大象传媒

JOY`S STORY

"There is probably going to be a war" The headmistress had said as she looked down on us sitting cross-legged on the floor. We had said prayers and the sun slanted down from the narrow Gothic arched windows. I watched the little specs of dust dancing in the beams. I wasn`t really listening until she mentioned a small town in Poland called Danzig."The Germans have very wickedly chosen to invade it" (I thought what a lovelt name Danzig was, like dancing)

I was eight and living in a small yorshire village called Baildon with a family called Featherstone.

Some weeks earlier I had come home from school to the two rooms my mother and I shared just off Manningham Lane in Bradford.My mother was never home when I arrived from school but I was surprised to see this lady whom I had not met before.
She told me that my mother had had to go away and that I would be living with her for a while in her house in the country. We tavelled in her car driving in the dark through shiny reflecting streets, then through dark hills necklaced with lights.
On arrival I was given sandwiches and cocoa in a warm friendly kitchen then taken to a small pale blue bedroom with white painted furniture.

Looking out of the window next morning I awoke to see a sparkling garden of lawns and fruit trees in blossom. A small beechwood floored with bluebells. I thought I was in fairyland. Later, as I stood on the lawn and looked out at the surrounding hills in the distance I was sure that I saw a white unicorn. It was probably a goat.

Some weeks later my mother surprised me with a visit and brought me a large celluloid doll with stiff straight legs and a dress on. Then a few weeks later I was surprised again as my father came to visit. This was the first time I had seen him since my mother and I had left. I was rather nervous to see him now and I knew that he easily got angry so I was careful to try not to upset him.

Not long after that my mother returned."I thought you liked it here" She said crossly, "But you told your father you were homesick". She packed my clothes and took me away. (I did like it there, I wanted to say, but I missed her.) How could I explain those two contradictory emotions?

She took me to Kendal by train and I shared a room with her in a family house which seemd to be full of people coming and going.

I went to school there for a while, in Kendal it could only have been for a few weeks. I did not make any friends but found that I could perform a trick that the grown-ups liked and which earned me pocket money. I had very flexible feet and could pick up sixpences with my toes which I was then allowed to keep.

One day we were on the train again, my mother and I. This time it was back to Bradford to stay with `Aunt Peggy` Not a real Auntie, but someone I had met once before. The next day mother took me to the cinema to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, then we had tea at a big department store called "Busby`s" a wonderful treat.

My head was swimming with happiness and the music of the film. I was with my beautiful mother and I skipped at her side, holding her hand as we returned to Auntie Peggy`s to tell her all about it.

At bedtime my mother said she had to go away again and I was to stay with Peggy. I didn`t see my mother again for about two years.

The following week I was sent to another school. This was a hard place where we stood in line and got stung by the headmaster`s cane if we were caught chattering. It seemd to happen all the time to me. I was a natural chatterbox and just couldn`t keep quiet.

At every turn people seemd to talk about the coming war. We children in school were both puzzled and excited.. I felt I knew exactly what the war was about because of what I had learned about Danzig at the school in Baildon.

The chatter was all about bombers and guns and the boys ran around the concrete playground arms outstretched making buzzing noises as they pretended to be planes and bombers.

We girls were quiter and more sedate. We tied white handkerchiefs around our heads and drew on a red cross with lipstick. We were going to take care of things. We were nurses.

The Summer holidays came and there was no school. I had not had time to make friends with anyone and it was a solitary time for me. Peggy sent me out to the park each day with a bag of sandwiches. I wasnot allowed to return until 4.00 and it rained often.

In the part of the park where the swings were other children played, but a solitary child is not welcome and I would be taunted and my sandwiches would be stolen.

In order to avoid them I would stay away from the playground and wander to other parts. However, in the quiet paths and shrub-lined avenues I was often accosted by men in raincoats.

Back at the house things were no better. A fourteen year old son called Jack had appeared. He and his friends set up a tent in the garden and I was endlessly tormented by them. They cut off the nose of my doll and threatened further tortures unless I obeyed them.

The house was on the corner of a busy road where traffic lights and Belisha beacons winked day and night. Workmen arrived to adapt them in preparation for the black-out masking the lights so that only a thin cross of beam escaped. Similar covers began to appear over the headlights of cars.

One day I was sent back to school to be issued with a gas mask in a brown cardboard box. We were instructed to carry it slung over one shoulder by a piece of string.

I welcomed any diversion from the misery of being at home with Jack and Auntie Peggy. She had very little to say to me as she smoked her Craven A cigarettes and listened endlessly to her gramaphone. The song "Red Sails in the Sunset". was played over and over again.

I slept in the attic and thought of the songs from Snow White."One day my Prince will come" was my absolute favourite.

Then one morning Peggy said I was going away to be evacuated. It would be like a holiday, she said.

She fitted me with a flimsy little blue striped rucsack which had cost her all of sixpence "and not a penny or word from your mother". She told me to carry my boxed gas mask, and to my blazer button-hole she tied a luggage label with my name and a number printed on it.

Then we set off for the railway station.

No more Jack, I thought.

AUDREY`S STORY

Looking back to those years one can`t help but marvel at the changes in our lives. The tooilet was outside, across the farm yard and was emptied by the council each week.
We had no running hot water and when we moved to Sandbed Farm (I think it would be 1935) there wasn`t any cold water on tap. We had a pump, in the kitchen and in the barn. I don`t know whether we had cold running water when you came or not - do you remember? I know we used to fill the (zinc metal) bath with hot water from a small electric boiler by the fire and got out with a ladling can.

All the things we take for granted now like central heating, bathrooms and indoor toilets, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, etc. etc., I can also remember the thrill of our first fitted carpet (Previously it was a `square` with oilcloth round the outside). All the housework was done by hand, whereas now all we do is `switch on`.

I was just eleven years old when the war started. (3.9.39) I remember someone from the council (Saddleworth U.D.C.) coming and looking all through our house. It was quite a big old farmhouse with three bedrooms and two large attics.

Each bedroom was occupied by (1) My parents. (2) my brother aged 14 and (3) myself. The attics were big empty rooms used for storage and in no way could they be used as bedrooms.

The council officials said we would have to take three evacuees, at which my mother protested, so the number was reduced to two.

I remember my mother being instructed to go to the Methodist school in the village on a certain day to collect the children (unsure of the sexes) and I saw her coming back along the road with two little girls, carrying gas masks and a few belongings.
They were called Mavis and Joy and were about eight years old. I don`t think they were aquainted with eachother before that day.

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