For the Duration - Chapter Two

Chapter Two
LEARNING to ADAPT

The magical aura that surrounded — no, still surrounds — Bampton is clearly not simply to do with the physical entity of the old market town. It must be more than the streets and lanes mapped out in my mind’s eye still, more than the fields and orchards through which I roamed so freely, the house and garden that I knew so well.

When I returned to Bampton in 1939, and settled as an evacuee, it was to renew friendships made in earlier holidays: for some of the village children had adopted us, then, into their own little circles. A fortnight considered objectively is not a long time, but it used to seem like an age to me, as a child on holiday. We had been transported into a vastly different environment, freed from accustomed but somewhat rigid home restrictions, and we went helter-skelter into the business of renewing acquaintance with loved and loving relations, villagers with time to spend on us, and well-remembered walks through fields and woods.

Now, however, it was not a matter of a fortnight stretching ahead of me. It was for ever, so far as I could make out! England was at war with Germany, this much I knew. I had been vaguely aware of the tension following the ultimatum to Hitler to withdraw his troops from Poland. I had heard sirens sounding on that Sunday when war was declared.

The grown-ups were certainly concerned; yes, I knew that there was a war on. But I had not the slightest idea of what it might mean: of the long years of suffering, of the anguish of loved ones parting, of the horror or of the bloodshed. Once again — as in 1914 — “the lights were going out all over Europe”, and all that it really meant to me so far was that I had moved from my South London home to our beloved Bampton.

I, Tony, had moved! I could not know that all over England, all over Europe, virtually all over the world, people were on the move. I did not realize, then, that Cousin Mary was almost sick with worry because her husband, Bert, had already gone from home. I knew that he had left, of course. But I could not know that it would be almost six years before he would be home for good. Fortunately, no one could know that. A kindly countryman, a truly gentle man, contented, and attuned to the seasons, Bert was steadily building up his own small-holding: yet he had joined the Territorials earlier in 1939. As a member of the Territorial Army, he had been mobilized a week or so before war was actually declared.

Bert was home again for a few days at the start of September. I ran my hands over the rough texture of his uniform, examined his cap-badge and greatcoat buttons, gingerly handled his rifle, and was not sure what to make of it all. There were suggestions of romance and adventure in the situation, perhaps, and I experienced a mixture of awe and respect, while at the same time I felt somehow less close to this new Bert. His regiment at first was the Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, as it was for many another local man. Later on he joined the Military Police, and was in Europe from shortly after D-Day until some time after the Armistice. He was a dispatch-rider and, on his motorcycle, he guided and escorted convoys.

As I learned these things later in the war, I found it difficult to reconcile the Bert that I had known with this European version. My Bert wore wellingtons, and a sort of dustcoat. He pedalled around Bampton on an old push-bike, carrying a bucket of eggs as he returned from The Orchard. This was the name of the field that held most of his hen-houses, and still contained a scattering of various apple trees, and a pair of grand old walnut trees.

Whenever he came home on leave, he slipped easily and naturally back into this old role. He would do odd maintenance jobs that had been neglected while he was away: checking the hedges and fences, the state of the chicken coops, the store of feed, and so on. He would express amazement at the extra paperwork that the Ministry had foisted onto poultry farmers.

“Blessed if Oi c’n make un out, Jane.” (Mary was always Jane to Bert). “We should let the bloighters in thur work un out. Nosy boogers that they be.”
“Ooh, Bert, don’t use that language! Whatever have they been teaching you in the army?” Mary’s voice rose and fell in lazy rhythm, whereas Bert’s, for all its rural burr, was more rapid.
“Not how to fill in they darned forms, any rate, m’dear,” and, administering a friendly but firm blow to her rear, he would leave the kitchen to do some more worthwhile job outside. He would be a wonderful comfort to Mary while he was home but, all too soon, he would be off again, and Mary’s loneliness would return.

One morning at the breakfast table, I was shocked into an awareness of what Bert’s absence meant to Mary. Early in the war, two teachers from the village school boarded with us, and on this particular morning I listened and watched as one of them tried to persuade Mary that she should not be worrying.

The familiar staccato “rat, tat-tat” had just accompanied the slithering of the post through the letterbox in the front door. Bills and circulars only. Meryl was insisting that it did not mean anything, that Mary had not received any letters from Bert for a longer period than usual. Of course he was all right! Letters could go astray — he was probably very busy...
“Stop worrying! You have no reason, Mary, to think anything’s wrong. Drink your tea and be sensible!”

Thus the teacher, calm and assured: the voice of authority. She was expecting — or hoping — to get results. But Mary was sobbing. Her voice was agitated, the usually slow and measured tones now jerky and broken, punctuated by sniffs and quiet moans. I felt awkward, and a little frightened.

"For Heaven’s sake, pull yourself together. Whatever will Tony think?”
What, indeed! This was a new situation. I had often been told that “big boys don’t cry” (and knew it to be untrue), but I had not seen a grown-up cry before — certainly not like this, at least. I do not think that I was embarrassed by it, but I was unsure what I should do, and it was disquieting.

Mary was becoming less and less rational, and the more that Meryl reasoned with her, the more distraught she became. I shrank back in my chair at the table, and watched apprehensively, beginning to understand something of the anxiety that had been consuming poor Mary, and was now breaking her up.

“Mary! Stop it, stop being so silly! You’re making me cross!” The more hysterical Mary became, the more forcibly did Meryl attempt to make her take control of herself. She shook her and remonstrated with her, punctuating her words with ever-more-violent shakes. Eventually it had to come: not the classical, hefty slap across the face, but a series of almost apologetic little ones.

I do not know if Meryl’s actions did the trick, or if Mary was just worn out, but it was not long before Mary was sitting on the sofa, with Meryl beside her, a comforting arm around her shoulders. Mary was half-sobbing, half-laughing, but she had regained control, and was dabbing at red eyes and tear-stained face with a handkerchief, and insisting that she was “all right now — leave me — I’ll be all right.”

*

I never again saw Mary give way to her feelings in this way. Her doubts, her fears, her anxieties — they must have been with her still, but they were kept at bay. As the war gathered momentum, women the world over were, of course, faced with the same loneliness and sense of loss while their menfolk were absent. When I think back to those days, I can not recall ever seeing Mary sitting around and moping. She was always busy, and this was surely a major ingredient in the antidote to her worries. The house and garden still had to be managed, as did the poultry business; not to mention her boarders, and the unaccustomed responsibility of children to care for.

We were one small household, learning to adapt to new and — for the adults, at least — often trying circumstances. Bampton was filled with such households. The population pattern had changed remarkably, for Bert was only one of many men who had enlisted or been called-up, and I was only one of many evacuees in the village. A school from an East London suburb had descended holus-bolus on Bampton, and more than a few housewives were now struggling to cater adequately for, and amicably with, their new families.

By the end of the first month of the war, I was a pupil at Bampton school — in Meryl’s class, which I rather liked — and Rene and Lorna were at Witney Grammar School. There was a school bus, but they often cycled the six miles each way, in those early days. My parents and young Barbara were back in London, my father continuing his work as a London City Missionary, in Deptford.

The so-called “phoney war” was under way: and great changes had come into the everyday lives of countless ordinary families.

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