For the Duration - Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven
TERRY’S CHOCOLATES

IN THE SAME WAY that marbles or fivestones would become fashionable overnight, only to drop out of favour just as suddenly a week later, perspex “jewellery” became the craze. We just had to wear a ring made out of perspex from the window of an aeroplane. To fashion such a ring, one needed approximately one square inch of perspex, a poker, a file and some sandpaper. The poker, having been heated in the fire in the lounge, melted the perspex quite easily, and the basic ring shape — albeit squarish outside — would start to form.
The smell that this initial stage produced was offensive to all but the craftsman. It is in my nostrils as I write, pungent and evocative: the sort of smell that is soon throughout the house. Then it was a matter of persistent use of file and sandpaper, an excellent test of patience and perseverance. Show-offs somehow managed to set beads into their rings, but I was content with a more modest, austerity model. I may have lacked staying power; or it may have been that I was attuned to the times, and aware of a certain necessary economy of style in fashions. The former possibility is the more likely.
One afternoon, we left our bicycles outside Brize Norton railway station, and followed the line where it skirted the perimeter of the aerodrome. As well as a rather morbid interest in crashed aeroplanes, we had keen appreciation for whole ones, whether airborne or on the ground, and we had heard that some aircraft were housed outside the aerodrome. This was why we trudged along the sleepy branch-line, knowing that trains were unlikely to disturb us, and pleased that no official from the station had challenged our right to be there.
The heat shimmered over the track ahead of us as we balanced on the metal lines, or strode from sleeper to sleeper, or kicked our way through the screenings in between. The airfield was on our right, spreading into the hazy distance, and a row of hangars lay just ahead. Everywhere seemed deserted. Only our little gang was abroad that afternoon.
The expedition was a greater success than we had expected. To the left of the line, partly concealed by hedgerows, and draped with camouflage netting, were several single-engined planes, including a Hurricane. To our delight, there was nothing to keep us away: no fences, no locked gates, and no sign of a guard. In a few moments, we were caressing the smooth surface of the Hurricane’s fuselage with awe and suppressed excitement. We clambered onto the wings, and peered into the cockpit. We inspected the markings, and tried to swing the propeller. Soon we forgot to be cautious, and scampered noisily about until our examinations were complete.
Back on the railway line, boasting of our daring, we made ready to return to the station. Beforehand, however, thinking to have a closer look at the hangars, we went a little further along the track. Emboldened by our recent success, we helped one another through the strands of a barbed wire fence, and stood in a group just inside the airfield’s boundary. Still we saw no one. And no one, apparently, had seen us.
Three or four aeroplanes were parked in a line beyond the first hangar. They were close up against the hangar wall, one behind the other, facing the perimeter fence. Large planes, these were; bombers, massive compared to those we had just come from, and they dwarfed the little party of adventuring schoolboys confronted by them.
“Look at the size o’ this bloody girt wheel!” exclaimed Jimmy. “Anyone know what planes they be?”
We were not sure. We were used to silhouettes: either static black, outlined starkly on a white page, or the real thing, trundling or hurrying overhead. The little Hurricane had been easy. Newspapers and magazines were forever depicting the famed chariots of the Battle of Britain gladiators — Spitfires and Hurricanes — and their profiles were quite familiar to us. To be suddenly among large aircraft, however, was a different matter.
It was not long before someone realised that a sort of trapdoor in the underbelly of the fuselage of one of the planes could be opened. A few heaves and grunts and helping arms later, we were all gathered inside the bomber. We eyed one another gleefully. This was hard to believe, but it was happening: we were actually inside an aeroplane! We had found the aircraft, and let ourselves in. What was even better, there was no one to evict us.
We sniffed at the newness of the interior — an artificial, unfamiliar smell — and fingered the shiny upholstery of the seats, and the cool smoothness of the wall panels. Items of gear lay about, and some drawing instruments were on the little square of desk where the navigator sat. We moved about the plane, each trying the various crew positions. The tail-gunner’s turret was a solitary place: even safe on the ground, it was much too far from the centre of operations. And, lying on my belly where the bomb-aimer would lie, I was exposed for the world to see.
At the time, none of us expressed surprise at our being where we were. One move had led naturally to the next: we saw the bombers, we were able to get inside one of them, so we explored. The reliving of the experience, in our conversations and in our private worlds, would come later.
Thinking back on this excursion down the Station road to the aerodrome, I can quite realise why Mary thought that I was making up a story to impress her, or to exercise my young imagination. I like to think that the lack of security — which gave us such a splendid day — was a rarity for the R.A.F. in 1941. Our intentions had been totally free of spite, but those of Fünf of ITMA fame, or of his real-life colleagues, would have been less innocent. And what capital Lord Haw-Haw could have made of the situation!

*

Mary cared for me for two full years. Meryl was there to guide me (with an occasional push or prod), through school — which, on the whole, I found easy — and she undoubtedly added weight in support of Mary at times when I wanted my own way. But it was to Mary that I turned for comfort, or for company. She was always there to listen to the breathless and disjointed accounts of my jaunts and adventures. She seemed to know when and how to respond: whether to cluck in sympathy, or to “Ooh!” and “Ah!” in amazement.
An exasperated scolding when I had once again allowed water from the swol1en brook to lap over the tops of my wellingtons. Or annoyance when it was discovered that the bottom half of the coal-scuttle had been filled with coal dust from the shed, because that was quicker than breaking up more coal into lumps suitable for burning. (Did I really think that no one would notice?) Such was the scale of my wrongdoing; and punishment matched it.
Before the war, we automatically spoke of “Mary and Bert”, and both contributed to that special feeling that the very name of Bampton evoked in us. Bert was fond of “Harry’s children”, and he used to observe our unworldliness with amused tolerance. We, in turn, warmed to his hearty bluffness, and we respected his countryman’s wisdom.
But the war that rewarded me with such a satisfying taste of rural life took Bert from his adored “Jane”, and from his labour of love, his smallholding. For six years, the army claimed him: for six years, Mary was without her “Bertie”. He became less distinct, more of a background figure, for me. Even so, home on leave in civvies, he would be his old teasing self, cheekily baiting Meryl or me, and grinning widely as he came in for his midday meal, easing his feet out of his wellingtons and demanding loudly: “Roight-ho! Jane, m’dear! What’s for dinner, then, old girl? Can’t hang around all day, work to be done!”

*

My best friend in London — Peter Lee — had been evacuated to Devon, as had most of Waller Road School’s pupils, and I have wondered how such a move would have affected me. Would the same intensity of feeling have been associated with that experience, as exists where Bampton is concerned? Or had I not been an evacuee, but remained in London, how would I have coped with the Blitz?
My cousin, Bill, only a couple of years older than me, tells of how he would slip out at night from his home in Brixton to work for the A.R.P., making his way to the site of some grisly incident, and worming through the wreckage seeking survivors. The men welcomed his slight build and youthful agility. Bampton and Brixton were as poles apart, and my boyish doings cannot compare to the drama and danger that Bill knew.
Has the ordinary become magnified in importance because it happened in Bampton? Or does Bampton glow more brightly in my mind because so much was new to me — so much that I could not readily have experienced in London?
The first winter of the war was severe. Packed snow lay on the streets of Bampton, and older folk found the footpaths hazardous. Sybil Smith, one of Mary’s teacher-lodgers, left the house one morning to go to school, slipped going through the gate, and fell heavily. A gash behind one ear, caused by the corner of a step, confined her to the house for a week.
Youngsters were less inconvenienced, and found new pleasures in the unusual circumstances. We built slides in the playground at school, and on the largely deserted whiteness of the streets. Each boy tried to impress the others with his dexterity on the glass-like surface of the slides, which gradually lengthened and became more challenging. Plenty of tumbles resulted, but no real damage to young bodies, resilient, and prepared for a fall.
The lake on Colonel Colville’s property froze so solidly, that a sort of “Open Lake” was declared. Forgotten ice-skates came out of cupboards, and the local populace sported en masse until well into the night. The moonlight reflecting off the ice lit an astonishing scene: the young and the old, the outgoing and the staid, all gained confidence as they became assured of the safeness of the ice. Arm in arm, the elderly Misses Booth glided around the lake; regally, they gazed ahead, seeing a winter of long ago. Family groups dared the ice together, mutually supportive in their slow progress around the edge.
That winter, local ponds remained frozen for many weeks, and iced over floodwater abounded in the fields around the village. We skimmed small stones across icy surfaces, enjoying the musical skittering sound that they made. We would test the strength of the ice cautiously before venturing upon it, for our headmaster had lectured us effectively on the terrible consequences of ice giving way, with graphic accounts of young lives trapped in icy water.
If there had been, earlier in my boyhood, freeze-ups similar to that of 1939-40, I had not noticed them. Colonel Colville’s lake made a mockery of the duck pond in Telegraph Hill Park, our local park in London. It was in Bampton, too, not London, that I lay in bed one morning idly watching the ceiling, and gradually becoming aware that the damp stain there was spreading. The thaw was welcome, but not the burst pipes that accompanied it; although the frantic mopping up and the strategic placing of buckets and bowls on the floor enlivened that particular morning. The chimney-fire was another bitter-sweet occurrence, that same winter: at once entertaining, embarrassing, and potentially disastrous.
And carol singing. Only once did that pastime approach for me its romantic, Dickensian ideal. Yes, it was at Christmas, 1939. A Sunday-school group met at the vicarage one clear night and, with snow crunching underfoot, and snug in scarves and balaclavas, we sang our songs of joy to the stars. Through the village we moved, judiciously picking our audiences (captive in their homes), and ending at the Manor. Fellowship and good cheer really did exist for us that night.

*

My stay in Bampton was nearing its end, while I, characteristically, seem not to have realised this, placidly accepting one day after the next. The night raids on London ended in May 1941, and the drift back to the capital began again; my mother and sisters, however, would continue to live in Lew, at least until the end of the year.
The formality of the series of examinations that marked the end of my primary schooling surprised me. Only three pupils from the village school were allowed to sit, and we all passed. There was some discussion at home as to which school I should now attend. The choice was between Witney Grammar, which Rene and Lorna went to, and Burford Grammar, a boys’ school with an excellent reputation. Both were about six miles from Bampton. A convenient bus went to Burford, and I should be able to travel with two other local boys, and so it was decided: Burford would see to my secondary schooling.
Burford was a mellow, peaceful old market town, on the edge of the Cotswolds, but I did not get to know it very well. On about my third day at Burford Grammar School, I had a message for my form master.
“What do you mean, boy? I have just issued you with your books for the year — and you have your locker. What do you mean, you’re going?” His eyebrows arrowed upwards in perplexed indignation.
“I’m going to school in London, Sir.” I was hesitant, but still persisting.
“Then what are you doing here? Answer me, boy — why on earth did you come to Burford, if you’re not staying? You are a foolish fellow! What on earth are you doing here?”
The other boys were sniggering in their desks, while I squirmed before the master at his table. Our conversation was getting nowhere. I could repeat only that I was going to school in London, and the master soon dismissed me with a frustrated wave of his hand: “Go away, boy, do! I can’t think why you ever came here.”
I could understand his surprise, if not his annoyance. At home, we had barely come to terms with the news that a public school in London had offered me a scholarship. It was promptly accepted, and everyone said nice things to me about my achievement. My father was proud of me, and I basked in the warmth of his pleasure. He gave Meryl a large box of Terry’s Chocolates — my father’s invariable choice for special occasions — as a token of his gratitude for her work as my teacher. A very welcome gift, in 1941!

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.