ORPHANS OF WAR

Leah Fleming

Copyright

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2008

Copyright © Leah Fleming 2008

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Cover image © CollaborationJS / Trevillion Images

Leah Fleming asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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 ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, 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: 9781847563552

Ebook Edition © January 2020 ISBN: 9780008184070

Version: 2020-01-09

Dedication

Alasdair, Hannah, Ruari and Josh

This one’s for you!

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Part Two

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Part Three

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Part Four

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

October 1999

The storm in the night takes everyone by surprise: ripping tiles into domino falls, battering down doors, plucking out power lines and cables, hurling dustbins and chimney stacks through fences and down the streets of Sowerthwaite, past the sturdy stone cottages whose walls have stood firm against these onslaughts for hundreds of years.

Showers of rolling timbers hurtle into parked vans, flinging in fury against shutters and barricades. In the back ginnels of the market town, the brown rats newly installed in their winter homes burrow deep into crevices as the wind flattens larch fences, blows out cracked greenhouse glass, twisting through gaps on its rampage.

The old tree at the top of the garden of the Old Vic public house is not so lucky, swaying and lurching, groaning in one last gasp of protest. It’s too old, too brittle and hollowed out with age to put up much resistance; leaves and beech mast scattering like confetti, branches snapping off as the gale finds its weakness, punching around the divided trunk, lifting it out of its shallow base, tearing up rotten roots as it crashes sideways onto the roof of the stone wash house; this last barrier down before the storm races over the fields towards the woods.

In the morning bleary-eyed residents open their doors on to the High Street to assess the damage: overturned benches flung into the churchyard, gravestones toppled, roofs laid bare and trees blocking the market square, smashed chimney cowls denting cars, gaping holes everywhere. What a to-do!

The BBC news tells of far worst devastation in the south, but swathes of woodland have been flattened in the Lake District and here in the Craven Dales, so the town must wait its turn for cables to be raised and power to come back on and mop-up troops to clear the debris. Candles, Gaz burners and oil lamps are brought out from under stairs for just such emergencies. Coal fires are lit. Yorkshire homes know the autumn weather can turn on a sixpence.

The tree surgeons come to assess the damage to the Old Vic and inspect the upended beech that’s stove in the wash house roof. The pub lost its licence decades ago but the name still sticks.

The young tree surgeon, in his yellow helmet and padded dungarees, eyes the fallen monster with interest. ‘Not much left of that, then…Better tell them up at the Hall that it’s being sawn up. They’ll want it logged quickly.’

His boss stares down, a portly man in his middle years. ‘She were a good old tree…I played up there many a time in the war when it were a hostel, after it were a pub, like. They had a tree house, as I recall. Kissed me first girl up there,’ he laughs. ‘This beech must be two hundred year old, look at the size of that trunk.’

‘It’s seen itself out then,’ replies the young man, unimpressed. ‘We can sort this out easy enough.’ They put on goggles and make for their chainsaws.

‘Shame to see her lying on her side, though. Happen she’d had a few more years yet if the storm hadn’t done its worst,’ mutters Alf Brindle, running his metal detector over the corpse. He’s broken too many blades on hidden bits of iron stuck into trunks over the centuries, wrapped over by growth and lifted high: crowbars and nails, bullets and even heavy stones hidden in the bark.

‘Who are you kidding? It’s rotten at the core. Look, you could ride a bike down there and it’ll be full of rubbish.’ The young man ferrets down into the divided hollow to make his point. There’s the usual detritus: tin cans, rotting balls. Then they begin stripping the branches, sawing the trunk into rings.

‘What the heck…?’ he shouts, seeing something stuck deep into the ring growth. ‘Switch off, Alf!’

‘What’ve you got there then?’ The older man pauses. ‘It always amazes me how a tree can grow itself round objects and lift them up as it grows.’

‘Dunno…I’ve never seen owt like this afore,’ his mate says, examining the rings, loosening what looks like a leather pouch, the size of a briefcase, from its secret cocoon. Curiously he begins to unwrap the cracked layers of rotten fabric. ‘Somebody’s stuffed summat right down here. It’s like trying to unpeel onion skins.’

As he loosens the parcel he reaches the remains of a tea cloth; its pale chequered pattern still visible. ‘Bloody hell!’ He jumps back and crosses himself. ‘How did that get there?’

The men stand silent, stunned, not knowing what to do. Alf fingers the cloth with shaking hands. ‘Well, I never…All these years and we never knew…’

‘Happen it’s been here for donkey’s years,’ offers the lad, shaking his head. ‘I can count the ring growth…must be over fifty years.’

‘Aye, must be…You OK? Look, that cloths’s got a utility mark in the corner. We had them on everything in our house after t’war,’ says Alf, shaking his head in disbelief.

The lad is already making for his mobile in the truck. ‘This is a job for the local constabulary, Alf. We don’t do owt until they’ve sorted this out, but better fetch someone from the Hall. It’s their property. I need a fag. Let’s go for a pint…Who’d’ve thowt it, bones buried in a tree? Happen it’s just a pet cat.’

Neither of them speaks as they stare at their discovery but both of them sense that these aren’t animal remains.

A tall woman in jeans and a scruffy Barbour paces round the tree trunk in silence, kicking the beech mast with her boot. She is youthful in her late middle age; the sort of classy woman who ages well and has never lost her cheekbones or girlish figure. Her hands are stuffed in her pockets whilst behind her a red setter bounds over the branches, sniffing everything with interest.

The woman looks down the path to the old stone house that fronts on to the High Street, its wavy roofline evidence of rotting roof timbers bowed under the weight of huge sandstone flag tiles. The tree has crashed through the outhouse at the side, leaving a gaping hole. It’s a good job they’d not begun any renovations, she sighs.

The scene of the discovery is cordoned off but soon it’ll be all round Sowerthwaite that remains have been found in the Victory Tree, human remains. It will be headlines in the local Gazette on Friday. There’s not been a mystery like this since the vicar disappeared one weekend and turned up a month later as a woman.

‘’Fraid it’s made a right mess of your wash house, Maddy,’ says Alf Brindle, not standing on ceremony with her ladyship. He’s known her since she was in ankle socks.

‘Don’t worry, Alf. We’d plans to pull it down and extend. Our daughter’s hoping to set up her own business here: architectural reclamations, selling antique garden furniture and masonry. She wants to use all of the garden for storage. The storm’s done us a favour,’ she replies, knowing it’s better to give the word straight before the locals twist it.

‘She’s up for good then, up from London to stay?’ he fishes.

Let them guess the rest; Maddy smiles, nodding politely. With a messy divorce and two distressed children in tow, the poor girl’s fled back north, back to the familiar territory of the Yorkshire Dales.

Sowerthwaite is used to wanderers returning and the Old Victory pub is a good place in which to lick your wounds. It’s always been a refuge in the past. She should know, looking down to where they found the hidden bundle, now in police custody.

How strange that all this time, the tree has kept a secret and none of them guessed. How strange after all these years…Fifty years is a lifetime ago. How can any of these young ones know how it was then or understand why she mourns this special tree; all the memories, happy and sad and the friends she’s loved and lost under it?

There are precious few left, like Alf Brindle, who’ll remember that skinny kid in the gaberdine mac and eye patch arriving with just a suitcase and a panda for company with that gang of offcomers who climbed up the beech tree to the wooden lookout post to spot Spitfires.

Maddy stares down at the fallen giant, now cut into chunks, choking with emotion.

I thought you’d last for ever, see my grandchildren out, even, but no, your time is over. Could it possibly be that deep within those rings, in those circles of life, you’ve left us one more puzzle, one more revelation, one more reminder?

Maddy’s heart thumps, knowing that to explain any of it she must go right back to the very beginning, to that fateful day when her own world was blown to smithereens. Sitting on the nearest log, sipping from her hip flask for courage, she remembers.

Part One

1

Chadley, September 1940

‘I’m not going back to school!’ announced Maddy Belfield in the kitchen of The Feathers pub, in her gas mask peeling onions while Grandma was busy poring over their account books and morning mail.

Better to come clean before term started. Perhaps it wasn’t the best time to announce she’d been expelled from St Hilda’s again. Or maybe it was…Surely no one would worry about that when the whole country was waiting for the invasion to come.

How could they expect her to behave in a cloistered quad full of mean girls when there were young men staggering off the beaches of Dunkirk and getting blown out of the sky above their heads? She’d seen the Pathé News. She was nearly ten, old enough to know that they were in real danger but not old enough to do anything about it yet.

‘Are you sure?’ said Uncle George Mills, whose name was over the door as the licensee. ‘If it’s the fees you’re worried about,’ he offered, but she could see the relief in his eyes. Her parents were touring abroad with a Variety Bandbox review, entertaining the troops, and were last heard of in a show in South Africa. The singing duo were looking further afield for work and heading into danger en route to Cairo.

Dolly and Arthur Belfield worked a double act, Mummy singing and Daddy on the piano: ‘The Bellaires’ was their stage name and they filled in for the famous Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth, singing duo in some of the concerts, to great acclaim.

Maddy was staying with Grandma Mills, who helped Uncle George run The Feathers, just off the East Lancs Road in Chadley. They were her guardians now that Mummy and Daddy were abroad.

‘Take no notice of her, George. She’ll soon change her tune when she sees what’s in store at Broad Street Junior School.’ Grandma’s gruff northern voice soon poured cold water on Maddy’s plans. ‘I’m more interested in what’s come in the morning post, Madeleine.’ Grandma paused as if delivering bad news on stage, shoving a letter in front of her young granddaughter. ‘What have you to say about this, young lady? It appears there are new orders to evacuate your school to the countryside, but not for you.’

There was the dreaded handwritten note from Miss Connaught, the Head of Junior School attached to her school report.

It is with regret that I am forced to write again to express my displeasure at the continuing misbehaviour of your daughter, Madeleine Angela Belfield. At a time of National Emergency, my staff must put the safety of hundreds of girls foremost, not spend valuable prep evenings searching for one ambulatory child, only to find her hiding up a tree, making a nuisance of herself again.

We cannot take responsibility for her continuing disobedience and therefore suggest that she be withdrawn from this school forthwith. Perhaps she is more suited to a local authority school.

Millicent Mills leaned across the table and threw the letter in Maddy’s direction, her eyes fixed on the child, who sat with her head bent. She looked like butter wouldn’t melt but the effect was spoiled by those lips twitching with mischief. ‘What have you to say for yourself? And why aren’t you wearing your eye patch?’

It wasn’t Maddy’s fault that she was always in trouble at school. It wasn’t that she was mean or careless or dull even but somehow she didn’t fit into the strait-jacket that St Hilda’s liked to wrap around their pupils. Perhaps it was something to do with having to wear an eye patch on her good eye and glasses to correct her lazy left eye.

If there was one word that summed up her problem it was disobedience. Tell her to do one thing and she did the opposite, always had and always would.

‘You can take that grin off your face!’ yelled Granny in her drama queen voice. ‘George, you tell her,’ she sighed, deferring to her son, though everyone knew he was a soft touch and couldn’t squash a flea. ‘What will your mother say when she hears you’ve been expelled? They’ve been footing the bills for months. Is this our reward?’

That wasn’t strictly true, as her parents’ money came in dribs and drabs and never on time. Her school fees were coming out of the pub profits and it was a struggle.

‘Don’t worry, it’ll save you money if I stay here,’ Maddy offered, sensing a storm was brewing up fast. ‘I’ll get a job.’

‘No granddaughter of mine gets expelled! You’ve got to be fourteen to get work. After all we’ve sacrificed for your education. I promised yer mam…’

When Granny was worked up her vowels flattened and the gruffness of her Yorkshire upbringing rose to the fore. She puffed up her chest into a heaving bosom of indignation. ‘I’ve not forked out all these years for you to let us down like this…I’m so disappointed in you.’

‘But I hate school,’ whined Maddy. ‘It’s so boring. I’m not good at anything and I’ll never be a prefect. Anyway, I don’t want to be vacuated. I like it in The Feathers. I want to stay here.’

‘What you like or don’t like is of no consequence. In my day children were seen and not heard,’ Grandma continued. ‘Where’s your eye patch? You’ll never straighten that eye if you take it off.’

‘I hate wearing it. They keep calling me one of Long John Silver’s pirates, the Black Spot, at school and I hate the stupid uniform. How would you like to wear donkey-brown serge and a winceyette shirt with baggy knickers every day? They itch me. I hate the scratchy stockings, and Sandra Bowles pings my garters on the back of my knees and calls my shoes coal barges. Everything is second-hand and too big for me and they call me names. It’s a stupid school.’

‘St Hilda’s is the best girls’ school in the district. Think yourself lucky to have clothes to wear. Some little East End kiddies haven’t a stitch to their backs after the blitz. There’s a war on,’ Granny replied with her usual explanation for everything horrid going on in Maddy’s life.

‘Those gymslips look scratchy to me, Mother, and she is a bit small for some of that old stuff you bought,’ offered Uncle George in her defence. He was busy stocktaking but he looked up at his niece with concern.

‘Everyone has to make sacrifices, and school uniforms will have to last for the duration.’ Grandma Mills was riding on her high horse now. ‘I don’t stand on my feet for twelve hours a day to have her gadding off where she pleases. It’s bad enough having Arthur and Dolly so far away—’

‘Enough, Mother,’ Uncle George interrupted. ‘My sister’ll always be grateful for you taking in the girl. Now come on, we’ve a business to run and stock to count, and Maddy can see that the air-raid precautions are in place. All hands to the stirrup pump, eh?’

Mother’s brother was kindness itself, and all the rules and regulations never seemed to get him down: the petrol rationing and food restrictions. He found ways to get round them. There were always pear drops in his pocket to share when her sweets were gone. He was even busy renovating the old pony trap so they could trot off to town in style, and the droppings would feed the vegetable plot outside. Nothing must be wasted.

The subject of the war was banned in the bar, though. It was as if there was a notice hanging from the ceiling: ‘Don’t talk about the war in here.’ Maddy knew Uncle George pored over the Telegraph each day with a glum face before opening time and then pinned on his cheery grin to those boys in airforce blue. He had wanted to join up but with no toes from an old war wound, and a limp, he failed his medical. Maddy was secretly glad. She loved Uncle George.

Daddy was gassed in the last war too and his chest was too weak for battle. Touring and entertaining the troops was his way of making an effort.

Now everyone followed events over the Channel with dismay, waiting for the worst. England was on alert and evacuation was starting in earnest. It was Maddy’s job to check that the Anderson shelter was stocked with flasks and blankets and that the planks weren’t slippy for the customers and the curtain closed. She helped put the blackout shutters over the windows at dusk every night and made sure the torch was handy if it was a rush to the shelter in the night across what once was the bowling green.

The Feathers was one of five old inns strung along the corners of two main roads between Liverpool and Manchester on the edge of the city in Chadley. It was the only one left with a quaint thatched roof, courtyard and stable block, where their car was bricked up for want of petrol coupons There was a bar for the locals and a snug for married couples and commercial tradesmen.

The bowling green at the back had been turned into an allotment with a shelter hidden away in a pit with turf over the corrugated roof. It was damp and smelly but Maddy felt safe in there.

Maddy had her own bedroom in the eaves of the thatched pub. They were close to a new RAF aerodrome, and men from the station came crowding into the bar, singing and fooling around until all hours. It was a war-free cocoon of smoke and noise and rowdy games. She wasn’t allowed in the bar but sometimes she caught a glimpse of the pilots jumping over the chairs and leapfrogging over one another. It looked like PE in the playground.

She often counted the planes out and in during the small hours when the noise of bombs in the distance kept her awake. They’d heard about the terrible fires over London and listened to the ack-ack guns blasting into the night sky to protect Liverpool and Manchester from raiders. She wished her parents were back in the country entertaining the troops and factory workers close by, not out of reach on the other side of the world and their letters coming all in a rush.

She was glad her parents were together but it seemed years since they had been a proper family and most of that time they’d all lived out of a theatrical trunk. No wonder she balked at leaving the only place she called home, to be evacuated. That was why she’d pushed her luck in class, even though she was on her final warning

Being small, though, meant she felt useless–too young to help in the bar, too old for silly games–sand not sure when she’d be old enough to join up and do something herself. There had to be something she could do besides look after Bertie, the cocker spaniel.

When her chores were done Maddy raced to the apple tree at the far end of the field. It was stripped of fruit and the leaves were curling up. It was her lookout post where she did plane spotting. She could tell the Jerries’ from the Spitfires blindfolded by now. The enemy planes had a slow throb, throb on its engine but the home planes were one continuous drone. She liked to watch the planes taking off from the distant runway and dreamed of flying off across the world to see Mummy and Daddy. It wasn’t fair. They had each other and she had no one.

Granny was OK, in a bossy no-nonsense sort of way, but she was always hovering behind her, making her do boring prep and home reading. It wasn’t as if Maddy planned anything naughty, it just sort of happened–like last week in assembly in the parish church when she sat behind Sandra Bowles.

Sandra had the thickest long ropes of plaits reaching down to her waist and she was always tossing them over her shoulder to show how thick and glossy they were. Her ribbons were crisp and made of gold satin to match the stripes on their blazers.

Maddy’s own plaits were weedy little wiry things because she had curly black hair that didn’t grow very fast and it was a struggle to stop bits spilling out.

Sandy was showing off as usual, and Maddy couldn’t resist clasping the two ropes in a vice grip as they dangled into her thick hymn book, so that when they all rose to sing ‘Lord dismiss us with thy blessing’, Sandra yelped and her head was yanked back.

Maddy didn’t know where to hide her satisfaction, but Miss Connaught saw the dirty deed and it was the last straw after a list of detentions and lines. Nobody listened to her side of the tale–how she’d been the object of Sandra’s tormenting for months. No, she would not miss St Hilda’s one bit.

It wasn’t her fault she was born with a funny eye that didn’t follow her other. Mummy explained that she must wait until she was older and fully grown before the surgeon would be able to correct it properly but that was years away. There’d been one operation when she was younger but it hadn’t worked. Being pretty in the first place would have helped but when Mummy looked at her she always sighed and said she must come from the horsy side of the Belfield family, being good at sport, with long legs.

They never talked much about Daddy’s family, the Belfields, and never visited them. They lived in Yorkshire somewhere. There were no cards or presents exchanged at Christmas either.

Daddy met Mummy when he was recovering after the Great War and she was a singer and dancer in a troupe. He was musical too and spent hours playing the piano in the hospital. They’d fallen in love when Mummy went to sing to them. It was all very romantic.

Maddy’s first memories were of singing and laughter and dancing when they visited Granny and Grandpa’s pub near Preston. She’d stayed with them when the Bellaires were on tour. Grandpa died and Granny came to work with George when Auntie Kath ran away with the cellar man.

Now everything was changed because of this war and everyone was on the move here and there. She just wanted to sit in the tree with Bertie, the cocker spaniel, sitting guard at the base. He was her best friend and keeper of all her secrets.

When it was getting dusk it was time to do her evening chores, closing curtains and making sure that Bertie and the hens got fed for the evening. Now that she’d been expelled, Maddy wasn’t so sure about going to a new school after all. What if it was worse than St Hilda’s?

‘Go and get us some fish and chips,’ yelled Granny from the doorway. ‘I’m too whacked to make tea tonight. The books are making my eyes ache. Here’s my purse. The one in Entwistle Street will be open tonight. And no vinegar on mine…’

Maddy jumped down and shot off for her mac. There was no time to call Bertie in from the field. Fish and chips were always a treat. St Hilda’s would call them ‘common’ but she didn’t care.

She heard Moaning Minnie, the siren, cranking up the air-raid warning as the queue for fish and chips shuffled slowly through the door. Maddy looked up at the night sky, leaning on the gleaming chrome and black and green façade of the fish bar.

Outside, little torches flickered in an arc of light on the pavements as people scurried by.

‘Looks as if Manchester is getting another pasting tonight!’ sighed an old man as he sprinkled salt all over his battered fish.

‘Go easy with that, Stan. There’s a war on,’ shouted the fish fryer.

Maddy could feel her stomach rumbling. The smell of the batter, salt and pea broth was tempting. This was a rare treat as Gran liked to cook her own dishes. If only the sirens would stop screaming.

Chadley was getting off lightly in the recent air raids as there was nothing but a few mills and shops and an aviation supply factory. The Jerries preferred the docks. As she looked up into the sky she saw dark droning shapes and knew she’d have to find shelter–but not before she got their supper wrapped in newspaper. There was something brave about queuing in an air raid.

Gran would be getting herself down to ‘The Pit’, and Uncle George would be sorting out all the air-raid precautions before he went down to the cellar.

When she was fed up Maddy liked to hide with Bertie in the Anderson shelter away from everyone, and sulk. She knew four big swear words: Bugger, Blast, Damnation and Shit, and could say them all out loud there and not get told off. There was another she’d heard but not even dared speak it aloud in case it brought doom on her head.

The whistle was blasting in her ears as she clutched her parcel, making for home, when an arm pulled her roughly into a doorway.

‘Madeleine Belfield, get yourself under cover. Can’t you see the bombs are dropping!’ shouted Mr Pye, the Air-Raid Warden as he dragged her down the steps to a makeshift communal shelter in a basement. She could just make out a clutch of women and children crouching down, clutching cats and budgies in cages, and she wished she’d brought Bertie on his lead. The planes were getting closer and closer to the airfield. This was a real raid, not a pretend one.

Last year it was quiet, nothing much had happened, but since the summer, night after night the raiders came. Her school, once thought far enough out to be safe, was now in the firing line, which was why the pupils were being rushed away to a house in the deepest country.

Perhaps she ought to go and apologise to Miss Connaught and promise to be well behaved…perhaps not. The thought of sharing a dorm with Sandra Bowles and her pinching cronies filled her with horror.

Oh Bertie…Where was her bloody dog! Now she’d thought about the terrible word.

It seemed ages sitting, waiting, the smell of damp and cigarette smoke up her nose. She wished she was down in the cellar with Uncle George.

Uncle George always smiled and said, ‘At least we won’t die of thirst down there, folks,’ coming out with his usual joke before he went into the night-time routine of turning off gas and water taps, evacuating the first few thirsty customers outside, across the bowling green to the official Anderson shelter they called ‘The Pit’. He would be checking that the stirrup pumps were ready for any incendiaries. They all had the drill off pat by now. Everyone had a job.

Now the sirens were screaming, distracting Maddy.

‘They’re early tonight,’ said old Mr Godber, sitting across on the bench with a miserable face. He was one of the regulars who usually came early to The Feathers for his cup of tea and a two penny ‘nip’, but now he was tucking into his chips with relish. There was old Lily who came in for jugs of stout and who once whispered that she’d been stolen by gypsies in the night but Maddy didn’t believe her. There was Mrs Cooper from the bakery, and her three little children trailing blankets and teddies, one of them was plugged into a rubber dummy. He kept staring at Maddy’s eye patch and her bag of chips with longing. There was the wife of the fish-and-chip man, and two old men Maddy didn’t know, who filled the small place with tobacco from their pipes. It was such a smelly crush in the shelter.

‘Where’s yer little dog?’ said Lily. The racket was getting louder. ‘If she’s got any sense she’ll’ve run a mile away from this hellhole. Dogs can sense danger…Don’t fret, love, she’ll be safe.’

‘But he doesn’t like Moaning Minnie.’ Maddy wanted to cry, and clutched the warm newspaper to her, looking anxious. She hoped Gran had taken her hat box down there. It contained her jewellery, their documents, her insurance certificates and the licences, and their identity papers, and it was Maddy’s job to make sure it got put in a safe place. Tonight the box would have to stay under the bed and take its chance.

The sky was still humming with droning black insects hovering ahead. There was a harvest moon tonight, torching the bombers’ path through the dark sky, just the night for Liverpool to be the target. There were planks on the basement floor but it was still claggy and damp, smelling of must.

‘Maddy! Thank goodness you’re here! Good girl, to stay put in the High Street shelter.’ Down the steps came Ivy Sangster, all of a do. ‘Yer Gran was worried so she sent me out to look for you. I said I’d keep you company down here,’ said the barmaid, who helped them on busy nights. ‘I’m glad I found you,’ she said, plonking herself down with a flask. ‘You’d better eat your chips before they go cold.’

‘Did they bring in Bertie? Is he in the cellar?’

‘Not sure, love. Your uncle George’s gone down as usual. You know he can’t stand small spaces…not since the trench collapsed on him,’ whispered Ivy, who was very fond of her boss and blushed every time he spoke to her. ‘Yer gran says it hurts her back bending in the Anderson. They’ll be fine down in the cellar.’

They all squatted on benches either side, waiting for the all clear, but the racket outside just got worse. Maddy was trembling at the noise but clung on to her chips. Ivy ferreted for her mouth organ to pass the time. They always had a singsong to drown out the bangs.

None of them felt like singing this time, though. Maddy started to whimper, ‘I don’t like it!’

It hadn’t been this bad for ages. Maddy was glad it wasn’t opening time and the pub was crowded or the shelter would be squashed. It would soon be over and they could go home and heat up the supper.

It was dark in the basement shelter so when someone flashed a torch Maddy inspected the walls for spiders and creepy crawlies to put in her matchbox zoo. Everyone was trying to put on cheery faces for her but she could see they were worried and nervous. They were the ‘We can take it’ faces that smiled on a poster at the bus station.

She tried to distract herself by thinking of good memories. When her parents were ‘resting’ between jobs, Mummy was all of a dazzle behind the bar, with her hair piled up in curls, earrings dangling and a blouse that showed off her magnificent bust, wearing just enough pan stick and lipstick to look cheerful even when she was tired. The aircrews flocked to her end of the bar while Daddy played tunes on the piano. Sometimes Maddy was allowed to peep through the door and watch Mummy singing.

Mummy’s voice had three volumes: piano, forte, and bellow–what she called her front stalls, gallery and the gods. When she started up everyone fell silent until she let them join in the choruses. Every bar night was a performance and the regulars loved her. Daddy just pulled the pints and smiled as the till rang. He sometimes sat down and played alongside her. Singing was thirsty work and good for The Feathers.

‘I want my mummy,’ whimpered Maddy. ‘She always comes and sings to me. I don’t like it in here any more.’

‘I know, love, but it won’t be long now,’ said Ivy smiling.

‘I want her now and I want Daddy. It’s not fair…I want Bertie,’ she screamed, suddenly feeling very afraid.

‘Now then, nipper, don’t make a fuss. We can’t work miracles. It won’t be long now. Let’s have some of your chips. Sing and eat and take no notice, that’s the way to show Hitler who’s boss,’ said Mr Godber. ‘Eat your chips.’

‘I’m not hungry. Why are they making such big bangs?’

‘I don’t know. It must be the airfield they’re after tonight,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders.

The whiz-bangs were the closest to them for a long time and Maddy was trembling. She felt suffocated with all these strangers. What if they had a direct hit? What about their neighbours down the road? Were they all quaking in their shoes too?

Was the whole of Chadley trembling at this pounding? They huddled together, listening to every explosion, and then it fell quiet and Maddy wanted to rush out and breathe the clean air.

‘I’ll just open up and see what’s what,’ said the warden. ‘They’re passing over. The all clear’ll be sounding soon. Perhaps we’ll get a night’s kip in our own beds, for a change,’ he laughed, opening the curtain and the door.

Maddy felt the whoosh of hot air as soon as the door was opened, a flash of light and a terrific bang. It was like daylight outside.

‘What’s that noise and that fire? Oh Gawd, that was close! Stay back!’ the warden screamed.

Then the droning ceased, and when the all clear sounded everyone cheered.

Ivy and Maddy stumbled out into the darkness, hands clutching each other for support.

There were sounds of running feet and a strange heat and light, crackling and whistling, bells going off. Men were shouting orders. As they left Entwistle Street for the main road, lined with familiar houses and shops, the light got brighter and the smoke was blinding, the smells of cordite and burning rubber choking Maddy’s nostrils. As they turned towards home they saw everything was ablaze, houses gaped open, the rubble alive with dark figures crawling over bricks, shouting.

‘No further, sorry, lass,’ said a voice.

‘But we live here,’ said Ivy. ‘The Feathers down there.’

‘No further, love. It took a direct hit. We’re still digging them out. Better get some tea.’

That last bang had been The Feathers. Its timbers were alight, turning it into a roaring inferno. The heat of it seared their faces and Maddy began to shake. Granny and Uncle George were down in that cellar…

‘What’s going on? Why can’t we see The Feathers? We’ve got to get to them…My granny…Granny…Ivy, Mr Godber, do something!’

She saw the looks on their stricken faces. No one could survive in that furnace, and Maddy sank back, terrified, feeling small and helpless and stunned by the inferno. She began to sob and Ivy did her best to comfort her. They couldn’t do anything but watch the fire rage. Maddy felt sick at the sight of their home going up in smoke and the thought that the two best people in the world, who’d done no harm to anyone, were trapped in that fire.

They all stumbled backwards, recoiling from the furnace before them. There were sounds of fire bells and shouting voices, more whistles blowing. She could hear someone shouting orders and the heat forced her back on her heels, the smoke blinding her, choking her throat with the smell of burning wood like some giant bonfire. The stench was making her feel sick.

The pub was ablaze from end to end. There were fires raging across the road. The garage exploded as the oil caught fire, sending fumes into the air. All she could think about was poor Granny and Uncle George as Ivy rushed forward screaming. ‘Two of them in the cellar…George and Millie Mills! They’re inside in the cellar…There’s a trap door. Oh God! Get them out, please!’ Her voice was squeaky.

‘Sorry, miss, no further, not near the fire. We’ve got to get it under control. Just the two of you outside then?’

‘I only went to Entwistle Street for chips, see, for their supper…I live here.’ Maddy pointed to the fire, not understanding.

‘Not now you don’t, love. All that timber and thatch, gone up like tinder. I’m sorry. We’re digging them out across the road. It’s not safe if the petrol tank goes up…The airfield got it bad tonight,’ said the blackened-faced fireman, trying to be kind, but she didn’t want to hear his words.

Another man in uniform was talking to a woman in a uniform.

‘Two survivors for you, Mavis,’ he said, pointing them out. ‘Take them for some tea.’

‘We’ve had our supper, thank you,’ Maddy said. ‘What about my dog, Bertie? You’ve got to look for him too.’

‘Bertie’ll be fine, love. Let the men get on with their jobs. I don’t think he went in the cellar. He’ll be hiding until it’s safe. We can look for him later,’ Ivy offered, putting her arm round her, but Maddy shook it off. She must find Bertie.

Maddy could see Mr Finlay from the garage across the road, standing in a daze with a shawl around his shoulders and the children from the house up the lane, clutching teddy bears and whimpering. But when she turned to see if anyone was coming out of the pub she saw only smoke and firemen and burning wood. It was a terrible smell and she started to shake.

Someone led them away but her legs were all wobbly. This was all a bad dream…but why could she feel the heat searing her face and still she didn’t wake up?

Later they stood wrapped in blankets sipping tea, feeling sick after inhaling the choking smoke, as the sky turned orange. The fire brigade did their best to quell the flames but it was all too late and the whole town seemed to be on fire.

Maddy would never forget the smell of burning timbers and the flashes and explosions as the bottles cracked and kegs exploded as the poor pub went up in smoke. Nothing would be safe in the world after this. She was shaking, too shocked to take in the enormity of what was happening as they were led shivering, covered in black dust, to the Miner’s Arms, to be given a makeshift bed in the bar, along with all the other victims of the blitz.

They drank sweet tea until they were choking with the stuff. Only then did someone prise the newspaper package out of Maddy’s hand.

On that September night, the whole area was brought to rubble by stray bombs offloaded on a raid. Nothing would ever be the same again. Suddenly Maddy felt all floaty and strange as if she was watching things from on top of the church tower.

In the days that followed the blitz she roamed over the ruins and the back roads of Chadley, calling out for Bertie. How could her poor old dog try to dodge fire, run for shelter, scavenge around or fight off mangy waifs and strays? She called and called until she was hoarse but he never appeared and she knew Bertie was gone.

Then it was as if her throat closed over and no sound could come out. Miss Connaught came and offered her place back in the school–but with no money to her name, she bowed her head and refused to budge from her makeshift billet in the Miner’s.

Ivy took her home to the cottage down the street where she had to share a bed with Ivy’s little sister, Carol. All Maddy wanted to do was sit by the scorched apple tree and wait for Bertie, but the sight of the ruined timbers was so terrible she couldn’t bear to stay for more than a few minutes. If she could find him then she would have someone in the world to hug for comfort while the authorities decided what to do with her.

Telegrams were cabled to the Bellaires in Durban. Maddy had to sign forms in her best joined-up handwriting to register for immediate housing and papers.

The funeral arrangements were taken out of Maddy’s hands by the vicar and his wife. He suggested a joint service for all the bomb victims in Chadley parish church. She overheard Ivy whispering that the coffins would be filled with sand because no trace of Granny and George had been found. The thought of them burned up gave her nightmares and she screamed and woke up all the Sangsters.

Ration books were granted, and coupons for mourning clothes, but everything just floated past her as if in some silent dream. She shed no tears at the service. Maddy stood up straight and looked ahead. They weren’t in those boxes by the chancel steps. There were other boxes, and two little ones: the children from the garage, who had died in the explosion. The family clung together, sobbing.

Why weren’t Mummy and Daddy here? Why were they off out of it all? All Maddy felt was a burning heat where her heart was. Everything was destroyed–her home, her family–and just the comfort of strangers for company. Where would she go? To an orphanage or back to St Hilda’s?

Then a telegram appeared from an address in Yorkshire.

YOUR FATHER HAS INSTRUCTED YOU TO COME NORTH. WILL MEET YOU ON LEEDS STATION. WEDNESDAY. PRUNELLA BELFIELD. LETTER. MONEY ORDER TO FOLLOW. REPLY.

Maddy stared at this turn-up, puzzled, and pushed it over for Ivy to read.

‘Who’s Prunella Belfield? What a funny name,’ she smiled.

‘She must be a relation I don’t know,’ said Maddy. ‘My grandma Belfield, I expect.’

Whoever she was, this relative expected a reply by return and there was nothing to stop her from going north. At least it would be far away from all terrors of the past weeks. There was nothing for her in Chadley now.

2

Sowerthwaite

‘They must be picked fast before the frost Devil gets them!’ yelled Prunella Belfield, burying her head into the blackberry bushes, while shouting instructions to her line of charges to fill their bowls to the brim.

It was a beautiful autumn afternoon and the new evacuees needed airing and tiring out before Matron began the evening bed routine in earnest.

‘But they sting, miss!’ moaned Betty Potts, the eldest of the evacuees, who never liked getting her fingers mucked up.

‘Don’t be a big girl’s blouse,’ laughed Bryan Partridge, who’d climbed over the stone wall to reach a better cluster of bushes, unaware that Hamish, the Aberdeen Angus bull, was eyeing him with interest from across the meadow.

‘Stay on this side, Bryan,’ Prunella warned, to no avail. This boy was as deaf as a post when it suited him. He had runaway from four billets so far and was in danger of tearing the only pair of short trousers that fitted him.

‘Miss…’ whined bandy-legged Ruby Sharpe, ‘why are the biggestest ones always too high to reach?’

Why indeed? What could she say to this philosophical question? Life was full of challenges and just when you thought you had it all sorted out, along came another bigger challenge to make you stretch up even further or dig deeper into your reserves.

Just when she and Gerald had settled down after another sticky patch in their marriage, along came the war to separate them. Just when she thought she was pregnant at long last, along came a second miscarriage and haemorrhage to put paid to that hope for ever.

Just when she thought they could leave Sowerthwaite and her mother-in-law’s iron grip, along came the war to keep her tied to Brooklyn Hall and grounds as a glorified housekeeper.

If anyone had told her twelve months ago she would be running a hostel for ‘Awkward Evacuees’, most of whom had never seen a cow, sheep or blackberry bush in their lives before, she’d have laughed with derision. But the war was changing everything.

When the young Scottish billeting officer turned up at Pleasance Belfield’s house, he stared up at the Elizabethan stone portico, the mullioned windows and the damson hues of the Virginia creeper stretched over the walls, and demanded they take in at least eight evacuees immediately.

Mother-in-law refused point-blank and pointed to the line of walking sticks in the hallstand under the large oak staircase.

‘I have my own refugees, thank you,’ she announced in her patrician, ‘don’t mess with me’ tones that usually shrunk minor officials into grovelling apologies. But this young man was well seasoned and countered her argument with a sniff.

‘But there is the dower house down the lane, I gather that belongs to you?’

He was talking about the empty house by the green. It was once the Victory Tree public house, but had been shuttered up for months after some fracas with the last tenant. It had lain empty, undisturbed, the subject of much conjecture by the Parish Council of Sowerthwaite in Craven, tucked away by the gates to the old Elizabethan manor. Not even Pleasance could wriggle out of this.

‘I have plans for that property,’ Mother countered. ‘In due course it will be rented out.’

‘With respect, madam, this is an emergency. With the blitz we need homes for city children immediately. Your plans can wait.’

No one talked to Pleasance Belfield like that. He deserved an award for conspicuous bravery. Her cheeks flushed with indignation and her bolster bosom heaved with disapproval at this inconvenient conversation. If ever a woman belied her name, it was Gerald’s mama, Pleasance. She ruled the town as if it was her feudal domain. She sat on every committee, checked that the vicar preached the right sermons and kept everyone in their proper places as if the twentieth century hadn’t even started.

The war was an inconvenience she wanted to ignore but it was impossible. There was not a flag or a poster or any recruitment drive without her approval, and now she was being faced with an influx of strangers and officials who didn’t know their place.

‘My dear fellow, anyone can see that place’s not suitable for children. It was a public house with no suitable accommodation for children. Who would take responsibility? I can’t have city ruffians racing round the streets disturbing the peace. Let them all be put up in tents somewhere out of the way.’

‘Oh, yes, and when a bomb drops on hundreds of them, will you take the responsibility of telling their poor mothers?’ he replied, ignoring her fury at his insolence. ‘We’re hoping young Mrs Belfield would see to things.’ The officer looked straight at Plum, giving her a look of desperation but also just the escape she needed from the tyranny of life with Mother-in-law and her gang.

‘But I don’t know anything about children,’ Plum was quick to add. Gerald and she had not managed to take a child to term and now that she was nearly forty, her chances of conceiving were very slim.

‘You’ll soon learn,’ said the billeting officer. ‘We’ll provide a proper nurse and domestic help. I see you have dogs,’ he smiled, pointing to her red setters, Sukie and Blaze, tearing round the paths like mad things. ‘Puppies and kiddies, there’s not much difference, is there? The ones we have in mind are a bit wayward, you see, runaways from their billets mostly. You look just the type to lick them into shape.’ The man winked at her and she blushed.

It was time she did some war work, and a house full of geriatric relatives hoping to sit out the war in comfort was not her idea of keeping the home fires burning.

‘My daughter-in-law has other responsibilities. There’s the house to run, and with so few servants I shall need her services,’ Pleasance countered quickly, sensing danger.

‘With respect, madam, I have checked, and Mrs Belfield is registered for war work, being of age, available and without children. It is her duty—’

‘How dare you come here and demand such sacrifices from a married woman? In my day, men like you…This is unacceptable to me—’

‘Mother, he’s got a point. I would like to help where I can,’ Plum interrupted. ‘We all have to make sacrifices. Gerald is doing his bit and now I must do mine. I shall only be down the lane.’

‘Who will make up the four for bridge?’ Mother sighed. ‘I don’t know what the world is coming to…I shall write to the West Riding and complain about your attitude, young man.’

‘You can do that, madam, but I have powers to insist that the stable block and servants quarters’ be utilised if needed. Would you prefer to have the kiddies on your doorstep or in your house?’

Plum almost choked at this obvious blackmail. It was good to see her bullying mother-in-law cornered for once.

‘Oh, do what you must, but I insist that Mrs Belfield returns each night. Who is there left to do the shutters for the blackout? None of my guests can stretch that far.’

‘I’m sure we can find a young lad from amongst the hostel to help you out.’

‘I want nothing to do with any of them, thank you,’ Pleasance sighed, patting her heart. ‘This’ll be the death of me, Prunella.’

‘She looks a gey tough old bird to me,’ muttered the billeting officer under his breath in his strong Scottish accent. The crafty blighters at the town hall had sent a stranger. No one in Sowerthwaite would have dared address her ladyship with such disrespect.

Plum grinned to herself. There were some changes already in this war that were long overdue. Mama was trying to sit out the war as if it didn’t exist. She refused to have a wireless in the house or a newspaper or any alteration to her regime, but one by one her maids and groundsmen, chauffeur and handymen had joined up, and they were having to make do in the kitchen with two refugees from Poland.

Why shouldn’t town children have fresh air and peace and quiet after all they’d been through? Why shouldn’t they romp through the fields and have rosy cheeks and strong limbs, fresh food? Her illusions were soon to be shattered by the first arrivals to the hostel three weeks later: ill-clad children in plimsolls, with scabby chins and nits.

‘Is this it?’ Plum said, staring in at the Victory Tree with disbelief. She’d never been inside the place before. It was a rough old stone building, little more than a long farmhouse, shuttered up and unwelcoming. ‘It needs a lick of paint.’

‘It needs more than that,’ said Miss Blunt, the new matron, sniffing the air haughtily. ‘I can still smell stale ale and urinals: very unhygienic. I thought we’d be using the big house…I’m not used to this sort of squalor. How will we ever get it ready in time? The children are due in a few days. Where will we get distemper, Mrs Belfield?’

‘That’s for the Town Hall to provide, or we can use lime wash; farmers always have lime wash.’ Plum refused to be defeated by the size of the task. ‘Everything else is ordered. At least they’ve got plenty of grounds to play in at the back, and there’s a wash house and stables for storage. The bar’s already been ripped out. This will make a good playroom for them to make a rumpus.’ She pointed to the large taproom.

‘This will be my sitting room,’ announced Miss Blunt with another sniff, eyeing the coal fireplace and the windows overlooking the green. ‘You’ll be up at the big house. I need somewhere to retire to…’

‘Why not make your room in the snug? It’s warmer and quieter in there. If we can give these children some space to let off steam,’ Plum added, thinking of ways to keep them out of mischief.

‘I’ll be the judge of that. They’re not dogs off the leash, Mrs Belfield. These are naughty girls and boys who don’t know how lucky they are to be housed. They must learn to run a home and stay in their place. Keep them busy and teach them domestic skills. Make them useful citizens and stand no nonsense.’ Miss Blunt was busy making her lists. ‘I shall need locks on all the doors. You can’t trust common children. They’re like wild animals.’

In the end they compromised by making the taproom the dining hall, with chairs and a bench by the fireplace. Old furniture from the servants’ quarters was brought down from Brooklyn Hall on a cart. The Town Hall sent two old men to whitewash throughout the building so it smelled fresh and clean and looked brighter. To everyone’s amazement, they installed a big bath and flushing toilet at the top end of the staircase. Most of the residents of the village had to make do with outside brick privies in the yard and zinc tubs.

‘It’s a right rum do giving strangers fancy plumbing. The Owd Vic’s gone up in the world. It were allus a spit’n’sawdust place afore,’ laughed one of the decorators as he sloshed the distemper over the bumpy walls. ‘Ah could tell you some right tales about this…but not for ladies’ ears, happen…There was a murder here once in the olden days. One of them navvies building the railway line threw some gelignite on the fire and near on blew the place up! They say there’s a ghost as—’

‘But why’s it called the Victory Tree?’ Plum was curious.

The old man shook his head. ‘Summat to do with the army recruits. Happen they mustered them up here,’ he said. ‘Before the last war, though. The Sowerthwaite Pals, they were called. Fifty bonny lads went out but you can count on yer hand the ones as came back. I was a farmer’s lad and never got to go…Lost a lot of my school mates. Her ladyship took it bad with losing Captain Julian, and then Arthur Belfield got a blighty…Never see him up here, do we?’

Old man Handby was fishing for information to take back to his cronies in the Black Horse but Plum’s lips were sealed. Even she didn’t know the full story of why Pleasance had dismissed her son with such venom.

‘Where’s the Victory Tree then?’ asked Miss Blunt, looking across the green to the stocks and the duck pond, expecting to see some big elm commemorating Waterloo or Balaclava.

‘Now there you’ve got me, lady. The only trees we have are those up the lane to Brooklyn planted by her ladyship in her grief. The big one at the top of the yard has allus been there…Dunno why it’s called the Victory Tree.’

Plum spotted some local children peeping through the windows to see what was going on. Once word got round the town that the evacuees were coming, she wondered just what reception the new arrivals would get when they turned up at the local school.

The world of children was a mystery to her. She hoped the man from the town hall was right and it was just a matter of training, obedience and praise. So far she’d been more a tennis court sort of gal, she smiled, driving a fast car with her dogs hanging out, a deb with not enough education and experience to be doing what she was doing now.

It had been a baptism of fire, sorting out beds and linen and fresh clothes for some of the sad little tykes who turned up at the station with their escort. Some, like Ruby, were pinched and cowed and eager to please; others, like Betty and Bryan, could be cocky and defiant, with wary eyes. There were still six more to arrive.

These were the rejects from other billets, each with a case history in a file, some nervy and sickly so perhaps it would be like running a kennels for the sort of puppies that were disobedient and poorly trained. In her book there was no such thing as a bad horse or hound, just a poor owner, so perhaps her experience might come handy after all.

Plum was to be in charge of ordering provisions, book-keeping and returning a full account to the Town Hall in Sowerthwaite, who were overseeing the evacuation and footing the bills.

Miss Blunt was a former school matron at a boy’s preparatory school near York, specially selected to control unruly children, and she wore a nurse’s uniform at all times to remind her charges that she would stand no nonsense. It was unfortunate that, to cover her thinning hair, she had chosen a rust-coloured wig, which shifted up and down when she was agitated. Plum could see trouble ahead for the poor soul if she kept up the pretence.

As the children picked bowls of blackberries in the autumn sunshine, Plum saw to her horror that their cotton shirts and dresses were stained purple and lips were dyed blue. There’d not been a peep out of any of them when she told them that every berry they picked was one in the eye for Hitler!

‘Miss, miss, the cow with handle bars’s got Bryan!’ yelled Ruby and Betty in unison, pointing to the boy who was pinned against the stone wall. For once, all his bravado had crumpled.

‘Don’t scream and don’t move. He’s just an old softie really,’ she lied. ‘He’s just curious.’

‘What if he tosses ’m over his head and kills ’im, miss?’

‘Look him in the eye, Bryan, and just hold out your bowl, let him sniff the berries and place it out of reach. Then run like the wind!’ she whispered. Hamish was a glutton for titbits and sniffed the bowl with interest, giving the lad the chance to make for the gate. She’d never seen a boy run faster, and he flung himself over the bars, tearing his shorts in the process. ‘It’s like the cowboys in the Wild West, miss, this country lark,’ he panted. ‘Sorry about the berries. The Rug’ll give me hell for tearing me pants,’ he added. ‘Sorry, miss.’

‘The Rug?’ She looked up as the children giggled. Then she realised it was a nickname–no guesses who the name belonged to. She had to stifle a smile. ‘I’ll say it was an accident in the cause of duty. I reckon we’ve got enough for ten jars of jelly out of this.’

When they returned Matron was waiting at the door, grim-faced. ‘Look at the state of them! Oh, and there’s a message from the Hall. You’ve to go at once, Mrs Belfield says, at once.’

Why did Avis Blunt make her feel like a naughty schoolgirl? It was probably nothing but just in case there was news from Gerald Plum scurried up the line of poplars along the avenue, each one in memory of one of the fallen in Sowerthwaite in the Great War. The war to end all wars had robbed the Belfields of their eldest son, Julian, and injured their second son, Arthur.

Ilsa, the refugee cook, stood in the hallway looking worried. ‘Madam’s not well. Come.’

Pleasance was sitting in the drawing room with her feet up sipping brandy, flourishing a telegram, and Plum went cold and faint.

‘No, it’s not Gerry. It’s from Arthur…the one abroad…I thought I told him never to contact me again…He made his choice. Now he begs me to take in his brat, blitzed somewhere near Manchester, would you believe. Dolly’s mother got herself killed. Nowhere else to go and he asks me to come to the rescue. The cheek of it, after all these years. As if I care what happens…’

‘Mother, he’s abroad. He can’t get to his child…You have to do your duty, it’s your granddaughter.’

Plum was shocked by the coldness of this selfish spoiled woman, who had cut herself off from her second son just because he had defied her and married a showgirl for love. Why, the very aristocracy of England was strengthened by the blood of many a Gibson girl and film starlet.

Gerald was the baby of the family and indulged as such. He dismissed his older brother as a fool. ‘He could have kept Dolly as a mistress and kept Mama happy,’ which was what he himself had done until recently. Sometimes Plum feared he’d only married her for her wider connections in the County, while keeping his Lillie Langtry in town, until the poor girl made a fuss and demanded he marry her. That’s when she disappeared and he came home repentant, bearing expensive gifts. Life was good when they were posted abroad for a while, but on leaving the army Gerald had grown restless back in Yorkshire, running the small estate. They’d meant to buy something for themselves but it seemed sensible to live at Brooklyn with his widowed mother.

Plum’s parents were dead and her brother, Tim, was in the air force, stationed in Singapore. They weren’t close and she’d never told him much about her marriage. She’d just gone along with the idea, thinking she’d fill the big house with children and life, but it hadn’t turned out that way. Now things were strained. However, divorce was out of the question–even Gerald knew that. He had no plans to be disinherited.

Plum had stayed up in the country, hurt and ready to make her own plans, then war had broken out and Gerald was called back into the regiment, and they sort of made things up again. Now the thought of one of their own abandoned in all that terror just like the evacuees troubled her.

‘She can’t stay here. There’s no room,’ Pleasance whined.

‘Of course there is. I’ve got more children arriving on Wednesday. If I can meet her then we’ll manage somehow. It will be good to meet Arthur’s girl.’

‘Arthur’s street urchin, more like. Brought up in a pub, I ask you, while they cavort themselves on a public stage. I am sick of this dratted war upsetting everything. Where’s it all going to end?’

‘As far as I can see the world has ended for Madeleine; bombed out, her granny dead and parents stuck halfway across the world. Just think of someone else, for a change…or would you prefer life under Herr Hitler?’

‘Don’t be facetious, Prunella. You forget yourself. This hostel thing has gone to your head and coarsened you. I’m too old to look after children.’ Mother looked up, her mouth pursed into a mean straight line. She was being unreasonable as usual. Time to butter her up with compliments. It always worked.

‘Rubbish! You’ll rise to the challenge, you always do. Look how you’ve provided a house for children already, made a home for Great-uncle Algie and Great-aunt Julia and her companion, and employed refugees. You try to set an example in the community. “By your fruits are ye known”–you keep quoting at me. We’ll manage, and I can see to Madeleine.’

‘But I said I’d never speak to him again.’

‘She’s Arthur’s child. She’s no quarrel with you. The girl never asked to be born or be part of this estrangement. Where’s your heart? Do we take in strangers but not our own just because of a silly quarrel?’ Plum lit a cigarette from her silver case, drew a deep breath as if it were an oxygen mask. Suddenly she felt so weary.

Pleasance Belfield was the daughter of a cotton magnate who had married into another successful business family. How quickly she’d forgotten her own roots. The Belfields weren’t old money but new money made in the cotton trade in Lancashire in the last century. They only bought the manor house when the ancient Coldicote family died out. Why did Mother have to behave as if she was queen of all she surveyed?

This poor mite might be the only grandchild she would ever have. How could she dismiss her so lightly?

‘Your grandchild needs a home, Mother. Think about it, at least,’ Plum pleaded.

‘I don’t know what’s got into you, young lady. You used to be so compliant and now you’re smoking like a chimney,’ Pleasance replied, ignoring her request, ready to criticise as usual.

‘I’m nearly forty years old. I’ll smoke if I like, but for your enlightenment, here are just a few reasons why I do. I wasn’t trained for anything but marriage and I have a husband who doesn’t love me. I have no children of my own to cherish. I have a brother risking his neck in the skies halfway across the world to keep us safe, so don’t call me “young lady”. I feel as old as the hills but I would never turn a child of this family from the door, so if you don’t like any of this then I’ll pack my bags and stay down in the Vic and take Madeleine with me.’

Plum stood up to beat a retreat to her room. It was the only place in the house where she could think her own thoughts. She was in no mood for any more arguments. This rebellion had been coming for months. She was sick of pandering to Pleasance’s whims and fancies. She could go to hell!

‘Prunella! I suppose you’d better send a telegram at once and meet her in Leeds with the others–but I don’t like it one bit,’ Pleasance sighed with a look of martyrdom on her face.

‘I’m sure you don’t, but you were never one to shirk your duty. Sowerthwaite expects you to lead by example, and what better than to take in a victim of the blitz? I shall need the car to collect them all from the station.’

Plum smiled to herself with relief. Round one to Arthur and his girl. Round one to her, for once.

3

Victoria Station, Manchester, September 1940

Gloria Conley tugged her little brother along the platform, trying to keep up with her mother, who was rushing through the crowds on Victoria Station, dodging kitbags slung over shoulders. Sid kept tripping over men sitting on the platform. The place smelled of steam and smoke and smelly armpits, but it was so exciting to be up close to those big iron monsters. There’d been so much to see since they got off the Kearsley bus into town. It was the longest journey she’d ever had, but Sid was whining about his ear hurting. Where were they going? Gloria hoped it was a trip to the seaside.

‘Now you stay put, while I get you some sweeties,’ smiled Mam, who was all dolled up in a short jacket and summer frock with a silly little beret with a feather stuck on the side. The soldiers wolf-whistled when she passed and shouted, ‘Give us a kiss, Rita Hayworth!’ Mam wiggled her bum, enjoying every minute of the attention, for she looked so pretty with her shoulder-length red hair and kiss curls.

Gloria was gripping Sid’s wrist for dear life in case they got swept away in the rush. As the carriage doors opened, bodies poured out with suitcases and parcels, and porters rushed around with trolleys. Gloria could hear whistles blowing and the smell of soot went up her nose.

Mam soon came back with Fry’s chocolate bars and fizzy pop in a bottle. They were going on a journey, that’s all Gloria had been told, and they had to be good.

Since the telegram came last week, Mam had been acting funny There’d been tears, and the usual aunties sitting round smoking and drinking stout. Something bad had happened: not the coppers banging on the door of their two up and two down in Elijah Street, looking for Uncle Sam, who had run away from the war: not the welfare man coming to see why she’d missed school again: not that nosy parker from two doors down who didn’t like the gentlemen callers banging the door at all hours. It was all to do with the ‘war on’.

‘His dad’s copped it good and proper this time and won’t be coming back. What’m I going to do with you two now?’ Mam sighed with a funny look in her eye while they were on the platform. ‘You’ll have to be a big girl and take charge of Sidney. I want more for you than I’ve got here, do you hear? This is no life for kiddies.’ Mam was snivelling and rabbiting on, shoving a letter in her pocket, a letter Gloria couldn’t read because she was still stuck with baby reading and had missed a lot of schooling looking after Sid while Mam slept in.

‘Give this to the policeman on the train, or one of them teachers down there, look…with the children. It’ll explain, but no telling fibs, Gloria. Be a good girl. Don’t lose yer gas masks. You’ll be the better without me, love. I’m doing this for your own good.’

Mam was crying and Gloria just wanted to cling on tight to her cotton frock, suddenly afraid. Something terrible was about to happen at this station. ‘Where’re we going?’ she sobbed. For a girl of well over ten she was the size of a nine-year-old, her face framed in her pixie hood.

‘Now, none of that! It’s for the best. I’ve got to do right by you…I’m going to join up and do my bit.’ Mam shoved a clean hanky in her face. ‘Blow!’

Gloria didn’t understand what she was getting at but Sid was crying and holding his ear. He always had sore ears. He was her half-brother. Not that she knew who her own dad was. His name was never mentioned. The one that got killed was Uncle Jim, Sid’s dad, but he was too young to understand. He could be a right mardy baby when he got one of his earaches.

Mam shoved them down the platform following the party of school children with little cases and gas masks, but they went into a full carriage. The train was packed, so she hung back suddenly. ‘Damn! We’ll happen wait for the next one coming,’ she said. ‘You’d better go to the lav, Glory. No one wants a kiddie with wet knickers.’

What was going on? Her life was full of mysteries, Gloria thought, sitting on the big wooden toilet seat in the ladies. There was the mystery of the customers who came to Elijah Street, the aunties who were always popping in, the men who went upstairs day and night to buy.

What Mam sold was another mystery, but it meant lots of jumping up and down on the bed and sometimes the plaster came down from the living-room ceiling where Gloria had to keep Sid amused.

She knew Mr Cummings, who came regular as clockwork on Sunday afternoons. When they set off for Clarendon Street Sunday school, he gave them cough drops out of his pocket with fluff on them and told them to hop it. There were others she didn’t like who came for a ‘seeing to’.

Lily Davidson’s mum was a hairdresser and saw her customers at the kitchen sink. Freda Pointer across the road went with her mam round the doors selling magazines. They were religious.

Sometimes when Gloria went upstairs, Mam’s bed was all rumpled and messy and smelled of perfume and sweat. ‘What do you do up there?’ she once asked.

‘Nothing you would understand, love. I make them better,’ she explained with a smile.

‘Like Dr Phipps?’ she asked.

‘Sort of. I give them treatments to help their sore backs and aches and pains,’ Mam said, and Gloria felt better after that.

In the playground of Clarendon Street Juniors she told Freda Pointer that her mother was a doctor and everyone started to laugh.

‘My mam says your mam’s a tuppenny tart, a lady of the night and she’ll go to Hell!’

‘No, she’s not! She never goes out at night,’ Gloria shouted, knowing it wasn’t exactly true as sometimes she woke up and found the door unlocked and no one in the house but her and Sid. If there was a raid she had to drag him out of bed and under the stairs to the cubbyhole and wait for the all clear. Sometimes she took him to Auntie Elsie’s shelter down the road.

‘Hark at ’er, ginger nut. You’re so stupid, anyone can see she’s a tart!’ Freda made everyone laugh and this made Gloria angry. With all that mass of copper curls, just like her mam, she did have a temper on her. She yanked at Freda’s plaits until she screamed blue murder and they punched each other and kicked shins until they both got the cane for fighting in the yard.

That was when she bunked off school again and went round the shops until it was home time. The welfare man called round and she got a clout from Mam for bringing trouble to the door.

‘We’re as good as any up this street and don’t you forget it. I give a service like anyone else. I’m doing war work, in my own way. Them across the road don’t even hold with fighting. You’ve only got one life, Glory. Make the most of it–grab it while you can before you end up like poor Jim, fifty fathoms deep among the fishes, God rest his soul.’

When Gloria got back on the platform Mam was begging cigs off a soldier.

‘That took a long time,’ she laughed. ‘Your skirt’s still tucked in yer knicks! Aren’t you a sight…Now you look after Sid while I just take a stroll with this nice man.’ She winked. ‘I’ll not be long’.

‘Mam!’ Gloria called, suddenly afraid as the feathers on the beret disappeared into the crowd. Would Mam come back to them? Gloria felt sick and clung on to her brother.

Was she nearly there, thought Maddy for the umpteenth time. It was hard to see just where they were on that long grimy train heading east, with its damp sooty carriages and brown sauce upholstery. It had taken hours and hours, and the train kept stopping in the middle of nowhere. She peered through the oval hole in the centre of the window, the bit that wasn’t plastered up in case there was a blast. All she could see were embankments black with burned undergrowth.

She’d eaten her sandwiches up ages ago and now she was down to the last dregs of the medicine bottle of milk, but there was one bit of chocolate stuck to the pocket lining of her gaberdine school mac. Ivy had shoved the bar in her hand when she saw her off at the station and made sure the guard knew she must be put off at Leeds.

She felt stupid with a label tied round her button and pulled it off, not wanting to be a parcel to be delivered to Brooklyn Hall, Sowerthwaite. What sort of village hall was that: a tin shack with corrugated roof?

The carriages were packed with troops straight off the docks, who slept in the corridors and played cards, the blue cigarette smoke in the carriage like thick fog.

In her pocket was a telegram from Mummy promising they’d get back as soon as they could and asking her to be polite to Grandma Belfield and Aunt Prunella until they came to collect her. She had slept with that letter under her pillow. She could smell Mummy’s perfume on the paper and it gave her such comfort.

If only she’d met her aunt before and if only she knew where she’d be sleeping tonight. If only Mummy and Daddy could fly back at once–but they would have to go by sea and round the Cape into the Atlantic, which were dangerous water.

Maddy kept feeling so tired and sad inside since that terrible night, it was as if her feet were being dragged through heavy mud. Every little thing was an effort–brushing her teeth, washing out her clothes. Now she was wetting the bed every night and it was so embarrassing to wake up and find her pyjamas all sodden. Ivy tried hard not to be cross with her but she got so upset. Mrs Sangster would be glad to see the back of her after that.

Now this train was taking her to live with strangers in Yorkshire; a place full of chimneys and mills and cobblestones and grime. She’d seen it on the pictures. The industrial north was near where the famous Gracie Fields lived and made her films. There were terrible towns full of misery, poor children in shawls who crawled barefoot under the weaving looms. The factories belched out smoke that blackened all the houses and it rained every day like in ‘the dark satanic mills’ of Blake’s poem.

No wonder Daddy ran away from such terrible surroundings. Now that towns and cities were being blitzed, other children were being evacuated out to the country. There were lines of them on each platform with labels on their coats, all of them carrying brown parcels, with stern-faced teachers ordering them up and down and ticking off lists.

Maddy sat in her school hat and coat, trying to be patient, but she could hear the noise outside the corridors of teachers telling their charges to hurry up and keep in line. She was squashed like a sardine in a tin, hoping the guard would remember to tell her when they reached Leeds Station, as all the signs had been taken from the platforms as a precaution in case the enemy invaded.

Peering out of her porthole only confirmed her worst fears as she saw rows of brick houses and chimneys poking up everywhere–no green fields and forests in view.

Beggars can’t be choosers, she sighed, trying to put on a brave face. She clutched Panda as if her life depended on it, her black curls poking from under her school panama hat. At least she was wearing her glasses and the eye patch was switched over to her bad eye so no one would see her squint. Her jaw was stiff and sometimes she kept shivering for no reason. She wished Mummy was here to cuddle her.

If she shut her eyes she could see Dolly Bellaire dressed for a concert in a midnight-blue sequined gown with her little fur shoulder shrug. She could almost smell the rich perfume of roses and the taste of Mummy’s lipstick when she kissed her good night. Her hair smelled of setting lotion and her fingernails were crimson. She always looked so glamorous.

At this moment, though, Maddy would have given up her new ration books just to have an ordinary mother in a tweed suit and jacket, with a headscarf and wicker basket, going off to the shops, and a dad who worked in an office and went on the eight ten each morning into Piccadilly. But it was not to be, and she must be strong for both of them.

I need the bathroom she thought, but didn’t want the soldiers to know she was dying to pee.

‘Will you show me where the wash room is?’ she whispered to a woman sitting opposite, who smiled but shook her head.

‘We’ll both lose our seats if I do. It’s down the corridor at the end. Ask the guard.’ The thought of asking a man horrified Maddy. ‘I won’t bother,’ she snapped back. She didn’t like pushing past all those rough uniforms sitting behind the door but she didn’t want to wet herself again.

‘Will you save my seat then?’ she asked the woman, who nodded.

There was a queue when she got there and the smell of the toilet made her feel sick, but then the train stopped at a big station. Men jumped off, others clambered aboard and a woman in a funny hat shoved two children up the steps. She hugged them tightly, big tears rolling down her face.

‘Now you be good, do you hear? This big girl will take you to her teacher and look after you. This is Gloria and this is Sid. There’s a letter in her pocket. She don’t read yet.’ The lady was crying and when the whistle screeched she jumped down and ran down the platform away from the train.

The two children started to howl. The little boy was screaming for his mummy. The woman was sobbing and ran down the platform again, waving to the train as they started to chug away. The children were making an almighty racket. Maddy didn’t know what to do.

‘Shush!’ she said to the boy in the balaclava and the girl in the pixie hood. ‘You can come with me. Take my hand.’ They stared up at her with snot running down their noses. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Gloria Conley…and he’s Sid,’ said the little girl. She looked to be about eight or nine, with the brightest red hair Maddy had ever seen.

It had all happened so quickly she wondered if she’d dreamed it up. The little boy was the size of one of the tiny tots in the Sunday school class and Maddy was cross they’d been left alone. She would have to find the teacher they belonged to and get them sorted out. Perhaps the others had got on at the other end of the train and in the rush they’d got separated. It was all very strange.

Sid began to howl, ‘I want my mam!’ Gloria was trying to be brave and Maddy knew just how that felt, not having a mummy to hold on to. There was something in the look on that mother’s face that worried her. Granny Mills would’ve known what to do. She would have to take them back with her first and then get them sorted out.

Maddy sat with Sid on her knee and Gloria snuggled up to her, squashing the soldier almost out of his seat. He was not amused. She counted every stop in her head so that she could tell the teacher just where they had got on. There were no signs on the station to help her.

Why had their mother not come with them? They were awfully small to be on their own but then she herself was not yet ten, and travelling unaccompanied. At St Hilda’s they never went anywhere without a chaperone. School seemed so far away now, another lifetime ago.

The children were neatly dressed in short woolly coats. They had gym shoes on their feet but their hair smelled of dried-up pee and boiled vegetables. Maddy tried not to wrinkle up her nose and hoped it wasn’t long to Leeds.

‘Where’re you going to?’ she asked.

‘Dunno,’ said Gloria. Maddy decided Gloria was a lovely name and she had a mop of glorious red ringlets even curlier than her own. There were freckles on her nose and cheeks and she had the greenest eyes, like a cat. Sid was just the same, only smaller.

‘You’ve got funny glasses,’ said Gloria, pointing at her patch.

‘What’s your other name again?’ Maddy said, ignoring her comment.

‘Burryl.’

‘No, your surname, Beryl what? I’m Madeleine Angela Belfield but you can call me Maddy.’

‘Just Gloria Burryl Conley.’

‘Where do you live?’

‘Dunno…’

‘You must have an address. What town…what street?’

‘Elijah Street, by the cut. Dunno owt else,’ Gloria shrugged.

This was hopeless. The stupid girl didn’t even know her address or anything. Perhaps she was simple-minded like Ivy’s cousin, Eddy, who went to a special school.

‘Well, Gloria, when the train stops at Leeds I’ll ask the guard to find your teacher,’ she offered, feeling very grown up.

‘What teacher? I’m not going to school,’ Gloria replied.

‘But you must go to school, everyone does,’ Maddy argued.

‘I don’t. Mam don’t believe in it…I look after our Sid for her,’ she said proudly. Maddy was horrified. ‘What’s your mummy’s name?’

‘Marge.’

‘And your daddy?’

‘Dain’t got none.’ Gloria pierced her with her green eyes. ‘You ask a lot of questions. Where are you going to then?’

Maddy told them at great length her own sad story. Sid had nodded off on her knee but Gloria was taking it all in. Then the train began to slow down and a whisper went through the carriage. ‘Leeds…next station.’

The soldier helped to pull down Maddy’s little brown suitcase from the rack. She roused the sleeping boy and clutched hold of Gloria’s hand. ‘You’d better come with me. Aunt Prunella will know what to do. Where’s your case?’

Gloria shrugged, pointing to a brown parcel tied up with string and her gas mask. ‘Come on, Sid, time to go with her.’

Maddy waited by the carriage door until it was opened for them and lifted Sid out and then Gloria. The platform was packed with soldiers and children milling around. She pushed her way as best she could, with Gloria clinging on to her sleeve, clutching Sid’s hand. How would she find Mrs Belfield in all this throng?

Gregory Byrne eyed the line-up of other kids and the welfare officer waiting to hand them over like parcels on the foyer of Leeds Station. It was not going to be easy. This one knew all the tricks and was watching him like a hawk, making him walk in front. Greg had a reputation to keep up. He wasn’t called ‘Houdini’ for nothing at his last billet; the escape merchant.

Any open window, convenient drainpipe, and he was off on the run, living rough, stealing from market stalls, a proper Artful Dodger, but his last escape had gone wrong and now he wasn’t as quick after doing that stupid dare.

If only the warden hadn’t been such a cow and teased little Alfie about his dirty pants. ‘What’s this stinking mess?’ she accused, shaming him before the gang.

‘He can’t help it, miss,’ Greg had gone to Alfie’s rescue. ‘Maybe if you stopped picking on him so much…’ He squared up to the old dragon. He was growing so fast, he towered over her.

‘You’ll speak when you’re spoken to, Byrne. Any more cheek from you and you’ll be on your way again. How many billets have you gone through? No wonder your mother ditched you in an orphanage as soon as she cast eyes on you. Not much of a specimen to behold, are you?’

She was eyeing him with contempt but he was not going to be bullied like the others.

‘Shut your mouth, you old bag. At least I don’t have to look in the mirror and see that frightening gob looking back at me!’ he shouted, and the others stood back in horror at his cheek. He was for it now but he didn’t care. He’d stopped caring about anything but cars and bikes, years ago.

She’d insulted his mother, who’d died when he was born. How dare the old dragon try it on with him? He was hardened by years of playground abuse. He wasn’t going to take no more stick from the likes of her.

‘Go to your room, Byrne. I’ll not be insulted by a scruff who has the brain of a flea and the brawn of an ox. I am sick of taking in riffraff like you. No one wants you–get out of my sight.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not stopping in this miserable dump!’ he replied. There was no holding him in a place where he was not wanted. He was out of the window and into the fields as fast as his legs could carry him, to join the other evacuees. They were kept outside all day until it was dark so that they didn’t mess up the house. It was a miserable hole but no worse than some of the others he’d been expelled from.

Greg led his gang away from their usual path down to the riverbank, making instead towards the mainline railway line.

‘We’re not supposed to come down here,’ said little Alfie, looking up at him. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I’m off. I’ve had enough of the old cow,’ sneered Greg, his face set with determination. His penknife was tucked in his pocket along with the Saturday spends that he’d been saving up.

‘But you’ve no money.’ Alfie was running after him.

‘You don’t need money; I’ve done it before,’ he said as he made his way to the footbridge, and the others were running to keep up with him. The iron footbridge linked two meadows over the main line going north and south. They were on pain of death not to come train spotting too close to the track.

The others were standing in awe as he prepared for his escape.

‘You’re not going to jump?’ Alfie croaked. ‘They go too fast down here.’

‘Gertcha! I bet he daren’t,’ sneered Arnie, who was growing into a bully himself.

‘You just watch. I’m waiting for a coal wagon or freight, easy peasy. You can watch. I’ve been practising for ages,’ Greg bragged, but that was a lie. He’d only just thought of the idea.

‘Houdini does it again!’ His admirers crowded round.

‘Where’ll you go?’ said the little boy.

‘Dunno…join up and see some action, runaway to sea,’ Greg replied, lifting his legs over the iron railings, dangling them. They were out of sight and half a mile from the hostel. He was hanging ready to drop as soon as the sound of a train came rattling down the track.

‘Anyone coming to join me?’ he laughed, knowing none of them would. ‘One drop onto an open wagon and we can be miles from here by teatime.’

‘Summat’s coming round the bend,’ yelled Alfie, ‘and it’s a slow one.’

‘Just you watch me…I’ll give the old bat a wave when I pass the kitchen.’ Greg was hanging from the bars now. The noise of the train and the steam filled the gully and stung his eyes.

Alfie tried to stop him. ‘Don’t do it!’

‘Get off me, the train’s coming now,’ Greg yelled, pushing him away. They were all consumed in a blind cloud of soot and steam and fire, his ears bursting with the noise as the engine roared past and the wheels clanked.

‘Geronimo!’ he yelled as he jumped, but his timing was up the spout and he banged and ricocheted off the wagon side with a crash. He landed not on the coal but on the track gravel, and heard something crack.

He heard someone say, ‘Fetch the pram! Quick…run back for help. Greg’s done for!’

The voices faded and then there was nothing.

He came to in hospital with a leg in plaster, broken ribs and arm, and got no sympathy or visits from anyone. He was treated like a prisoner under guard, but his legs hurt too much to be thinking of escape.

They would move him on again but he had plans. He would get himself fit and then join up before it was all over. No one could keep Gregory Byrne tied up for long.

4

Leeds Station, Five p.m.

The train station foyer was crowded as Plum rushed through the barrier onto the platform, clutching her list of names. The trains were running late and she was overdue at the rendezvous by the drinks kiosk. A queue of dishevelled soldiers eyed her up and down. Perhaps it was a mistake to put on her big cartwheel hat but she thought it might give the children something to follow if there was a crush. Maybe it did look a bit grand for the occasion. She felt overdressed, like Lady Bountiful at Ascot.

All she could think of was collecting the six children on the list from their escort and waiting for the Transpennine Express to pick up little Madeleine. They would catch the connection through Scarperton Junction that would get them back to the hostel for tea, but everything was running late.

Peggy Bickerstaffe, Gregory Byrne, Joseph Ridley, Enid Cartwright, Nancy Shadlow and Mitchell Brown–she knew the names off by heart. With relief she saw them lined up in place with the school welfare officer, who handed them over with scarcely a nod. He shoved a file into her hands. ‘Over to you now,’ he said, and eyed her hat with surprise. ‘Can’t stop, don’t want to miss my connection. We’ll come on a visit next week to see them settled in. Good Luck!’

If she’d hoped for a line-up of compliant little infants to shepherd, then she was in for a big disappointment. This lot were older, scruffier, and two of the lads were taller than she was. Don’t show your fear or your ignorance, she primed herself. Dogs and kids could sense weakness, so she beamed with false confidence.

‘We connect at last. Sorry to be late but the train was held up for a troop train.’ No one spoke but they eyed her hat and her gloves. ‘Look, we’ve just one more to pick up from the Manchester train.’

‘Can I be excused?’ said one of the bigger girls.

‘And me too,’ said the other.

‘Not yet,’ Plum said, quick off the mark. That was the oldest ruse in the book. They were going to have to wait now on the platform. There were whistles blowing, loudspeakers going off and a crush of passengers pushing and shoving for a long train heading north. This bunch could not be trusted to sit while she went in search of information. One blink and they’d scarper to the four corners–time to divide and rule.

‘Peggy, Joseph, Mitchell?’

‘Yes, miss.’

‘I’m Mrs Belfield. I want you to be our scouts and get us the best carriage on the train to Scarperton Junction, just over there. Spread out and make sure there’s room for all of us. I’ve brought a picnic,’ she smiled, tempting them with titbits in her basket: bribery and corruption, but just for once she needed them to be on her side. They were eyeing her shopping basket with interest now.

‘Nancy Shadlow, Enid Cartwright, Gregory Byrne…come with me to find out if the Manchester train has come in. I want you to search out a little girl standing on her own. She’s called Madeleine.’

‘Yes, miss,’ they replied in unison.

Could she trust them to behave? The big boy with the blue eyes brimming with mischief towered over the girls, all teeth and knees, but there was something about him she felt she could trust–call it an instinct for a pack leader. In a litter of puppies there was always one that was confident and friendly and up for good training.

Then she turned round and saw that one of the girls was heading towards the station buffet to a group of soldiers, to beg sweets no doubt.

What did she expect from strange children who were being sent packing into the deepest country just because they had been labelled as troublemakers? But if they thought her a soft touch they were in for a shock.

It was like chasing a naughty dog. It must be brought to heel and admonished on the spot or it would get the upper hand. At least she was fleet of foot and weaved in and out of the crowd. She saw the girl pocket the familiar green and gold packet of Woodbines, sharpish. Looking up, the minx beamed at her in defiance.

‘This child is not yet thirteen and underage, so if you’re looking for any favours…’ Plum snapped at the soldiers. ‘Just walk in front of me, young lady. Do you think I’ve nothing better to do than chase after you? I thought I could trust a pretty girl like you but I’m mistaken, you’re just a silly little kid. Give those cigs to me. I’m old enough to smoke them.’ She threw them back to the soldier and shook her head.

She grabbed hold of Enid’s arm and half dragged her back to the other children who were restlessly shuffling about. ‘I see that I’ll have to escort you myself.’

She turned to the biggest boy. ‘I’m relying on you now to find Madeleine across there, Gregory. Tell her Mrs Belfield has sent you and bring her down here as fast as you can.’ She was torn between leaving the whole damn lot of them and collecting her niece but what could she do? Miss Blunt had made excuses why she was too busy to come. Who would think six children needed two escorts? Armed guards would be more appropriate. They were not coming to Sowerthwaite for their health, and she was not going to fail her first big test.

He was free! What a turn-up! Greg could scarper off and no one would know where he was–hide on a train, find the nearest port and join up. No one would guess his age or ask. His limp was not so bad now. The funny lady in the cartwheel hat had given him the perfect opportunity, silly cow!

No, that wasn’t fair. She was OK, as posh biddies went. He’d seen a fair few of those at the orphanage open days, billeting halls and WVS. They didn’t scare him.

She’d picked him out and given him a job to do, asked him to meet another kid and trusted him. That was a change! He was so used to being called ‘a bad ’un’.

Greg had no memories of any home but Marston Lodge. When the orphanage was right in the firing line off the Sussex coast, they were moved lock, stock up north, and he’d been picked for farm work, on account of his size.

The farmer near York had treated him worse than his animals, and that was saying much. When he fell sick, he’d been picked up and sent to live with the vicar as a ‘special case’.

They’d kept him in a room over the stables and they sent him to a posh school where he got in fights and got beaten up just for being a ‘vaccy’. That was when he learned a thing or two in the boxing ring.

Just when he was settling down, having bashed in a few heads of his own, along came that curate creep with the funny stare who had tried to touch his privates. He’d punched him a right hook and been sent to the correctional hostel for being ‘out of control’. Here he’d lost his southern accent for good. Now Greg was on the move again and he was sick of fighting his corner, sick of being labelled by the panel as ‘delinquent’ and a ‘dunce’.

Well, he wasn’t stupid. He could read and write as well as anyone else, but he just didn’t hold with school any more. If only he was fourteen and could leave. He wanted to be where there was danger and bullets and excitement, not to be sent on an errand like some ‘trusty’.

As he walked out of sight, the ‘trust’ word hung heavy. Mrs Belfield had picked him out and chosen him specially. Perhaps it would do no harm to fetch the kid and then bunk off, as these were orders, not punishment for a change.

Then he saw her, the kid in the white school hat with glasses, looking lost and trying to be brave. It was a look he knew so well. Blast it, he couldn’t leave her standing there–even if she wasn’t on her own.

Maddy stood clutching her charges, feeling suddenly abandoned. There was nobody waiting to meet her on the platform. She had checked this was Leeds Station and she daren’t move. Sometimes they made announcements over the Tannoy but no one called her name. She stood frozen to the spot.

Where were the teachers who should’ve gathered up Gloria and her brother? Now she was stuck with them too and it was cold, damp and sooty, the trains like smoking black dragons on huge iron wheels.

Maddy had her ticket but did they have theirs? What if the guard didn’t let them through the barrier? How horrid was Aunt Prunella to abandon her like this?

Then she saw a boy limping down the platform, a big string bean of a boy who looked her up and down.

‘Are you Madlin? Mrs Belfield sent me. She’s on the other platform with me mates,’ he smiled, pointing across the platforms.

‘And who’re you?’ Maddy eyed him with suspicion. He wore shorts to his knees, and plimsolls, his socks were dirty and his straw-coloured hair stuck up at the back.

‘Greg Byrne. Who are these two?’ he asked. ‘I thought you were here on your own?’

‘Gloria and her brother…they got lost. I have to find someone to take them.’

‘Bring them along then. Her in charge seems to be on top of the job, she’ll sort ’em out. Did they chuck you out of your hostel?’

‘I was bombed out. I’ve got to go to my granny’s.’

‘You’re not one of us then?’ he said. ‘These two look like a right pair of book ends. Where did you find them?’

Maddy tried to explain to him as he shepherded them back towards another platform.

‘Hurry up or we’ll miss the train. Wait till you see her hat, the missus they sent…looks like a dartboard.’ Greg was racing them down the platform and Sid was half carried between them.

Gloria said nothing but gazed up at him as if he was a creature from another planet. ‘Where you taking us? Don’t leave us, will you?’

‘There’s a picnic on the train. Just get them on the train and say nowt. It’ll be all right. I think her in charge’s a toff,’ Greg explained.

‘Mrs Belfield is my granny,’ Maddy announced proudly to put him in his place.

‘Blimey! She’s the youngest gran I’ve ever seen then.’

There was this pretty woman in a big hat standing outside the carriage, waving to her. She rushed up and held out her hand. ‘Madeleine, at last…I’m sorry I wasn’t there to meet you but I had to collect a few others and I was late, but I knew Gregory would find you.’

‘Are you Aunt Prunella?’ Maddy asked, suddenly overwhelmed by the smiling face, those dark blue eyes and that amazing hat with the net hanging down.

‘Call me Plum, dear, Aunt Plum. I hate Prunella–it sounds more like a box of dried fruit.’ She laughed and her eyes creased into a grin. ‘Thank you, Gregory.’

Gregory had sneaked into the carriage behind Aunt Plum’s back with Gloria and Sid.

‘Oh, I was so sorry to hear your bad news. Your daddy has rung but the line was terrible. They’ll be on their way home, darling, but it’s going to take an age. What a rotten time you’ve had, but you’ll have a home with us for as long as you like. Come on, we’ve grabbed a whole carriage to ourselves and you can meet the other evacuees. They’re going to live in a hostel in the village. Won’t it be fun!’

Plum was so relieved to have them all safely gathered in as the train chugged out of the station. It was getting dark and the covered lamps flickered; all she could see were legs tangled up. There was a plump boy in shorts with a grimy bandage half hanging off his knee, full of grit and raw skin. He smelled of Germolene.

Then came Gregory, his strong calves covered in yellowing bruises, wearing plimsolls with holes in the sides and carrying the overwhelming stench of sweaty socks. The next set of knees were bony like door knobs, with raised weals, looking as if they’d been leathered with a strap. Across the seat were Enid’s long thin legs in grubby ankle socks, and she wore a pair of patent ankle-strapped shoes that looked two sizes too small.

The next pair of plimsolls were very small indeed. There was a small girl huddled in the corner with another little boy. Their knees looked scrubbed clean but they smelled of wet knickers. Then Plum glanced over at her niece in her brogue shoes and woollen stockings, her school uniform two sizes too large for her and those awful round glasses that hid her big grey eyes.

Why did she think of a tin of broken biscuits when she looked at her charges? They were a bunch of misshapes indeed. Broken biscuits were sold by the pound and thrown together in bags, they got crushed and splintered but they tasted just as good once you sorted them out: Abernethy, Nice, Bourbons, Custard Creams and Garibaldis.

But these were children, not broken biscuits, tired, lost, wretched-looking children. Even Madeleine looked haunted and exhausted.

These were not first-timers, full of excitement at being evacuated to the countryside. No, this lot knew the score. Each had a story to tell and had been labelled as a delinquent, a runaway. A quick flip through their files would yield a catalogue of misdemeanours and black marks.

This was their last chance to settle down and behave. There should be six evacuees and her niece, but when she counted them Plum realised to her horror that there were two extras huddled behind Gregory.

‘Who are those?’ she asked, her heart pounding at the implication. ‘Gregory?’

‘Dunno, miss. The girl brought them with her off the train. We couldn’t leave them,’ he said.

‘Madeleine, who are they?’ Plum was trying to keep the panic out of her voice.

‘Their mother put them on the train and told me to look after them. I couldn’t find their teacher. No one came to collect them so we brought them to you,’ she said, and Plum could hear the others giggling at her refined accent.

‘’Er don’t half talk posh, miss,’ said Enid.

‘No, I don’t,’ the girl snapped. ‘Did I do wrong, Aunt Plum?’

More guffaws as they heard her nickname.

‘Shush! Have you found out their names?’

‘The lady called them Glory and Sidney, but she says she’s Gloria Conley and they don’t go to school, and it was six stops before Leeds when they got on…Manchester, I think. I’m sorry but I didn’t know what to do,’ whispered her niece. ‘Oh, the lady said there was a letter in her pocket and “she don’t read”.’

‘Well done, darling, you did what any of us would’ve done. Just check her pocket but don’t wake her yet,’ Plum whispered.

‘Shall I pull the cord and stop the train?’ offered Peggy.

‘No!’ Plum snapped, the panic rising within her. What if someone was searching the station for them? What if worried relatives had called out the police? Oh, why had Miss Blunt not come with her?

‘Here, miss, in her pocket, a letter…’ Gregory leaned over and shoved a paper into Plum’s hand. The note was written in pencil on the back half of a torn envelope.

To whom it concerns.

I am sending them away for good. My fella got killed and I can’t take no more. I have no proper home for them and am going away so don’t come looking. Tell them they is better off. You can call them what ever name but they will answer to Gloria Beryl and Sidney Leonard. She is ten but don’t look it and he is five. I cannot take them with me but they will be ever in my heart. Tell them they deserve better than me.

Plum went cold when she read the contents of the note. In desperation the poor mother had just thrown them on the train to the mercy of strangers. How grief-stricken and depressed must she have been to have done such a wicked thing? She must be traced and found, and made to face her responsibilities, but first they would have to take these children to Sowerthwaite for the night, inform the police and authorities and find a home for the mites.

How was she going to explain all this to Matron, and what would Pleasance make of her granddaughter? At least she showed initiative, and Gregory had sneaked them on behind her back. He was a natural leader and they were going to have to watch him.

Perhaps sometimes things just happened and you had to respond as best you could. She had wanted a challenge and, by God, she’d got one now.

Maddy could see Aunt Plum was upset as she read the letter over and over again. It was all her fault but the lady had told her to look after them and for once she’d been obedient. Now she would be in trouble for letting them get on this train, but Gloria was still sticking like gum to her side. The other girls were staring at her now with interest ’cos she’d done something naughty in their eyes.

‘Child snatcher!’ whispered the biggest one. ‘You’ll be for it!’

‘Shut up, stick insect,’ said Gregory in her defence. ‘She done what she had to do. She’s been bombed out.’

‘What’s it like? Did you see any stiffs?’ asked another of the boys.

‘It was horrid and my dog ran away,’ Maddy answered.

‘We had to have ours put down. Uncle said as we couldn’t feed it proper and the cat too. He put them in a sack and threw them in the dock.’

‘I know a lad as put his kittens through the mangle,’ boasted the fat boy with the bandage.

‘That’s enough,’ said Aunt Plum, in such a sharp voice that everyone listened. ‘We’re going to have to be kind to Gloria and Sid. It won’t be long before our station so get all your parcels and cases and follow me. You’re in the Yorkshire Dales now–it’s wild and dark, and if you jump ship you’ll get lost on the moors and get swallowed up in a bog and never found. Do I make myself clear?’ she ordered, but there was a smile in her voice.

‘Yes, Mrs Plum,’ said a lone voice, and everyone giggled.

‘I rather like that, Peggy, so you can call me Mrs Plum if it helps you remember what I say.’

Greg stared out into the darkness, wondering what he’d let himself in for. Why hadn’t he scarpered when he got the chance? Now he was stuck with this lot and miles away from civilisation, just like before.

They all clambered off the train and stood on the blacked-out station. The air was damp and chilly, but it felt fresh and Greg sniffed the scents of wood smoke and steam. There was a crisp wind that rattled round them as they made their way over the steep footbridge and out through a gate to the waiting black saloon, with pull-down extra seats and a luggage rack on the back.

‘Madam says to cover the seats in case these vaccies bring anything with them,’ said the chauffeur in leather boots and a peaked cap, eyeing them all with suspicion.

Greg took one look at the car and sighed…That’s more like it, a whopping big Daimler saloon.

Everyone had to crush in and Sid woke and started to cry so the Plum woman put him on her knee. The man in the black jerkin drove them ever so slowly up a long steep hill with only pinpricks for lights, and Greg couldn’t see a thing for Enid’s bottom in his face. Where were they going now, miles from anywhere? It was pitch-dark outside and eerie.

All he could see were miles of stonewalls on either side of them. It was like driving through a stone maze. It had been such a strange day and he had almost forgotten why he was here. There was no sound of gunfire or planes overhead. How could this place be so quiet and peaceful and hidden away, and where were the smoking chimneys and factories of Yorkshire?

They stopped outside a long stone house and went inside. He smelled the familiar whiff of Lysol and polish. A woman in a starched apron and a funny helmet and uniform stood with her arms folded, inspecting them as they came through the door.

‘Girls to the left, boys to the right. What’s this, two extras? They’re not on my list, Mrs Belfield.’

Here we go again, Greg sighed. There was always one of these tough old birds waiting to lick them into shape. He should’ve run while the going was good but it was late and he fancied another butchers at that Daimler.

Mrs Plum was for it too and tried to explain, but everyone started talking at once and pointing at Madlin and the little ones and she blushed. Gloria started to snivel and Sid screamed and said his ear was hurting. Matron felt his forehead and said he was burning up and he couldn’t stay there.

‘Now look here, you can’t just pick up any waif or stray and bring them here. They haven’t a scrap of identification on them and no ration books. We’ll have to call in the constable. What did you think you were doing?’ she spat out a spray of spit in his face.

‘Don’t be cross with him,’ said Madlin, the thin one with the squint. ‘I told him not to leave us.’

Greg was touched that someone was sticking up for him, even if it was only a girl, but he could look after himself. He was about to launch into the old bat when Mrs Plum caught his arm, as if reading his mind.

‘Matron, I think we should discuss this in private after we’ve settled the children,’ she said, quick to jump to his defence. ‘They’re all tired and hungry and need to get their bearings, and I need to take Madeleine to the Hall.’

‘Well, she can take her two charges with her until I’m told otherwise. We aren’t geared up for extras. The bedrooms are full as it is, Mrs Belfield. Though heaven knows what her ladyship will say to these two scruffs. He’ll need the doctor, by the look of him.’

‘Then I’ll leave you to your duties,’ said Mrs Plum with a sniff and blazing eyes. ‘Come on, you three, time for one last trip to the lavatory and then bed.’

The lads were taken into the attic. There was a row of beds with large jam jars by the side. ‘What’s these for, ashtrays?’ Greg joked.

‘Just a trick the doctor thought up to stop any bedwetting, but aim straight!’ came the order. ‘The lavatory is a long way off and I know how lazy boys can be. Unpack your bags and supper is in the kitchen.’

Greg bounced on his bed. So far so good: clean sheets–a good sign–and a locker for his stuff. It would do for a few nights until he got his bearings and then he’d make a run for it again. They’d gone north and west from Leeds. He knew his geography. They couldn’t be that far from a seaport but he fancied another ride in that Daimler.

Gloria was so tired she could hardly keep her eyes open as they drove up a long path with tall trees, and then a great white owl flew across in front of them.

‘What’s that?’ she whispered to Maddy. ‘I don’t like this place.’

‘Just a barn owl and it’s not far to Brooklyn Hall,’ said Mrs Plum. ‘But you’ll have to be very quiet when we arrive. Mrs Belfield is not used to little children so let me explain what’s happened first.’

‘My ear hurts,’ moaned little Sid, whimpering.

‘I know, darling. I’ll find some cotton wool and warm oil for it.’

‘Is this it?’ Gloria looked up at the huge stone house with a square tower in the middle and windows like a castle. It was bigger than all of Elijah Street put together. It was all shuttered up and unwelcoming. There was a huge oak door at the top of some wide stone steps.

‘The windows have got their eyes shut. It looks as if it’s sleeping,’ she said, making Mrs Plum smile.

They pulled the bell and a young woman in a pinafore came to the door. They were ushered inside and the driver took the car around the back. Maddy thought there must be some mistake. Were they being taken into a school?

A woman came down the stairs with a stick, a tall woman in a long black dress with a shawl around her arms, her smoky-grey hair piled up high. She smelled of flowers.

‘At long last, Prunella…Oh, what a pretty child,’ she said, grasping hold of Gloria, eyeing her carefully. ‘This is not the Belfield golden hair. Where did such extravagant curls come from? So small for her age…Come here, child and let me see you. We can do something with you.’

‘That’s Gloria, an evacuee,’ spluttered Mrs Plum. ‘Madeleine, your granddaughter, is over here,’ pointing in the other direction to where Maddy hung back in the shadows.

‘Oh, I see…Take off your glasses, girl, let the dog see the rabbit.’ The lady eyed her up and down. ‘Oh dear, how unfortunate…Not our side of the family at all, is she? She’s like a horse with a wall eye, not to be trusted. Ah well, it was to be expected.’

Gloria’s eyes were on stalks. She’d never seen such a grand room except in the pictures. She’d seen Little Lord Fauntleroy and Shirley Temple at the fleapit on Saturday mornings. She was living in fairyland in the middle of the pictures and this was going to be her new home. Then the old lady saw Sid whining. He was going to spoil everything.

‘Just shut up and behave or we’ll get chucked out,’ Gloria whispered in his ear. Didn’t he know when he was well off? He was looking queer again.

‘This is Gloria and her brother, Sidney, who’s not very well. They need a bed for the night and some medical attention, I’m afraid,’ Mrs Plum said.

‘This is impossible, Prunella. It was bad enough-having the one but now you’re asking me to put up three and to call out poor Dr David at this time of night. Can’t it wait?’ The two women were trying to argue quietly but Maddy could hear their angry mutters.

‘It’s like the pictures, innit?’ whispered Gloria, looking around with wonderment. ‘I keep pinching myself. If Mam could see us here…’

‘Where’s she gone to?’ said Maddy, hoping to catch Gloria off guard.

‘Dunno,’ came the guarded reply. She was too tired to think what Mam was doing now. She’d just left them on the train to fend for themselves and she didn’t understand why, but Gloria was still preening herself for having been picked out as the Belfield girl.

Sid was looking funny again.

‘Miss, miss, he’s fitting! He allus does this when he’s sick,’ she yelled.

The old lady looked on with concern as he was laid down, rigid with tremors. Perhaps Sid could be useful after all. If he was sick they couldn’t move him and she could stay the night in a palace. She was curious now and wanted to see what it all looked like in the morning light.

‘Shall I put something over his tongue? Miss Connaught does that when Veronica Rogers has a fit,’ offered Maddy. Her grandmother looked surprised to hear her speaking the King’s English in her best elocution voice. At least she wasn’t being ignored now in favour of Gloria’s pretty looks. That had hurt more than anything.

‘Now look what you’ve brought to our door…Send Ilse to The Vicarage and he can phone for Dr David. These lower classes don’t know how to look after themselves properly, letting children loose in this state. Those children look half starved and such coarse accents. I don’t want Madeleine picking it up. Arthur’s taught her some manners, I see.’

‘I can speak French too,’ Maddy added. ‘We did French and Latin at St Hilda’s but I hate Latin.’

‘Speak when you’re spoken to, girl,’ said the old woman. ‘Go and find Ilse and send her off with a torch. This is most inconvenient!’

Maddy wondered if they were expected to bob a curtsy like the maids did, but decided against it. She raced across through the baize door into a warren of passages, Gloria clinging on to her, into the kitchen where they found two women sipping tea.

‘We need the doctor for a little boy. Please can someone go to the nearest phone?’

The women jumped up and put on their coats.

‘Just the one of you, I think,’ Maddy ordered, but the girls shook their heads.

‘I not go in the dark. There be ghosts in the lane and soldiers. We go in twos together, please,’ pleaded the brown-eyed girl with her hair all scraped into a plait around her head.

What sort of place was this house, where servants were afraid and Mrs Belfield lived all alone? No wonder Daddy never spoke of it and his horrid mother, who was a snob. Why had no one told her that the Belfields lived in a castle with big sweeping stairs and stone floors that smelled of old smoke?

Tomorrow she would ask Aunt Plum if she could join the evacuees in the village. Gloria could stay here with Sid and be petted, but she didn’t want to spend another night in this horrible place where she wasn’t wanted.

Later, when the doctor came to examine Sidney and pronounced that he’d burst his eardrum and needed bed rest and medicine, the two girls were tucked up in a huge four-poster bed with curtains round the posts. The room smelled of lavender and damp.

Ilse had warmed the sheets with a big copper warming pan and made a fuss of the pair. Gloria was made to stand in a tub and be sponged down by Aunt Plum to see if she had fleas. Her underclothes were thin, clean and she wasn’t wrapped in brown paper like some of the vaccies were supposed to be. She was enjoying every minute of the fuss.

Maddy had never undressed for bed with a stranger before. She wanted to be on her own, but not in this barn of a bedroom. She wondered about all the people who’d died in that bed. Were their ghosts still haunting the place?

What a strange day! The only nice thing about it was meeting Aunt Plum, but they never got time on their own to talk over what had happened. Everyone expected Maddy to look after the other two.

She wished she’d never gone to the washroom on the train, never seen the mother shove those two into her hands, but she had. Then she thought of her relief when Greg had limped down the platform to rescue them. Perhaps there was one friend after all who would look out for her–even if he were a boy.

5

December 1940

‘Can you pick up my knitting, dear?’ gasped Great-aunt Julia as she struggled with her two sticks across the hallway of Brooklyn Hall. Maddy wasn’t used to going at tortoise pace but she loved being useful to the old ladies in the drawing room who, wrapped in ancient fur wraps and shawls to keep out the draughts, were busy knitting for the Sowerthwaite Comforts fund. Everyone took it in turns to sit up close to Uncle Algie’s battery-operated wireless to catch the news as best they could.

Maddy couldn’t believe it was nearly Christmas, nearly three whole months since that arrival at Brooklyn Hall, when Sid had had his fit and Grandma had eyed her up and down with disappointment.

‘It’s hotting up in Greece,’ shouted Great-uncle Algernon across the room, resting his half a leg on a leather buffet as he strained to catch the bulletin. ‘Metaxas has said “No” to Mussolini and there’ll be trouble in the Balkans, mark my words…Oh, and Liverpool and Manchester had another visit from the Luftwaffe last night. Three of our planes are missing.’

‘Don’t believe a word of it, girls,’ shouted Grandma, looking up from her letter writing. ‘It’s all lies and propaganda. I don’t know why you want to depress us with such news.’

Maddy was glued to the six o’clock news every night. She had heard enemy bombers droning overhead at night on their deadly route across the moors, hoping that the searchlight on the field battery would be torching their path for the ack-ack guns.

Her parents were on their way back from Egypt, hinting in their letter that they were going the long route round Africa and there was fighting in the Mediterranean. They were coming home for Christmas, but Maddy would rather they stayed put if there was danger.

It was such an age since she’d seen them and so much had happened, so much to tell them about her new school and friends. How the Brooklyn seemed like a hotel full of shuffling old people, who played endless games of patience and bridge, who quarrelled and fussed over Ilse’s cooking and fought to get the best corner by the huge fireplace.

Besides Uncle Algie and Aunt Julia and her companion, Miss Betts, there was a distant cousin Rhoda Rennison and her sister, Flo. It was easy to lump them all together somehow in their grey cardigans and baggy skirts, darned lisle stockings and tweed slippers. Around them wafted a tincture of eau de cologne that almost masked a more acidic smell. The oldies melted into the walls of the Brooklyn between meals along with their ear trumpets, stringy knitting in carpet bags and shawls. Then when the dinner gong rang they appeared from the far recesses of the house, back to the table like clucking hens at the trough, pecking at their plates, too busy to talk to Maddy

Aunt Plum was worried about Uncle Gerald, who was waiting in barracks down south to be sent abroad soon. When she was upset she smiled with sad eyes and went for long walks over the hills with her dogs, when she wasn’t on duty at the Old Vic Hostel.

Maddy walked to the village school each morning with the two Conleys, who now lived in Huntsman’s Cottage with Mr and Mrs Batty. It was a funny arrangement: normal school lessons in the morning, mixing with the local children at St Peter’s C of E School, and then lessons in the village hall, crushed in with a gang of evacuee kids from Leeds, who were living the other side of Sowerthwaite. It was all very noisy and they didn’t do much work, just copying from the board until hometime. There weren’t enough teachers to go round.

It was not like St Hilda’s at all, and the first thing she’d done was to lose her elocution accent in favour of a Yorkshire one, flattening her ’a’s so she didn’t get teased, though it made Grandma Belfield furious if she said bath instead of baath.

‘The sooner Arthur comes and puts you in a half-decent school…You’re turning into a right little Yorkshire tyke. It’s no good Plum letting you mix so much with that village lot. They’re teaching you nothing but bad habits. I hear they’ve been up to their old tricks again on the High Street,’ Grandma sighed, looking up at Maddy’s glasses and then turning back to her letter writing.

Maddy smiled to herself as she sat with her arms out so Aunt Julia could unravel a jumper that smelled of mothballs. Peggy, Greg and Enid knew all the best wheezes. It was Enid’s idea to fill the cig packet with dirt and worms and then box it up as if it was new and toss it on the pavement. They hid in the little alleyway while the passer-by spotted the cigs and pounced only to jump back in horror. They filled blue sugar bags with horse droppings and left them in the middle of the road so the carters stopped, hoping for a present to give their wives, only for the smelly muck to spill out while the gang had to look, duck and vanish like the Local Defence Volunteers down the ginnel.

Everyone got a telling-off from the constable, and poor Enid was grounded for being the ringleader by Miss Blunt, but she complained they’d all helped so all of them missed the Saturday film show as a punishment except Maddy. Going on her own was not much fun.

Greg was out cleaning the Daimler and helping Mr Batty, and begging old wheels to make a go-kart from the salvage cart. There was always something happening at the Old Vic even though Miss Blunt was strict and didn’t like mess. They were busy making Christmas presents out of cocoa tins, painting them and putting holes in the lids to pull a ball of string through. String was very precious now. Aunt Plum took her down to the hostel to join in the crafts after school. They were turning dishcloths into pretty dolls and sewing dusters into knickerbockers with frills on to sell at the bazaar for War Comforts. Soon it would be time to make Christmas paper chains and tree decorations.

The Brooklyn was fine in its own way, but since Gloria and Sid had moved in with the Battys, Maddy felt lonely at night, the draughts whistling round the house like banshees. Aunt Plum and Grandma were always out at committee meetings; the Comforts fund, the WVS, the Women’s Institute and the Church Council, so she sat with the oldies listening to the wireless while they dosed after supper. Uncle Algie let her listen to the Light Programme, and the music that reminded her of Mummy.

Mummy’s letters were full of interesting places that Maddy dutifully looked up in the atlas with Uncle Algie’s help. They had sung in concerts in the desert under the moon and stars.

We’re so looking forward to Christmas and to being a proper family once more. We should never have left you behind, but we thought it was for the best. You have had to suffer because of us doing our duty but be strong and brave. Not long now, darling.

It was a funny war here, nothing much happened at all. There was a gun battery up behind Sowerthwaite, and the Local Defence Volunteers paraded in church. The town was bursting with kids from all over the place but no bombs and no big factories belching smoke were to be seen. It was a relief to wake up each morning to silence and the bleat of sheep but she still felt sad. In her dreams she went back to Chadley, chasing Bertie, singing round the piano with Uncle George, playing with the button tin, making corkscrew coils of knitting with Granny Mills. If only they were here with her for Christmas too.

Her biggest surprise was that the Yorkshire of her Jane Eyre heroine was so beautiful and wild, with hills and stone walls creeping in all directions, green grass and hundreds of sheep, cows and pigs in makeshift arks, chicken coops and duck ponds, horses ploughing up the fields by the river and gardens crammed full of vegetables and apple trees.

They were making an allotment behind the Old Vic and Mr Batty was helping the big children plant vegetables. None of them had known a fork from a spade before they started but they did now. Enid and Peggy complained their hands were getting blisters. It was all so peaceful and safe, as if she’d moved to another world, but at what a cost? Why couldn’t they all have come before the war to enjoy the scenery?

Maddy’s favourite spot was high up in the big beech tree that was planted right at the back of the Old Vic in the corner where the garden became a field. There was a swing rope up to a little wooden den in its branches. The tree was very old.

From their hide-out they could spy on German planes and hide if the enemy invaded. There was a password to climb up that changed every week.

Aunt Plum said the tree was planted long ago by subscription after some famous victory. No one could remember which battle it was but it had to be hundreds of years old. It must have been in honour of the men of Sowerthwaite who took part; a bit like Grandma’s line of Lombardy poplars on the lane up to Brooklyn Hall, which Maddy always felt were sad trees. She called them the Avenue of Tears.

One of those trees was for her Uncle Julian-no wonder Grandma hated anything to do with the war. She did her duty on her committees but her lips were always set in a thin line and she had no smile wrinkles round her eyes like Aunt Plum.

Maddy lay across a branch of the tree daydreaming, her arms dangling down, hidden by a curtain of rusting leaves. It reminded her of the apple tree near The Feathers, but that made her think of Bertie and Gran and the terrible blitz that haunted her dreams. She hoped her little dog had found a new home.

Aunt Plum’s dogs were big and bouncy, not the same as her own special friend.

Everything was so different here, she thought, hiding under the canopy whilst she watched for spies. There had to be spies in the district if there was going to be an invasion soon, she thought. She knew the fire drill by heart. Now she was supposed to be collecting beech mast to feed Horace the pig in the shed.

It was fun going on salvaging trips down the cobbled alleyways and lanes, staring in through the doors of stone houses with slate rooftops like fish scales. Sowerthwaite was full of secret lanes that opened out onto the wide marketplace. Its shops lined the streets with arched doorways and bow windows straight out of her fairy-tale book. There were banners across the town hall urging the townfolk to buy Savings Bonds, posters in the shop windows warning of ‘Careless Talk’, but no bomb sites or proper air-raid shelters in sight, not like Chadley.

Peggy, Gloria and she were in Greg’s team, collecting newspapers and jam jars for salvage. Peggy was very round, always puffing, and didn’t like pushing the handcart; Gloria was always sneaking off looking through shop windows, so Maddy and Greg did most of the hard work, dodging dogs, knocking on doors and trying to beat the other gang for the team to collect most. Big Bryan Partridge’s gang cheated by hanging round the back of shops, sneaking cardboard boxes while Mitch Brown and Enid hung round the Three Tuns to cadge bottles, but Miss Blunt liked to have them out of the Vic all day being useful, come rain or shine.

Maddy loved practising for the school Christmas concert in church, making secret presents for the oldies, and now with Mummy and Daddy coming home it was going to be just perfect. Only one thing was spoiling everything now.

Last night her dreams were disturbed by bangs and flashes and the flames burning the pub, and she was running to save them but she couldn’t reach them in time and then she woke and her bed was wet again.

Aunt Plum had put a rubber sheet on her mattress when she first came and told her not to worry, but she woke crying from the dream and crying with shame as she sneaked her sheet and her pyjamas down to the scullery to soak in the sink. She was making extra work and there was a war on and it worried her. Then she’d had to creep back in the dark, feeling up the oak banister rail and curl up with Panda, trying to be brave.

The silence outside was scary at first but she strained to hear the night sounds, the bleating sheep, the owl hooting, the drone of a night plane or the rattle of the night express in the distance. She was lucky to be safe and warm in this hidy-hole, but until Mummy and Daddy returned it could never be home.

The old house was friendly in its own way, cluttered with walking sticks and cushions and doggy smells. There were rooms boarded off and shuttered to save on heating. The sun shone through dusty windows, but it gave off little heat now.

Sometimes she walked up from school, up the Avenue of Tears, wondering if Daddy did the same dawdle with his satchel all those years ago. Why had he never come back here?

It was something to do with Mummy and the Millses being ordinary and saying ‘bath’ in the wrong way, but Mummy was beautiful and sang like a ‘storm cock’. When Maddy grew up she would marry someone she loved, however poor he was, if he was handsome and kind. He wouldn’t mind that she was leggy and plain with a turn in her eye that never seemed to get any better. She didn’t want another operation to straighten it out. The last one in Chadley hadn’t worked for long.

Aunt Plum promised when things were less hectic they would take her to see a specialist in Leeds who might sort out her eye once and for all. With the war on, though, Aunt Plum said all the best surgeons were at the front so they might have to wait until peace came again.

It was so peaceful here. The war hadn’t bothered Sowerthwaite, and it wouldn’t if Grandma had anything to do with it. Maddy touched the bark of Uncle Julian’s poplar for luck.

Gloria Conley skipped round the playground singing ‘Little Sir Echo, how do you do…’, her bunches bobbing behind her. She’d just been chosen to sing a solo in the school concert and Miss Bryce said she had lovely voice. She couldn’t wait for it to be Christmas now.

She didn’t mind being moved out of the Hall because now Sid and she had their own special auntie and uncle of their own and all because of Sid’s ear.

It had gone septic and now he couldn’t hear in it at all. Miss Plum had explained how ill he was when the Welfare came to take them away, and that he couldn’t be moved. Then Mrs Batty asked Mrs Plum if they’d like to come and stay with them. It was such a relief. How Gloria’d prayed not to be taken back to Elijah Street. She hoped that the Lord understood why she had to fib like mad about how Uncle Sam, God rest his soul, had beat them and poor Mam had shoved them on the train out of harm’s way. In her heart she knew it was all lies but it made a better story than the truth–that nobody wanted them.

She woke up on that first morning in Brooklyn Hall and thought she’d died and gone to heaven, snug in clean sheets and pyjamas, with thick checked shirts and corduroy dungarees to play out in. There was yucky porridge for breakfast but hot toast and real butter and jam for afters.

Everyone had fussed over Sid until he was better She wished they could stay in the big house for ever but then they’d been allowed to stay on in the grounds at the Battys’ cottage, which would have to do.

Mrs Batty did all the washing for the Hall and the ironing. She had a big copper boiler in its own shed and an iron mangle that she turned with strong arms. She made big stews out of rabbits and stuff that Mr Batty ‘found’ in the woods. Huntsman’s Cottage was small but clean, and the old couple let them run wild in the woods and play with the other vaccies after school.

Even school was turning out better than she dared hoped. Her reading and writing were coming on and Maddy sometimes let her practise the difficult words in the reading book. She was getting quite good now but would never catch up the Belfield girl.

The only worry was that Constable Burton was sending someone to find Mam. She was in big trouble now. Gloria prayed that Mam’d take her time to fetch them back or come and live with them up here. She still couldn’t believe that she’d just shoved them on that train…It didn’t make any sense. Gloria never wanted to go back to the cobbled streets and dark corners of the city again, now she’d seen Brooklyn Hall.

It was Miss Plum who explained that Mam was no longer living in Elijah Street. In fact no one knew where she had gone. ‘Gone orff, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘Not to worry, Gloria, she’ll come looking for you soon enough.’

How could Gloria explain that she wasn’t worried, she was relieved to be staying put? Old Mrs Belfield said they ought to be put in an orphanage, so she cried and hollered and made herself so sick that Maddy’s gran relented, saying that they could stay ‘for the duration but in somewhere more suitable’, whatever that meant.

It didn’t take a numbskull to work out that old Mrs Belfield thought she wasn’t good enough to share a room with Maddy. She was not family, but Miss Plum explained that she could come and play with Maddy any time she liked. Try and stop me, Gloria thought.

She loved the Brooklyn, with its wide curving staircase, the pictures up the walls in gold curly frames and the smell of wet dogs and lavender polish. Every shelf was covered in china Bo-Peeps and silver trinket boxes, statuettes and ornaments.

Why must she be banished just because she wasn’t born rich and petted with pretty dresses? There were no dancing lessons for her, or ponies to ride. The Belfields lived in another world, in a big space with fields to play out in, not cramped in a bricked back yard with noisy neighbours, barking dogs and horrible smells.

Yet this war had done something wonderful in transporting the two of them from the town into the country. There would be no budging her now. She and Sid might live in a humble cottage but she was going to stick close to the Big House like glue. Maddy would be her best friend and where she went Gloria would not be far behind, she smiled to herself.

Huntsman’s Cottage would do for now but when Gloria Conley grew up she was going to find her own rich man with a house with a hundred rooms and servants so she could live the life of a film star. She loved going to the Saturday pictures with the other vaccies to see Mickey Mouse and Charlie Chaplin, and Shirley Temple in Poor Little Rich Girl.

If being rich meant learning to read and write proper…no elbows on the table and no slurping her soup, sucking up to her betters, then she was up for it. She was prettier than Maddy any day. That must count for something, and she could sing the best in her class. When they saw her on stage in the school show, then they would see she was as good as any of them.

Greg Byrne took the corner fast. He’d borrowed some pram wheels off the salvage lorry, just three to make his racing cart. It was low to the ground with ropes to guide the steering. This was the fastest he’d made –if only he could control the damn thing. There was a touch of black ice on the tarmac ahead that was going to be tricky but skidding would be even better, he grinned to himself.

It was worth weeks of cleaning and polishing the Daimler, fetching and carrying empties, to have the money to build this racer.

There was something about going faster and faster that made his head spin with excitement. There was nothing to beat it. The trudge up the steep hill track onto the moors, with its five sharp bends, made it all worth it, scaring horses and carts, making tramps dive into the walls out of his way when he careered down pell-mell.

The best thing of all was to cadge a ride on the back of one of the soldier’s motor bikes up to the battery field, towing ‘Flash Gordon’ behind him.

One push and the cart flew downhill all the way with the soldiers’ shopping list for the village stores. All he could think of when he trudged back up the hill was the loose change he’d earned and the day when he would be old enough to own a racing bike himself. Even a two-wheeler would be a start but the old ‘sit up and beg’ two-wheeler bike in the Vic belonged to The Rug; an ancient black metal affair with a basket up front, that made Miss Blunt look even more like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. She rode it to Scarperton on market day and no one was allowed to borrow it.

She ran the hostel like HMS Bounty, with her rules for wayward evacuees, a strict rota for chores, curfew hours, punishment meted out for bed-wetting and lateness, so once or twice he’d let her tyres down just to get even. One of these days he’d do a bunk but not yet.

There was something about the Old Vic that he’d taken to. It wasn’t a bad billet. He’d been in far worse, and something Miss Plum had said about him being ‘officer material and a born leader’ pleased him, even if he did lead the gang into mischief. He was the one that started them off giggling when Miss Blunt’s wig went all of a quiver, which made it wobble even more. The others looked up to him as their boss, and Enid had offered to show him her thingy for a ride on Flash Gordon.

Sowerthwaite wasn’t that bad a place. There were always summat going on, hills to climb, foraging for mushrooms and sticks, salvaging trips. School was pretty basic. He was marking time for his fourteenth birthday when he could get apprenticed.

As long as he was working on wheels with oil he was happy, and Mr Batty had showed him all the ins and outs of the Belfields’ saloon. He taught him to do rough work, taking engine bits apart and putting them back together again. He watched how to decoke the engine and change the oil and tyres. ‘You’ve got engine oil in your veins, me laddo,’ Mr Batty laughed.

And once, only once, the chauffeur’d let him sit in the driving seat, showing him the stick gears and letting him drive a few yards. This was sufficient to keep him behaving enough to stay put and not draw too much attention to his madcap schemes.

There was a big garage on the main road out of Sowerthwaite that might take him on as an apprentice mechanic if he kept out of trouble and if Miss Plum put in a good word.

Greg liked walking up into the Dales to the battery field. It was manned by a group of old soldiers. He wasn’t supposed to trespass but there was a geezer there called Binns who knew all about birds of prey: buzzards, merlins, peregrines and harriers. Now he could tell a sparrowhawk from a kestrel by its tail.

Mr Batty was a bit of a stargazer and showed him directions by the stars and how to find true north. Greg had never seen so many stars in a sky before, all with different names.

It was a man’s world up here, a train-spotter’s paradise, perches on rocky cliffs to climb in search of dead eggs, waterfalls with deep ledges to jump into pools when the weather warmed up…if he stayed that long.

There weren’t enough hours in the day for Plum to finish getting ready for Arthur and Dolly’s return.

‘I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss, Prunella,’ sniffed her mother-in-law. ‘They can stay in the Black Horse. It’s what they’re used to, after all.’

‘Of course they won’t! They’re family. I don’t understand you sometimes; your own flesh and blood…It’s Christmas, Mother, the season of goodwill. Those two have risked life and limb to get back to Maddy, the least we can do is let bygones be forgotten and give them a proper homecoming. Heaven knows what dangers they’ve faced en route.’

‘Please yourself but don’t expect me to roast the fatted calf for them. Not a word from either of them in years.’

‘Do you blame them? When did you last write to Arthur?’ Plum argued, but Pleasance stormed off out of earshot. How could families quarrel over trivia when the country was in such danger?

Her recent visit to London to see Gerald off into the unknown after what was obviously embarkation leave gave Plum a good idea what London was going through. There were raids every night and total devastation in some parts of the town. It had been a bittersweet reunion: going to parties held in smoky basement flats, trying to get last-minute tickets for a show, spending the night in a public shelter when they were caught in a raid, and a twelve-hour journey back on the train. She felt so guilty to be living so peacefully out in the sticks away from such terrors. Their parting had been rushed and fraught and very public.

Gerald listened to all her news of the hostel and her new job politely.

‘I must tell you what Peggy said to me the other day,’ she prattled on, hoping to amuse him. ‘We were running the vacuum cleaner over the drugget in the Vic. Peggy Bickerstaffe, the little pug-faced one who steals biscuits when no one is looking, was supposed to be helping. She just stood there looking at it puzzled. “Am I one of them?” She pointed down to the machine.

‘“A Hoover?” I replied. “It’s a vacuum cleaner, dear.”’

‘“That’s right, miss, a vac…and we’re vaccies. We’re sent out all day picking up other people’s rubbish.” It brought me up sharpish, I tell you. You never know what goes on in the mind of a child, do you?’

‘I wouldn’t know…’ Gerald replied, obviously not interested, but she wanted him to know what sort of children she was billeting.

‘Enid shocked me the other night too when we were making cocoa in the kitchen. She was talking to Nancy and Ruby bragging, almost. “At the last house I was in, I got sixpence for doing cartwheels. The old man used to give me extra if I did it wi’ no knickers on,” she sniggered.

‘“That’s enough,” I said, trying to change the subject. ‘No wonder that girl is boy mad. Makes me think what other things went on and she’s still only a child. What do you think?’

Gerald shook his head. ‘Let’s go to bed.’

They made love on that last night in the hope of conceiving another baby but somehow their very desperation spoiled it for her. She just couldn’t relax into it. Part of her was still smarting from his earlier betrayal and wondering if his affair was really over. Was he just humouring his wife to keep her sweet and still seeing Daisy behind her back? Did it suit him that she was stuck up north with his mother, out of sight? Was she just a glorified housekeeper? He knew she and Pleasance didn’t get on, but her own parents were dead.

Loyalty would always keep her at her post. That was a given. She’d been raised to value service to others as the duty of anyone brought up in comfort, wealth and security. What she was doing for those unfortunate evacuee children was important. She just wished he would be more interested in his niece, Maddy

There’d been just time before her return to trawl through the shops to find gifts for her charges. She had clothing coupons from the local authorities to spend on Greg and the Conleys. There were still materials hidden away in shops that could make winter dresses and trousers. She found toys for Sid and Gloria in Hamleys, and a present for Maddy that was a bit extravagant.

If only Pleasance would spend more time with the girl and get to know her, Plum sighed, looking out of the sooty train, but she seemed to avoid the child. It was so unfair. In fact, Pleasance avoided all the evacuee children, claiming she was too busy doing her war work. Sometimes this consisted of little more than endless tea parties with ladies in smart hats bemoaning the lack of decent domestic servants while they knitted balaclavas and scarves. Their comfortable world was being turned upside down by this war and Mother was struggling to adjust to not having her usual creature comforts to hand: their car was doubling up for one of the town ambulances, the bedrooms were filled with aged relatives, and now Maddy had children traipsing up and down the stairs making a racket that got on her nerves. Her son’s visit was playing on her nerves too.

How strange to meet a brother-and sister-in-law for the first time. Would Arthur remind her of Gerald or the photo of Julian in the drawing room? Gerald looked so dashing in his uniform with his thin moustache hovering above his upper lip like Robert Donat, the film star. If only he wasn’t so handsome.

Men like him didn’t have to work to charm the girls, they just turned up, all tight trousers and teeth, and the doves fluttered in the cote around them. She should know–she’d felt the power of his charm beaming in her direction. Theirs had been a whirlwind romance. She’d come out in London and Yorkshire, done the round of debutante parties and balls, been thrown in the path of suitable partners, and Gerald had been the most handsome, persistent and debonair. The fact that she was an heiress of sorts with a good pedigree made his wooing all the more ardent, she realised with hindsight.

The Templetons fought with King Charles, lost their lands under Cromwell and then got them back under Charles II. The estate near Richmond now belonged to her brother, Tim, but there was a generous settlement on her; not a fortune but enough to give her independence.

She was young, naïve, taking all Gerald’s flattering attention at face value. He did love her in his own way, as a desired object, a pretty face and the future mother of his children. The miscarriages had changed all that, made her wary, and he’d lost patience and found other pretty faces. His mother was disappointed with them both for not coming up to scratch in the heir department. She didn’t like weakness.

Was that why Pleasance distanced herself from Arthur’s child–because she was plain? Was it her roving eye and spectacles, her bony frame and gawky gait that disappointed her? Maddy was growing fast. All the newcomers had blossomed on fresh air, good food and quiet nights’ rest.

It was just as she first thought, these children were like a kennel of puppies. She smiled thinking of roly-poly Peggy, who stuck to Enid Cartwright. Both were at the awkward age of fourteen, being too old for dolls and too young for boys.

Little Mitch Brown was a serious chap, old for his years, with a hunted look on his face like a nervous terrier. Bryan Partridge was like one of those lolloping mongrels, willing, shambolic and always racing into mischief. Nancy Shadlow was so quiet she was like a timid sheepdog cowering in a barn yard, silent and wary. She cried for her mam and sisters, and wasn’t settling at all. Gloria was a bouncing red setter, impossible to keep still but she tagged along with Maddy, who had the knack of reining her in somehow.

Gregory was the one coming on better than she’d dared hope, the pack leader, handsome in a rough sort of way and proud; a bit of an Alsatian about him. She’d already asked at Brigg’s Garage if he could be taken on as a mechanic.

It was promising to be a great Christmas–if only Herr Hitler would give his bombers a holiday over the festive season so everyone in the country could have a good night’s rest. Just a lull for a few days would do.

As the towns turned into villages and hills, grey into green, Plum peered out at the beauty of her surroundings, relieved and guilty to be leaving the nightly raids behind. Her war work was of a different kind from that of the women in the city: trying to give these lost children some fun, hope, and discipline. She tried to temper Avis Blunt’s coldness with some warmth and understanding.

Matron was always banging on about them needing a firm hand but Plum had always got more from her dogs with praise and titbits than with sticks and a beating. Too much yelling and punishment made them anxious and confused, and that set them off in the wrong direction. Surely the children needed firm consistency but also praise when they deserved it?

They had hidden the latest food parcel sent as goodwill gifts from the American people. It was bulging with treats and clothing, and so precious. With all the terrible submarine attacks on convoys in the Atlantic, who knew when they might receive another one? There were more tough clothes for playing in, warm nighties, tins of syrup, lovely quilted bedspreads, milk powder, sweets and magazines. Christmas at the Old Vic was going to be fun.

The hostel’s Christmas turkey was provided by the Town Council and the Christmas puddings were ready in Mrs Batty’s scullery. The children would lunch after morning service and the Belfields, along with their elderly houseguests, would dine later and dress for the occasion.

Plum had used her own coupons to buy Maddy a turquoise velvet dress with long sleeves from Harrods. It was outrageously extravagant but she wanted the child to have something pretty to wear for her parents. Pleasance would have to go halves with her whether she liked this present or not. The other gift had been hidden at Brigg’s Garage for weeks, out of sight of peering eyes.

Everyone was doing their best to be cheerful and festive, but the shops were struggling to keep up with demand. All the factories were up to speed and turned to war production: curtain mills turned into shirt factories, woollen mills turning out uniform cloth, silk mills churning out parachute silk, engineering works pumping out machine tools and spares for aircraft and tanks.

The streets of Scarperton were filled with older men and women with baskets, nipping out in their lunch break to catch up on shopping. The farms were full of land girls. Plum wondered what it was doing to the babies and children, not having fathers around the house and mothers on shift work.

Then she smiled, thinking of her own childhood, when Nanny dressed her to take tea with Mummy and Daddy, if he was home. Sometimes she hardly saw him for weeks. Mummy was a lovely creature who popped into the nursery to say good night, dressed in chiffon and smelling of vanilla perfume. They were loving strangers to her in some ways.

Everyone had to make sacrifices now but she yearned to have a child of her own to cherish, one who would not be farmed out to servants all day. Without Gerald close by it was an impossible dream. War was causing such disruption even in this sleepy market town.

All the schoolmasters were called up for service and older staff brought out of retirement, married women were also back in the classroom. Farmhands, postmen and shopkeepers had all but disappeared. It reminded Plum of after the Great War when she was young and so many of her friends had daddies killed in the war. On market days it seemed as if the whole town was full of women, young boys and farmers, who had a reserved occupation. There were a few soldiers billeted around the streets but no army camps nearby.

She hoped that Arthur and Dolly would arrive back in time for Christmas. They were due to dock in Liverpool at the end of next week, if all went well. No wonder Maddy was excited and Pleasance was going around with a look on her face like her corns were pinching her.

‘What have you got against Dolly?’ Plum asked one night, after her return from London.

Maddy was in bed and the oldies were snoozing by the fire with their cocoa. Pleasance had looked down her specs at Plum.

‘It’s a matter of standards. Those sorts of girls…well, we all know what showgirls are like…actresses. I never expected a son of mine to get mixed up with one of them,’ she sighed.

‘But Dolly was singing to wounded troops when they met,’ Plum replied.

‘On the make, dear, just looking out for someone to be her meal ticket…It was all about the S word,’ she whispered back.

‘The what?’ Plum could hardly believe what she was hearing.

‘You know perfectly well what I’m getting at. Sex,’ Pleasance mouthed in disgust. ‘It was just sex with those two!’

‘And so it should be at that age, Mother. Dolly’s a lovely-looking woman. I’ve seen posters of her.’

‘So why did they produce such an ugly duckling? I’m not even sure if Madeleine is Arthur’s…I did warn him he was making a mistake.’

‘Oh, enough! That’s not very Christian. How can you say such a wicked thing when they’ve been out giving their services to the troops? Arthur sounds like the nicest of the brothers.’ How dare Mother insinuate such a cruel thing about Dolly!

‘I’m surprised at you. Gerald is the handsomest of all my boys,’ Pleasance preened, looking up from her book.

Plum plonked herself down on the sofa, picked up her knitting. It was time for some home truths. ‘I think this family must have a fascination for the stage. I know Gerald has. He’s kept a mistress in London for years. In fact, he was seeing her before we were married. He says he’s finished with her but I’m not so sure. If you want to criticise anyone, tear your own pretty boy off a strip, not Arthur. He’s the only one with a happy marriage.’ That would pop her balloon.

‘Prunella, what’s got into you? Don’t be so mean. Gerry can’t defend himself. Men are like that sometimes. It doesn’t mean anything. You have to make allowances for their urges. They don’t marry girls like that–not in my day, they didn’t.’

‘Didn’t you have any urges then?’ Plum paused, unimpressed by her argument.

‘No I did not. I did my duty and gave him three sons. In return he gave me respect and didn’t trouble me much after that. What Harry did in his spare time, I never asked, but Arthur wouldn’t leave well alone; he had to go and marry the girl against our wishes. I blame him for Harry’s death–letting the family down, going on the stage, refusing to go into the business with not even a grandson to inherit. Gerald was too young to take over. He’s just a man being a man. It’s a pity there’s no child. You wouldn’t talk so freely then.’

‘It’s not for want of trying.’ Plum blushed with embarrassment. ‘You missed out, not enjoying the physical side of marriage. It can be fun.’

‘So much fun that my son seeks comforts elsewhere? Our sort of women are not bred for such…messiness. Next thing you’ll be saying we should demand to be pleasured and equals like those damned Suffragettes making fools of themselves. There are women paid to give those sorts of services…’

Pleasance could be so cruel. ‘And what wretched lives some of them lead,’ Plum snapped back. ‘I’m glad I’ve got the vote and have some say in things. Anyway, what has all this got to do with Dolly and Arthur? I just want them to be made welcome for Maddy’s sake.’

‘You’re getting too fond of that child, spoiling her. She’s not our responsibility now. We’ve done our duty.’ There was no budging Pleasance. No use carping at her.

‘All I’m asking you is not to hold up Gerald and me as paragons of virtue. This last affair almost came to a divorce, but we’ve talked it through and it’s sorted so you can sleep easy; end of subject. And who wouldn’t be fond of Maddy? She’s your only grandchild. Once that eye is realigned I bet our duckling will turn into a swan.’

‘Oh, don’t talk poppycock. I’ve never seen a plainer child. Now, if it was Gloria…she’s got spark and those green eyes, she’ll go far,’ said Pleasance. ‘Pass me my sherry.’

‘Do you think so? There’s something about her that worries me. I can’t pin it down. Madge Batty says she’s forever prancing in front of the mirror. Now there’s someone who ought to be on the stage…Don’t forget the school Nativity play on Monday. We’ll have to support our evacuees.’

‘Must we? The pews are so hard in the church.’

‘Come on, Sowerthwaite expects its most prominent citizen to do her duty.’ Plum smiled sweetly as she handed Pleasance the glass.

‘I’ve done my duty sending my sons to war, opening my home to refugees and evacuees and putting up with disruption at my time of life. But listening to Juniors caterwauling on the stage is not my idea of a night out,’ Pleasance snapped back.

‘Bah humbug!’ laughed Plum, her tension released. ‘Who needs Dickens when Scrooge is alive and well in Brooklyn Hall?’

‘Don’t be facetious, it doesn’t become you…making fun of a poor widow in her sorrows. Christmas is nothing without your family around you,’ Pleasance sighed, sipping her sherry as she gazed into the log fire. ‘Ugh! Is this the best we’ve got? Algie’s been at the decanter again.’

‘Hark at you. You’ve got a house full of relatives, a son and daughter on their way home, a hostel full of abandoned children and a granddaughter…Just thank God in His Mercy you have the means to give them all a wonderful time…The joy is in the giving.’

‘Just leave the sermons to the vicar, Prunella,’ came the sharp reply.

It was nearly Christmas and still no news of Mummy and Daddy. Maddy was so excited, waiting to hear their voices. Grandma didn’t believe in having a phone at the hall but the Old Vic now had one for emergencies and Aunt Plum promised to let her know as soon as the trunk call came through.

‘Can I go to the station to meet them with Mr Batty?’ Maddy pleaded.

‘Of course, but we must expect delays with the snow,’ Aunt Plum smiled. She was putting the finishing touches to the playroom decorations, with Mitch and Bryan standing on the table fixing up paper bells.

They were going carol singing round Sowerthwaite with the church choir and it was snowing hard. The village looked just like a Christmas card, full of prewar glitter.

Peggy was sulking because her mother wasn’t coming until Boxing Day. There was a special train for evacuee families to come out from Hull and Leeds. Enid had begged to go to the soldiers’ dance but Matron said she was too young, so she swore at her and was up in the attic bedroom having a screaming match, calling down the stairs the worst swear words she could muster.

Maddy was trying not to worry about Uncle Algie’s latest news bulletin from the wireless. ‘Convoys under attack. That means no bananas for tea,’ he joked.

Maddy had not seen a banana or an orange for years, not since she was at St Hilda’s. She thought of those poor sailors rowing open lifeboats in stormy seas. Thank goodness Mummy and Daddy weren’t crossing the Atlantic.

She’d helped Aunt Plum prepare their room, air the bed with a stone hot-water bottle, put on crisp sheets and a beautiful silk counterpane. They filled a vase full of pink viburnum from the garden that smelled so sweet. The fire was ready to be lit in the grate. The bedroom smelled of polish and soot. She just couldn’t wait.

Then she thought of their last Christmas together with Uncle George and Granny Mills behind the bar at The Feathers, Mummy singing ‘There’ll Always Be an England’ to the airmen, and everyone cheering. It had been such fun being all together…

Suddenly she felt sick and sad and shaky. Nothing would be the same ever again. Last year she’d been safe–now she’d come to live with strangers. Her eye had been straightened when she was seven but now it had gone all wonky again. The patching wasn’t working and sometimes she got two shapes, not one, before her eyes. Would they be disappointed like Grandma when they saw her, plain Jane that she was?

Tears rolled down her face; from deep inside great sobs poured out of her. Grandma came to see what the noise was and stared down at her.

‘What’s up now, child? What’s brought this on?’ She patted her on the shoulder like a pet dog.

‘They won’t come…they won’t come…I know it,’ Maddy spluttered.

‘Now how did you come up with such an idea? Of course they’ll come. They’re on their way,’ Grandma argued, but Maddy was too upset to guard her tongue.

‘But you don’t like my mummy and they’ll go away again and never come back,’ she blurted.

‘Here, blow your nose,’ came the reply. ‘Now who’s been telling you silly tales? How can I dislike her? I’ve never met her. You’re too young to understand grownup affairs. We’ll have a perfectly pleasant celebration, so stop all this silliness, dry your eyes and go to the kitchen for a biscuit.’

‘I don’t want a biscuit, I want Panda,’ Maddy sniffed. ‘I just want my mummy and daddy to come home.’ She felt foolish and awkward now. She’d poured out all her fears and Grandma didn’t understand. How could she? She’d not even been to her sparents’ wedding.

‘You’re a big girl for cuddling toys, Madeleine.’

‘I want Panda and Aunt Plum,’ she argued, pushing past her grandma.

‘Oh, please yourself, but stop snivelling and pull yourself together. Crying gets you nowhere. I was only trying to help,’ said Grandma, turning towards her, looking hurt, but Maddy was off down the stairs in search of her beloved black and white companion.

Panda heard all her troubles and never answered back.

It snowed hard again overnight, drifting across the lanes into banks of snow, covering the railways lines with ice. Everyone’s pre-Christmas travel plans would be disrupted with this snowfall, Plum sighed. Sowerthwaite had tucked itself in for the duration, used to bad winters and being cut off for days. The school was closed for the holidays, the food bought in and the children in the hostel were trying to be good, itching to be out on tin trays and sleds down the sledge runs.

Matron was huffing and puffing about the extra work, frustrated that her leave to be with her sister near Coventry might be cancelled. The news from the city was bad and she was worried by no word from Dora that she was safe.

‘I’ll have to go and see for myself, Mrs Belfield,’ she insisted, and headed off into the snow to catch the first available train south.

Gerald sent a cryptic note from somewhere hot and dusty, but there had still been no word from Arthur and Dolly. That was only to be expected due to the weather conditions and delays. Everything was in place for their arrival and for the children to have a party at the Hall on Boxing Day. The excitement was mounting and once chores were done they were out on the hills having a great time.

Tonight was the Christmas Nativity play and they were all taking part except Greg, who was helping stack chairs at the back of the church. His voice was well and truly broken and he growled like a bear so that got him out of the fancy-dress parade.

Mrs Batty had warned them that Billy Mellor’s donkey was brought out of its shed to do its annual turn parading down the aisle on its way to Bethlehem, no doubt leaving its annual deposit, which the verger would sweep up for his roses before it gassed the congregation. Hitler might do his worst but the donkey would do its duty on cue. Enid, Peggy, Nancy and Gloria were all kitted out as angelic hosts with wire halos on bands round their heads.

‘I look daft in this costume,’ Enid moaned. ‘I’m too old for dressing up. Look, there’s Alf and his mates.’ She pointed out the line of soldiers in the back pew, sticking out her tiny breast buds in a silly pose.

‘You’re too young to be bothering about them,’ Maddy said, but Enid ignored her, turning to Peggy with a loud voice. ‘No one would look at her twice. She’s only jealous.’

‘No she’s not.’ Gloria stepped in to defend her friend. ‘You’re common.’

‘Hark at the kettle calling the pot black, Conley! Takes one to know one!’ Peggy added her pennyworth.

‘Shurrup, fat face!’ Gloria replied. The three angels jostled and nudged each other, knocking Nancy into the stone pillar until Maddy stepped in.

‘Shush! You’re in church. The play will be starting soon. It’s too important an evening for quarrelling. Thanks for sticking up for me, Gloria,’ Maddy whispered. ‘But we don’t need to bother with anything they say, do we?’

‘Ooh, listen to Miss Hoity-Toity,’ Enid giggled, and turned her attention back to the audience.

Maddy took her place in the choir, hidden behind the chancel screen. Everything shimmered in the candlelight. The church windows were boarded up in case any light shone through. How comforting that blitz and bombers had not stopped the Christmas festivities. How confusing that in Germany they would have their own carols and candles, all of them, allies and enemies, praying to the same God. It didn’t make any sense.

When they all returned to the Vic and the children were in bed on pain of being given a sack of coal by Father Christmas for being naughty, there were still stockings to fill and parcels to wrap for tomorrow night. At least being busy there was no time to worry about Gerald. The Nativity had gone well and for once the donkey did his dump in the churchyard, not the aisle. The children had behaved impeccably and everyone was saying what a credit the Brooklyn children were to the Old Vic. She had to admit they played their parts on cue. Gloria sang out like a bell and Mitchell read his lesson like a trooper. There was hot fruit cordial in the church hall and spiced buns flavoured with home-made mincemeat that were wolfed down in seconds. The vicar gave a vote of thanks. Pleasance had made an effort, wearing her thick fur coat, Algie and Julia alongside, so the Hall was well represented. Poor Miss Blunt was stuck somewhere between here and Coventry and unlikely to return. It was turning out to be a good Christmas after all.

Plum’d enjoyed all the children’s preparations, making sure they made presents for each other, all the secrets and surprises, letters and cards home, and the parcels arriving for some of the children who lived far away.

Without children the Brooklyn Christmas was a stodgy affair of much wine and little cheer, sherry gatherings and small talk and gossip, church and long walks. This was going to be a real Dingley Dell festival at the Brooklyn: the excitement of parcels unwrapped, extra food rations and treats, decorations in every room and fires lit, a great tree cut down and decorated, and above all the chatter of little voices singing carols. All they were waiting for was Dolly and Arthur’s arrival by train to complete the picture.

Pleasance was fooling no one by pretending it was all a waste of time and expense, for even she had given a hand wrapping up parcels and sending cards this year. No one could say Sowerthwaite didn’t look beautiful in the snow, icicles spiking down the rooftops.

Lost in these thoughts, Plum didn’t hear the bell ring.

‘Mrs Belfield! Phone!’

Plum raced over to the hall shelf. ‘Sow’thwaite 157,’ she smiled. At last! What perfect timing! ‘It’ll be Maddy’s parents,’ she yelled to Mrs Batty, who was preparing the morning’s vegetables in the kitchen. She smiled at her ruffled reflection in the mirror.

Then her expression went from grin to grimace in two seconds, her mouth tightening. She slumped on to the hall chair in a daze. ‘When…? How…? I see…Yes, Yes…I see…Thank you for letting us know…Is there any hope?…I see…Yes…It is dreadful…’ She slammed the phone down and sat winded. Some disembodied voice had just shattered hopes of a cheerful Christmas. Mrs Batty was hovering, curious.

‘What is it, Mrs Belfield? Not bad news? Not Master Gerald? You’ve gone white,’ she said.

‘No, it’s not him. I’m afraid it’s Maddy’s parents. Their ship was overdue, reports are coming in that it went down en route home in the Atlantic, somewhere off the coast of Ireland…enemy fire. They’re not among the survivors…Oh dear God, what am I going to tell the poor child? It’s almost Christmas Eve!’

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