Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
1 September 1939
2 The Village Hall
3 The Vicarage
4 Pork Sausages
5 School Time
6 First Visit
7 Moving On
8 Jack Frost
9 First Christmas
10 On the Ice
11 Only a Dog
12 Spring
13 Granddad
14 First Love
15 Home for the Holidays
16 Blitzed
17 Flight
18 The Blacksmith’s Wife
19 Barrow Pigs
20 The Cheese Bin
21 Jennifer
22 Song of the Nightingale
23 A Song from Home
24 Facts of Life
25 The Black Car
26 Goodbye, Skylark
About the Author
Copyright
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA
www.transworldbooks.co.uk
Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Corgi Books
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © David Merron 2015
David Merron has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of non-fiction based on the life, experiences and recollections of David Merron. In some cases names of people and places have been changed solely to protect the privacy of others. The author has stated to the publishers that, except in such minor respects, the contents of this book are true.
Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781473510838
ISBN 9780552171472
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1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
With thanks to all those people who, during the Second
World War, opened their homes and shared their family life
with strange and sometimes awkward children from the cities.
The all-clear sounded at daylight. In the shelter it was dark when Mum woke me. Rubbing sleep from my eyes, and still shaken from our midnight flight through the bombs and flames, I clutched her hand tightly as we climbed the metal stairs and emerged into an acrid smell of charred wood and burning oil and rubber.
Splintered glass and white ash carpeted Commercial Street. Trolleybus wires dangled loose across the road. Smoke hung everywhere in the air, while steam rose from doused, smouldering shops. At Gardiner’s Corner sodden suits, shirts and underwear, blasted out from the Fifty Shilling Tailors where Dad had bought his suit, lay strewn across the pavement. I cringed as we passed: they looked like crumpled bodies.
By Aldgate East station we stopped for a moment. Mum glanced down at me, her face grey, eyes bloodshot and hair tied up in Uncle Barney’s maroon silk scarf.
‘We’re going straight back to the country, David,’ she quavered. ‘We’ll just go to the old house first. Some of your clothes are still there and you can change. You can’t go back looking like that!’ My jacket and short trousers were creased and soot-streaked.
At the corner of Great Alie Street, firemen directed their hoses onto a pile of smoking rubble. A chrome and black counter-top stuck up like a crumpled aeroplane wing. That was all that remained of old Max’s fish-and-chip shop, where we used to buy a ha’porth of chips and a penny gherkin. One of the men wiped his smoke-blackened face and nodded at Mum.
‘Don’t think they’ll be fryin’ tonight, Missus,’ he quipped, with a faint smile.
Walking down St Mark’s Street, I wondered whether our house was still safe. Although it was near the docks, it had escaped damage so far. But as we turned the corner, I saw that our luck had run out. Only the first two houses on our road had escaped. Our own outside walls were intact but through the empty doorway I could see the wet, charred remains of floorboards, ceiling laths and roof timbers.
At the far corner of the street, three firemen were rolling up canvas hoses. One took off his helmet and looked at Mum, his bald head glistening with sweat.
‘Sorry, love. No chance. Caught a bread basket, this lot did.’ The ‘bread basket’ was a parachuted pannier of incendiary bombs that spilled out close to the ground to concentrate them. He glanced down at the hoses. ‘And we ran dry. Everyone did. Didn’t have a chance, luv,’ he said again.
As well as ours, the Rowsteins’ corner house had gone and Shirley’s next door was burned out, too. She had been my playmate for as long as I could remember – Shirley with her long, fair ringlets, singing ‘On the good ship Lollipop …’ Now she would have to move away as well.
I looked up at Mum. She stood with one hand to her cheek, staring in through our open doorway. Everything that wasn’t burned was soaked or covered with soot. A corner of a Film Fun comic was stuck to the passage skirting-board. At least I had a new home – and a billet in the country. We were lucky. If Dad hadn’t got that van last week and brought the rest of our furniture …
Mum was crying silently. ‘Come. There’s nothing for us here, David,’ she murmured, casting one last look at what had been her family home since the end of the First World War. She tugged at my hand. ‘Let’s get to the station. I’m taking you straight back to the village.’
As we turned and walked back up the street I began to feel better. Going back. To Mrs Baker and Frank and the long garden. Back to the country …
Evacuation. It was a new word. One I had had to learn quickly. At eight years old I vaguely understood that it meant being sent away somewhere with my school but without my family. What I could not anticipate, though, were the changes it would bring to me personally – and, no doubt, to anyone else who went through the experience.
Before September 1939, my world was bounded by the four Tenter Streets that formed a tight, dense corner of London’s East End. They were probably named after a medieval ‘tenter field’, where weavers spread their washed cloth to dry and bleach. The area was a square of three-up, two-down and backyard-loo Victorian terraces, of smoke-blackened brick and grey slate roofs. The abrupt plunge into a vividly green early-autumn countryside and wide blue skies made an indelible impression that persists to this day and shaped much of my life.
My childhood until then was that of the East End Jewish community, of first- and second-generation immigrants who had fled the pogroms and persecutions of Tsarist Russia from the end of the nineteenth century until the First World War. It ranged from deeply traditional grandparents, who spoke only Yiddish, to those born in London and already almost in distinguishable from the general population. For me and my friends, our parents worked mainly in tailoring, cabinet-making and shopkeeping, or had stalls down Petticoat Lane – the famous clothing market – the younger ones branching out into offices and commerce, still understanding Yiddish yet speaking only English.
My dad, Jack Malina, was a ladies’ tailor, not very tall but well built and with a blue chin despite frequent shaving. Born in a shtetl – a Russian village with a mostly Jewish population – his worldview remained somewhere between Brest Litovsk and Whitechapel. He was only fourteen when his father died and had made his own way across Europe, a boat ticket from Bremen to London sewn into the lining of his coat, to join his older brother. He arrived a couple of years before the First World War began, and in 1917 was conscripted into the army. He spent almost two traumatic years in Flanders.
Dad was more familiar with Yiddish than English and that language permeated our everyday life. When I was first evacuated, I hesitated to ask my foster-parents for a bowl as I knew it only as a shissel.
Shortly after his release from the army he had married my mother – quite a beauty from their wedding photographs. One of a large family, Mum had been born in the East End and had had a good schooling. She was an avid reader, getting through many of the latest novels, borrowed from the Whitechapel Library. As she bustled around the kitchen, she sang ‘We’ll Gather Lilacs’ and other songs from thirties musicals. Now, like most working-class women in the East End, she had a lined face and hennaed her greying hair.
Jewish immigrants had brought over their religious tradition and practice and, of course, the synagogue. We spent Friday nights and Saturday mornings in prayer, and celebrated all the festivals and holy days. At the end of each service a stream of chattering worshippers flowed down Alie Street and St Mark’s Street and into the small houses for supper or lunch while, on the way, news of deaths, marriages and births – in that order – was relayed and commented upon. Everyone had an opinion.
Meanwhile, we youngsters would pull at our parents’ hands, just wanting to get home and eat. We’d waited all through the long service to get out to play or go home for a meal. Of course, Friday nights meant a smashing supper but Friday also meant no lights, no wireless, no writing or drawing, and the endless Sabbath ennui.
For me, there were only two bright spots in our religious practice. The first was the few minutes on Friday night in the synagogue when all the young children gathered on the rostrum under a huge prayer shawl to take a sip of the sweet red kosher wine from Palestine. As the silver goblet was passed round, we all tried to hold it longer against our lips to drink more, but the shamash – the beadle – was up to our tricks: he would snatch it away and move it on to the next. The second bright spot came during the annual Celebration of the Law, when the women, who occupied a balcony above the main hall, would throw down sugared almonds for the kids to scramble about and pick up. Sadly, neither made up for the tedious synagogue hours.
Unlike my older brother and sister, Arnold and Rita, I resented being shut away in a stuffy hall to mumble prayers I didn’t understand, while my friends from less devout families played outside.
Mum was a great cook and our Friday-night meal would usually consist of her fried fish and chicken soup with matzo balls. Saturday lunch was often choulent – a special stew. We weren’t allowed to cook on the Sabbath so on Friday afternoons my brother and I often took a large blue saucepan of choulent, tied at the top with a clean white tea-towel, to the baker’s. Mr Cohen didn’t bake on the Sabbath but his oven remained hot, so many families in the neighbourhood brought their choulent pot, paid a few pennies and left it to cook overnight.
On Saturday, after morning synagogue, Rita and I would go to collect it; girls and children were allowed to carry on the Sabbath. All the way home, my mouth watered at the smell. I couldn’t wait to get my teeth into the meat and the chewy dumplings. One of the first things that struck me when I arrived at my country billet was the unfamiliar smells coming from the kitchen – especially that of bacon frying.
Every so often after Friday-night synagogue, our whole family would have supper at my grandparents’ house. Grandma, whom we called Booba, and Granddad, or Ziyder, were Mum’s aged parents. We sat silently around the laden white tablecloth, Booba covering her head with a shawl, then circling her hands over the candles as she recited the blessing. Ziyder would break the soft white khollah bread and distribute a piece to each of us. I was fond of my grandfather with his tiny white goatee beard. He and Booba had come over from Poland in the 1880s and had had a small shop in Middlesex Street, until they retired. The old man was also a cobbler and sometimes I would watch him repairing shoes on his last, which he held tight between his skinny knees.
Dad’s tailoring trade was notorious for stopping and starting, according to the season’s fashions. Whenever neighbours or uncles came round, the talk, in a mixture of English and Yiddish, was often about ‘lay-offs’ or, conversely, the bren: working all hours and Sundays to complete an order for Simpsons or Selfridges. Otherwise conversation focused on the ferdlekh – horseracing.
‘Barney had two winners yesterday, Missus,’ Dad might say, when he came home. He always addressed her as Missus; Mum called him Jack.
‘Doesn’t let you know about all his losers, though,’ Mum would comment disparagingly.
Barney, Dad’s elder brother, was slightly shorter than Dad but both had deep cleft chins and bushy eyebrows. ‘Like two peas in a pod,’ Mum would say. I sometimes wondered whether Dad placed bets with the bookie’s runner who came down the street drumming up business, a short, skinny man in a large flat cap. If he did, they wouldn’t have been for much – Mum wouldn’t have been slow to put him right.
All through the summer of 1939, the talk had been of ‘The Crisis’, Cousin Alf and Uncle Barney arguing about whether there would be a war or not.
‘Hitler wouldn’t dare invade the Polish Corridor.’ Alf, tall with dark, Brylcreemed hair, was adamant. I had no idea what he meant. ‘We have a treaty with the Poles.’
Dad’s heavy brow knotted. All summer he had fretted about his married sisters and their families in Poland – he would put money aside to post food and clothing parcels to them. I still have his last Post Office confirmation slip, dated June 1939. After the war, Uncle Sam went to Poland but found they had all perished along with the whole community.
I usually ate in what Mum called the scullery – our small, dark back kitchen. The dining room was mostly used on Friday night. We rarely sat in the front room, with its sofa and armchairs, and I first sensed that there was trouble in Europe when Mum rented it to a refugee a year or two before the war started.
Myer was a young man from Vienna. He spoke broken English and we became quite friendly. One day he agreed to take me to a staged circus at the Rivoli cinema if I promised to stay for the film afterwards. When the black and white gangster film got going, I became so scared that I badgered him to take me home, which, after a short while, he did. ‘It’s the last time I take him,’ he muttered to Mum, annoyed. ‘Too late to go back now!’
‘Shouldn’t have made him do that,’ said Mum afterwards. ‘He’s an orphan and a refugee as well.’ When war broke out Myer volunteered for the army and I don’t know if he survived – I still feel guilty about that film show.
I often wondered what a ‘crisis’ was but, as it seemed that I was the only one who didn’t know, hesitated to admit it. The year before, following Hitler’s annexation of Czechoslovakia, there had been a ‘crisis’, written in large black letters on the front page of my father’s preferred paper, the News Chronicle, but nothing had happened. So, despite the headlines and adults’ talk, as long as it remained a ‘crisis’, I supposed there wasn’t going to be a war.
For we kids of the Tenter Streets that year’s holiday time carried on much as before: playing knock-down ginger on the doors in the surrounding streets and occasionally getting a cuff round the ear if anyone caught us. Sometimes we’d gallop round to Aldgate High Street in pairs with string harnesses or play rounders with a tennis ball. The only traffic danger came from plodding horses with carts heading for the Co-op depot at the end of our street.
One highlight of that cool summer before the outbreak of war was an old, turbaned man coming round with a large wooden box, ringing a small bell and calling, ‘Indian toffee! Indian toffee!’ With our ha’pennies we would buy newspaper twists of the sticky sweet and sit on our mums’ scrubbed doorsteps trying to make them last.
During most summer holidays, we spent a week or two in Southend or Westcliff, on the Essex coast, at a kosher boarding house. Mum was always moaning at the prices they charged and the poor service, Jewish landladies being like any others – but more so. She would have settled for a week at a non-kosher, cheaper place but Dad wouldn’t consider it.
Evacuation and the war came suddenly – in that order. Until the end of August 1939, the school summer holidays were like any other. Then, a few days before we were due back for the new term, Mum started taking me to school. We left home very early in the morning. I’d just turned eight and until then I’d known only one five o’clock, the one that signalled teatime. Now I realized there was another, which happened long before I was ready to get up. After a snatched early breakfast, my mother hurried me through the grey, almost silent backstreets of the East End.
‘What’s being evacuated?’ I asked, not for the first time and trying to keep up with her while playing my habitual game of avoiding the cracks in the pavement – treading on them brought bad luck.
‘Going away somewhere in the country.’ She sighed, her face drawn. She had already told me that, if war came, the school would be sent to the countryside, but otherwise she seemed to know little more than I did.
If she did know more, she wasn’t letting on and probably for good reason. My parents had been through the First World War, Dad with the Labour Corps in the hell of Ypres, Mum dodging the Zeppelin bombs falling on the East End and the docks. Everyone said it would be much worse if it happened again.
In the late 1930s, as Hitler occupied Czechoslovakia and threatened more, and Britain appeased, the screening of the 1936 H. G. Wells film The Shape of Things to Come – which predicted a catastrophic second war in Europe – heightened fears. I wasn’t allowed to see it and, despite my mother’s insistence of ‘not in front of the children’, the horrific impression it had created soon percolated down to us kids through the adults’ comments and worried faces.
My classmate, Gerald, had seen the film, sneaking into the Troxy Picture Palace in Mile End Road with his elder brother. He enjoyed scaring the rest of us stiff with half-remembered scenes of massed flights of bombers, heaps of smoking rubble and poison gas. Lanky Sid Harris, one of my best friends – sharp nose with a shock of fair hair – said that Gerald was exaggerating to make an impression. But within a year I had experienced the first two and was living in constant fear of the third.
Evacuation. It had taken some months for its significance to sink in: that my schoolmates and I would be sent away from our parents, and that it would be quite some time before we came back. Meanwhile, we and our teachers would be a tiny island in the midst of a sea of country folk, many of whom had never met a Londoner – and certainly not a Jewish one.
Inside the tall, grey-brick building of Buckle Street Infants’ School off Leman Street, instead of the usual lessons in sums and writing, or painting, or singing with our teacher at the piano we read, drew or played Snakes and Ladders and Ludo. During those days in school at the end of August, while we waited for a decision from the local education authorities, the teachers made sure we were quiet and occupied, or left to doze, and that we were attached to our luggage, coats, gas-mask boxes and food parcels, ready to move off at a moment’s notice.
Miss Alice Pizer, our headmistress, was a short, compact woman, with white hair neatly tied back in a bun and tortoiseshell glasses hung about her neck. She was the epitome of organized calm in the face of potential chaos. She would come in and talk quietly to my class teacher, her younger sister, Esther, their foreheads furrowed. Esther Pizer was taller than her sister with a lovely calm face, wavy brown hair and soft dark eyes. The Pizers were of that generation of women who, with their prospective husbands under the mud of Flanders or seriously disabled, had little chance of marriage or family and became the nurses, teachers and welfare workers who held society together between the wars.
For two long mornings we sat doing little, and each afternoon we trooped home again. On the morning of Saturday, 2 September, I felt sure that, after a few hours of hanging about, I would soon be home again. That day, however, was different. On Friday, 1 September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland. Britain and France gave him an ultimatum to withdraw. And that changed everything.
On that third day at school – a Saturday, no less – the first sign that something was brewing came when we were labelled. One by one we were called over to the teacher’s desk to have a sealed brown envelope bearing our name and initials tied to our jacket or coat lapel. The teachers each had one, too, and small groups of curious children – mainly girls – ran from one to the other trying to find out their first names. Neither let on: the informality of war had yet to surface.
It must have been around midday when the signal came. Like many other children, I’d fallen asleep on the polished woodblock floor of the classroom. When the younger Miss Pizer woke me, my first thought was that we were being sent home again. ‘Come,’ she said softly, as she leaned over me. ‘We’re really going away now.’
‘You mean we’re not going back home like yesterday, Miss?’
‘No,’ murmured Miss Pizer, ‘not this time. Come.’
My stomach turned. Suddenly I was anxious. How would Mum know we had gone? Who would tell her? When I didn’t come home that afternoon, like I had on the previous days, she’d think I’d been knocked down by one of the lorries rumbling down to Wapping Docks. Mum was always worried about my crossing Leman Street. And we were going to travel on a Saturday as well – Shobbos! What would Dad say about travelling on the Sabbath?
The classroom grew noisier and noisier, with everyone shuffling and chattering. I stood up, put on my jacket, raincoat and cap, then reached up to the window ledge for Mum’s bright blue sugar-paper bag of food packed for the journey that no one had really expected would take place. Long barley-sugar twists stuck out of the top, glowing like gold in the sunshine coming through the wired-glass windows.
Then everyone was moving and I was swept along in the crush, through the double doors and down the wide stone staircase – a noisy, chattering river carrying me with it.
‘Looks like we’re really off this time, Ronnie.’ I grinned at my best friend as we bumped against one another on the stairs.
‘’Bout blinkin’ time an’ all,’ said Ronnie, his ginger hair sticking out in all directions.
‘Know where we’re going?’ I asked.
Ronnie shrugged. ‘A long way out in the country, my dad says.’
Immediately I pictured thatched cottages, milkmaids and cows in the fields, like in my storybooks.
Down in the playground, the whole school was assembling, everyone shouting and being hustled into lines by the teachers. I’d never experienced anything like it and just let myself be pushed into place. I felt a hand grip my arm.
‘Here!’ It was Rita, four years older than me and at a different school. ‘Come here. Get in line with me.’ What was she doing here? Having a bossy sister around was the last thing I wanted, especially as none of my friends was saddled with one.
In a long column, four abreast, we wound out of the school gates between the tall, smoke-grimed warehouse walls of Buckle Street and into bustling Leman Street, the teachers scurrying back and forth, trying to keep us in line. Since Rita was the eldest she was put at the front and I had to be with her, my classmates taking the mickey, giggling and pointing.
Rita was lugging our huge brown suitcase with one hand and holding the school banner with the other. I had a rucksack on my back and clutched the paper food parcel tightly to my chest, the string of the gas-mask box cutting into my shoulder. A week or two previously we’d had gas-mask drill in class, giggling at the farting noise the air made as it pushed past the side rubbers when we breathed out, never imagining it might be something we’d need to know for real.
As we neared Aldgate High Street several mothers, alerted by the East End bush-telegraph, began to arrive and run alongside us. Some were calling out, others crying. Anxiously I looked for Mum but couldn’t see her. Suddenly Ronnie’s mother appeared and pushed a small brown-paper package into his coat pocket.
‘I’ve got enough food already, Mum,’ he protested.
Mrs Marks pinched his cheek. ‘You can never have enough,’ she replied. Then, patting his head and mine, she drew back and was lost in the crowd. I was relieved that she had seen me: Dad and Mr Marks worked in the same tailor’s shop. At least he would let Mum know I had gone.
Near Aldgate East station, shoppers and shopkeepers stood in doorways, and people leaned out of upstairs windows, all gawping at our long, chattering crocodile. At the front strode our headmistress with her umbrella and bulging leather briefcase – a Pied Piper leading the children out of the city.
‘Say goodbye,’ a voice called from a window above a shop, laughing. ‘You may never see them again!’
At Gardiner’s Corner – the busy junction with Aldgate High Street and Commercial Street – we stopped at the kerb. It was where, playing the devil at a quiet moment in the traffic, we used to run out to place a ha’penny on the tram tracks. After a tram had rattled past, we’d dash to pick up the same coin, now hot and squashed. Today, at nearly midday, heavy traffic was thundering by in both directions: would we ever get across?
A policeman appeared alongside the headmistress and spoke briefly to her. Then he strode into the road, his helmet barely visible amid the cars and lorries. Thrusting a white-gloved hand into the air, he blew on his whistle and – like Moses stretching his rod over the Red Sea – everything came to a halt.
Lorries, cars and buses backed up in a gigantic traffic jam. Bus drivers leaned out from their cabs, grinning and waving, as we hurried across the highway, stepping over the tram lines. We were like the Children of Israel crossing the Red Sea, this time fleeing from the armoured chariots of the modern Pharaoh with his black moustache and red armband, who threatened to come over the English Channel, along the Thames and up Cable Street. I was sure he would come up Cable Street because that was where Mosley’s Blackshirts had tried to march.
One Sunday afternoon a few years previously, Dad and my brother Arnold had marched off at lunchtime ‘to stop the Fascists’. Mum cautioned me to stay at home and, to make sure I did, she told me to sit on the front step and forbade me to move.
Opposite our house was the rear yard to the Co-op depot in and out of which, every weekday, shaggy-fetlocked horses drew heavily laden carts. Unusually, that Sunday the gates were wide open and inside there were lots of mounted police and a few Black Marias. With growing curiosity I had sat and watched the coming and going all that lunchtime.
When I went out again later, I was amazed to see ambulances and police vans unloading dishevelled officers, many with bloodstained white bandages round their heads and arms in slings. Who would dare to attack a policeman?
That evening, Dad and Arnold had returned with a few neighbours, all cock-a-hoop, telling us how the dockers had joined the Jews in fighting the police, who were protecting Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirt marchers. It went down in history as ‘The Battle of Cable Street’.
Arnold was eight years older than me, with a square face and wavy brown hair. By the age of fifteen, he had already left school and was working at the Houndsditch Warehouse. Pre-war, it was tough for a working-class lad to continue studying. He had a good head for figures, and had he been a bit younger, the 1944 Education Act would have given him the opportunity to go to grammar school. Arnold was a champion swimmer. He spent the last part of the war in the Royal Navy, the only Jewish matelot on his ship, and astonished that at least half of the crew couldn’t swim.
Now as we crossed the high street, it seemed ages before we reached the far side where, standing under the blue canopy of Aldgate Station, I turned to look back. The policeman’s white glove had disappeared and the traffic was moving again.
By the time we all trooped into the station booking hall, scores of parents had arrived to say goodbye. I looked back to see if Mum had come but the barriers were closed. All I could see was a mass of puffy red tear-stained faces pressed against the gates, through which came a chorus of names, with ‘Goodbye’ and ‘God bless’.
As if fearful that the barriers would give way, ticket collectors and police had linked arms to push back against the weight of the crowds, the forest of arms, hands and fluttering handkerchiefs. It was a sight I would never forget. I just hoped Mum wasn’t caught up in the crush.
Rita took my hand and hurried me down the steps to the Metropolitan Line platform where a train was already waiting – a special train, just for us.
After much pushing and shoving, I found myself in the train’s restaurant car, which seemed really posh. A whistle blew and, as we drew away, I wondered again where we were going. We rumbled through Baker Street, emerged from the underground tunnel into the daylight and sped past Wembley Park, where rich Uncle Sam lived. At Harrow on the Hill we had to get off but only to change trains: that was as far as the Metropolitan Line ran at the time. Again, I was jostled amid the noisy crush of children while anxious teachers tried to exert some kind of control. Soon, a steam train pulled into the platform and there was another mad rush – everyone wanted to grab a window seat.
I wondered how long the train journey would be. The furthest I’d ever been was to Southend and never without Mum. I stared out of the smoke-grimed window at the sunlit green countryside, passing through stations with strange names, like Moor Park, Sandy Lodge, Chorleywood and Chalfont St Latimer, then a deep white chalk cutting in the hills. At that point, lulled by the gentle rocking of the train, I fell asleep.
I remember dreaming of a long, dark tunnel at the end of which was a brilliant blue light. I asked Mum why the light never came any nearer and, as she leaned forward to reply, the train jolted to a halt and I woke up. ‘Come on, sleepy,’ Rita said. ‘We’re here.’
I rubbed my eyes and yawned. ‘Where?’
Rita dumped the rucksack on my skinny knees, then pulled our case from the overhead rack. ‘Don’t know. We’ve arrived, that’s all.’
I couldn’t understand why she was being so ratty. Rita was a few inches taller than me and her straight brown hair was usually cut in a bob with a fringe; she wore a coloured slide on one side. She had long black eyelashes and always looked determined. Later, as a teenager, she never lacked for boyfriends. While I was generally in rumpled shorts and jacket, she was always neatly dressed – that day in a pleated skirt, navy-blue jumper and white socks.
Through the window, I saw a black asphalt platform and, on the wall, a railway poster. No station nameplate. Two older boys rushed through the carriage, treading on my feet. I glared after them.
‘Watch out, you lot!’ I yelled.
One turned. ‘Get a move on, dozy, or you’ll be goin’ back again.’ It was Sammy Rosen, short and podgy, the class bully. It wouldn’t be the last time we clashed.
I yanked my cardboard gas-mask box out from under the seat and hitched the rucksack onto my shoulders. Then I glanced up at the luggage rack. The blue paper bag had gone!
‘Here.’ Rita held it out to me. ‘Hang on to it this time.’ Clutching it to my chest, I peered inside, checking that the magic barley-sugar sticks I’d almost left behind at Harrow were still there. Mum had said they’d give me special energy for the journey.
Out on the platform, I was still wondering where we were. At the far end, the engine puffed, sending steam into the narrow strip of blue sky between the station canopy and the carriages. The guard – a short, burly man in blue serge – strode down the edge of the platform, flicking the heavy varnished doors closed with his wrist. The brass handle jumped as it latched with a sharp clunk.
The engine whistled, there was a hiss of steam, and shouts echoed along the platform. ‘Stand back! Stand back!’
The carriages jerked forward and began to slip past with ever-increasing speed. Finally, the guard’s van flashed by, the guard staring wide-eyed at the jumble of children and luggage spread across the platform.
With the train gone, the station seemed strangely quiet, but before the hubbub could renew, the headmistress spoke:
‘Now, then.’ A pause. ‘Listen carefully!’ Another pause. No one moved or spoke; it paid to keep quiet when the headmistress was speaking. She was hidden by the crowd but I could picture her as if she was right in front of me: brown tailored costume, beige stockings, hair swept to a bun at the back of her head and those tortoiseshell glasses.
‘Take all your luggage,’ she continued, ‘and make sure you don’t leave anything behind. No pushing when we move off. There is ample time!’
We set off and I was carried along willy-nilly up the steps and across a bridge. The rucksack pulled at my shoulders. The gas-mask box dug into my ribs. And, by the time we lined up again on the far platform, my raincoat was rucked up on one side, socks were round my ankles and I was sweating.
Once more, Rita was chosen to lead the column and carry the school banner. I had to line up with her, my friends teasing and giggling. Rotten old Sammy and his cronies jeered.
At that moment, across the tracks, I saw, at last, a large blue and white nameplate: Aylesbury. In the days before dual carriageways and motorways, Aylesbury was remote and unfamiliar to an East End kid. It could have been anywhere. ‘Aylesbury ducks! Aylesbury ducks!’ I heard someone chuckle, but I had no idea what they were talking about.
Out in the cobbled station yard, three red-faced men, with fair hair and broad leather belts pulled tight under bulging bellies, were heaving sacks of coal onto a cart. They straightened up and stared as we filed past, reminding me of the carters outside the Co-op depot in South Tenter Street, even though the latter were short and dark-haired, in frayed jackets and peaked caps.
Across the road, there were large houses with driveways. I glanced up at my sister. ‘I thought we were going to the country.’
Rita sighed. ‘How should I know?’ She took my hand again. ‘Must be the nearest railway station, I suppose.’
Our long crocodile wound along the street as local people stood in small groups and stared. Rita was holding our white oilcloth banner. Painted on it, in red and black, was ‘Buckle Street Jews’ Infants’ School. London. E.1.’
Everything around me was so different from our grey-black houses at home – wider roads, tiled roofs, red-brick houses, trees and garden hedges. The people looked different, too. Taller and ruddy-cheeked. Still, I consoled myself, we were from London, the world’s biggest and best city, capital of the British Empire, which coloured half the countries in my school atlas red. London was the centre of the world. Not like this out-of-the-way place.
A sleek brown pony trotted past, pulling a two-wheeled trap. I thought again of the Co-op delivery drays parked in our street, with their huge shaggy-maned carthorses, each leg bigger than my whole body. As they munched from their jute nosebags, we would dare one another to dash under their huge, sagging bellies. Once a horse had turned and taken a nip at my hair, sending me tearing through our front door to cry in my mother’s lap, and wonder why Arnold couldn’t stop laughing.
Even though he was eight years older, Arnold and I generally got on well, apart from one time when I had been looking through his stamp collection. I must have been about seven. Admiring the colours of some of the stamps, I’d stuck them on the windowpane to see the light through them. How Mum stopped him beating the life out of me I’ll never know.
Soon we approached the centre of the town. The traffic noise increased – it was almost as loud as in London – and we came to a large square. It was crammed with red, green and orange buses, some standing, others entering or leaving, and everywhere there were crowds of children with harassed teachers.
While we waited to cross, two old ladies in long coats and black hats looked us up and down. ‘Deary me,’ muttered one. ‘Such poor little mites and so far from their mams.’
‘Yes,’ tutted the other. ‘There’s a sad thing, tha’s for sure.’
I didn’t hear any more – I didn’t want to. As we crossed the road, the brown envelope tied to my lapel blew up into my face and my eyes misted. No longer did I feel the proud Londoner, come to show them all what was what. I was just another little nipper, on my own in a strange town full of funny people. My mum and dad were a long way away, far beyond the hills we’d passed through in the train just before I’d fallen asleep.
Feeling lost, I gripped Rita’s hand tighter and my mind spun back to the anxieties of the past months, Dad and my uncles talking of war, ‘crisis’, air raids and Hitler. I glanced up at the sky, wondering whether the war had started while we were on the train. Would the Germans bomb London on the first day? Where would Mum and Dad take shelter? And what about Granddad Ziyder? He was very old and wouldn’t be able to run to the shelters.
As I pictured his white beard and soft grey eyes, I remembered the penny I’d borrowed, the penny that had caused such a fuss. I never had gone round to apologize, like Dad said I should – there’d been no time before we were told to wait in the school every day, packed and ready to go. Now I wouldn’t be able to for a long time. What would Ziyder think of me? Dad had been angry but Ziyder hadn’t seemed to care. I’d have to wait till the war was over to give it back – and how long did a war last?
Rita’s sharp tug at my hand brought me back to the present. We’d crossed the road and were standing on one side of the square. At the end there was a tall, rectangular church tower, and along the other two sides, rows of red-roofed houses and shops. It was as crowded as Petticoat Lane on a Sunday morning.
Lines of schoolchildren stood everywhere, some in smart blazers with blue and white stripes, or grey with red piping and caps to match. Most were just like us in navy-blue raincoats or grey jackets, carrying suitcases, rucksacks and cardboard gas-mask boxes – and all with a brown envelope tied to their lapels.
Tall men in grey suits, holding manila files, hurried between the different groups, leading them this way or that and urging them onto buses. As soon as one bus left, a new one eased into its place and another school started to get on. And the noise! Adults calling, children shouting, engines roaring and belching smoke – today we’d call it ‘organized chaos’. It was all part of the huge effort to move tens of thousands of schoolchildren out of the cities and into the countryside.
I was so busy watching everything that I didn’t notice that our school, too, had started to board. Someone tapped my shoulder. It was my teacher, Esther Pizer. ‘Up you go,’ she smiled, ‘with the others.’
I jumped onto the rear platform and ran up the steps to the top deck. The ginger mop of Ronnie Marks poked up from the front seat. He turned and grinned, buck teeth like headlamps.
‘Wotcher, David. Here. Saved a space for you.’ I dumped my rucksack under the seat and sat down with a thump. We bounced up and down together, giggling and waiting for our pals, for all the gang to be together.
‘Seen Sid and Alfie yet?’ I asked.
Ronnie shook his head. ‘No. Not since the station.’
I looked back towards the stairs. ‘Hope they get on our bus.’ We bounced up and down again.
The top deck filled, but Sid and Alfie still hadn’t come. Suddenly Ronnie jumped up and pointed.
‘Look. There they are!’ Down below, most of our classmates were getting on the bus in front. ‘And Sandra’s with them,’ he shouted. ‘With Miss DeWinter. All of ’em!’
Seeing Sid and Sandra together made me think for a moment of the previous year. Sid and I had been wondering what girls had between their legs where our ‘things’ were. So we devised a plan to take little Sandra for a walk behind the old garage. We’d ask her to show us hers if we showed her ours – and each give her a penny as well. Which seemed only fair.
Sid did the negotiating and she agreed to come behind the small garage near Prescott Street. All went well, until at the last moment she changed her mind and said no. Laughing, Sid snatched up her dress but she jumped back then ran away, crying her eyes out.
‘Can’t trust girls to keep a promise,’ Sid moaned. I agreed. And we went to buy sherbet fountains instead. So we never did find out – at least not until our teens. However, Sandra told her mum and Sid was called into the headmistress’s office the next day for a dressing-down. Somehow, I got away with it, which Sid felt was unfair. It dented our friendship for a while.
Ronnie jumped to his feet. ‘Look. They’re leaving first!’
I pressed my nose to the window as their bus drew away. ‘What a cheek! Rotten luck.’
‘Not fair. Not fair,’ sang Ronnie. ‘They’ll beat us to it!’ We thumped on the front window but no one turned to look back as the bus accelerated, swung out of the square, and was gone.
I stared through the side window. Below, the headmistress was waving her arms and arguing with one of the tall men. He held up a thick sheaf of papers and was shaking his head. I nudged Ronnie.
‘Cor,’ he said. ‘Ain’t never seen Miss Pizer so cross, have you?’
‘Not like that.’ Reaching down, I pulled up my knee-length socks. ‘Wonder what it’s about.’
A moment later the man turned and strode away. The teachers looked at each other and then, frowning, slowly boarded our bus. At that the driver, who’d been standing to one side, hopped into his cab, started the engine and we moved out.
Outside the town, the road divided and we took the left-hand fork. Ronnie and I hunched forward, urging the bus to go faster – we wanted to catch up with the others.
‘Can’t see ’em,’ said Ronnie eventually, sitting back.
‘Me neither,’ I murmured. I picked up my blue bag, broke off two pieces of barley sugar and gave one to Ronnie. As we crunched and scanned the empty road ahead, I wondered what had become of the other bus with our friends on it. It was one of the many separations from familiar people and places that would dog me throughout the war years. One after another, the people and things I had once taken for granted would disappear, leaving me feeling abandoned and having to fend for myself.
On the top deck the two of us sat silently, gazing out over the late-summer scene. The bus brushed against the hedgerows of the narrow, winding road beyond which a patchwork of small orchards and fields stretched away to the horizon. Rows of brown corn-stooks arranged like tiny tents stood across yellow stubble.
As we stared, a cloud crossed the sun, bringing a long black shadow that crept like a giant caterpillar across the landscape. Was there really a war? Everything still seemed so peaceful.
I leaned close to Ronnie. ‘D’you think the war’s started yet?’ I whispered, not wanting the two older girls behind us to hear and think I was ignorant.
‘Nah. Course not!’ Ronnie never whispered.
‘How d’you know for sure?’ I asked, rubbing my nose.
‘Cos they’ll blow sireens, my dad says.’
‘What d’they sound like?’ I persisted.
‘Well. Er …’ Ronnie circled his hands in the air. ‘Summat like a hooter. A big car hooter.’ He didn’t seem very sure.
‘P’r’aps like a ship’s foghorn,’ I said, remembering the Eagle Line steamers on the Thames as they hooted for Tower Bridge to be raised, their huge red paddles thrashing the water to foam and their yellow funnels belching smoke. We often stood by the Tower of London – our playground – watching the ships taking East Enders on trips to the seaside at Southend and Margate and reading out their names on the bows. Just a year later those ships took part in the Dunkirk evacuation when the Laguna Belle, a ship much loved by our parents, was sunk.
Soon, tiled roofs showed through the trees and, gears grating, the bus slowed and turned into a narrow lane. A low branch skidded along the roof and we ducked. It was probably the first double-decker that had ever come that way. After more twists and turns, it braked to a halt. Abruptly, the noisy chatter ceased and everyone pressed their noses to the windows. Had we arrived? And where were we?
Esther Pizer’s voice floated up the stairwell. ‘Now, then. Come down slowly. And remember to bring everything with you.’
Joining the crush of blue raincoats, suitcases and gas-mask boxes, Ronnie and I clomped down the stairs and out onto the tree-lined roadway, gathering by a wide gateway that led into a large, gravelled courtyard. At the back stood a single-storey, pebble-dashed building with a steep, tiled roof.
The bus drew away and we spread across the road. I looked up: the sky was the bluest I had ever seen it. No aeroplanes; not even vapour trails. Nothing. There couldn’t be a war. Yet when we’d left London that morning, workers had been filling sandbags outside Leman Street police station.
By the wooden gatepost stood a large black notice-board. Painted on it was a white cross and beneath it: ‘St Mary’s Church Hall’. The words and the cross made me hesitate: what would my father say? Despite everyone pushing past me through the gateway, my legs wouldn’t budge and I stood stock still, hands clenched. Dad was not only strictly religious but his dislike of anything Christian – probably stemming from his childhood in Tsarist Russia – must have been instilled in me.
I suppose I would have been stuck there all day had not my sister grabbed me by the arm and hustled me across the courtyard, buffeted on all sides by chattering children. I shook her off and we squeezed through a double doorway.
Inside, rows of low benches, like we used for PE, stretched across the rear half of the hall. After settling ourselves along them, I noticed two women in dark green uniforms sitting behind a trestle table piled high with papers. On their shoulders were the letters ‘WVS’. Did the ‘W’ stand for war? My teacher, Esther Pizer, stood to one side of them and our headmistress on the other. She was talking to a tall, red-faced man with a white moustache. Next to him stood a balding man in a black jacket and white clerical collar – I tried hard not to look at him. In the far corner by the door a large group of women, some in coats, others in aprons and dark dresses, were staring at us and muttering to each other.
I sat between my sister and Ronnie. ‘Are they the ones who are going to look after us?’ I asked.
‘Dunno,’ said Ronnie. ‘Don’t much fancy that one with the sharp conk, do you?’