almost impossible to read his words. He was welcoming
enough and shook her hand warmly, but he seemed shy and
wouldn’t look her full in the face, which made it even harder
to understand him. When he was followed in by Jenny and
Brian, the other two evacuees, the chatter became impossible
to follow and Judy’s initial optimism faded a little. She
sat looking at the table, scarred with many years of use,
while the conversation flowed about her unheard.
Dinner was toad-in-the-hole with cabbage and potatoes,
followed by rice pudding. Afterwards, she helped wash up
and then Sylvie took her upstairs to show her where she was
to sleep.
The room was the same size as the one downstairs, its
uneven walls distempered in a sunny yellow and with yellow
gingham curtains at the low window. There was a cupboard
in one corner and a chest of drawers. Against one wall were
two bunks, both neatly made with patchwork quilts spread
over them.
‘This is where me and Jenny sleep. My bed’s the bottom
one. But you’re going to sleep in it now, and I’m going to be
on the floor.’ A mattress had been laid under the window. It looked comfortable enough, and Sylvie knelt on it to lean on
the wide windowsill and gaze down into the garden. She
turned after a moment and looked enquiringly at her aunt,
and Judy realised she must have said something.
She pointed at her ears. ‘I didn’t hear you. Say it again.’
But Sylvie shrugged and shook her head, as if what she had
said wasn’t worth repeating.
Judy felt a familiar flash of irritation. This happened time
and time again. People made casual remarks but when they
were unheard, couldn’t be bothered to repeat them. It made
her feel even more cut off - as if she had no choice in what
she was allowed to hear, as if she didn’t matter. It made no
difference that on the occasions when someone did repeat
their casual remarks she thought herself that they weren’t
worth repeating - she just wanted to hear. She wanted to
hear everything - like other people. Like she had before. She
wanted to be able to make up her own mind about what was
worth hearing.
The irritation quickly faded, however. It wasn’t Sylvie’s
fault, and she’d been very good about talking directly to
Judy. She was pointing down into the garden now, saying
something about an apple tree. Judy knelt beside her and
found that she was gazing out into an orchard at the back of
the house. She gave a little gasp of delight.
The orchard contained a dozen or so trees, every one
smothered in blossom. A foam of pale pink and white
seemed to wash like waves on the seashore right up to the
walls of the house, reaching just below the window. Their
scent drifted in through the open window, filling the room
with delicate fragrance. Below them, revealed only in
glimpses, the grass was sprinkled with late daffodils and
Judy saw the cat, Bossy, who had been ejected from his
chair at dinnertime, slumbering in a corner, warmed by
sunlight.
Judy felt a warmth steal over her body and into her heart.
I’m going to be happy here, she thought. It was the right
thing to do. If I can get better anywhere, it will be here.
She gave her cousin a hug. ‘Show me the rest of the
farm,’ she said. ‘Show me everything.’
It was not until she experienced the peace of the countryside
that Judy realised just how much she had been affected by
the terror of the raids on Portsmouth.
For a few days, she just roamed about in a dream. The
weather stayed fine and after she had helped Mrs Sutton to
tidy the bedrooms and wash some of the everlasting supply
of dirty clothes from the children and Mr Sutton, she was
free to go outside and lift her face to the sunshine. Often,
she took a bowl of vegetables out into the garden and sat on
an old chair, preparing them, but more than that Mrs
Sutton refused to allow her to do. ‘You’re here to get built
up, not do housework,’ she said, making her meaning plain.
‘You go for a nice walk. There might be a few bluebells
starting to come out.’
The children were at school in the mornings, and Judy
wandered alone down the lanes, drinking in the scent of the
flowers that bordered the way, and wishing she could hear
the song of the birds. She came to the village and stood for a
moment gazing at the green with its pond, alive with
tadpoles, but turned away quickly when she saw an old man
hobbling her way. She wasn’t ready to meet strangers, who
wouldn’t understand her deafness. On her own, with no
need to strain to hear, she felt herself again.
Arriving at a crossroads, she took a different way and
found herself close to some woods. As Mrs Sutton had
suggested, they were filled with early bluebells just beginning to come out - a sea of misty colour rippling in the
green dappled light that filtered down through the leaves
above. Judy gave a little gasp of pleasure and dropped down amongst them, stretching herself out and breathing in their
fragrance. She turned over and gazed up through the leaves
at the sky. I could be happy in a place like this, she thought.
I could be happy here for ever.
Back in Portsmouth, on the night after Judy left, there was a
raid which was concentrated on the Hilsea area, with several
high-explosive bombs being dropped close to the gasworks
and on the main railway line. A lot of houses were hit too,
and three people killed, one of them a friend of Polly’s.
‘I knew her at school. We used to sit next to each other
when we were in Miss Jenkins’s class. She went to work at
Lipton’s, and then she got married to a chap from Tipnor
way - dockyardman, he was till he went in the Army.’ Polly
wiped her eyes. ‘They had two boys, must be about my
Sylvie’s age. I suppose they were evacuated, poor little
souls.’
‘It’s awful for kiddies, losing their mums and dads,’ Cissie
said. ‘Like those two little Simmons girls. Our Judy’s going
to try to get across to see them, you know. It’s not far.’
‘She’ll see Jess Budd’s boys too, then,’ Dick observed.
‘Not bad nippers, though the older one’s a bit of a scamp.
He used to knock about with Micky Baxter, you know,
when his mother wasn’t looking. I should think she’s glad to
have him out of the way. That boy’s a bad influence.’
‘Oh, he’s not so bad,’ Alice said. ‘I saw him down
Charlotte Street the other day, working on one of the stalls.
He told me he’s been given a delivery bike, got a little round
of his own. Said he wants to join the Army soon as he’s old
enough - wants to be a hero.’
‘Hero!’ Dick snorted. ‘Dunno what sort of a hero that
boy’d be! Look at the trouble he got those other poor little
tykes into - Jimmy Cross with one leg blown off, and that
Nash boy killed outright. I’d be glad to have my youngster
out of his way, I can tell you.’
Now that the weather was better, Dick’s health had improved and he was able to get out into the back garden
and do some digging. The patch where Alice had grown
lupins, sweet williams and bunny-rabbits was now entirely
given over to vegetables and a couple of currant bushes.
Frank Budd, from number fourteen, had given Dick some
cabbage seedlings from his allotment, and he had already
harvested several pounds of new potatoes and baby carrots.
He had also managed to get some sticks for a row of peas
and runner beans.
‘Dig for Victory,’ he said, going out to the shed to fetch
his gardening tools. ‘Well, at least I can be a bit of use
around the place.’
Polly was working almost full-time now as a WVS
volunteer. She still did some hairdressing, but it was mostly
during the evenings or on Saturday afternoons. For the rest
of the time she found herself carrying out a huge variety of
tasks - from organising salvage drives to collecting saucepans, jelly moulds and kettles for their aluminium, to
sweeping up nuts and bolts from factory floors for re-use.
Every time the air-raid warning went, she hurried off to
present herself at the Emergency Centre, where she
collected her old ambulance van and prepared to dash off to
the site of the nearest bomb damage.
Often, the raid came to very little, with the planes
droning overhead on their way to London, Bristol or some
other city. But you never knew when the siren went whether
this would be such a night, or whether it was the beginning
of another ferocious attack. And you never knew if they
might jettison some leftover bombs on the way back. You
could never feel safe. Not until the ‘Raiders Passed’ - or, as
most people now called it, the ‘All Clear’ - sounded its
comforting wail.
Cissie and Alice too were doing their bit for the war
effort. Alice went to the Centre on the days after a raid and
spent her time making tea and sandwiches. On other days she and Cissie presented themselves at one of the two
communal feeding centres, where meals were provided for
all those who couldn’t cook their own, or were unable to get
groceries from the shops. There wasn’t much variety - just
soup at a penny a cup or a plate of minced beef and potatoes
at three or a time - but customers arrived in
droves, and when the tables and chairs were all occupied
they sat on the floor, the stairs and even outside in the street to eat. The Centres were invariably sold out by one o’clock.
It did seem, however, as if the raids were easing off. After
the one on the night following Judy’s departure to
Ashwood, there was a lull. People began to look and feel
better. It was almost summer, they were getting more sleep
and some of the bomb damage was being patched up. You
could almost think about smiling again.
Not that there was much else to smile about. The war was
looking bad in Europe. Yugoslavia and Greece had both
been overrun, with Allied forces having to be evacuated
from Greece and Crete - ‘just like Dunkirk all over again,’
Dick said bitterly - and at home there had been devastating
raids on Plymouth, Liverpool, Newcastle and Bristol. At
this rate, there wouldn’t be a city left in the whole country.
It wouldn’t be worth invading.
Yet the fear of invasion was still very strong. All around
the coasts barbed wire was being put up along the beaches,
so you couldn’t even go for a swim any more, and the Home
Guard was on permanent alert. The signal for an invasion
was the ringing of the church bells, so they were silenced on
every other occasion and Sunday mornings were quiet. You
didn’t know how much you’d enjoyed hearing the bells till
they weren’t there any more, Cissie remarked.
At Ashwood, Judy would have welcomed hearing anything
at all. She went for walks every day, wishing she could
hear the birds singing or the rustling of leaves and the
whisper of grass. She avoided meeting the village people or even the other evacuees, knowing they would be embarrassed
by her deafness or even think there was something
‘strange’ about her. They probably think that anyway, she
thought sadly, noticing a small group of children cross to
the other side of the lane as she approached. They’ll be
saying I’m mental, or a witch or something. She wondered
how many people in the past had become objects of fear or
derision simply because they were deaf, or frail in some
other way. Lonely old women, stuck in tumbledown
cottages because people were afraid to help them. Grumpy
old men, surly because they were hurt by their neighbours’
treatment of them.
Is this going to happen to me? she wondered. Suppose I
never get my hearing back? Am I going to spend the rest of
my life like this, avoiding people just because I’m afraid
they’ll treat me like a leper?
The thought of Sean haunted her still. She grieved for
him, yet she had an uneasy feeling that her grief should have
been deeper. I loved him, she thought, twisting the little ring on her finger. I ought to be even unhappier … yet to her
dismay she could barely remember what he looked like. She
hadn’t even a photograph to remember him by. The only
person in the family to own a camera was Dick, who had
had a box Brownie, lost in the bombing, and with film so
hard to come by he had never taken a picture of Sean. Judy
tried to capture Sean’s face in her mind but it was elusive,
fading away every time she thought she had conjured it up.
Perhaps it was because they had known each other such a
short time; there were so few memories.
She stopped and leaned on a field gate. Another memory
came into her mind - a brief glimpse of a tall, fair-haired
young man in RAF uniform with a Spitfire badge on his
arm. Chris Barrett. She thought of his ready grin, the flash
of white teeth and the crinkling of blue eyes. She thought of
the hour or so they had spent together trapped in the lift, the easy conversation, the feeling of comfort he had given