Daughters of the Mersey (16 page)

Amy soon understood how the different enterprises at Coed Cae Bach dovetailed together. They kept two cows to supply the house with milk, Bessie made butter from the cream and the skimmed milk was fed to the calves which were fattened and sold for beef.

They kept two pigs to fatten on the buttermilk, one of which was sold and one killed and cured for home use. There were flocks of hens and fifty or so sheep. Jack had fenced off half an acre in the little field and a neighbouring farmer ploughed it for him in exchange for his labour
at harvest times. Jack planted all the potatoes, carrots, swedes, onions and cabbages they would need.

In the garden in front of the house they grew salad vegetables, lettuce, shallots, radish and a row or two of scarlet runner beans and garden peas. They had gooseberry and blackcurrant bushes, a thriving bed of rhubarb and the orchard produced apples, pears and always a plentiful crop of plums and damsons. For the most part they ate what they produced.

Bessie sold her surplus butter and her eggs, and the money she earned bought the things she couldn’t produce, the sugar, soap, candles and paraffin oil.

At mid-morning, less than a week after Amy had arrived, Auntie Bessie pointed out a figure walking up the field towards them. ‘That’s the postman,’ she told her. ‘He could be bringing you a letter from your mother.’

Bessie had suggested Amy use another of the stamped addressed envelopes she’d been given and write to her mother again. This time Amy had told her about the cows and about Marmaduke.

‘The postman will take your letter,’ she said. ‘You won’t have to wait until Saturday to post it.’

‘He’s carrying a big parcel,’ Amy said. ‘Could that be for me?’

‘We won’t know till he gets here. It might be for someone else on his round,’ she warned.

But Amy was fluttering with hope. Mum had said she’d send on some of her toys and more of her clothes. She had a pink party frock with a tulle skirt and a satin bodice that had once belonged to June. Amy wanted to have that and she wanted her teddy bear too. She waited, holding her breath, with hope growing inside her
all the time. She met the postman at the gate.

Joy of joys, the parcel was for her. ‘It feels like my birthday although it isn’t,’ she told them excitedly. She couldn’t wait to get it open and they crowded round to see what Mum had sent, but she felt a surge of disappointment when she saw the contents. ‘It’s just my old clothes.’

‘Wellingtons.’ Auntie Bessie picked them out. ‘And warm jumpers and more underwear. These are just what you need.’

‘What I’d really like,’ Amy said, ‘is my teddy bear.’

‘Well, you must write and thank her for the parcel so she knows you have received it, and you could ask her for a pair of strong boots to wear to school every day, they’d last much longer than those shoes.’

Amy was thrilled to find books at the bottom of the box and a bag of boiled sweets, a full writing pad and a packet of envelopes with the stamps already on them. There were three letters folded inside, one was for Auntie Bessie but there were two for Amy. One from Mum, folded round a whole shilling.

The other letter was from June who wrote:

It was Sunday and June had
been told to report to the General Hospital at five o’clock today. She’d told her parents that the time set was two o’clock so that she could meet Ralph after lunch and spend the afternoon in his rooms with him. But she was on edge and the time crawled.

‘Sunday at five o’clock seems a funny time to ask you to start,’ Ralph said.

‘It’s so we can settle in,’ June said. ‘We’ll be allotted our sleeping quarters and collect our uniforms so we’re ready to start tomorrow morning.’

At twenty to five, Ralph walked with her across the park to the hospital gates, carrying her suitcase. It was an awkward goodbye and June was nervous because she was leaving all that was familiar. She mounted the front steps and entered through the rather grand front door. In the entrance hall she found a group of girls all about her own age and was able to relax a little and study them. Three were Welsh, three were Irish and four were from the local area. There would be ten in the new class.

The Home Sister led them across to the nurse’s home and allotted them their rooms. June thought hers fairly spartan to look at but there were radiators which meant central heating when the cold weather came. She’d been measured for her uniform when she’d come for her medical exam and it was piled on the narrow bed waiting for her.

‘Change into your uniforms,’ the sister ordered and held up what looked like a large gauze tray cloth. ‘This is your cap. Bring one with you to the sitting room and I’ll teach you how to fold it.’

They did
as they were told. June felt very strange in the stiff striped dress of heavy cotton.

‘I see you’ve all remembered to bring two tiepins to hold up the bibs of your aprons, and I hope you’ve all brought hair clips or a hat pin for your caps.’ Her eyes went round the group, looking at their hair. ‘Long hair is to be worn up tucked under your cap. Short hair must be short enough not to touch your collar at the back, and must not be all over your face. A fringe is allowed but only if it is cut an inch above the eyebrows.’

Three of the girls were advised to get a haircut. June had twisted her long honey-coloured curls into a French pleat before coming. They had to concentrate hard to fold their caps correctly and when June clipped it on her head it felt anything but secure.

‘You all look like nurses now,’ the sister told them, ‘and in future,’ she looked June in the eye, ‘you will be addressed as Nurse Dransfield. You do not address your fellow nurses by their given names on the ward, it is unprofessional.’

The Sister Tutor arrived and took them to see the school. She told them they’d be spending the next six weeks there from nine until four thirty, but they would have breakfast at seven o’clock with the other nurses and work on the wards between seven thirty and nine o’clock.

‘It is now half past six and time for the first seating at supper, so I’ll take you along to the dining room and wish you goodnight. Do not be late for classes. I’ll see you all at nine o’clock sharp.’

The last thing June wanted was food, but she followed the others and held her plate out in front of the serving counter to receive a portion cauliflower cheese. She found herself seated at a long table between two girls, one from Ireland called Mary O’Leary and
the other from Birkenhead called Doreen Brown.

When they were trooping back to the nurses’ sitting room, June fled to her bedroom to remove her new uniform and lay it out ready for the morning. She pulled on the blouse and skirt she’d come in and ran to Ralph’s rooms, taking great gulps of fresh air as she crossed the park. He was reading his Sunday paper and was surprised to see her. She flung herself into his arms and poured out all her news to him.

‘I hope I’ve done the right thing, the sisters are formidable and much stricter than Mum.’ Ralph swept her into a comforting hug. ‘It doesn’t look as though nursing is going to be a laugh a minute, but it is bliss to be able to run up to see you like this.’

I
T WAS EARLY SEPTEMBER AND
time for the new school year to start. On the first
day, Amy was on edge. Bessie got her out of bed early, cut a sandwich for her lunch and filled a brown sauce bottle with milk.

‘This morning,’ she said, ‘I’ll walk down with you to meet the taxi and see you into it.’ The taxi had to come from town, collecting children on its way. It then had to go a further twelve miles or so along the road to pick up the children from farms further up the valley and get them to school for the nine o’clock start.

‘You’ll be able to find your way home by yourself, won’t you?’ Amy could see Auntie Bessie was anxious about that.

‘Yes,’ she said, though she was nervous because everything was so different, except her green gymslip and blazer with green and gold tie. Her familiar old uniform was something of a comfort.

Before long, a large taxi with several children inside drew up in front of them. The driver called the usual friendly greetings in Welsh as Bessie opened the back door, pushed her inside and waved her off.

The children stared at Amy and fingered her gymslip, but they spoke English to her and alternated between English and
Welsh between themselves. Bessie had assured her she’d meet up with the children that had come from her school but these were all strangers.

The taxi emptied outside the school and the children trooped straight inside, drawing Amy with them to the girls’ cloakroom where they hung up their coats. It surprised Amy to see that each of the girls wore a pinafore over a jumper and skirt and had heavy workman-type boots of stiff unlined leather with steel studs on sole and heel.

One girl was both friendly and pretty and said her name was Glenys. She thought Amy’s sturdy lace-ups were fancy and called them town shoes. She showed her the girls’ playground, a bare patch of concrete with railings round, with the girls’ lavatories on the far side, which stank even more than the one at Coed Cae Bach.

Amy thought they played around for what seemed an age before school began, but eventually a bell was rung and they all trooped into the main schoolroom. The others began to sit down at their desks but the teacher sent Amy on to another small room divided from the main schoolroom by a partition of wood and glass.

Here she was relieved to see the familiar faces of the other evacuees, seven girls and one boy and all about her own age. They were all from her school and some had been in her class.

Miss Cosgrove came over from her lodgings at the manse carrying a large bag in which a Thermos flask could be seen. She told them that Miss Morris, who taught the youngest age group, those between five and seven, had kindly given up her classroom to accommodate them. Miss Morris now had to teach the small ones on the other side of the partition, which meant there were two classes
being taught in the same room.

Miss Cosgrove handed out new pens and exercise books and her lessons were what Amy was used to. She was able to relax.

When school was over, the taxi was waiting outside but it was going up the road and Amy found Glenys and some of the other children walked home rather than wait for the taxi to return. The other children pointed out the wicket gate to her that led up the cwm. Auntie Bessie congratulated her on finding her way home alone. She was setting the table for afternoon tea, but first Amy was sent upstairs to change out of her school clothes. They sat down together to eat bread and butter with homemade jam and cake, together with stewed plums from the orchard and junket and cream.

Amy loved the junket. Bessie told her she would show her how to make it. All that was needed was to fill a bowl with a pint of warm fresh milk straight from the cow and stir in the junket powder which contained rennet and came in flavours like strawberry and banana. It would set as soon as it was cold.

As soon as the meal was over, Bessie brought the washing-up bowl to the table, put the pots they’d used in and tipped hot water from the kettle over them. The washed dishes were lifted out one by one on to a tin tray and Amy dried them.

Bessie refilled the kettle, banked up the fire and said, ‘Time for afternoon milking now. Come and help me look for the cows.’

‘I know where they’ll be,’ Amy said. ‘I passed them on my way home from school.’

‘Yes, if you could bring the cows up with you tomorrow, it would be a
great help,’ she said. ‘It would save me having to walk down to look for them straight after tea.’

‘They’re such big things.’ Amy wasn’t sure about the cows.

‘Cows are gentle creatures, there’s no need to be afraid of them,’ Bessie told her. ‘They wouldn’t hurt anybody.’

‘But will they come when I tell them to?’

‘Of course they will. Here they are, look. You call
hobe
to them.’

‘
Hobe hobe
,’ Amy called weakly. Both cows looked up at her and then their heads went straight down again to tear at the grass.

‘It’ll be easier tomorrow because you’ll be below them. Just give them a tap and push them up. If you’re calling them you need to shout,’ Bessie said. ‘You have to show them you are the boss.’

Amy tried again. They took a couple of paces towards her and paused for more grass.

Bessie let out a growl of irritation and waved her walking stick at them. Slowly they started to lumber up the steep sideland, taking the back way into the farmyard.

‘They move for you because you have a stick,’ Amy told her. ‘I might feel braver if I had one.’

‘Here,’ she said, ‘take this. You follow them. You’ll need to open the back gate to the farmyard to let them in and be sure to shut it behind you. I’ll go back the way we’ve come and open up the cowshed.’

Amy thought it a very risky thing she was about to do. She didn’t think her sister June would want to do it and she wasn’t scared of the dark or of crossing busy roads. Feeling very daring, Amy went up
close to Grumpy and gave her a tap on the back. It made her quicken her pace and lift up her tail to let several steaming pats of manure burst out, just as she had for Uncle Jack.

Amy didn’t feel so brave when it was time to open the gate to the farmyard. She had to pass them to reach it and climbed round in a big circle to do it. By then Bessie had opened the back door to the cowshed and Sunshine led the way straight into her own stall. Grumpy lumbered into hers.

‘There,’ Auntie Bessie said as Amy hovered at the door. ‘That was excellent. Now come on in and I’ll show you how I tie them up.’