September 1939
I had a carrot cake with me then, as it happens (Doris was saying).
My mum and dad walked me to school and when I got there we all lined up to get took to Paddington by the volunteers.
You’ve probably seen the pictures—not of me, like, but of some of us from them days.
All lined up in our warm coats with our bags or boxes or what-have-you, ready to start new lives away from the bombs.
We was being sent all over, some nearby, some as far off as Devon.
Some even went up north, though that was mostly folks from closer-to, Manchester and that.
I was lucky to get Surrey, it meant it weren’t far to go.
And I sat on the train with my carrot cake on my knees wrapped in paper.
There was this boy sitting opposite me. I don’t remember his name or much of what he looked like, but I gave him a bit, broke it off in my fingers and handed it to him, and he swallowed it down like he’d not eaten in a week.
I remember that alright, though it’s been near on eighty years.
As a kid I’d barely been outside Stepney so it was odd to see all the trees and grass and fields and such going by the train window.
And when we got to Tapworth the ten of us as was going to Patchley got out in a big mob and the marshals met us at the other end to walk us up the hill to the big house.
It weren’t a hotel in them days of course.
Family owned it, name of Branningham—I don’t think they was the ones what built it, that would’ve been some bugger named Patchley I suppose.
But it was the Branninghams when I got here in thirty-nine.
It looked the same, mostly. These kinds of places always do—you ain’t allowed to do much to the main house, and the grounds don’t change much neither.
Course it looked bigger to me, because I was smaller then.
Not by much, mind. Twelve I must have been, perhaps thirteen.
One of the older girls, though I was the youngest at home.
Anyhow I’d been put in sort of charge on account of that, and I had to help lead the others up that long drive, what you probably saw on your way in, and then line them all up in front of the house so Mr. Branningham—Sir Arthur Branningham, he was actually, been a big deal in the last war but sitting this one out—could inspect us.
So there we was, me and nine others, all lined up by height like The Sound of Music and Sir Arthur comes down with his whole family.
It’s not big, just him, the missus, two sons and the little girl.
My age, she was, standing just apart from the rest, wrapped in this long blue coat with fur trim, hat pulled down over her ears.
And her eyes—like she was looking at the whole world all at once and seeing things you’d never see.
I remember Sir Arthur walked up to us and did his welcome bit. “You’ve come a long way,” he said, “and you’ll find we do things very differently here from what you’re used to, but keep your backs straight and your heads down, and I’m sure you’ll fit in all right.”
Then he told us where we was going to be staying—that place they call the Lodge now—and how we wasn’t to bother the family or the staff, but we was to have meals provided for us and could have the run of the grounds so long as we stayed out the flowerbeds and didn’t drown ourselves in the river.
And that was that. Me and this boy called Tom—nice lad, we stayed in touch ’til he died in ninety-two—got the other eight together and took them back down to our rooms. And they was cosy.
Not as cosy as they is now—things have come on a bit since the war—but better than a lot of us was used to.
I’d never had my own room in my life. I slept like a dead horse that first night and most nights after.
Missed my mum and dad of course. And my sisters.
My brothers had both gone off to fight, though one had lied about his age, which made Mum upset.
But they was good times all in all and I kept busy.
Most days we went to a little school in the village—it’s not there anymore and it was mostly your three Rs, not like now where you learn all kinds of stuff. And we had church on Sundays of course—the church is there, I saw it when I come up for the contest—and Saturdays we had to ourselves.
Day after we arrived was a Saturday, as it happens. And I took the time to explore these woods and the river—there’s a bridge down that way if you ever fancy the walk, least there was in my day—and that afternoon I was taking a wander when I saw her again. The daughter. Her with the eyes.
She was sitting on the bank in a yellow dress just one shade too summery for the weather, ’cause there was a nip in the air though it hadn’t fully turned yet. Her hair was down, all chestnut-brown and wavy. And she was throwing rocks at frogs.
“What you doing?” I asked her.
“Throwing rocks at frogs,” she replied.
“Why?”
She looked up at me. Some things get foggy, but I remember the look on her face like it was a week last Thursday. Like she didn’t know whether to laugh or spit. “It’s very rude, you know, sneaking up on a person when they’re throwing rocks at frogs.”
“I weren’t sneaking.”
“Wasn’t.”
“Right, I weren’t.”
“No, I mean you wasn’t sneaking. I mean I wasn’t sneaking. I mean—look, who are you?”
I didn’t know what to make of that. “I’m an evacuee.”
“I know that, bumblewit. I mean what’s your name?”
I didn’t know what a bumblewit was neither, but I thought I could work it out. “Doris.”
“Really? How peculiar.”
“What’s wrong with Doris?”
“She’s a nymph. You don’t look like a nymph.”
I weren’t sure what to make of that. “What do nymphs look like then?”
“Touché.”
I weren’t sure what to make of that, neither.
“You don’t know what that means, do you?”
“No.”
She laughed, then. And I remember that, too. Remember how it sounded there by the river. Like water itself running over me and through me. “Don’t know much, do you?”
“Guess not.”
“It’s French,” the girl explained. “It means you got me. I have no idea what a nymph should look like, I only know you aren’t one.”
She’d distracted me. I tried to stop her distracting me. “Why you throwing rocks at frogs?”
“I like to see them jump.”
“Ain’t that a bit cruel?”
Most girls, I reckon, wouldn’t have smiled at that, but she did. She smiled at me. “Daddy says it’s a cruel world, and I think he’s probably right.”
“My old man says you shouldn’t pick on anything smaller than you.”
She thought about that. But she didn’t like it. “Really? It seems a lot safer than picking on things that are bigger than you.”
Getting tired of standing, I sat down next to her, and she looked at me like I’d broke some rule I didn’t know about.
“Excuse me, did I invite you to come sit with me?”
“Your dad said we had the run of the grounds.”
“My father isn’t here.” She turned around, going from sitting to kneeling. “This is my riverbank. If you want to share it with me, you have to pay a toll.”
I didn’t have much, but I’d brung what was left of my carrot cake with me. I took it out my satchel and showed it to her. “This do?”
She looked down, more pleased than I’d expected. “It looks very crumbly. Did you make it yourself?”
I had, and I said as much. Though my mum had helped.
“Oh how nice. Very well, your toll is accepted.”
I’d expected her to hold out her hand, but she opened her mouth instead. Not wanting to upset her, I broke off a piece and fed it to her. She took it, and her lips brushed over my fingers like a breeze over leaves.
“I think I shall enjoy you, Doris,” she said. And then she got up and left.
It weren’t ’til she were gone that I realised she hadn’t told me her name.