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5th Chapter of my story

Beetley, near Dereham,Norfolk; glad to come home, sleeping in the subway.

For the first time in my life I was separated from my brother Brian. Norfolk is where the steel entered my soul. No-one to share thoughts with, have jokes with, or play with. The only light in my life there was the dog , a Collie, kept in a kennel outside in all weathers, and the 10 month old baby Keith, whom I adored. Norfolk is a very flat county, and the wind blows across unrelentingly. I think this makes Norfolk people very hardy, not to say hard. When I arrived, I was told to put my "daps" on, and when I questioned what "daps" were, was told not to be cheeky. It turned out they were plimsolls. The broad Norfolk accent was at first IMPOSSIBLE to understand, and it seemed to me that all they wanted me for was to skivvy. My only joy was to be allowed to feed the baby with groats in the morning,hold him, and take him out walking in the pram. At weekends, I was sent out in all weathers after breakfast with the baby and a bottle of milk for Keith, and told "and don't come back until tea time". So I wandered the country lanes and the pine woods on my own, finding fairy dells where the grass was mossy and soft to sit on, and making up fairy stories in my head. Or sometimes I would take a book which I had begged off a neighbour. I would go round people's doors and ask if they had any old books. "please, have you any book I could read?"... and they would say, "no, but I'll look in the attic" From up in their attic they would produce old mildewed, yellowed old books which had been there for generations, I think! I would read ANYTHING, usually grown-up books like "Peerless Women" or "Florence Nightingale" or "Mill on the Floss" (a heartbreaker, a real sob). I was starving for any sort of intellectual interest. Auntie's daily habit was to walk to her mother's house on the other side of the village every afternoon with Keith in the pram, where she met her sisters for a cup of tea. They had dug out a very old adult boneshaker of a bike (I coud'nt reach the pedals) which I was made to use to cycle to school, about 2 miles away. After school, I was expected to pedal home, clean the fire out, re-lay it, make my bed, and feed and collect the eggs of 24 chickens, then light the fire and get it going into a blaze before auntie arrived home. I was 10 years old. I really earned my living with the Woodhouses.
The school was run by just one Headmistress, who stood at the front and walked back and forth between the Infants, Junior and Seniors, all in the same room. We were just handed old text books and told to do "adding up". This was so boring that I read under the desk most days, and no-one challenged this, no-one noticed WHAT I did. When the time came for myLondon County Council (LCC) exam, the test papers were sent down from London. As I was the only London child there, I took the exam sitting in a chilly schoolroom on a Saturday morning, with a teacher hogging any heat that may have reached me from the coal fire. The teacher stood in silence hugging the fire for the two and a half or three hours that the exam took, never saying a word, (I was not allowed to talk) and I can remember my fingers being so cold I could hardly hold the pen. I took the exam completely on my own, since it was under the auspices of the London County Council; the village children were under a different authority. I could make no sense of what the papers were about, and needless to say, failed my exam.
I was hungry ALL the time I was in Norfolk, and even though they kept chickens, the eggs were allocated to the Government; so when Auntie made batter pudding it was made with flour, water and bi-carbonate of soda, and tasted awful. I was told to get up in the dark, in mid-winter (I had no gloves) at 5.30a.m., while the neighbours were still in bed, and steal their Brussells sprouts out of their field; and on other occasions, get up early (and keep quiet) and go to another neighbour's field, dig out sugar-beet from the hard and frozen ground, to feed auntie's rabbits, which were kept in hutches outside, bred for their fur. My fingers froze without gloves, and I suffered painfully as they thawed out, but the Woodhouses were not concerned with that. They also caught moles and killed and skinned them, then stretched the skins out and pegged them, to dry for their fur, to make extra cash. My fingers were frozen many a morning, and as they thawed out it was agony, so I cried with the pain. Their answer was "Aw, don't be soft!" or "you'll die after it" said with guffaws of amusement. The other chore, which I hated because I often fell of the bike and hurt myself on the frosty roads, was that every Monday morning, I had to get up at 6 a.m.and cycle over to grandma's at the other side of the village, while balancing two heavy bags of dirty washing on each handlebar. The bike would go all over the road and wobble about with the weight of the washing, as it was far too big and heavy for me to control, and I often came off on the way there, and had to be very careful on the way back, and then go on to school. And again, without gloves in the frost, my fingers nearly fell off with cold.. The females of the family gathered every Monday to do the washing together. We did'nt have school dinners in Norfolk, and the only food I was ever given daily was Marmite sandwiches, without any margarine - or a potatoe, on which I carved my initials and placed in the cinders of the enormous open fire at the school. Lots of kids did this, we would eat the hot spud with relish, even though we had no filling. The "Marmite sandwiches", without margarine, were so repetative and boring that to this day I detest Marmite.
One day, my dad visited. It was my 11th Birthday. Joyously happy, I jumped around as I tried out my bright shiny new Fairycycle, which I had begged my dad for, and dreamed about so long. He had also brought me a very pretty velvet hairband, with flowers on, which suited my jetblack shiny hair perfectly. While dad was there, everyone made an admiring fuss of me. But as soon as he had gone home, Mrs. Woodhouse turned to me and said "Rene, you don't need that new bike, we've already given you one, give it to Cissy, she needs one". Cissy was her little neice. "no" I said"its my birthday present". Deep disapproval of my selfishness finally made me give in and let Cissy have it. The next thing was "that hairband does'nt really suit you, your not pretty enough for it, it would looke much better on Cissy, would'nt it". Morally blackmailed again, but with a deep sense of injustice, I allowed the admittedly beautiful Cissy, with her golden ringlets, to have my hairband. I did'nt tell my dad, because I knew he had enough to contend with. I think that after seeing the bombing and what my dad had to do, I had developed a deep sympathy for him, which made me grow up perhaps sooner than I would have. So I stayed silent. But I cried, long and volubley, into the evening washing-up chore, cried for my brother and my home and my friends. One day, I found I had an itchy rash all over my stomach, which was diagnosed as Scabies. For this, I was taken to Dereham Clinic, where two enormous rough women dunked me up to my neck in a warm sulpher bath, leaving me on my own for quite a while, which was supposed to cure me. It must have, as I got better. By now, I had had enough of Norfolk, I never settled there. It had changed me from a carefree, sharing and giving child, into a bitter, haughty one, who despised all around me for their behaviour towards me. One day, auntie asked me if I wanted to go to Church, and to their surprise, I eagerly said "oh, yes,so please". So every Sunday I would run, with hope and pleasure in my heart, cross country, through roughly ploughed fields, short-cutting in my need to get to Church; then I would settle contentedly between grown-ups, and sing, with the best of them, the dear familiar old hymns. It was as though I was among my own, the nearest thing I could get to home, and it made me very happy and safe for a short while.

When I did not think I could take any more of the homesickness I felt, my dear mother arrived to take me home. When I left, everyone stood at the gate and sang "Goodbyeee, don't you cryeee, there's a tear, Rene dear, in your eyeeeee". Believe me, I was not crying. I gave them a funny look and skipped joyfully home alongside my dear mother. When we arrived back in central London my mother said "Rene, its too dangerous to get through London tonight, the bombing is heavy, we will have to sleep in the underground". So, mum and I descended the steps into the subway.
continued...next...
Sleeping in the underground

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