Without a newspaper or book to read, Sam's occasional customer seemed to be concentrating on the glass of brandy before him on the small round table. He was certainly lost in thought. He had a half-smile on his face.
•
Maurice Stafford was hardly aware of the coppery-gold liquid in the tumbler. His fingers encircled the bowled glass and he leaned his elbows on the tabletop, but although he gazed into the brandy, his thoughts were on other things. Like the old man who sat by the pub's warm fire, he was sifting through his memories, remembering a different era…
Most of the evacuees had been collected by the LCC (London County Council) from meeting points at schools, orphanages and town halls all over south London and brought by coach (or charabanc, as they used to be called, Maurice reflected with a faint smile) or bus to Paddington railway station, while a few had been taken there directly by fretful and remorseful mothers. Hundreds of children were gathered on the station's great concourse, all with identity labels attached to collars or coat buttons, gas-mask boxes hung around their necks, a few possessions in cardboard suitcases or brown paper parcels tied with string. Ministry of Health and Board of Education officials were in charge of the mass exodus of children, and they were fraught with disorganization and noise.
Maurice stood and waited with nine others from the same orphanage. None of them were crying like many of the evacuees, because they had no family from which to be parted. In truth, the ten of them regarded the evacuation as an exciting adventure. At the last moment, another boy joined them, hurriedly brought there by two members of the RCM (Refugee Children's Movement). Documents were checked by officials before the five-year-old boy, Stefan Rosenbaum from Poland, was formally handed over. After the first evacuee-laden trains had departed the station, the eleven orphans were herded towards an already crowded carriage and put on board. One of the older orphans, a girl called Susan Trainer, had immediately taken charge of the overwhelmed Polish boy, holding his hand tightly and calming him with soft words he did not understand.
After a long journey, the eleven orphans were taken off the train by their adult guardians at a town none of them had ever heard of in North Devon, and from the small rustic station a yellow bus carried them to a house in Hollow Bay called Crickley Hall, where they were cheerlessly greeted by their new custodians, Augustus Theophilus Cribben and his sister Magda.
Cribben was openly furious at the addition of the Polish refugee, while Magda was plainly hostile towards him. They had not been expecting the boy. The guardian, who had accompanied the children from London, explained that it had been a last-minute arrangement. Stefan's parents had been shot when they tried to flee Poland with their son, and he had been brought over to England by other escapees and turned over to the authorities. The boy was shy and spoke very little English.
Cribben had gone through the relevant papers concerning Stefan's status with a fine-toothed comb before reluctantly accepting the boy into his care. He had stated his disapproval of the situation forcefully and the temporary guardian looked relieved to get away at last.
On that first day, and despite the long journey the children had made, the harsh regime began. They were immediately ordered to wash themselves, two at a time in the house's one bathroom. A waterline was marked in the bathtub of three inches rather than the government's water-saving limit of five inches. The tepid water was only changed twice during the bathing and Magda supervised it from a chair on the landing outside the bathroom, issuing orders through the open doorway. Even Maurice, who was considerably bigger and older than the other boys, had to share the bath, as did Susan Trainer, who at eleven was the eldest girl. After the communal bathing, it was nit-seeking time. Magda carried out the searching with a metal comb. Then everybody's hair was cut short, the boys having a pudding basin placed on their heads to set a line for the barber's clippers that Magda used, the hair up to that line so short that the lower scalp and back of the neck was exposed to the air. The boys looked ridiculous and the girls fared not much better—they had to have short bob-cuts that just covered their ears. As well as a toothbrush each and a spare set of underwear, the LCC had provided the orphans with black plimsolls, which they were ordered not to wear inside the house (which would be for most of the time, their only outings being the Sunday-morning visit to the local church) so that they would not leave scuff marks on the floors and stairs, nor make undue noise.
After a meagre meal of mincemeat and boiled potatoes (this was to be their staple diet from that day on) they were sent up to the dormitory, which was a capacious converted attic where iron cotbeds were set out. There was no excited chatter between the children as they undressed for bed. At the orphanage, Susan had been allowed to tell bedtime stories, but not here in Crickley Halclass="underline" the children were instructed to go to sleep immediately after Magda had switched off the lights.
They were an austere twosome, Cribben and his sister Magda, and they made it clear from the start that they would tolerate no dissension or misbehaviour from the children in their charge. Ominously, Cribben had used his split-ended cane the very next morning when Eugene Smith, nine years old, was late down for the assembly in the hall (the orphans had to present themselves washed and dressed in two lines at precisely six thirty every morning). Breakfast would follow after prayers in the big drawing room, which also doubled as a classroom. Eugene hadn't appeared 'til the rest were all seated at the two long trestle tables that were used as desks during school time, and Cribben had flown into a fearsome rage. The nine-year-old was made to bend over in front of the others and Cribben administered six hard strokes of the cane.
Swish-thwack! Maurice had never forgotten that sound. Neither had he forgotten Eugene's screech of pain. Swish-thwack! Six times. By the end of the caning, Eugene had been reduced to a blubbering wreck.
Cribben and Magda's very presence was intimidating—no, it was downright scary— and Maurice knew he had to ingratiate himself with them as quickly as possible. He was not only big for his age, long and gangly, but he was also smarter than the other children and certainly more cunning. He did not relish that cane leaving red stripes across his own backside and he determined to do anything to avoid it.
As luck would have it, his chance to gain favour with the Cribbens came the very next day.
The parents and baby brother of two of the evacuees, Brenda and Gerald Prosser, had been killed one night in the Blitz when a German bomb had fallen on their home (the father had been on leave from the army at the time, prior to being shipped overseas). Their parents' bedroom, in which the one-year-old baby also slept, had been totally demolished, while Brenda and Gerald's bedroom had hardly been touched. With no relatives to take them in, the sister and brother had been sent to the orphanage. That had been almost three years ago, and ever since the deaths of their parents and sibling, they had feared the nights, afraid that a bomb might drop and this time kill them too. So they had taken to sleeping, sometimes together, beneath their beds. The punishment of their friend Eugene had traumatized them so much that on the second night at Crickley Hall, Brenda had taken the blankets (there were no sheets) from her own and Gerald's bed and laid them on the floor under her bed. They had slept the night there, cuddling together. Maurice, who was a natural sneak, had informed on them the next day. As punishment the Prossers had been caned across the palms of their hands, six strokes each, with Gerald collapsing in wails and tears after the third stroke. Magda had to support him and force his arm straight so that Cribben could finish the chastisement. Both children were left with livid red weals on the hands and their punishment noted in a big black book that Cribben kept.