The buttoned cushions were warm and the air in the carriage still and close, despite the open window. When we finally set off, the motion stirred up a breeze, which helped a little. On the wall opposite me was a poster of the Scarborough seafront, and I spent most of the journey remembering the carefree childhood holidays I had enjoyed there with my parents in the early years of the century: another world, another time. The rest of the trip I glanced out of the window, beyond the scum-scabbed canal, and saw the urban industrial landscape drift by: back gardens, where some people had put in Anderson shelters half-covered with earth to grow vegetables on; the dark mass of the town hall clock tower behind the city centre buildings; a factory yard, where several men were loading heavy crates onto a lorry, flushed and sweating in the heat.
Then we were in the countryside, where the smells of grass, hay and manure displaced the reek of the city. I saw small, squat farms, drystone walls, sheep and cattle grazing. Soon train tracks and canal diverged. We went through a long noisy tunnel, and the children whimpered. Later, I was surprised to see so many army convoys winding along the narrow roads, and the one big aerodrome we passed seemed buzzing with activity.
All in all, the journey took a little over two hours. Only about ten or eleven children were shepherded off at the small country station, and I followed as they were met and taken to the village hall, where the men and women who were to care for them waited. It was more civilized than some of the evacuation systems I’d heard about, which sounded more like the slave markets of old, where farmers waited on the platforms to pick out the strong lads, and local dignitaries whisked away the nicely dressed boys and girls.
I went up to the volunteer in charge, an attractive young country woman in a simple blue frock with a white lace collar and a belt around her slim waist, and asked her if she had any record of an evacuee called John, or Johnny, Critchley. She checked her records then shook her head, as I knew she would. If I were right, Johnny wouldn’t be here under his own name. I explained my problem to the woman, who told me her name was Phyllis Rigby. She had a yellow ribbon in her long wavy hair and smelled of fresh apples. ‘I don’t see how anything like that could have happened,’ Phyllis said. ‘We’ve been very meticulous. But there again, things have been a little chaotic.’ She frowned in thought for a moment, then she delegated her present duties to another volunteer.
‘Come on,’ she said, ‘I’ll help you go from house to house. There weren’t that many evacuees, you know. Far fewer than we expected.’
I nodded. I’d heard how a lot of parents weren’t bothering to evacuate their children. ‘They can’t see anything happening yet,’ I said. ‘Just you wait. After the first air raid you’ll have so many you won’t have room for them all.’
Phyllis smiled. ‘The poor things. It must be such an upheaval for them.’
‘Indeed.’
I took deep, welcome breaths of country air as Phyllis and I set out from the village hall to visit the families listed on her clipboard. There were perhaps a couple of hundred houses, and less than fifty per cent had received evacuees. Even so, we worked up quite a sweat calling at them all. Or I did, rather, as sweating didn’t seem to be in Phyllis’s nature. We chatted as we went, me telling her about my school teaching, and she telling me about her husband, Thomas, training as a fighter pilot in the RAF. After an hour or so with no luck, we stopped in at her cottage for a refreshing cup of tea, then we were off again.
At last, late in the afternoon, we struck gold.
Mr and Mrs Douglas, who were billeting Johnny Critchley, seemed a very pleasant couple, and they were sad to hear that they could not keep him with them for a while longer. I explained everything to them and assured them that they would get someone else as soon as we had the whole business sorted out.
‘He’s not here,’ Johnny said as we walked with Phyllis to the station. ‘I’ve looked everywhere, but I couldn’t find him.’
I shook my head. ‘Sorry, Johnny. You know your mum’s got a speech impediment. That was why I had to go back and ask her exactly what she said to you before I came here. She said she told you your father was missing in action, which, the way it came out, sounded like missing in Acksham, didn’t it? That’s why you came here, wasn’t it, to look for your father?’
Young Johnny nodded, tears in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t understand why she didn’t come and look for him. She must be really vexed with me.’
I patted his shoulder. ‘I don’t think so. More like she’ll be glad to see you. How did you manage to sneak in with the real evacuees, by the way?’
Johnny wiped his eyes with his grubby sleeve. ‘At the station. There were so many people standing around, at first I didn’t know… Then I saw a boy I knew from playing cricket on the rec.’
‘Oliver Bradley,’ I said. The boy whose name Johnny was registered under.
‘Yes. He goes to Broad Hill.’
I nodded. Though I had never heard of Oliver Bradley, I knew the school; it was just across the valley from us. ‘Go on.’
‘I asked him where he was going, and he said he was being sent to Acksham. It was perfect.’
‘But how did you get him to change places with you?’
‘He didn’t want to. Not at first.’
‘How did you persuade him?’
Johnny looked down at the road and scraped at some gravel with the scuffed tip of his shoe. ‘It cost me a complete set of “Great Cricketers” cigarette cards. Ones my dad gave me before he went away.’
I smiled. It would have to be something like that.
‘And I made him promise not to tell anyone, just to go home and say there wasn’t room for him, and he’d have to try again in a few days. I just needed enough time to find Dad… you know.’
‘I know.’
We arrived at the station, where Johnny sat on the bench and Phyllis and I chatted in the late afternoon sunlight, our shadows lengthening across the tracks. In addition to the birds singing in the trees and hedgerows, I could hear grasshoppers chirruping, a sound you rarely heard in the city. I had often thought how much I would like to live in the country and, perhaps when I retired from teaching a few years in the future, I would be able to do so.
We didn’t have long to wait for our train. I thanked Phyllis for all her help, told her I wished her husband well, and she waved to us as the old banger chugged out of the station.
It was past blackout when I finally walked into our street holding Johnny’s hand. He was tired after his adventure and had spent most of the train journey with his head on my shoulder. Once or twice, from the depths of a dream, he had called his father’s name.
I could sense that something was wrong as soon as I turned the corner. It was nothing specific, just a sudden chill at the back of my neck. Because of the blackout, I couldn’t see anything clearly, but I got a strong impression of a knot of shifting shadows, just a little bit darker than the night itself, milling around outside Colin Gor-mond’s house.
I quickened my step, and as I got nearer I heard a whisper pass through the crowd when they saw Johnny. Then the shadows began to disperse, slinking and sidling away, disappearing like smoke into the air. From somewhere, Mary Critchley lurched forward with a cry and took young Johnny in her arms. I let him go. I could hear her thanking me between sobs, but I couldn’t stop walking.