大象传媒

To my great relief, Ruby came to stay at the Newbolds and, I am convinced, saved my life. I was to be grateful for her spirited attitude. Mrs. Newbold was at first glad to get another girl - popular with landladies who wanted an unpaid servant - to be fed on scraps and screamed at - but she soon began to feel the restriction on her sadistic games. She still kept a sharp eye on me, keenly looking for faults.
Although she kept us both short of food, and continued to take every opportunity to humiliate me, the edge was taken off it, and I was beginning to cope. I was determined not to be a victim. Although the big things were missing in my life; a routinely supportive family; good nourishment, the confidence not to let the teacher bully me, I decided I would be a solver of problems, one of which was Jessie Newbold. I had wanted adventure. Well, here it was, and the fight was on.
"She's tekkin' advantage," Mrs. Newbold claimed, piously, of my dependence on Ruby's protection. However, she did find it meant another ten and six a week for the minimum outlay. Since she fed us so little, and Doreen picked at her food, it's hard to imagine what she did with the spare coupons from our ration books. They were of course, saleable, and more highly prized than adult ration books.
A small incident stands out across the years. We had at first been sent to the school of St. Mary's and, while I was in the playground, a nun belonging to St. Mary's began rounding up children to return to lessons. She had a good-humoured air, and an obvious affection for her charges. She went to include me in her open-armed gesture of gathering us in, then realised I was not one of theirs. The smile vanished from her benign face; she looked me rapidly up and down, her face a picture of scornful indifference and rejection. I stood there, reading her face and body language as only a small child can, as she bustled the children away from me.
An air raid in Stafford was merely a break in lessons; we went to the shelter, said prayers, then sang hymns, including God Bless Our Pope. This was Pius the Twelfth, who was so helpful to Hitler in his attack against the Jews. Then came school songs, to which the boys put their own words, sotto voce. When the All Clear sounded, we said prayers again, and went back to lessons.
The town's vackies were given little treats, one of which was to see Charlie Chaplin in The Ice Rink. The fact that it was shown in a community hall instead of a proper cinema, only added to its excitement. It was out of its place, and therefore exotic.
Frank Newbold worked at Bagnall's, makers of rolling stock. It later became Lansing Bagnall, and is now simply, Lansings. At Christmas, they held a party for the children and evacuees of their employees. Some bright clerk had written a song for the kids to sing. The end line of the chorus ran:- B-A-G-N-A-double L-S spells Bagnall's." The rude little boys saw this one coming and bellowed:- "B-A-double L-S spells Bagnalls!" There were several verses, and the chorus gained in enthusiasm and volume each time. The men on the platform grinned, and their ladies gave a thin smile.
For all the fuss that was ever made about bad language and vulgar usage, I had heard all the rude words by the time I was halfway through Junior School. I didn't know what most of them meant, and could not reconcile some of them to my own anatomy, though I had sense enough not to repeat them in front of adults. My introduction to them had been in casual use, so there was no offence in them. It was only little boys' rudery. It was only when they were accompanied by blows and hatred,administered by an adult, that they acquired a sinister meaning. Apart from the tedium of repetition, isolated words have never offended me, only the violence expressed in them, and that applies also to the most respectable vocabulary.

The Mayor of Stafford presented each of us with a small gift; we had music and games,
were entertained by the adults, then we sat down to a feast, and I ate well for the first time in months.
Then something odd happened. The abuse suddenly stopped. From picking at me constantly, she did an abrupt about turn, and praised everything I did, sometimes to an embarrassing degree. In my immaturity, I really thought she had had a change of heart. The truth of it was that Ruby must have told Mum about what was going on, and Mum was looking around for somewhere else to put me. She had moved up to Birmingham to look for more lucrative work, and had taken a job on the Midland Red buses. But she now lived in a tiny back-to-back slum in Balsall Heath; and her working hours were erratic.
During the hot summer of 1940, we roamed the Staffordshire countryside, getting sunburnt, and coming home with armfuls of bluebells. As we stood chattering at the sink, washing the gooseberries we had picked and which we would have with our supper, Mrs. Newbold burbled; "Look, even Mary's cheered up now." She wasn't even bright enough to make the link between abuse and misery.
We were allowed to play out on the Rec. until ten o'clock, in the safety of each others' company until, tired out, we drifted back 'home,' the sweat cooling on our bodies, and as we passed the mothers standing at their gates, with their children still in the bathing costumes they had played out in all day, the women chatted contentedly about how cheaply you could clothe children in the summer; about how you could spin out the rations by filling the kids up with plenty of your home-grown vegetables, fruit from the apple and pear trees, and berries from the hedgerows. This was a bright little window in my childhood.

(This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from Wyre Forest Volunteer Bureau on behalf of Mary Rose Benton and has been added to this site with her permission. Mrs Benton fully understand the site's terms and conditions.)

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