Ellie (6 page)

‘I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received and that consequently, this country is at war with Germany.’

Ellie was stunned. She knew, of course, as everyone did, about Germany invading Poland. Before she left London everyone had been talking about it. But since arriving here, her own problems had taken precedence and the Gilberts hadn’t discussed any further developments in front of her.

Horrified gasps came from every quarter of the church and Ellie heard a sob from someone behind her. The vicar held his hand up to silence everyone, indicating that Mr Chamberlain was still speaking.

‘I know you will all play your part with calmness and courage. Report for duty in accordance with the instructions you have received. It is of vital importance that you should carry on with your jobs. Now may God bless you all. May he defend the right. It is the evil things that we shall be fighting against, brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution, and against them I am certain that the right will prevail.’

The wireless was switched off, and at once a babble of voices broke the stillness in the church.

Ellie turned to Mr Gilbert. ‘Does that mean they’ll start bombing now?’

There was no time for an answer. The vicar mounted the pulpit again, urging everyone not to panic and reiterating all that the prime minister had said.

‘I look to you all to think of your country,’ he said earnestly, looking from face to face. ‘Today I ask you to remember that each one of us will be tested in the months to come, not just the men expected to fight. From now on we must each rise above self-interest and pool our resources for the common good. The harvest this year is more important than ever before. We have evacuee children in our midst who must be cared for. I beg each and every one of you to give of your best, to offer help and solace to those in need. To maintain the black-out rigorously and follow the instructions you’ll be given in the event of an air raid. But above all, I ask you now to pray. For all our brave men who are prepared to give their lives for England. For God’s safe deliverance for all of us.’

The vicar’s words were still ringing in Ellie’s ears as she stepped outside the church porch between Mr and Miss Gilbert, suddenly aware that this was a momentous day, one she’d remember for the rest of her life.

St John’s Church was in a narrow street which led down towards the station. Next to it was a small school. There was no churchyard as such, just a few steps down to the pavement. No one was making tracks for home – they were all standing around in groups chattering nineteen to the dozen but otherwise everything looked so normal. A clear blue sky, bright sunshine, the terraced houses opposite just as tranquil as they’d been for the last hundred years. Was it possible that all these people might have to use those hideous gas masks slung over their shoulders? Would German planes really come flying over here and drop bombs?

Despite the knowledge that Britain was now at war, Ellie still had the same objective she’d set out with this morning: to get herself moved away from the Gilberts’. To her delight, she spotted the large woman who’d met them at the station and led them to Corn Exchange. She was standing across the road, outside a gentleman’s outfitters with bow windows, chatting to another couple of women. Even at a glance she was clearly a figure of authority. Her wide-brimmed pink hat wouldn’t have been out of place in Regent Street, and her matching dress and jacket stood out amongst the more soberly dressed women.

Mr Gilbert paused to speak to an elderly man with a large stomach and a red face.

‘What about you, Amos?’ the old man asked. ‘Will you be called up? Or do you reckon you’ll have your work cut out here?’

Ellie glanced at Miss Gilbert. She seemed confused, clutching her prayer book to her thin chest like a shield against expected Germans, staring into the middle distance.

Ellie grasped the opportunity and slid through the crowd in the road towards the woman in the pink hat.

‘Excuse me, miss.’ Ellie tugged at her sleeve.

‘Yes?’ The woman turned to Ellie with a look that showed her displeasure at having her conversation interrupted.

‘I’m Ellie Forester,’ Ellie said breathlessly, one eye on Miss Gilbert, less than fifteen yards away. ‘I’ve been put with Miss Gilbert.’

Suddenly a terrible noise broke out, a wailing sound which made everyone look around in astonishment, covering their ears.

‘Bombs,’ someone yelled. ‘They’re coming!’

Ellie was rooted to the spot in shock. All around her people began to run, some back to the safety of the church, others bolting for their homes, dragging children by the hands. She looked up and saw nothing but blue sky, and at the same time someone pushed her firmly in the back and hissed at her to get in the church.

It was Mr Gilbert who’d pushed her, but once inside he seemed calm. His sister, however, was already cowering in a pew. She had her hands over her head, her face ashen, her lips moving as if gabbling out a prayer.

‘I’m quite certain they are only testing the siren,’ Mr Gilbert remarked, nudging his sister in a gesture that said she should pull herself together. ‘I really don’t think the Germans have got themselves organised this quickly.’

Some of the older ladies looked quite faint with shock. The lady in the pink hat, whom Ellie so badly wanted to speak to, was offering her smelling salts around.

The siren stopped, and a few minutes later a different one wailed out.

‘That’s the “all clear”,’ Mr Gilbert said knowledgeably. ‘You see, I was quite right, they were only testing. But in future, Ellie, you must act as soon as you hear it. Next time it could be the real thing.’

Ellie wasn’t concerned with next times. She’d lost her opportunity to speak to the lady in the pink hat and she had a horrible feeling she would be stuck with Miss Gilbert for several days before she got another chance.

‘You can sit in the living-room and write to your mother this afternoon,’ Miss Gilbert said as she sluiced the kitchen sink round.

They had eaten roast beef for dinner, followed by apple pie and custard, but though it was the biggest meal Ellie had eaten here, she was still hungry. She’d seen Miss Gilbert pour some thick dripping into a stone basin and her mouth had watered imagining it spread thickly on bread.

Mr Gilbert had gone into the parlour, a room at the front of the house which Ellie had been told to keep out of, and for the past hour she had helped with the washing up and yet more cleaning of the kitchen.

Ellie brightened up at the prospect of writing home. It seemed simple: she’d tell her mother the truth about this place and she’d come and get her.

‘You’re a good cook,’ Ellie said, hoping to ingratiate herself with the woman, if only to get some peace until she left. ‘We ’ardly ever ’ave roast beef at ’ome.’

‘I wouldn’t expect a child from the slums to eat such things.’ Miss Gilbert pursed her lips and looked pointedly at a gravy stain on Ellie’s dress. ‘You are a very slovenly girl. Perhaps when you’ve spent a few hours scrubbing clothes, you’ll learn to be more careful.’

Ellie sat at the small table in the living-room scribbling away, happy enough now that Miss Gilbert had left her alone.

It was a small, bare room overlooking the yard. Just two wooden-armed easy chairs either side of an ugly fireplace, a wireless on a shelf and the table she was using by the window. The bookcase offered no entertainment, only a set of encyclopaedias, a large Bible and three or four recipe books. As in all the rooms she’d been into, the walls were dun-coloured. Any design on the paper had long since faded, and the only picture was of the King and Queen at the coronation.

Writing to her mother wasn’t as good as talking to her, but it was close. She poured out all that had happened since she arrived, the slaps, the hunger and her conviction the woman was barmy. But spite wore thin after a bit and she moved on to describe the place.

‘I’m writing this in the living-room,’ she wrote, smiling as she thought of it. ‘I don’t know why they call it that as it’s as dead as the bodies in Mr Gilbert’s coffins. They only come in here to listen to the wireless and the chairs are placed just so. The window looks on to the yard and there’s a row of headstones and a few urns out there which give me the willies. I think the bodies are in the room across the passage which she said I mustn’t poke into. There’s a funny pong coming from it. But I’ll try and get a peek before I leave. You should see the parlour, Mum! It’s packed with the kind of old furniture like in the props room at the Empire. But I’m not allowed in there either, except to dust. The only place I kind of like is Mr Gilbert’s workshop. It used to be a stable when he had a horse-drawn hearse and it’s still got old bits and pieces hanging up. It smells lovely in there, all different kinds of wood, but I suppose it’s a bit spooky with all the coffins standing up on end. Mr Gilbert told me today he’s going to start me trimming coffins tomorrow. Is this what you meant about me learning something useful?’

Ellie started to laugh to herself, imagining her mother reading it to Marleen, for a moment forgetting how awful it was here. She moved on, explaining how Miss Gilbert watered down the milk and measured the loaf with string, and her conviction the woman gorged herself in private because two or three times she’d seen her with crumbs round her mouth.

‘Please let me come home, Mum,’ she finished off. ‘I’m no good away from you. We should be together.’

Finally finished, she folded up the three pages, put them in the envelope and sealed it down. She was just addressing it when Miss Gilbert came in.

‘Can I go and post it?’ Ellie asked. ‘Mum gave me a stamp.’

‘Go and get it then,’ Miss Gilbert said, half smiling, as if pleased Ellie had kept quiet for so long.

Had Ellie been used to devious adults she might have wondered why she was allowed upstairs suddenly. But all she could think of was being allowed out on her own and the chance of doing a little exploring.

She scampered up the stairs, found the stamp she’d been given and even stopped for a moment in the bathroom to dab away the gravy stain on her dress. But as she ran back downstairs and saw Miss Gilbert, her stomach turned over.

The woman was sitting down, the envelope ripped open on her lap. She was reading the letter.

Ellie didn’t stop to think as she lunged forward and grabbed it from Miss Gilbert’s hands.

‘Oih, that’s private,’ she said. ‘You ain’t got no right to read it!’

‘It’s just as well I did.’ Miss Gilbert snatched it back, ripping it into shreds. ‘How dare you write such slanderous lies?’

‘There ain’t no lies,’ Ellie said, her legs turning to water. ‘You know there ain’t.’

Miss Gilbert moved quickly, slamming the door and standing in front of it. ‘You minx,’ she said, eyes narrowing behind her glasses. ‘If you think you can laugh at me behind my back and make up stories, then you’re mistaken. Hasn’t it occurred to you your mother sent you here to get rid of you?’

‘No she never,’ Ellie said indignantly. ‘She sent me away to be safe.’

For a moment there was silence. Ellie was shaken by her own stupidity at not anticipating that Miss Gilbert would find a way to read the letter, but she was also cut to the quick by the woman’s last remark.

Miss Gilbert was also shaken, not only by the girl’s startlingly incisive, well-written letter, but the knowledge that if this got out in the town she might find herself in trouble.

Grace Gilbert was what her own father called ‘a tortured soul’. Even as a child she had never been quite right, a strange, solitary child who hid herself away talking to imaginary friends. Old Mrs Gilbert had blamed a severe attack of impetigo when Grace was eighteen for most of her problems. It may indeed have been the start of her obsessive cleaning, but hardly explained her maniacal fits of temper, or her spiteful and vicious nature. But her father must have been keenly aware of his daughter’s instability, for when he finally died he left the house and business to Amos with the proviso that his son was to take responsibility for his sister.

She was forty-five, three years older than Amos, and over the years she’d become more and more cranky, spiteful and bitter. She had no friends and no interests aside from her home and reading this letter had somehow stripped away the illusion she’d clung to that she was better than other people.

‘I wanna go ’ome,’ Ellie said. She was frightened by the strange intensity in Miss Gilbert’s eyes, but she was also just a little ashamed of what she’d written. ‘I’m sorry for what I said about you, it weren’t very nice. But I’m missing my mum.’

Miss Gilbert thought quickly. She had decided to take in an evacuee first and foremost to raise her standing in the church. Just last week the vicar had told the whole congregation that it was their Christian duty. When she discovered she would get ten shillings a week too, that put a seal on it. She desperately wanted to punish the girl, but she knew if she lashed out now, so soon after the girl’s arrival, the billeting officer would soon get to hear of it and before long it would be right round the church and town. Besides, Amos approved of the girl and he might take her part. Perhaps it might be better to overlook this incident for now. The girl was at least useful. There was more than one way of killing a cat.

‘We’ll get one thing straight.’ Miss Gilbert wiggled her finger at Ellie, but she softened her voice as far as she was able. ‘We all have to make sacrifices for the war effort. My brother and I took you in to do
our
part. You must do yours by following our rules. Now you’ll sit down again and write your mother a proper letter, telling her how pleasant it is here. Do you want to make your mother miserable?’

‘Course I don’t,’ Ellie agreed, although she felt like crying. ‘But she wouldn’t like me to make out I was ’appy ’ere when I’m not.’

Miss Gilbert sniffed. She had picked this girl because she was fat and plain, assuming she’d be docile and suitably grateful too. But her appearance was deceptive. The girl was sharp as a razor, inquisitive and bold, and she’d need watching continuously.

‘What have I done to you?’ Miss Gilbert rolled her eyes alarmingly. ‘You have a nice room, you’re fed. Clearly, from what I’ve read, you are a very greedy girl, and that’s why you’re so fat. Am I wrong to give you a suitable diet?’