slept on in the corner, pale as a cellar mushroom.

  “When will we be there?” Cissie asked Ian Brent. An only child, with a father who worked for the Gas Board and a mother sewing part-time in a bakery, he had been away on trains twice before.

  “Search me,” he said. “Must be getting on for teatime now.”

  Mary, still blinking a little, went back to looking out of the window. The train drew them through a big pinewood. The great eye of the sun hovered over the points of the trees. Looking down deep into the darkness of the branches, Mary remembered, again, her one book and the picture of the two children holding hands amid the long, dark trunks of the trees, at night.

  “Oh – it’s about two kids, whose Mum and Dad couldn’t feed them no more, so they took them out in the woods and lost them on purpose like so they couldn’t find their own way home,” Ivy had told her negligently. As she remembered that, Mary’s mouth opened. The trees, their tops gleaming with sunshine, which had so charmed her, now made her feel scared. Her eyes filled and brimmed over. Tears began to roll down her chubby cheeks.

  “What’s up, Mary?” said Frank Jessop.

  Mary, remembering more of Ivy’s words, “– then they come to a witch’s house and she tried to eat them up –” and seeing Ivy’s blonde hair streaming down from under a steeple-crowned hat, gave a deep, gasping sob, like a howl.

  “Cheer up, Mary. It’ll be all right,” said Frank. “It’s fer yer own good. You can ’ave an egg every day. You can go home when we’ve beat the Germans.”

  This did not comfort Mary, who felt she did not want to go home. There, on the one side, was the picture, just like a photograph, of Sid and Ivy standing outside the narrow brick house in Meakin Street, and on the other the picture in the book, showing herself and her brother Jackie abandoned and wandering in the dark forest at night. Lost between the two visions, she went on crying. Gradually, under cover of the sobs, her natural optimism asserted itself. Jackie would always look after her. He always did. Nothing bad ever happened to Jackie. The forest must have an edge. They could walk out of it, away, into the fields beyond. And, just then, the trees gave way to an expanse of fern-covered common land, vast, green, fenceless, hedgeless, intersected by small trodden pathways through the high ferns and gorse, all warmed and lit by the golden light of afternoon, as far as the pastureland, which rose in gentle hills on the horizon. And Mary, rubbing her two grubby hands over her wet cheeks, wiping her nose on her bare arm, ceased to sob.

  “When we’ve beat the Germans –” Frank had said. The children’s voices muttered on in the hot carriage. They were tired now.

  “Dunno when that will be.”

  “My dad,” Jim Hodges said stolidly, “reckons we’ll lose.”

  “What?” Mannie Frankel said, looking frightened: “Why? Why’ll we lose?”

  “My dad says,” Jim Hodges told him, “they’ve got more men, and more equipment than what we’ve got. He says anyone can see we’re being beaten to a jelly. They’re on the doorstep, he says, my dad says –” and he paused. “He says Mr Churchill’s a liar.”

  “Cor,” said Cissie. “What a rotten thing to say. Your dad’s a rotten German spy.”

  “His friend thinks so, too,” said Jim. “They know Winnie’s got a plane waiting for him out in the country somewhere, and when the Germans come he’ll drive out there in his car and go all the way to America.”

  Cissie, looking out into the countryside, involuntarily searching for the plane, muttered, “I don’t believe yer.”

  “That’s right, isn’t it, Win?” Jim said. He reached out and jerked her knee about. “Wake up, Win. Doesn’t our dad know Winston Churchill’s got a plane somewhere so he can escape when we lose the war? Here, Win, doesn’t our dad say that?”

  Win, waking up, said, “Oh yer. That’s what he says. What do you want to wake me up for? I’m tired.”

  “So you could tell them it was true, what I said,” Jim said sensibly. “You can go back to sleep now.” And she did. “There – see,” he said to the others, “that’s what my dad says. He doesn’t care who wins the war.”

  “He must be stupid,” said Frank Jessop.

  “Don’t you call my dad stupid,” Jim said. “He reckons we’d all be no worse off under the Germans than what we’d be under Churchill. He shoots the workers.”

  “No worse off with Germans –” said Mannie. “Speak for yourself, then. Me and my mum and dad would be worse off, that’s for sure.”

  “Oh – Jews,” said Jim. “That’s different. My dad don’t care about the Jews. He says there’s too many of them anyway, and they’ve got all the money. My dad’s thinking about the working classes.”

  “Who are they?” asked Mary, but no one heard her.

  “They’d shoot the King,” said Cissie, scratching her head. “’Ere, I hope there’s no little strangers in the backs of these seats. My head don’t half itch.”

  “They do them over every day with a brush,” Ian Brent said. “I know –I seen them. Anythink in your head you must have picked up at home.”

  “Liar,” said Cissie, but without energy. Most of the children, hot, tired and hungry, were losing heart.

  “I hope I get on a farm,” Jim Hodges said placidly. “I wouldn’t half like to see the animals.”

  “What animals?” said Mary.

  “Sheep and cows,” said Jim. “That sort of thing.”

  “I hope the bull gets you, Jim Hodges,” said Cissie in a murmur.

  “Chickens,” said Frank Jessop, leaning excitedly towards Mary. “You know – oh, you know, Mary, they lay eggs and that.”

  “Lay eggs,” said Mary. “What – eggs?”

  “Yeah, ’course. What you eat.”

  Mary had an egg every day. Ivy did not, nor did Sid, nor Jackie.

  “Don’t you tell nobody about these eggs,” Ivy had instructed her, with her face close to Mary’s, for emphasis. “If I get to hear you’ve said one word – one word, mind – I’ll lock you in the coal-hole and I won’t never let you out. Are you listening?”

  So Mary, with the mystery of eggs growing deeper but still inextricably bound up somehow with getting locke
d up, said, “Oh,” and no more. To change the subject she asked Frank, “Is this the country?”

  “Course it is,” said Frank.

  “Don’t they have air raids here?”

  “Course they don’t. Why do you think we come here?” said Frank. “’Ullo – there’s Jackie. Wotcher, Jack.”

  Mary’s brother leaned against the side of the door, surveying the seated children. “Wotcher,” he said. “Everybody happy?”

  “Get out of it,” said Ian Brent scornfully.

  “Thought I’d just pop in to see what you lot was doing,” said Jackie. “I told him I wanted to go to the toilet.”

  “Who? Burns?” said Cissie. “You in with ’im?”

  “Yer,” said Jackie. “’E give me one of ’is sandwiches, dinnertime.”

  “Never” said Ian Brent. “What was in ’em?”

  “Paste,” said Jackie. “You all right, Mare? You been crying, ain’t yer? Your face is all dirty. Cor, you don’t ’alf look a sight. Cheer up, gel, we’ll be there in ’alf an hour.”

  “I think it was that tunnel,” said Cissie. “I reckon she’s too young to come away on her own, like.”

  “Well, she’s got me, ain’t she?” said Jackie. “Stands to reason – our mum knows no ’arm will come to old Mary while brother Jack’s about. That’s right, ain’t it, Mare?”

  Mary nodded at him gratefully.

  “Well, I’d better be getting back,” said Jackie. “Now I’ve paid me call. Can’t say I think a lot of the holiday so far.”

  “Cor – ’ark at you,” said Ian Brent. “Cheerful Charlie. Come to cheer us all up, ’ave you?”

  “Well – here we are, leaving home for Gawd knows where, to live with a load of swedebashers we’ve never seen before in all our lives, you don’t want to believe all they tell you about fresh air and eggs and milk and that – there’s got to be a snag somewhere.”

  “What do you know?” said Ian Brent suspiciously.

  “Only that things don’t always work out like they say they will. That’s the law of life, chum, take it from me.”

  “Well, we’re here now, so we’d better make the best of it,” said Cissie.

  “Oh, yer,” said Jackie. “That’ll get you a long way.”

  “You can’t do anything about it,” said Cissie. “You’ve got to put up with it, same as us.”

  Jackie smiled. “If I don’t like it, I’m going home.”

  “Garn,” said Ian Brent. “How will you manage that, Tarzan?”

  “Oh,” said Jackie, airily. “There’s always a way if you use your brains, my boy. Well – I’d better be going, before he comes looking for me. – Chin up, Mare,” he added, “we’re nearly there.” And, turning round, off he swaggered; shrimpy Jack, four foot six, nine years old, in boots too big for him, long grey flannel trousers reaching to his knees and an old black jacket, cut down from one of his father’s.

  “Reckons he’s clever,” grumbled Cissie, when he had gone. “He’ll find out.”

  But he had cheered the little evacuees, for whom the long hot journey into the unknown had come to seem eternal, as if they would never go home and never arrive at their destination. Mary, suddenly refilled with hope and happiness, as if it had been poured in through the top of her head and had flooded through her body, right down to her toes, sighed, altered her position, and leaned back contentedly against the scratchy upholstery. Jackie could do anything. He could drown unwanted kittens in a bucket and climb up to the roof and sit by the chimneypots shouting, “Look at me!” He could cheek Ivy and dodge out of the door laughing before she caught him a smack round the ear. Once he went for a ride on the district nurse’s bicycle and left it down the railway sidings and came home, and no one knew who’d done it. Mary loved Jackie. She really felt miserable when she had to eat her egg, in secret, after he’d gone to school, so that he couldn’t have a dip of it. She started to think about eggs again.

  She was thirsty, though. The great ball of the sun, lower now in the west, still burned down over the moving landscape, a patchwork of small fields, some green with long corn, some pastures, marked off with hedges intersected by little brown pathways across or around the sides. Thick clumps of trees, oak and elm, stood in rises and in hollows. There was no noise now, except for the puffing of the train and its regular clacking over the rails. The children sat quietly. The world outside the windows lay still and glowing under the afternoon sun. The train puffed on.

  Suddenly there was a cottage with a little garden hedged with blossoming rose bushes. Across the lawn a washing line billowed with clothes pegged out to dry. On one side there was a garden path leading down from the back door of the house to a vegetable patch at the bottom of the garden. Halfway down the path, her skipping rope sweeping over her head in arcs, a little girl was jumping. As Mary watched, the rope swung and the little girl jumped up and down in the sunshine, her gold hair bouncing.

  The train took them past as Mary, turning round with her cheek hard against the window, just saw the kitchen door open and a small black and white dog bound out and race down the path towards the skipping girl. Then the train swung round a bend. Suddenly they were travelling between big embankments of black stones, covered with straggling grass and surmounted by rough bushes.

  Mary now turned back to face Frank Jessop, sitting opposite her in the other corner and, with her hand suddenly over her mouth, uttered a small moan of loss.

  The train swept them into another dark tunnel.

  She sat there, rigid in the dark, feeling her heart thudding in her chest.

  “It’s a long way to Tipperary,” sang the others in ragged chorus. “It’s a long way to go.”

  “Oh Peggy – get your bloody hand off me – I nearly had a fit,” came Cissie’s voice.

  “It’s a long way to Tipperary, to the sweetest girl I know.”

  But Mary sat quietly, stiff and straight, feeling her heart pound and the blood pulsing in her head. As they came out into the light she said, in a meek voice, amid a chorus of moans, groans, boos and cheers, “Cissie, have you got a comb?”

  “What?” said Cissie, pushing Peggy’s bulk away from her. “Get off, Peg. You’re all right now. What – a comb? What for?”

  “I want to borrow your comb,” said Mary. “And then will you take me to the toilet?”

  “Oh, Gawd,” said Cissie. “What with you and Peggy, there’s no peace. All right then. Come on.”

  “I want the comb,” repeated Mary.

  “Comb it when you come back.”

  “I want to comb it there,” said Mary.

  “Whatever for?” said Cissie.

  “I just do,” said Mary, trading on the knowledge that Cissie was used to the irrational obstinacies of small children. In fact she desperately wanted to comb her hair in front of the mirror she had seen in the lavatory. There was no mirror in the compartment, just the empty wooden space where it had once been. She had a perfectly good reason but she would not say what it was. She knew better than to do that. Instead she squeezed out a few tears and made a low moaning sound. Threatened by this, Cissie said quickly, “All right. Don’t start crying. Here’s the comb. Come on – I’ll take you.”

  At the door to the lavatory, Mary said, “Now, you go away.”

  Cissie gave her a straight look and said, doubtfully, “Don’t lock the door, mind.”

  “Give us the comb, then.”

  Cissie, handing to her half a pink Bakelite comb, said, “What’re you up to, Mary Waterhouse?” Her only answer was the stupid look on Mary’s face. She shrugged and walked back along the corridor, calling back, “Don’t you dare lock that door.”

  But she did not say why not and Mary, standing on her toes now, inside the lavatory, scarcely heard her. She did lock the door, leaning against it for support and flipping the metal bar over into the socket with the tips of her fingers. Once the door was locked she pulled up her dress, pulled down her dingy white knickers with the sagging elastic, peed, and pulled the knicker
s up again. Then she started. The little compartment was dim, for the windows were made of frosted glass, but, doggedly, as it rocked to and fro, she stood on her toes and pulled up her dress and wetted the hem under the tap in the washbasin. She washed her face over with part of the damp dress and dried it roughly the same way, for there was no towel, not even any lavatory paper, in the compartment. She washed her hands and then rubbed them, clean but wet, over her face again and down her legs. Seeing the heavy smears of dirt up and down her legs which this process produced, and guessing that similar smears must still be on her face, she jumped on the lavatory seat and, as the tray swayed, looked in the glass. Then she got down, unlaced her black shoes, took off her socks and soaked one under the tap in the basin. She cleaned her face carefully with it. She dried it with the other. She stood on the lavatory seat holding both socks, which dripped down on to her bare feet. Craning forward, she looked again at her face in the glass. It was clean. Bending over in the rocking compartment, staggering from time to time, she washed her legs with the socks. Then she started to comb her fair, slightly unruly hair, which hung down to her shoulders. Oh, the pain of dragging that comb through the knots and tangles as the train tossed to and fro – the pain in her arm as she tugged over and over again at the same knots, shutting her eyes, which kept on watering with agony as she tugged. To think she was doing this to herself, instead of having Ivy do it to her. It seemed like hours and hours she spent there, in the little dim compartment, as the train hurtled them through a countryside she could not see because of the frosted glass in the windows.

  But there were two ideas as sharp as arrows in Mary’s head. One was that, for reasons she could not quite analyse, she must look like a good girl when she arrived. The other was a notion about a lady with long gold hair, a long white dress and a gold crown, walking through a meadow, full of grass and little white flowers. As she tugged and pulled at her hair, and, staggering continually against the moving walls of the compartment, tried to keep her feet in the small smelly room, her mind ran on these two things – the good girl with the clean face and the golden-haired lady. How often had someone turned to Ivy in a shop, or in the street and, glancing down at little Mary, said, “Oh, look at the little mite with her lovely hair – like a little princess.”