Copyright

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2014

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers

77–85 Fulham Palace Road,

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © Lynne Reid Banks 2014

Cover credit: Design © www.beckyglibbery.co.uk

Cover photographs: Figures © Mark Owen/Trevillion, Ship © Getty Images, Suitcases and tree branch © Shutterstock

Lynne Reid Banks asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007589432

Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007589449

Version: 2014-07-21

To Glady who read and liked it first.

To ‘Cameron’ who wouldn’t read it at all!

And in memory of ‘Alex’ – Pat Reid Banks, my mother.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One: The Voyage

Chapter Two: Montreal

Chapter Three: On the Train

Chapter Four: We Arrive

Chapter Five: Freedom

Chapter Six: School

Chapter Seven: Willie and the Crescent Club

Chapter Eight: Fall (OK, Cameron – Autumn)

Chapter Nine: Snow

Chapter Ten: Changes

Chapter Eleven: Across the Tracks

Chapter Twelve: Our New Life

Chapter Thirteen: The End of Winter

Chapter Fourteen: Penny Wise and Other Dramas

Chapter Fifteen: New York, New York!

Chapter Sixteen: Fairyland

Chapter Seventeen: Back to the Real World

Chapter Eighteen: All Change

Chapter Nineteen: Worries

Chapter Twenty: Emma Lake

Chapter Twenty-one: Wooding

Chapter Twenty-two: Music Hath Charms (Even For Me)

Chapter Twenty-three: Laddie’s Adventure

Chapter Twenty-four: The Menace Returns

Chapter Twenty-five: The Muskeg

Chapter Twenty-six: Bad News

Chapter Twenty-seven: Cameron’s Adventure

Chapter Twenty-eight: Benjy

Postscript

Also by Lynne Reid Banks

About the Publisher

Our families travelled to Liverpool from London, where I lived, and Cheltenham, where Cameron lived, to see us off.

My mother and father, two aunties, an uncle – even Grampy, our mothers’ father, made the journey, although Grampy was old and not well, but he would come. And Shott, his dog. He wouldn’t leave Shott behind in case he got bombed.

Travelling by train was crowded and very uncomfortable in wartime, with all the soldiers and people being moved around the country on war work. But Shott was popular. Grampy had to stop the soldiers feeding him. I’d never liked him much – he sometimes growled and even snapped – but now, for some reason, I wanted him on my knee. I stroked and stroked his curly fur and for once he let me. He was quivering. Dogs sense things. And there was a lot to sense. The whole carriage was crackling with feelings.

Cameron kept looking at Shott, but he didn’t touch him. I didn’t always know what Cameron was thinking because he kept his feelings shut in. But I knew then – he was thinking of Bubbles, his dog. The ‘Bulgarian bulldog’. Leaving Bubbles must have been awful. Not as bad as leaving both his parents, but awful just the same.

I kept my eyes down a lot of the way. I didn’t want to look at my beautiful daddy, grim-faced, holding my mother’s hand. Hardly talking. Or at my Auntie Millie, Cameron’s mother, keeping Cameron close to her. Uncle Jack, reading a medical journal. And Grampy. He only spoke to Shott. I think he was struggling not to cry. My mother was his favourite, and she was going away.

Mummy didn’t say much, either, except to ask me every now and then if I was all right, if I wanted anything. Only the aunts chatted, brightly, trying to keep up our spirits. Auntie Millie, who was the liveliest of us all and could always cheer us up, had her work cut out this time. Mummy, Cameron and I were going to get on a ship and sail far away. Who knew when, if ever, we’d all be together again?

I didn’t know how I felt. I think I just didn’t know how to feel. There was too much feeling all around me. If I thought anything on that long train journey, it was, I wish this was over. I wish we could be on the ship. Did I not mind leaving Daddy, leaving the aunts, leaving England? I couldn’t get to grips with that. I had Mummy. I had Cameron – though not then; he just sat by the window watching England go by. Auntie’s arm was round his shoulders but once I saw him twitch as if he simply wanted to be left alone.

At Liverpool docks, I remember standing there with them all around us. The ship’s great side – grey, dotted with portholes – loomed up beside us. The gangway was ready and the loudspeakers were telling us to go on board. Grampy clasped me to his little round stomach.

“Be a good girl, Lindy,” he said. “Help your dear mother. Keep your eyes and your mind open. New things are frightening at first but sometimes they turn out better than the old. And don’t worry about us!” He held me away and smiled through his tears. Then he boomed, “I always wanted to go to Canada! Wonderful country! It’ll be a great adventure!”

I saw over Grampy’s shoulder Cameron’s parents hugging him. And Daddy holding Mummy tight. Then Daddy held me tight. His moustache scratched my cheek and it was wet. Daddy crying? Never. I’d never seen him cry. It must be the rain … I held him round the waist … Then somehow we’d left them and were on the ship, standing against the rail, waving and waving. Shott was barking up at us, shrill little goodbye yaps. Then the ship’s hooter drowned out every other sound, the saddest note I’d ever heard.

The sea journey, Liverpool to Montreal, took five days. It was summer, 1940 – the first summer of World War Two – but the ocean didn’t seem to know it was summer. It didn’t want us on it. It pitched our ship, the Duchess of Atholl, from end to end and from side to side, and then in a sort of swirl, like a spoon stirring, which was the worst.

When you’re seasick you can’t think about anything else. Nine times on the first day out of Liverpool I threw up – twice over the rail, three times in the washbasin in our cabin, three times on the deck before I could reach the rail, and once at dinner in the dining room in front of everybody.

I shouldn’t have gone to dinner of course. Cameron didn’t, but then he was on hunger strike. He wouldn’t leave our cabin or eat anything we brought him from the dining room to tempt him. He didn’t eat a thing for two days. What doesn’t go in, can’t come out, as Mummy used to say, so he wasn’t sick even once. I tried to coax him out by telling him about the life-drills.

“But you have to! Everyone has to do lifeboat drill!”

“Leave me alone.”

“But what if the ship sinks?”

“I don’t care if it does!”

By the time he decided to come out of our cabin and out of his strike, the worst was over. The ocean had calmed down. Even I wasn’t being sick any more, and I was able to show him around Our Ship.

It was a big ship, with two funnels and three decks. It had a large lounge and two dining rooms with tables and chairs fixed to the floor. Not much else was fixed. If your glass of water started to slide, you had to drop your knife, quick, and grab it.

I told Cameron about the boat-drills again. When a siren blew, we had to take our lifebelts and go to our stations. Everyone on board knew where their station was. Ours was on the port side – the left – near the back of the ship. I showed Cameron our lifeboat, swinging overhead.

“How do you think we’ll get into it?” I asked. I’d been worried about this, being a bit plump and not very athletic.

“They’ll bring it down level with the deck then they’ll open the rail – here. See? There’s a gate – and we’ll have to jump in.”

I didn’t speak. I didn’t think I could jump that far. Especially the way the ship could rock … Perhaps a sailor would lift me in. I wondered if Mummy would be able to jump. If she couldn’t, I wouldn’t let the sailor lift me in without her. I could imagine the lifeboat dropping down into the sea with Cameron in it and Mummy and me still on the sinking ship. Only I knew Mummy wouldn’t be parted from Cameron.

Cameron shared Mummy’s and my cabin, but he nearly hadn’t. Mummy made it happen. On the first day, when we’d pulled out of Liverpool Harbour, an officer showed us to a cabin for two down on the lowest deck. Mummy took one look through the narrow doorway, at the tiny room with an upper and lower bunk and no window, and said, “I’m very sorry, officer, but there must be some mistake.”

“No mistake, madam.” He looked at his clipboard. “Hanks – that’s the name, isn’t it? You and your little girl are in here.”

“No,” said Mummy, politely but firmly. “There are three of us. Where is my nephew to sleep?”

“Male passengers over the age of eleven have to sleep in all-male cabins.”

“My nephew is sleeping with me. I am responsible for him. How can I be, if he’s somewhere else?”

“I’m sorry, madam—”

“Please don’t be sorry. Just give me another cabin with three berths in it. In any case I can’t sleep down here, in such a tiny space. I suffer from claustrophobia.”

This was true. When she was little, Mummy had been playing hide-and-seek with her sisters at a party. She’d hidden in a wardrobe in an upstairs room. The door had stuck. She’d shouted and hammered on the door for what felt like hours and finally she panicked and banged so hard the wardrobe fell over, and since then she’d been terribly afraid of being shut in small spaces.

She wasn’t panicking now, but she was an actress. She made a sort of mad gleam come into her eye and did a funny twitchy thing she could do with her face. One of my favourite stories was how, when she was on tour with a play, she would sit on the train and do twitches whenever someone who wasn’t one of the actors tried to come into their carriage.

It had worked then, and it worked now.

The officer took one horrified look at the twitchings and said, “Oh. Well, that’s different. I’ll see what I can do.”

And before long we were led upstairs (up the companionway) to a higher level and shown a cabin for four with a porthole. We could see the sea through it, and although we were told we mustn’t open it, it was much better than being in the dark, stuffy cabin downstairs, where we would have been “battened under the hatches”, as Mummy said later.

“Have we got this whole cabin to ourselves?” I asked. “The spare bunk too?”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s for the suitcases.”

“You are clever, Auntie,” said Cameron in a strange, flat voice. He went and lay on one of the bottom bunks, took his favourite book, England, Their England, out of his backpack, and began to read.

“Absurd,” Mummy muttered. “Off somewhere in a cabin full of men! Imagine what your mother would say to me!”

I saw Cameron bite hard on his lips.

What must it be like, not to have your mother with you? To have left her behind to be bombed? I wondered.

I squeezed his hand, but he took it away from me to turn a page. Cameron never liked you to see him showing any weakness.

Now, standing on the deck, I showed him how the great propellers or ‘screws’ churned up the water into a boiling white froth, leaving a spreading trail across the sea behind us. I loved to stand on the lowest deck where I was closest to this seething mass of white water. Cameron stood beside me for a while, gazing back the way we’d come. He looked so stricken I thought he might go on hunger strike again.

But then he went off by himself. He wasn’t satisfied with just seeing the parts of the ship that any passenger could see. Before the third day was over, he’d made friends with one of the crew and managed to get down into the engine room. He emerged from the hatchway looking happier than I’d seen him look for a long time. Also dirtier.

“You should see the engines!” he said. “Huge. Fires roaring away in great tunnels. The way they have to work to keep them going! They let me throw a chunk of coal in. I threw it like a cricket ball.”

I felt happier than I’d felt so far too. Cameron – my Cameron – was back.

The captain had heard about my marathon sick day. At dinner on that third evening, he was moving among the dining tables saying a few words to some of the passengers, and he stopped next to ours.

“Are you the little girl who was sick nine times on our first day out?” he asked with a smile.

I said I was, feeling ashamed of being ‘feak and weeble’, as Daddy would have called it.

“Well, I think that’s a ship’s record,” he said. “I’ll put it in the log! Are you feeling better now? How’s your little Derby Kelly?”

“My what?” I mumbled.

“Derby Kelly – belly,” he said, patting his through his uniform, and everyone at the table (there were eight altogether) laughed, especially one woman, who said, “How do you know Cockney rhyming slang, Captain?”

“By being born within the sound of Bow Bells,” he said. Some of the others looked surprised. “They have to take all sorts in wartime,” the Captain said with a faint smile.

I asked Mummy later what he meant.

“Being born within the sound of the bells of Bow Church is supposed to be the mark of a true Londoner,” she said. “But Cockneys usually talk working class. That’s why that woman was surprised. Because working-class men don’t often get to be captains.”

“And what’s rhyming slang?”

“Oh, that’s fun,” she said. “Now let me see. Apples and pears are stairs. Frog and toad is a road. Barnet Fair is hair. Rub-a-dub-dub is a –?” She looked at us, expectantly.

My mind was a blank, but Cameron said, “A pub?”

“Yes!” said Mummy.

“What’s ‘war’?” Cameron asked with a frown.

“I don’t know. ‘Beastly bore’, perhaps … You’d better ask the captain.”

So I decided to do that. After all, he had spoken to me, and after dinner several people who’d been at tables near us stopped me and said, “Aren’t you the lucky girl, being singled out by the captain!” I thought we were practically friends.

So the next morning (the fourth day of our voyage, by which time I was feeling as if I’d been on the ship for a large part of my life) I waited around at the foot of the bridge. Cameron had told me that if the engine room was the stomach of the ship, the bridge was its brain. There was a sailor at the bottom of the steps leading to it and when I asked if I could see the captain, he said, “Sorry, miss, he’s busy steering the ship just now.”

“I only want to ask him something.”

“You and half the people on board!” he said.

“I want to ask him,” I persisted, “what’s rhyming slang for ‘war’.”

“Bless you,” he said. “You don’t need to trouble the captain for that. I can tell you! It’s ‘buckets of gore’. Or ‘buckets’ for short. And ain’t it the bleeding truth!”

I knew ‘bleeding’ was a bad swear word. Naughty little curse words – bother, dash and blow – lead you on to worse words, and take you down below! Nanny used to say. I just said, “Thank you,” and ran to find Cameron to tell him. But he was already in the middle of a group of boys and I knew I should keep clear. When boys get together they don’t want girls hanging around.

That night, tucked into our bunks before Mummy came to join us (she liked to walk around the deck on her own before she went to sleep) I dared to ask Cameron why he’d gone on strike.

“Why do you think, Lind?” he said. He sounded impatient.

“Because they made you leave England?”

“England. Parents. School. Friends. The war. Everything.”

“Do you mind leaving the war?”

“Of course,” he said, as if I was being stupid.

“But there’ll be bombs. Maybe Hitler will come,” I said.

“And do you want to be safe in Canada if that happens?”

Yes, I do, I thought. But he made me feel that was wrong. “We’re too young to help,” I mumbled.

“I’ll miss everything,” he said. And he suddenly raised his voice. “And I’ll miss Bubbles most of all. He’s old. When I get back he’ll probably be—” He turned his back on me. “Leave me alone. I want to go to sleep.”

On our last day, the fifth, it suddenly got very cold. We hadn’t expected to need our new ‘Canadian winter’ clothes until – well, until it was the Canadian winter. But now, if we wanted to go out on deck, we needed them.

Before we left England, Mummy had bought a lot of clothes with clothes coupons we’d saved up, with other members of the family contributing. We’d bought woollen jerseys and thick skirts and warm stockings and undies, and heavy winter coats, gloves, scarves and caps. Cameron’s mother had bought him winter clothes too. Now we needed them if we didn’t want to be stuck ‘below’ for the whole day. And where were they? Not in our cabin. They were down in the hold, in our big cases, completely out of our reach.

But Cameron and I weren’t going to be beaten. We just piled on everything we had with us, in layers, and each wrapped a blanket over our heads and around us, covering our hands. Then up we went.

As we opened the door on to the deck, a blast of freezing cold air nearly knocked us over backwards. But we soon recovered and scrambled out, nearly tripping over the ledge, staring. Straight in front of us – instead of empty ocean – we saw what looked like a huge blue mountain.

“Oh, look! An iceberg!” breathed Mummy.

It wasn’t only blue, of course – it was mainly white, with some greeny bits. It gleamed like an enormous lump of sugar that glittered and flashed in the sun. Hundreds of other passengers had come up on deck – dressed in strange clothes like us – and stood against the rail, staring and whispering to each other.

Why are they whispering? I wondered. It just seemed you had to, it was so awesome. I didn’t know that word then. But it’s the only one that fits.

As we stood there, watching this magnificent thing seeming to move past us, Mummy said, “That’s the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen!”

A man was standing beside her. There weren’t many men on the ship; it was mostly women and children. But this man turned his head and said, “Madam, you are so wrong! It’s not beautiful at all. It’s a menace – a threat to our ship! Don’t you know what happened to the great, unsinkable Titanic? One of those deadly things tore the guts out of it.”

For once my mother had nothing to say. But I did. I said, “It’s still beautiful! Even dangerous things can be beautiful.”

“What, for instance?” this man asked. “Guns? Bombs? You think they’re beautiful, I suppose!”

“Tigers,” I said. “And my mother’s right. That iceberg is beautiful. And it won’t hurt us either, because we’ve passed it.”

He turned away from us. Mummy put her arm round me and hugged me to her side. She hugged Cameron too, and he let her. We watched the iceberg get smaller behind us until it was just a blue peak on the horizon.

“Why was that man so nasty?” I asked.

“He’s scared,” she said. “A lot of people are scared.”

“You’re not!”

She hugged me closer and didn’t answer.

What I’m going to tell now, I didn’t know about until long afterwards. The third night at sea when we were halfway through the voyage, Mummy couldn’t sleep. She didn’t know what it was going to be like where we were going, and she’d never been away from Daddy since they were married. And besides, she felt shut in. She wanted desperately to open the porthole but she knew she couldn’t. So she got dressed and went up on deck.

She walked about for a bit, and then stood at the rail. She was quite alone. It seemed everyone else on the ship was asleep, yet it kept moving steadily through the water. She felt much better outside than she had in the cabin. She kept breathing deeply and looking at the millions of stars shining overhead like a canopy embroidered with diamonds …

Just as she was thinking that she might be able to sleep, she saw something. The starlight shone on a straight path – a trail of whitish bubbles coming towards our ship like an arrow. I wouldn’t have known what it was, but Mummy knew. It was a torpedo.

She was so frightened she couldn’t move, let alone cry out. She could only watch in horror and fear as that arrow of deadly bubbles came quickly nearer and nearer … Our ship steamed on, unknowing, and just as she thought the torpedo must hit us, it sped under the back of the ship and off across the sea.

It had just missed us.

Mummy slumped over the rail. She hadn’t been seasick at all so far, even in the rough early days. But now she threw up into the sea.

As she straightened up, looking out across the water in dread, expecting to see a second torpedo, she got another sort of shock. A hand fell on her shoulder.

“What are you doing here, madam? You must get below at once!” said a man’s urgent voice.

It was one of the officers. She turned to him and gasped, “Did you see it? Did you see it? It nearly hit us! It—”

The man took her by the shoulders. “What’s your name?” he asked, peering at her through the darkness.

“Mrs – Hanks—”

“Mrs Hanks,” he said, very quietly and strongly, “I want you to go back to your cabin straight away. You mustn’t come on deck at night. And whatever you thought you saw, please … say nothing to anyone. I want you to give me your word you’ll say nothing.”

Mummy just nodded. Shaking all over, she went down the steps and found our cabin and didn’t say a word about it until long, long after we got safely to where we were going.

A month later a ship carrying evacuees was torpedoed and sunk. She didn’t tell us about that, either. She’d always been very upfront about the war, and hadn’t tried to shield me from it, but this was too close. When I think what she must have gone through every night – maybe every day too – after that till we reached Montreal, never showing her fear, I feel very proud of her.

Of course, we’d been told about where we were going, but I must say it didn’t mean a lot, at least not to me. Cameron, who was a brain-box, probably did a bit of research, which may have been part of why he didn’t want to go.

Great-uncle Arthur O’Flaherty lived in a place with a very funny name – Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, which was somewhere called the prairies in the middle of Canada. On the boat, whenever we’d told people where we were going, they either looked blank or said, “That’s pretty far west.” This made me feel we were going into some strange lonely place far from civilisation.

I knew that our uncle was quite old, and lived alone in a small flat, on a pension, so he couldn’t have us to live with him. So when my family wrote to him to ask his help, he’d found a middle-aged couple called Gordon and Luti Laine, who offered to receive us as ‘war guests’. Mummy had told me that Canadians are usually very polite and nobody wanted to hurt our feelings by calling us evacuees so ‘war guests’ was what people like us were called.

Great-uncle Arthur turned out to be one of the kindest, gentlest, most generous men in the world. Good all the way through. But the trouble with really, thoroughly good people is, they often can’t seem to realise that not everyone is as good as themselves.

We docked at Montreal in the evening. As we sailed into the harbour, we could see a tall, pointed hill with a cross on the top, all lit up; it was our first glimpse of the city.

Mummy sat on a bollard at the docks, after we collected all our big luggage. She took her wallet out of her handbag – which never left her – and counted our money. She’d changed it from pounds to Canadian dollars on the ship, and it looked a lot more – she got five dollars for every pound. But we’d spent a lot on the ship.

Daddy had had a talk to me before we left. He usually left serious talks to Mummy, but this time it was about her, so he did it.

“We’re not a rich family,” he said, “but you’ve never gone short. Now, when you and Mummy are in Canada, she won’t have any money of her own.”

“Why not? Can’t you send us some?”

“No. Wars are so expensive. The government wants women and children to go abroad to be safe, but still they don’t want money to go out of the country. They’re not going to let me give you more than ten pounds apiece. With Cameron’s ten pounds, that’s thirty altogether. Not very much. Just about enough, if you’re careful, to get to where you’re going. After that, you’ll have to depend on other people. Strangers.

“And that’s going to be very hard on Mummy,” Daddy went on. “Having to ask every time she wants something. Please, Lindy, be a very good girl and try to understand and not ask for too much. You’re not greedy, I know that. But it will be hard on you too.”

Mummy counted out the money we had left and took us to the hotel nearest to the docks for the night. It was pretty scruffy, but Mummy said, “Our train for the prairies leaves early in the morning. We have to sleep somewhere, and this place at least is cheap.”

Cameron and I were hungry. We left our small mountain of suitcases in our three-bed room and went out into the shining, thronging streets of the city.

There were lights everywhere. England had been blacked out for months and months before we left, and it’s hard to describe how wonderful it was to see all these lights blazing – street lamps, office blocks with all their windows lit up, colourful advertisements, car headlights … The whole city was like a Christmas tree. Even Cameron, who, I knew, was determined not to like anything in Canada, couldn’t help twisting his head in all directions, drinking in all those lovely lights.

Another thing that was different from England was that the streets were full of people. In London people didn’t go out at night much because without lights it was so dark you could fall over things. Here, there were crowds, all with loud voices – mostly French ones, which astonished me – and lit-up, cheerful faces. Nothing could have showed more clearly that we’d left the war behind. No one here was afraid of Hitler’s armies or his bombs.

The man at the hotel desk had told us about a restaurant a short walk away. We headed there, through the bright night, not talking because it was all so strange and we were suddenly very tired. Mummy held our hands. We were still wearing our ship clothes, which were rather crumpled and grubby after five days at sea, but Mummy had dug out a mac for each of us to cover up the worst.

We reached the restaurant and stepped inside. There was an orchestra playing. The place was crowded with lively people eating their dinners, all talking and laughing and clinking their knives and forks. But as they noticed us standing in the doorway, a silence spread out across the room.

Then the orchestra stopped what it was playing, and struck up ‘There’ll Always Be an England’.

Everyone stopped eating. Some people started singing the song. Several men began to stand up, and then sat down again. Every eye in the restaurant was fixed on us. It was as if we were standing in a spotlight.

They obviously saw that we were fresh off the boat from England. ‘There’ll Always Be an England’ was the pop song of the moment and they played it for us. I thought they were being nice, but for Mummy, it was a horrible ordeal. She felt stared-at, exposed, humiliated – the poor refugee from war-torn London, an object of pity. She stood it for the whole length of the song, as if she was being punished somehow, and then she took our hands again and turned and fled.

I don’t remember where or what we ate that night. Our first hamburger, probably, or our first hot dog. All I remember was seeing Mummy crying her eyes out for the first time since we left England.

The next morning we got up early and took two taxis to the railway station with us and all our luggage. Mummy didn’t want to spend money for taxis – she kept watching the meter – but there was no other way.

She told us that the train journey to Saskatoon would take three days. This gave us an idea of how big Canada was – the longest train trip I’d ever taken was three hours, to Newcastle-upon-Tyne to visit my old nanny.

“Your fathers paid for our tickets before we left England,” Mummy explained. “So we shouldn’t have to spend any money till we get there. The ship was expensive – luckily there’s not much to buy on a train!”

In the taxi I asked, “What will the Laines be like?”

“I think, very nice. We got a letter from them saying how much they’re looking forward to having children in their home.”

“Haven’t they got any?”

“No.”

Cameron frowned, and said, “I suppose we’ll have to be very quiet and well-mannered then.”

“Yes, you will,” said Mummy. “And who knows for how long? It’s not like a visit. We’ll be living there. It’ll be their house and we’ll have to stick to their rules, whatever they are.”

“Sounds like lots of fun,” muttered Cameron.

We settled on to the train, as we had on the ship, but of course with far, far less space. We had two double seats, facing, with a folding table, to ourselves. Most of our luggage was taken away to be put in the luggage van. We just had the suitcases we’d had in the cabin.

“Won’t I be glad when we can have proper baths and I can get all our clothes washed!” Mummy said.

Mummy was the cleanest person in the world and it was hard for her to put the same clothes on day after day. She’d washed our undies and socks out every night on the ship, but on the train she couldn’t.

And the train wasn’t very clean, I must say. It was a steam train, which meant a lot of smoke blowing back from the engine. Even though the windows didn’t open, everything soon felt gritty.

The locomotive let out a long hiss and sounded its whistle. As soon as it began to move, Cameron and I jumped up and started to explore.

We could run up and down the aisle between the seats, although Mummy said we should walk, and not disturb other passengers. There were a lot of children besides us on the train with their families, but I don’t think any of them were evacuees – they looked too clean and tidy. I somehow knew we wouldn’t make friends with any of them. We were set apart.

We went as far towards the engine as we could go, and then the other way, towards the last coach. We passed through a dining car where the stewards were laying the tables for lunch, which cheered us up. Beyond that, past the kitchen coach with its white-coated chefs and lovely smells and another three carriages, we found it – our happy heaven! It was called the Observation Car.

First there was a carriage with a bar in it. People were sitting around with drinks and snacks and newspapers. We sort of sneaked past them, because we could see that at the far end – the very back of the train – there was an open place. When we got out there, we stood on the rocking, swaying, racketty boards, and stared around us in amazement. It was just like the back of a small ship! A half-moon space with a curved rail around it and a roof over it, but open sides. We could hear the clacketty-clack of the wheels racing over the rails, smell the smoke from the engine far away at the front of the train, and breathe the Canadian air. How different from English air, somehow!

“You could easily just fall off the back of the train,” I said, leaning over, staring at the rails streaming out behind us.

“Only if you were extremely stupid,” said Cameron, backing up his point with, “‘Better drowned than duffers. If not duffers, won’t drown.’” This was from Swallows and Amazons, which, before he found England, Their England, had been one of his favourite books.

There was nobody out there but us. We sat on the fixed seats and watched the outer suburbs of Montreal flash past, and then the countryside – wide, lots of lakes and trees, empty of people – everything utterly new and exciting. But also scary – it looked so wild. I could feel my heart beating in time to the wheels: Clicketty-clack! Clicketty-clack! You’re going so far you may never go back!

“Aren’t you liking any of it?” I asked Cameron at last.

“No. Yes. I don’t know,” Cameron said, scowling out at the wild scenery. “I wonder if there’s hunting here.”

After a while, Mummy came to find us.

“Isn’t it big,” she said.

I could tell she liked the wide open spaces. Nothing claustrophobic about this.

She sat with us for a while and smoked a cigarette. Her smoke streamed away with the rest of the smoke. Mummy smoked an awful lot – she always had, but she’d cut down since we left home, to save money.

At last Cameron said, “Isn’t it nearly time for lunch?”

We worked our way back to the dining car and sat down at a table nicely laid with clean linen and cutlery and glasses. After the ship, the rocking of the train merely jingled the glasses against the knives and forks.

We were just looking at the menu, which was full of strange but interesting things, when the waiter came along and asked Mummy for our tickets.

She brought them out of her handbag and gave them to him. He looked at them for a long time and I felt a sudden prickle of unease. Something was wrong.

“I am very sorry, ma’am,” he said. “These tickets only entitle you to ride the train to Saskatoon. They don’t give you any meals.”

Mummy looked at him in disbelief.

“No meals?” she said. “But my husband bought us first-class tickets from Canadian Pacific Railways in London!”

“These are standard-class tickets, ma’am. They don’t include meals.”

“So what are we to do?” Mummy asked with a shrill note in her voice.

“There’s a snack bar in the observation car,” he said, looking very uncomfortable. “You can get sandwiches, peanuts, candy bars, that sort of thing. And soft drinks. And tea,” he added, as if that made up for everything.

“For three days?” Mummy cried.

People were looking at us now, and I became aware of how we must look – travel-worn and shabby. I was suddenly so hungry I felt tears come into my eyes. I looked at Cameron. He was just laying the menu down in a very final kind of way, as if he were saying, Well, this is just what I was expecting. Complete disaster.

“Of course,” said the waiter, “if you care to pay a supplement on your tickets, to make them first class—”

Mummy stood up, and urged us to our feet.

“I can’t,” she said, as quietly as she could. “We left England with ten pounds each, of which I have less than half left. Let’s just hope Canadian Pacific Railways does very cheap sandwiches.”

She herded us into the aisle and back towards our seats, under the eyes of everybody in the dining car.

“Mummy, what happened? Didn’t Daddy buy the right tickets?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Mummy said. “I’m sure he meant to. There’s been a mistake, that’s all.”

“So now we live on sandwiches and ‘candy bars’ for three whole days,” said Cameron. “What’s a ‘candy bar’ anyway? Is it like Brighton rock? I hate Brighton rock!”

“We’ll soon find out,” Mummy said grimly.

We went back to the observation car and Mummy bought us a ham sandwich each, and lemonade. The sandwich had mustard in it, but for once I was good and didn’t grumble. I could see Mummy was in an awful state about the tickets – she hardly ate anything. I had to make her take bites from my sandwich. She told me smoking means you don’t have much appetite but I didn’t really believe her.

Candy bars turned out to be scrumptious, though. We got one each. Mummy said, “I’m sorry, darlings.” We looked at the shelves behind the bar. They were laden with delicious food – no rationing here! But now we had money rationing.

Cameron, for once, couldn’t hold back. “Could we have some peanuts, Auntie? They can’t cost much,” he said.

“Oh, why not!” said Mummy. She bought us a bag to share, and lit another cigarette.

We went back to our seats and Cameron and I played hangman for a while. Suddenly a man came and sat on the spare seat next to Cameron. He was tall and a bit grey-haired with a tanned face.

“Excuse me,” he said. “May I talk to you?”

Mummy, who’d been powdering her nose with her little swansdown puff, snapped her compact shut and said, “Yes?” rather too sharply for good manners.

“I couldn’t help hearing about your trouble – I was at the next table,” he said.

I felt Mummy stiffen. I didn’t know what was coming, but she did, and she was going to hate it.

“You’re from the Old Country,” he said.

I would soon learn that a lot of Canadians call England ‘the Old Country’. “Well, I’ve got folks there. I’m very worried about them, with all this talk of invasion and all. I want to help them, and I can’t. So I thought, maybe I could help you instead.”

Mummy just sat there. Nobody spoke. Cameron and I stopped playing our game to listen. We needed some help. Was Mummy going to say no? I knew she wanted to. She was very proud. I remembered Daddy’s talk.

“I couldn’t take money from you,” she said. “It’s kind of you. I just couldn’t.”

“No? Well, could you allow me to invite you and the kids to dine with me in the dining car this evening?”

Mummy bent her head. Then she lifted it again and looked this kind man in the face.

“Yes,” she said in a strangled voice. “I could. Thank you.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I think we should eat early, don’t you? So the kids can get an early night. They begin making the berths up at around seven, and the first sitting for dinner is at seven too. They ring a bell. I’ll come by for you.”

He stood up to leave. “My name’s Hank, by the way.”

“Mine happens to be Mrs Hanks,” said Mummy. She couldn’t help smiling.

Cameron and I looked at each other. We pulled gleeful faces.

Hank paid for our meals from then on – two and sometimes three a day. Mummy tried to cut down on meals, and for herself I think she’d rather have starved, but she couldn’t starve us or keep us on sandwiches (and lemonade called Seven-Up) for three long days. Even with the odd peanut.

By the time we got back from the dining car that first night, the night conductors had miraculously transformed the seats into beds. Each person had either an upper or a lower berth. To climb into the upper berths there was a ladder. Of course Cameron and I both wanted an upper berth but only he got one. I was in a lower berth and so was Mummy.

Once you were in your berth, you could draw thick green curtains across and fasten them together from the inside, so you were in your own little room. On the first night I thought this was the best thing in the whole train.

But for Mummy it was a nightmare. Her claustrophobia kicked in.

“I don’t know how I can stand this,” she said to me in a tight, desperate voice. Then she was ashamed of worrying me, and said, “Never mind, darling. I’ll manage somehow.”

I got undressed in my berth. I loved being in it. I realised it was better to have a lower berth because I had a window. I could open the blind and watch the dark scenery going by. The rocking of the train and the rumble of the wheels soon put me to sleep.

When I woke up in the middle of the night, I climbed out into the empty, half-lit aisle, and looked into Mummy’s berth. She wasn’t there! Where could she be? She’d said “I’ll manage”, but how could she? She couldn’t even sit up all night in her seat because our seats weren’t there any more – they’d been turned into berths.

I pattered down the aisle in my bare feet. By instinct I headed towards the back of the train. Everyone was asleep behind their curtains. I opened the doors between the coaches and skipped through the swaying, accordion-y connectors, holding tight to the rail.

Suddenly I felt the train slowing down and when I was just in the middle of one of these tricky in-between bits, it stopped altogether. Not sharply enough to wake anyone; it just came to a standstill, with a lot of hissing.

I hurried on to the last coach – the observation coach. This would be where Mummy would head for – where she could sit outside and not feel shut in. I was absolutely sure of it.

A few men were there, having a late-night drink at the bar. Not bothering about them seeing me in my nightie I ran past them, through the carriage to the open bit at the back. I knew Mummy would be there – I just knew it. But I was wrong.

I stood on the platform, staring round. We’d stopped, not in the middle of all that emptiness as I’d thought, but in a little town. All the buildings were low and apart from a few lonely street lamps, it was almost as dark as London. There was just a wooden platform with a sign and a name that I couldn’t read. The train stood, hissing and kind of chuntering – an impatient noise. A noise that said, I’m not staying here long.

I stood there, clutching the rail, staring into the dimness. A man came on to the platform behind me.

“Are you looking for your mom?” he said.

It was the first time I’d heard that word. But I nodded.

“She was here. And she didn’t come back through the bar. She must’ve got off the train.”

Got off the train? That was impossible. The train would soon leave. Had she – no! But if not? – run away?

I wanted to shout for her. Mummy! Mummy! Come back! But the man was there and I couldn’t. I couldn’t let him think I had thought for one split second that she would leave us.

“Are you cold?” the man asked.

It was very warm, for night-time, but I was shivering.

He took off his jacket and wrapped it round me. “Tell you what. You sit out here and I’ll bring you a Coke while you wait for her.”

The ‘Coke’ tasted not of coal as I expected, but of mouthwash. I hated it. I clutched the bottle tightly, because just standing there thinking the train was going to start forward, leaving her behind, was unbearable. I stared out into the half-lit station and my whole inside clenched up. I was barely breathing. The man sat on one of the seats.

“Coke OK?”

I forced myself to nod, my eyes straining in the darkness.

“Where you folks headed?”

“Saskatoon.”

“That’s mighty far west. You got family there?”

“Mummy’s—” My voice stopped coming out.

“You from the Old Country?”

I tried to swallow. There was no spit. I took a sip of the sickly sweet stuff from the bumpy bottle to moisten my mouth. “Yes.”

“I guess they’re being pretty brave over there,” he said. “And you folks are brave, too, coming to a strange country. Where’s your pop?”

“My – what?”

“Your dad.”

“He couldn’t come.”

“He’s in the forces?”

“No. He’s too old. He’s a doctor.”

“So your mom’s doing this on her own.” He shook his head. “She’s one brave lady.” He stood up suddenly. “And here she comes.”

I looked where he was looking – at the end of the platform. It was true! She came out of the darkness at the far end, into the light. There was a man with her, one of the conductors. I recognised him.

When Mummy saw me leaning out over the rail, she broke into a run. In another minute I was in her arms. I hugged her as if I’d never let go.

“Lindy – my darling – what are you doing up?”

The conductor was waving a flag. The train hissed once more and started to move. Both the men disappeared. It was just me and Mummy on the swaying back of the train, with the breeze blowing as we picked up speed.

“Mummy – Mummy – where were you? I thought you’d run away!”

“Oh, my God, you didn’t!” she said.

She sat down and took me on her knee. I’d never loved her so much, or had such a feeling of relief.

“I was sitting out here,” she said. “I’d run out of cigarettes. I’m afraid I was crying. I felt so lonely and scared. And that very sweet man came out and sat with me and I told him – about Daddy and how I didn’t know what we were going to find in Saskatoon – and when the train stopped at that little town, to take on water, he took me for a cup of tea to the tiniest café you ever saw … It was all made of logs … He even bought me some cigarettes – look, they’re called Black Cat! I knew the train couldn’t leave without him. I never dreamed … Oh, my poor little poppet, you must have been so frightened!”

She slept the rest of the night in my berth, tops to tails, with the blind up on the window so the moon could shine in.

Hank was travelling alone, and at meals we talked. He lived in Calgary, which was even further west than we were going. We asked him what it would be like, in Saskatoon.

“When you get to your host’s house,” he told us, “the first thing he’ll ask you is, ‘Do you ride horseback?’”

“Well, we do,” said Cameron eagerly.

“Y’see, out west, the folks want to keep some of the old pioneering ways. They don’t want to get soft and citified, even if they’re not ranchers and trappers any more. So, they eat regular meals, like those spoilt easterners, except for one, and that’s breakfast. For breakfast they keep up the old traditions.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, they go out and catch their own breakfasts.”

Cameron’s mouth fell open.

“You mean, they go hunting, on horseback?”

“Sure do. Can you shoot?”

“No.”

He sucked in his lips. “Gotta learn to shoot. You start with a BB gun. Course, you can’t shoot anything big with those, but you can get a few gophers.”

“What’s a gopher?” Cameron and I asked at once.

“You don’t have gophers in England? They’re little critters about this big – ” He held his hands about eight inches apart – “They live on the prairie, in holes. Millions of ’em. You shoot a couple, fry ’em up – makes a dandy meal on toast. Of course you gotta skin ’em and gut ’em first.”

Mummy had her nose in her hands. I looked at her. Then back at Hank. He looked completely serious.

“What about girls? Do they have to shoot gophers too?”

“Well, no, girls are let off shootin’ if they don’t like it. But they do have to ride out on the prairie, and then they can catch their breakfast another way.”

“How?”

“I’ll tell you. You make a loop in a long piece of string, and put it around a gopher hole. Then you wait. When he puts his head up, you jerk the loop tight round his neck, and there’s your breakfast.”

I made a face.

“Of course,” Hank went on, “if you got a soft heart and don’t wanna eat him, you can have him for a pet.”

I thought of my pet rabbit, Moley, left behind. “How do I catch him?”

“Gophers are crazy about condensed milk.”

Mummy gave a stifled snort.

“So what you do is, you take your tin of condensed milk. You punch two holes in it, top and bottom, and then you use that same length of string with the loop in it to drag the tin across the prairie. The gopher comes along and starts licking up the milk, and by the time the tin’s empty, he’s a-layin’ there on his back with his belly full of his favourite food, and you can ride back and pick him up, and he’s yours. For life.”

I listened, entranced. I could see it all! My own pet gopher!

“I’ll eat cereal for breakfast!” I exclaimed.

Mummy couldn’t contain herself. She bent over her knees and exploded.

“And what about me?” she managed to choke out. “I can’t ride and I can’t shoot and I refuse to strangle little things to death.”

Hank seemed to think about this. “Well, maybe on account of you’re all fresh from the Old Country they may let you off and give you bacon and waffles for a few days, till you settle in. But I’m sure relieved you kids can ride horseback, because maybe they won’t, and you’ll have to go out and shoot something to eat on the first morning. Enough for your mom as well.”

“I could do it. I bet I could,” said Cameron. “I’ve hunted foxes and got the brush. I was in at the kill. I got blooded!”

So then he explained very seriously to Hank about fox hunting and Hank said, “You mean they smear fox blood on the kids’ faces and give ’em the fox’s tail? Are you telling me a tall story, by any chance?”

The last part of the train journey got us seriously worried. The windows were now so dirty that if we wanted to see out properly we had to sit on the observation platform. The interesting countryside we’d seen earlier, changed. It was no longer full of lakes and hills, pine forests sprinkled with little towns and the occasional log cabin, not to mention exciting wildlife – Cameron had seen an eagle, and I’d seen a huge thing with strange antlers that Hank told us was a moose. Now the landscape was flat. No trees. No lakes or rivers. Just flat, flat, flat land under a swaying sea of yellow wheat. There were few signs of life. Only some farms, miles apart – hours apart.

“What are those things?” Cameron asked Hank, who was sitting with us pretty much full-time now.

“Grain elevators,” said Hank. “When the wheat’s harvested they bring it to the railheads and store it in those big square towers. Then they load it on to the trains to take it all over Canada.”

“But aren’t there any towns – proper towns?”

“Sure there are. Saskatoon is a big town. Population forty-odd thousand.”

“That’s not big,” said Cameron. “London’s got millions of people.”

“Ah well, I’m not saying it’s a big city. Though that’s what they call it. The Hub City of the Prairies.”

“How old is it?” Mummy asked.

“Not old. Maybe sixty, eighty years. Might still be some old-timers living there who remember when it was nothing but an Indian settlement.”

I pricked up my ears. “Indians? Real Red Indians?”

Hank looked a bit uncomfortable. “Well you know, they aren’t red, and they’re not Indians. We Anglos call them that, because we made a mistake when we first got here, thinking we’d arrived in India! But if you ever meet one, you don’t want to say, ‘Gee, are you an Indian?’”

“So what should we call them?” Cameron asked.

“By their tribe, maybe. Around Saskatchewan, it’s Cree. And other tribes. But mostly Cree.”

“Where are they? Can we see them?”

“They’re all on reserves now.”

Later, when I got Cameron alone, I said, “Wouldn’t it be fun if we really had to ride across the prairie and we met some Crees!”

“What if they were Apaches? Or Navajos? There are hundreds of different tribes. There must be a generic name for them if we can’t call them Indians.”

Cameron and his lovely long words! Generic. I got it. Something for all of them, instead of Indians. But for the moment I forgot about them, whatever they were called.

“Look at it,” he said. “It’s all wheat. How could we ride through that? It’s weird.”

If ‘weird’ means strange, unknown, utterly different, then he was right about where we were going. Or, as Hank taught us to say, “He sure slobbered a bibful.”

We reached Saskatoon at six o’clock in the morning. Mummy woke us early, when there was hardly any light coming through the window of my berth – just enough to see the endless wheat fields rushing by. She took us along to the cramped, smelly washroom at the end of the carriage and produced some clothes she’d been saving for us to make a good impression when we arrived. My frock was very creased but at least it was clean. Cameron wore his school blazer, even though it had been getting hotter every day.

“Shall I wear a tie?” he asked.

“I don’t know … We should have asked Hank,” said Mummy.

She was putting make-up on. She hadn’t worn much on the journey, just lipstick and some powder, but now she put on eye shadow and mascara, and earrings. I thought she looked beautiful, and actress-y.

She wore a very pretty dress I hadn’t seen before, and stockings, and shoes with a bit of a heel. She wrapped her lovely blonde hair in a sort of turban. She looked like at home when she was going out for lunch. We bundled all the rest of our things into our suitcases as the train rocked the last few miles to our destination.

We stood near the exit door. Mummy smoked. She said, “I remember feeling just like this before I went on stage on a first night to play a big part.”

I’d once acted a big part in a school play – a queen. I suddenly remembered standing in the wings in my red dress with my hair down my back, with such a sudden terror of forgetting my lines that I nearly ran away. Yes. It was like that now.

Only Cameron seemed completely calm. “I wonder if they’ll come to meet us in a horse and buggy,” he said.

Just as the whistle blew for Saskatoon, Hank turned up. He must have got up early to say goodbye.

“You’ve been quite wonderful,” said Mummy. “A lifesaver.”

He shook hands with her, but she suddenly kissed his cheek. She had to stand on tiptoe.

“You’re welcome,” said Hank.

We’d never heard that phrase before. Mummy stared at him.

“What a very nice thing to say,” she said.

“Here’s my address in Calgary,” he said, giving Mummy a card. “Let me know if you need anything. Be good kids for your mom, now.” He shook Cameron’s hand and gave me a hug. “Go git them gophers!” he said. “Oh! I forgot to tell you – you want some pocket money, the government pays a bounty for every tail!”

The train pulled into the station. Right opposite where we stood, hung the sign that read ‘SASKATOON’.

“Is that an Indian name?” my clever cousin asked.

“Yep,” said Hank. “It’s the name of a berry. And ‘Canada’ is an Indian word too. It means ‘Big village’.”

Mummy and I were hanging out of the doorway, looking up and down the platform. There were lots of people waiting. But suddenly Mummy said, “There they are. Look. Those three down there, the white-haired man and the man and woman. Bet you.”

The train hissed to a stop and people started forward to get on or to greet people. ‘Our three’ were staring anxiously at the doorways. Mummy stepped out, waved, and called quite loudly, “Uncle Arthur!”

The older man turned quickly. Then, with the help of a walking stick, he came hurrying towards us, his face alight.

I didn’t know him at all, only that he was Mummy’s uncle, that he lived alone, that he was a retired bookkeeper. That he’d taken the trouble to find us some people to live with. But when I saw his face for the first time, warm with welcome as he strode towards us, I knew at once that I would love him.

He clasped Mummy in his arms, his stick falling to the ground. Cameron jumped down and scooped it up. We stood beside them, waiting. I happened to look up and saw Hank in the train doorway. He lifted our suitcases down and Cameron took them one by one. He looked at Mummy with a funny, soft look, and gave us a tiny wave. Then he disappeared, and we were smothered in a mass hug from Uncle Arthur, who smelled of pipe tobacco and welcome.

There was a lot of bustle all around us, but I felt someone close behind me. I turned, and faced a stranger with dark hair and glasses and a beaming smile.

“I know who you are! You’re Lindy!” he exclaimed. “I’m Gordon! I’m your new Poppa, the guy you’re coming to live with! Gee, this is great! Can I give you a li’l hug?”

I let him. He smelled strange. It was a smell I knew, but it was out of place here. Then he turned and a woman with hair too white for her face came forward rather shyly.

“This is Luti, my wife. Mrs Laine – Momma! – meet our little girl! And this—” he almost pulled Cameron forward with a hand on his shoulder, “this must be Cameron!” He wrung Cameron’s hand, pumping it up and down. “Gee whizz, you’re such a big boy, I didn’t expect – I thought you’d be about this size!” He put his hand about a foot from the ground.

Luti said softly, “Don’t be silly, Gordon.” She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. “Welcome to Saskatoon, Lindy.”

Mummy had turned towards us, still holding Uncle Arthur’s hand. There were introductions and more handshakes.

Mummy said, “We must go and see to our big luggage.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that!” Gordon said heartily. “They’ll have it off the train by now. Our railways are wonderful! Don’t you folks just love Canada? C’mon kids, let’s go find your bags!”

I noticed Cameron had peeled off his heavy school blazer. It was sweaty hot at seven in the morning.

Uncle Arthur called a taxi for him and Mummy and some of the luggage. Cameron and I drove to our new home in the Laines’ car. Cameron, who knew all about cars, hissed to me in the back seat that it was a Hillman Minx. He sounded surprised. Later he explained, “I thought they’d be rich.” Hillman Minxes weren’t, it seemed, what rich folks bought, at least not in England.

Gordon chatted the whole way.

“It’s gonna be so great to have kids around the place, huh, Mrs Laine? I mean Momma? I can’t wait to get started being a poppa! Look, kids, there’s our river! Bet you didn’t expect it to be so big, huh?”

We hadn’t expected it to be, at all. It was certainly the most exciting thing we’d seen for twenty-four hours of prairie. It was wide and had waves and steep banks, and rushed under the big bridge we were crossing.

“The city of bridges! That’s what we call Saskatoon! This one’s called Broadway Bridge. You’ll soon be criss-crossing it on the streetcar, to get downtown to the movies, I bet! We’ve got five movie theatres! Waddaya think of that? Almost like London, eh?”

“Of course it’s not like London,” said Luti in her quiet little voice.

“Only kidding,” said Gordon.

The car pulled up in a curved street with some pleasant-looking houses on each side. The house where we were going to live had a lawn that came down to the pavement, and as soon as we opened the car door, a dog came rushing to meet us. I could feel Cameron’s mood changing. He just couldn’t help himself.

“Here comes Spajer to say hi to you!” said Gordon.

Spajer was a golden cocker spaniel with long, silky ears. He jumped all over us. He was a lovely dog and Cameron couldn’t resist patting him, but I sensed he felt a bit disloyal to Bubbles.

“Is Spajer an Indian name?” asked Cameron.

Gordon roared with laughter, but Luti said, “We had another dog before him called Jasper.”

“Oh, I see! An anagram,” said Cameron.

Both the Laines stared at him.

“Smart boy,” said Gordon, sounding surprised.

Mummy and Uncle Arthur arrived and there was a kerfuffle as we got the luggage into the house. There suddenly seemed to be an awful lot of it, and Gordon made a joke about “You folks planning to stay awhile?” which I don’t think any of us got.

Mummy was very quiet and tense and stuck close to Uncle Arthur. He kept his arm around her whenever he could. I knew they’d never met before, but already they seemed to love each other. I know now that Mummy felt close to him because he was family and everybody else in this whole city was a stranger.

The house was pretty, though not like an English house – very new-looking with lots of windows and polished wooden floors and modern furniture, all clean and shiny. There were gardens on three sides. The curved street was wide and not too busy, with trees and front gardens without fences. We all wanted to see our bedrooms and I wanted to have a bath – Mummy kept sort of picking at her dress where it was sticking to her – but Gordon wanted to talk.

“You kids’ll soon learn the neighbourhood,” he said. “See that li’l park across the street? You can go there by yourselves and play and find pals. In the winter they turn the whole park into a skating rink. Bet you can’t ice skate!”

We agreed we couldn’t.

“I just can’t wait to teach you! Bet you’ve never seen snow like we get here! Two, three feet at a time! That’s not counting the drifts!” He held his hand right over his head to show how deep the ‘drifts’ got.

Snow higher than a man? Cameron gave me a look. He was thinking what I was – we could make forts and tunnels, crawl in and play amazing adventure games. From then on I started looking forward to winter. And not just because of the heat now, which was the worst I’d ever felt.

Luti excused herself and went into the kitchen while Gordon offered us drinks – Coke for us (ugh! – but at least it was cold) and iced water for Mummy and Uncle Arthur, after they’d both refused ‘a li’l snifter’. I didn’t know what that was, but then Gordon opened a shiny cupboard in the corner and brought out some bottles. Mummy looked amazed to be offered alcohol so early in the day, but Gordon had one. It didn’t look so ‘li’l’ to me.

Gordon stopped talking to sip his whiskey and we just sat there on the chintz armchairs. There was a long, difficult silence. Finally Uncle Arthur said, “You know, I think my folks might like to see their rooms and maybe clean up before breakfast.”

“Luti!” Gordon called. She came almost running in. “What are you thinking of, honey? Take these folks up to their rooms, huh? I’ll bring the bags up.”

“But I’ve just put the bacon on,” she said.

Cameron and I looked at each other. We’d suddenly remembered Hank’s tale.

“So we don’t have to ride out on the prairie to shoot our breakfasts?” Cameron said.

“Whaaaat?” Gordon shouted.

Luti gaped at us, her blue eyes staring.

Their faces! We suddenly realised we’d been had!

Cameron and I laughed until we choked. We couldn’t stop. Mummy had to calm us down.

“Please can we go to our rooms?” she begged.

Uncle Arthur left us. At the door, he said, “I don’t like ‘Uncle Arthur’. Sounds Victorian. Why don’t you call me O’F?” Then he kissed us all goodbye.

Mummy seemed to cling to him. Luti led us upstairs and showed us our rooms. One for Mummy and me with two single beds and a dressing table with a frill round it. The window overlooked the back garden. I went to look out, and noticed something funny. The window had netting on it, like our meat safe at home.

“We have screens on the doors too,” Luti said, following my gaze. “The bugs get in anyhow. We say our mosquitoes are as big as cockroaches and the cockroaches are as big as gophers.”

“What are the gophers as big as?”

“Beavers, I guess!” she laughed. “Tell me if I’ve forgotten anything you need.” She stared at Mummy for a moment. “You’re real pretty,” she said suddenly. “Everyone’s going to love you.”

I decided I liked Luti. I liked her saying Mummy was pretty. Although she wasn’t pretty. She was beautiful. Even tired out and stressed and with her make-up sweated off.

Cameron had a smaller room. He looked round it bleakly, but then he saw it had a desk with lots of drawers, and a bookcase with some books in it.

“In her letter, your mom told me you like to read, Cameron,” Luti said. “I chose some books for you. I hope you like them.”

“Thank you very much,” said Cameron, sounding really grateful.

“We only have one bathroom,” she went on, “so it may get a bit crowded. But for today it’s all yours. I’ll delay breakfast. Come down when you’re ready.”

Mummy went first. She said she was desperate to get clean and asked us to wait, which we did, in Cameron’s room. He started off by going through the books Luti had bought, but then there was a scratching at the door, and Spajer joined us, and after that no reading got done. I think Spajer decided round about then that he was at least half Cameron’s dog.

Mummy came out of the bathroom at last, in a dressing gown, smelling lovely.

“Bubble bath. That Luti,” she said to me quietly, “has thought of lots of little kind things.” Then she said one of her favourite phrases, “The little more, and how much it is. The little less, and what worlds away!”

Cameron went next. I watched Mummy start doing her face.

“Gordon talks a lot, doesn’t he?” I asked.

“Lindy.”

“What?”

“Shut the door.” I did. “Listen, darling. I want you to remember something. We’re going to owe these people a lot. They’re going to have to pay for everything – everything we need, everything we eat, and everything we do that costs money. I want you to be aware that this is their house, and that they’re here. Don’t say or do anything that might offend them.” She took the towel off her head and began to comb out her long blonde hair. “I’ll say one other thing. We’re ambassadors for England. People will be watching us. They’ll judge England by how we behave. Do you understand, my poppet?”

“Yes. But he does talk a lot, doesn’t he?”

“Yes. I hear Cameron coming out … Go and have your bath and I’ll come in and wash your hair for you.”

That first Canadian bath, after the three-inches-of-hot-water ones we’d been rationed to at home, was unforgettable. So deep, so hot, so full of bubbles! I felt as if I was washing off the grime of a coal mine, and then I felt like a movie star. As I lay chest-deep while Mummy washed my hair, I forgot all about the journey, the war, the strangeness. I just wallowed.

“Maybe it’ll be all right – Canada. Saskatoon. The Laines,” I said.

Mummy just made lots of lather and said nothing.

We had three weeks of freedom to explore and find our feet before we had to start Canadian school, but I was too excited by everything around us to think much about that. Cameron, though, as usual, was better at thinking ahead. He asked Luti questions about school and then told me the answers.

“It’ll be just an ordinary local school,” Cameron told me. “They call them public schools here – the opposite of public schools in England. I don’t think they have private schools here where you have to pay.” He fiddled with his shoelace and then said, “It’s boys and girls.”

I’d never been to anything but an all-girls school.

“Do you think that’ll be weird?” I asked Cameron, nervously.

“They’ll probably think we’re weird,” he replied.

Luti had a ‘daily’ – a Swedish woman who came in to clean and who gave us a foretaste of how interesting we were. She didn’t really talk to us (she couldn’t speak much English) but she stared at us as if we’d fallen off the moon.

That, though, wasn’t as bad as the visitors. They’d started coming on the first day. We’d hardly begun to unpack after breakfast when the doorbell rang, and after that it didn’t stop ringing. It seemed all the Laines’ friends wanted to meet us. Well – have a good look at us, anyway.

For the first week it was like one long party. Most of these strangers probably meant to be kind and welcoming, but Mummy still got the heebie-jeebies. She felt she had to be ‘on show’ to the visitors, and be a good ambassador, but she got more and more stressed. Twice I came home from playing out and found her crying (quietly) in our room.

“I feel like a fish in a bowl,” she whispered, blowing her nose. “A performing fish.” She reached for her Black Cats. She always whispered whenever we were talking privately, even with the door closed. “And the way they drink! At all hours! They tease me because I won’t knock back the whiskey like they do. They’re calling me Ice-water Alex! If I drank like they do, I’d fall flat on my face!”

“Does Luti drink a lot?” I asked.

“No. But Gordon drinks enough for both of them.” She muttered this out of the side of her mouth, but I heard it.

Gordon wasn’t around much, because he worked all day as a lawyer and had an office downtown. He had ‘KC’ after his name, which stood for King’s Councillor, and which in England you didn’t get to be until you were an important – and rich – lawyer. Gordon and Luti weren’t rich. Cameron had been quite right about the Hillman Minx. Gordon was just an ordinary small-town lawyer after all. But it was quite a while before we realised this. The Laines were determined to show us and all their friends – and maybe even themselves – that they could afford to have war guests. Mummy hardly ever had to ask them for money at first. Gordon thrust wads of dollars into her hand every Saturday but she always gave them back, taking only what she needed for little things for us, and for her Black Cats.

All the grown-ups I knew smoked. Mummy tried to cut down, but it was very hard for her. She needed her ‘coffin nails’ as she called them. Of course I hated her calling them that but Mummy knew smoking was bad for you and she told me I must never start.

“My lungs are so full of tar by now they’re like black sponges,” she said.

“But then why do you do it?”

“Because I can’t stop. Which is why you must never start.”

Mummy was invited to a lot of people’s homes. She didn’t want to go, but she felt she had to. Luckily Cameron and I weren’t included so till school started in September, we were free a lot of the time. Free in a way we’d never been before. And we made the most of it.

At first we just wandered about in the little park near the house. Spajer tagged along, hoping for a walk or a game of ball, when Luti agreed to let him out – she was terrified he’d get lost or be run over, but he stuck close to Cameron, and Cameron took good care of him.

“Bubbles is half-spaniel,” he reminded me. “We only call him a Bulgarian bulldog to make him sound like a thoroughbred.”

There were lots of other kids, and other dogs, around the neighbourhood. They stared at us too – we didn’t dress like them; Cameron in his short grey flannel trousers and me in my English dresses. But they were a friendly lot and we soon started hanging out with them.

It was girls with girls and boys with boys, mixed school or not. So while I was learning ball games like ‘One, two, three allairy’ and skipping games and sometimes being invited to play in my new friends’ ‘back yards’ (as they called their gardens), some of the boys were showing Cameron what they called ‘the ropes’.

The railway ran past the back of our house. Of course, we’d heard the trains go by, but there was a big screen of fir trees that stopped us seeing much of them.

Cameron came home one day and told me casually that the best game was throwing things at the engine drivers.

“What!” I almost screamed. “Are you mad? What do you mean?”

“Wait till it’s time for the next train, I’ll show you. The railway’s great fun. Only we’ll leave Spaje behind, because he’s not very train-wise.”

In the late afternoon, he found me in the park and beckoned. I left the other girls and followed him round by the end of the street to the railway crossing. We crossed over then followed the tracks a little way back towards the house.

He took out a one-cent coin and laid it on the track.

“What’s that for?”

“You’ll see. Now, collect tin cans.”

I looked around but only found two. He did too.

“That’s enough. It’s all you’ll have time for,” he said. “There’s a train due soon. Put your ear to the rail and you can feel it coming.”

“I’m not putting my head on the line! That’s dangerous!”

“Oh, don’t be babyish! You can see it coming for miles. It’s just fun to feel the rail vibrate.”

Very reluctantly I knelt down on one of the wooden sleeper beams and put my ear to the cold rail, next to the cent, lying there waiting for its fate.

“Don’t knock the cent off!” Cameron shouted.

After a bit I felt a trembling, and at the same time I heard a sort of humming sound. I leapt to my feet and ran away from the line. Cameron was there with a tin can in each hand. Far away down the line I could see the smoke puffing out above the trees.

“What do we do?”

“When the train goes by, you throw them at the engine driver in his cab,” he said.

We’d been up to mischief before in our lives. But this? “What if you hit him? You could hurt him!”

“Oh, you never hit them, they’re going too fast. It’s good throwing if you get it anywhere near the cab.”

Now we could hear the train coming. Its whistle was blowing and next moment it came into sight, round the bend. The great locomotive, spilling out smoke, came chuffing and grunting and whistling towards us. Just as the open part, where the driver and the fireman were standing, flashed past my eyes, Cameron shouted “Now!” and threw his tin cans swiftly one after the other like cricket balls.

They hit the fire-box and bounced off harmlessly, but one of the men shook his fist out of the cab at us, and then turned back, and made the whistle shriek, as if broadcasting our badness. Even though I never got around to even picking my tin cans up, let alone throwing them, I felt the shame of it.

We stood there. Cameron was panting and grinning. He looked as excited as if he’d been throwing tin cans at Hitler. When the whole long, long train – a goods train – had gone past, he rushed to the line, bent down, and picked up the coin.

“Look!”

He showed it to me. It was thin and flat and its dull copper colour had changed to silvery brightness. I touched it with one finger. It was warm.

“Here, you have it. Don’t go telling Auntie,” Cameron said.

I took the only bribe of my life – a train-flattened one-cent coin.

“I won’t if you promise not to do that again,” I said.

“Goody-goody,” he muttered, not for the first time.

On the way home, he recited, in a thoughtful, matter-of-fact voice:

“The boy stood on the railway line,

The train was coming fast.

The boy stepped off the railway line,

The train went whizzing past.

The boy stood on the railway line,

The engine gave a squeal.

The driver took an oily rag

And wiped him off the wheel.”

At the weekend Gordon ‘did things’ with us. He called himself our Poppa, as in “Poppa’s gonna take his kids out tomorrow and show them the sights!” Mummy was expected to come too. Luti mostly stayed home, or sometimes went out to play bridge. Her bridge club was very important to her. She tried to take Mummy but she said she was such a bad player she’d only spoil the game.

We didn’t always go on these trips by car because Gordon wanted us to learn how to ride the streetcars. These ran on rails down the middle of main streets, with a sort of arm on the roof that reached up to electrified wires overhead. They rocked and swayed and made a loud clanging noise. There were two sorts: the big ones that took us across the bridge into downtown, where the hotels, movie theatres and restaurants were; and the local ones that were smaller and were known as puddle-jumpers.

Apart from the movie theatres, downtown didn’t mean much to us, except for one hotel, the Bessborough. It was rather grand, with pointed turrets, and it stood in a large park on the west bank. There, Gordon liked to take ‘his family’ for Sunday lunch in the smart restaurant that overlooked the river. O’F sometimes came too. We loved seeing him but we didn’t very often, because Mummy said he preferred seeing us on our own.

Gordon seemed to know a lot of people, and the meal would always be interrupted by him jumping to his feet, waving and beckoning to these acquaintances, who would come over and be introduced to us. I could see how much this embarrassed Mummy. Luti had asked her to dress up for these outings and the men always looked admiringly at her.

“Gordie loves showing you off,” Luti had said. “He thinks you’re beautiful. He loves your hair. Could you leave your turban off, do you think?”

After lunch, Cameron and I would play in the park for a bit while the grown-ups sat on a bench talking. The river fascinated us, not just because it was so wide and sort of wild-looking but because these lunchtimes were the only chance we had to play near it. Mummy had forbidden us to go to the riverbank by ourselves. The bank on our east side was untamed – steep and thick with undergrowth. She was always afraid we’d fall in and be swept away by the strong current. Cameron muttered his favourite Swallows and Amazons quote – “Better drowned than duffers” – a lot but it didn’t make any difference.

It was especially hard for him because all the other boys went down there.

“That’s where they go sledding and tobogganing in the winter,” he said. “I hope Auntie’s got over her terrors by then. There aren’t any other hills to sled down.”

But he did go out on to the prairie with the others (riding on the crossbar of a friend’s bike) to catch gophers. He caught three, with the string-loop, and cut their tails off (when they were dead) to send in for the bounty. It was ten cents per tail. He used the thirty cents to buy Mummy some sweets.

“Candies,” I said.

“Sweets,” he said.

I was picking up lots of Canadian words that he refused to use.

On our first day at school, Gordon took the morning off. He wanted to be the one to take us.

The school was quite far away. The puddle-jumper would have taken us most of the way but Gordon said we shouldn’t use it. “All the kids here walk to school. I bet that’s something new for you, isn’t it?”

Cameron said nothing. I’d noticed he often kept a dignified silence when Gordon said something that hinted at Canada being somehow better than England. But I said, “At my first school, I always walked, even when I was only seven. By myself.” I wasn’t going to let Gordon think we were sissies or something.

When I first saw Buena Vista Public School, I stopped dead in the gateway and couldn’t make my legs move for a minute. Gordon tugged my hand.

“Aw, c’mon, Lindy! It’s only a big ol’ school! Bet you never went to such an impressive one, though!”

True enough. My earliest school had been in an ordinary house. My boarding school had been a low building surrounded by fields and woods. This looked like a castle out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

Cameron was striding ahead. He wasn’t going to let Gordon tug him along. I freed my hand and made myself walk across the front yard and up the wide stone steps; there were, after all, dozens of children and some grown-ups all around me.

Gordon took us to the head teacher’s office. On the door was printed the word ‘PRINCIPAL’. I remembered my first day at my convent boarding school and half expected there to be a nun inside, but it was just an ordinary woman. She stood up from her desk and came to shake hands with us.

“I’m Mrs Jameson,” she said. “I’m very glad you’ve come to our school. We’re very excited to welcome you.”

Excited? Cameron flicked me a look. He didn’t like ‘excited’, but I did. As much as he hated to be the centre of attention, I loved it.

“Cameron will be in 7A,” she said, “and Lindy in 6B. Your classmates are expecting you. Come with me now – I’ll introduce you.”

Gordon tagged along, but at the door to the first classroom, the principal turned to him politely and said, “Mr Laine, I think it would be better if you left the introductions to me.”

Gordon looked disappointed. But he said he’d pick us up after school.

I don’t remember what happened with Cameron. But I remember very well being led into my class, 6B. There were about twenty-five children of my age, all sitting in double desks facing a huge blackboard. There were big windows along one wall, and the others were a mass of colour, which turned out to be maps and charts and pictures. When Mrs Jameson and I came in, everybody stood up and every face turned to us.

“Class, this is Lindy Hanks. She’s our war guest from London, England. Will you please give her a real Buena Vista welcome?”

To my amazement, everybody not only clapped, but cheered. I remembered the restaurant and ‘There’ll Always Be an England’. Well, at least they wouldn’t start singing that!

The teacher, who was young and pretty with shiny black hair and lipstick, came over to me, and the principal left.

“Hello, Lindy. I’m Miss Bubniuk. Now, where shall we put you? Who’d like to have Lindy share their desk?”

Three girls sitting alone threw their hands up. Miss Bubniuk led me to one of them.

“This is Marylou, she’ll be your desk partner.”

Marylou was one of the girls I already knew from the little park.

“Oh, good, Lindy!” she said, so excitedly I thought she was going to hug me. She patted the seat beside her and actually did put her arm around me when I sat down. All the others kept their faces turned towards me until Miss Bubniuk clapped her hands for attention.

The time till lunch passed in a whirl of enthusiasm. You’d have thought I was a princess come among them, the way they treated me. At break, which they called ‘recess’, Marylou and the other girls from the park showed me off as if I were their proudest possession. My celebrity went to my head a bit so that by lunchtime I felt like a princess. I swaggered over to Cameron, who was sitting alone in a corner of the playground.

“These kids are really swell!” I enthused.

“Don’t say ‘kids’,” he said. “And don’t say ‘swell’. It’s beastly slang.”

Cameron could be very scathing sometimes. But this time he couldn’t squash me. I loved the new words.

Luti had packed sandwiches for us. We opened them up together. Peanut butter and jelly – a whole new taste experience, right up there with waffles and maple syrup, corn on the cob streaming with butter, and pork spare ribs cooked with brown sugar, one of Luti’s specialities. I loved the food in Canada. Cameron didn’t, or pretended not to. He said none of it was a patch on roast beef and fish and chips.

“This is ridiculous,” he muttered as we sat on a wall, eating our sandwiches.

“What is?”

“The lessons. They’re so incredibly easy. We did the maths they’re doing ages ago. They don’t know the first thing about British history. We were up to the Industrial Revolution at home. They’ve never heard of it here. It’s all about Canada. And the book we’re reading in class is for babies.”

I hadn’t found the lessons particularly easy, just strange. Miss Bubniuk was much less strict than the nuns and there was far more shouting out the answers and whispering. I saw two boys throwing rubbers at each other when she was writing on the board. I thought it was more fun than the convent, but so different I hadn’t thought to compare what we were actually learning. It was new, that was the long and short of it. Everything was, and that stopped me comparing it with England.

I said, “I guess we just have to get used to it.”

Cameron glared at me. “You suppose. You don’t ‘guess’.”

“That’s how they talk here.”

“Well, it’s not how I talk. If you start putting on a Canadian accent I won’t talk to you at all.”

I wasn’t having that. “Can’t I even say ‘recess’ instead of ‘break’?” I teased.

Just then some of the girls from my class called me to come and play a ball-bouncing game. I stuffed the last bit of sandwich into my mouth and left Cameron sitting there alone. I didn’t even stop to wonder why the ‘kids’ in 7A hadn’t made a prince out of him.

I soon found out, though. Cameron’s teacher having come to the same realisation as my cousin – that he was a good year ahead of his classmates – suggested he move straight to the local high school. So before I’d even got completely used to the way to school, letting him lead the way, I had to manage on my own. Cameron was now a student at Nutana Collegiate. There he joined a class called 9A. The high school was, I learnt, streamed – A students (the best) in A, Bs in B and so on. Cameron was the A-est student you could imagine, although he was nearly two years younger than the others in his year group.

I was secretly hoping that this age difference would mean that he’d fall back a bit on me, as the others in his class would be too old for him. But that wasn’t what happened. Cameron didn’t care whether people liked him or not, so of course they all wanted him to like them and he became something of a prince to them, which lasted long after I’d stopped being a princess and gone back to being just a girl who ‘talked funny’, like calling her mother Mummy instead of Mom.

After I stopped being special, I wasn’t invited to play after school much and I didn’t seem to have any real friends. I complained to Mummy that there must be something wrong with me.

“You’re different, that’s all. They’ll get used to you.”

“Should I start talking like them? Would you mind if I called you Mom?”

“I would absolutely hate it. I’d rather you called me Alex. But anyway there’s no point in putting something on that isn’t you. Be yourself and see what happens.”

Nothing did for a couple of weeks. Then Willie happened.

One thing that we all did together – apart from playing with Spajer and taking him for walks – was go to the movies.

This involved a streetcar ride into Downtown, where the movie theatres were. We were all sitting in the stalls at the Capitol, the grandest, one Saturday afternoon, and I noticed another girl with plaits like mine, only red, sitting next to me with her mother. She didn’t go to Buena Vista or I’d have seen her. She was wearing trousers and a khaki top like a battledress.

The double bill – two films – was always accompanied by a cartoon, trailers and a newsreel, and on this afternoon started with the newsreel. The famous Pathé theme music was blaring but I was eyeing this girl next to me and not paying a lot of attention, when suddenly I heard Mummy give a little gasp, and Cameron, who was on the other side of me, leant forward and gripped the seat in front.

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