The Evacuee

I really did miss Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s declaration of war against Germany on 3 September 1939. You had a fictitious account of this earlier in the short story, ‘Family History’.

In real life, after that broadcast, things moved quickly.

The following Friday, along with a hundred or so other boys from our school, I was evacuated to Westmoreland.

We arrived in Appleby, a quite beautiful market town with the Lake District and the Pennines so very close. It was a quiet sort of place where you might feel that the news of the death of Queen Victoria hadn’t yet quite filtered through.

I recall our arrival at the railway station and the march in file down to the town, each one of us wearing the school cap and carrying our cases and gas masks over our shoulders. Many of us wore the school’s regulation navy-blue belted raincoat and my, it was hot. I cannot think that the organisation was as slick as it ought to have been, but then there had never been such a large scale home-land evacuation as this before. Local volunteers led us around the streets, knocking on doors and inviting people to select any one of us that they wished. Hard luck if you were a rather plain, gawky-looking eleven-year-old. But still I was eventually housed.

I have two strong memories of that period.

The first, I think, was the deep shame I felt that perhaps my parents had not brought me up properly, when I became aware that my table manners were not as they ought to be and I found it acutely embarrassing when I realised that I couldn’t even hold a knife and fork properly. But finally I got the hang of it and managed to take food to my mouth via my knife. The only problem was the peas.

Cue for a verse:

I eat my peas with honey

I’ve done it all my life

It may sound kind of funny

But it keeps them on the knife

But back to another even more tricky situation.

I got to know several local boys in Appleby, and one Saturday afternoon I met one of them with his girlfriend on a seat by the River Eden. Eddie, I think that was his name, was such a cheerful boy, probably aged about sixteen or seventeen. In the course of our conversation I told him that my finger was painful. It was swollen and inflamed. It was a whitlow, I told him. The people where I was staying had put on some ointment but it didn’t seem to be working. ‘Doesn’t half hurt,’ I told Eddie and his girlfriend.

Straightaway he had the remedy. ‘It’ll do the trick,’ he told me, ‘no bother.’

‘It’ll cure it, will it?’

‘In next to no time, son,’ he said. ‘Go to the chemist and get yourself a packet of French letters. That’s what you need. You just put one on your finger.’

French letters? How on earth would I be able to ask for French letters? I’d only been learning French for a few weeks. I could say some useful things like, ‘Where is the dog?’ or ‘Where is the beach?’ but nothing more complex than that.

Eddie and his girlfriend could see my uncertainty, but they made every effort to reassure me.

‘Don’t worry, lad. You don’t have to speak French. Just go to the chemist and tell him what you want.’

I was so grateful that I went straight off to do as they had suggested.

As I went in the doorbell pinged and straightaway this jolly old soul appeared behind the counter.

‘Hello, sonny,’ he said, ‘what can I do for you today?’ And he beamed at me.

And I told him, all the time hoping that this whitlow cure wouldn’t be too expensive.

‘Sorry,’ he said, and he held his hand up to his ear. ‘What’s it you want?’

I repeated what I’d said.

He came round that counter like a bolt of lightning and took me by the scruff of the neck, all the time shouting at me, ‘Get out, you dirty little beast, bringing your towny ways here Get out and don’t ever come back.’

I tried to tell him about the whitlow. ‘I want to put it on my finger,’ I squealed.

‘On your finger?’ he shouted. ‘I’ll give you ‘on your finger,’ you vile little rat. Get out of my sight!’

So I got out of his sight, but I heard his last words. He’d be speaking to the headmaster.

And so he did.

Early on the Monday morning I was standing in front of the head’s desk. He asked a few questions then suddenly put his head in his hands. His shoulders were shaking and he was coughing as if he was going to choke. Or maybe he was going to be sick. I wondered if he wasn’t well and I nearly asked him if he’d like a glass of water, but then he looked up and, his eyes full of tears, he signalled towards the door, just sort of flapping his hand. He didn’t say anything but I could see he was sort trying to tell me to go.

So off I went and I never heard another word about it.

By the way, they don’t work for whitlows.