Uprooted - a Canadian War Story

May contentment come your way

  And fragrant pipe-smoke wreath your head

  Promising happiness ahead.

  I really liked ‘wreath your head’. Even Cameron said that was good. We gave him a tea party with a cake and candles and Mummy gave him a book as well – Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. Cameron read it first and said that, second to England, Their England, it was the best book he’d ever read, except the love stuff. Before I could get hold of it to see what the love stuff was, it was too late.

  Cameron could do his paperboy job during school time, because it happened early in the morning, before it was even light until spring came. He borrowed Mummy’s alarm clock and got up so early he was never around for breakfast except on Sundays.

  What job could I do? I kept thinking. I asked around, and then Marylou, my desk partner, suggested the stables.

  I liked horses, and I knew how to ride, and Cameron had already heard about a riding school out by the Exhibition Grounds that he said he might ride at when he’d finished paying for Jane’s Fighting Ships. (I really thought Jane must be a funny sort of woman, to write a huge book about battleships.) So, when the streets started getting clearer of ice and snow, I rode my bike out there and asked for a job.

  I’d already tried getting easier jobs – like in Pinder’s serving ice cream and in a shoe shop – but they just said I was too young. Letty, the woman at the stables, didn’t say that. She asked if I’d had any experience, and I told her that once, at my convent, I’d had to muck out a stable as punishment for playing a joke on one of the nuns. She asked what the joke was, and when I told her, she laughed and said, “Well, you look like a good strong girl – I’ll give you a trial. Saturday mornings, nine till one. A dollar an hour. And in school breaks I can use you more.”

  I said, “And can I ride?”

  “If you pay.”

  “No, I mean, a little ride, without paying.”

  She looked at me with a grin on her face. “You strike a hard bargain. OK. Twenty minutes round the riding school. You can ride Bonny. She’s just had a foal, and she needs exercising.”

  She showed me a Shetland pony with a tiny foal, no bigger than a large dog. He was so, so sweet. I petted Bonny and she let me pat her little one, whose name was Piper. I rubbed the baby’s-hand-shaped white star on his forehead and he pushed against me.

  This is going to be OK, I thought. I can do this. This is definitely what Willie would do, and it’ll give me lots to write to her about.

  In my first letter to Willie, I’d asked her to ask Alfie what he’d done with the Hallowe’en head. But when her first letter arrived, she didn’t mention it. She wrote lots about her new American school, which she said was the noisiest place she’d ever been in and that she wasn’t going to learn a thing. But she sounded – well, excited. About everything. She said their new family were “not just richer than the Warrens, they’re rolling!” and had taken them to visit Manhattan. She couldn’t believe the buildings.

  Under the ground, you could understand it. But not up in the air like that. Why don’t they topple over? We went up in a lift to the top of the Empire State Building. I left my tummy behind it went so fast, and when we looked down, I got dizzy. It’s super-duper-fantabulous. I wish you were here. There’s loads of room, they’ve got five bedrooms and FOUR BATHROOMS. No more queuing up to pee! I’m going to ask them to invite you!

  “I hope she won’t!” said Mummy, when I told her.

  But knowing Willie, I thought she might.

  It still bothered me a lot that Daddy hardly ever seemed to write. I’d had only one letter from him the whole time we’d been in Canada, and Mummy the same, I knew – they came together in one envelope with a tuppenny stamp on it, as if it was being posted to somewhere in England. I thought that was funny, that tuppence brought an envelope thousands of miles.

  I asked Mummy if the letters were being sunk. She said “Possibly”, but it was something she obviously didn’t want to talk about.

  Then one day I came home from school at lunchtime because I’d left my sandwiches on the streetcar. I thought it’d be fun to have lunch at home and maybe listen to some of the soap operas Mummy and Irene used to talk about. But Mummy wasn’t listening to the radio. She was in our bedroom, sitting on the bed. She was bent over something clutched in both hands. She was sobbing.

  I rushed to her. “Mummy! What’s the matter?”

  She straightened up.

  “Wait a minute,” she said.

  She went out of the room and I heard her in the bathroom running the tap. Washing her face, I supposed. She’d left what she’d been clutching, crumpled up on the bed. It was letters from England – two of them. One I saw was from Grampy. The other was from Daddy. I noticed that Daddy’s was the crumpled-up one. Grampy’s was just lying there beside its envelope.

  When Mummy came back, she said, “Bring the letters and come into the kitchen. I need a cup of tea.”

  I sat at the table. Mummy didn’t ask me why I was home at lunchtime. She just gave me a couple of cookies and a glass of milk, and made herself a pot of tea. She was smoking furiously while she did it.

  “What’s happened?” I asked.

  “Nothing. No bad news. No news at all, really.”

  “So why were you crying?”

  She took the letter and smoothed out the creases.

  “I’ve waited weeks and weeks for this,” she said. “And when it comes – what is it?” She crumpled it up again and her face was all screwed up like the letter. “I know he’s run off his feet. He’s doing double shifts at the hospital – your Grampy says so. On top of his usual surgeries and visits. He’s not living at home, by the way. He’s living with his awful vinegary old Scottish auntie. She’s supposed to be housekeeping for him, but I bet she eats half his rations or feeds them to her rotten mangy old cat … She always hated me. Never wanted Daddy to marry an actress … Ooh, I could tell you a thing or two about that woman! That’s why I hardly ever saw her, and why you didn’t. Oh, never mind all that!”

  She took a big gulp of tea and a drag on her cigarette. “But look! Lindy, it’s not fair! I wait and wait, and write and write, and when at last I get a letter, what is it? It’s nothing but two long, boring golf stories! And one of them’s very rude!”

  I was stunned. “No news? Nothing – loving?”

  “Oh – yes – I suppose so.” She smoothed the letter out again slowly. “He says he loves us and misses us. He says the bombing’s been ‘a bit of a nightmare’.”

  “If he’s not at home, how can he go into our Anderson shelter?” I’d helped to dig that, in our garden, when the war started. When we left, I thought it would keep Daddy safe.

  “His aunt has one. Ours …”

  “What?”

  “Well, it’s been flooded. A landmine landed in the reservoir behind our house.”

  Through dry lips, I dared to ask: “Is our house still there?”

  “Oh, yes. All the back windows gone, but they’ll be repaired.”

  “But – then – Mummy – isn’t it good Daddy was with his auntie?”

  “Yes. But please don’t ask me to love her because I can’t.”

  “But you – you do love Daddy?”

  “Love him!” she shouted suddenly, so that I jumped and spilt the remains of my milk. “I adore him! He’s my darling, and the best doctor in West London – all his patients say so! I’ve heard him called a saint! I just wish he was a bit less saintly and a bit better at writing letters, that’s all!”

  So I didn’t get to hear any of those soap operas, after all. But Mummy said that evening, when she’d calmed down, that talking to me had helped, and that I’d come at the right moment.

  “He can’t help it,” she said. “He’s not good at expressing his feelings.”

  “Like Cameron?”

  “A bit. Funny – he’s more like Cameron than Uncle Jack is. Uncle Jack is very good at expressing his feelings.”

  I didn’t even
try to guess what she meant by that.

  At school it was ‘aggie season’.

  As the thick, packed, dirty snow slowly melted and ran away in streams, it left parts of the playground bare. As soon as there was a patch of dirt where the mud had dried, out came the aggies. They were marbles, all sorts – big ones the size of gob-stoppers, little peewees, and everything in between. In all colours and with all kinds of squiggles and swirls inside them. The object was to win them from each other.

  A small aggie-sized hole was dug in the dirt, and you had to try to knock aggies in with your crooked finger. There was a skill to it and a hundred rules that kept changing. I was hopeless at the game. But I became addicted to it. All my pocket money went on little net bags of aggies. I neglected my homework, I neglected everything. If I won some aggies, I felt like a millionaire, and if I lost, which I usually did, I was plunged into despair. Oh, I understand gamblers! I played all recess, and after school I was late home. When I started creeping out of bed half an hour early so as to get to school in time for a couple of games before lessons, Mummy got seriously worried.

  “This is ridiculous,” she said. “Stop it! You’ll start playing on Saturdays next!”

  No I wouldn’t. Saturdays were sacred to the stables.

  I did my work, and my arm muscles got strong and hard, lifting the forkfuls of bedding and bales of hay. I groomed all the ponies and got to know them. Of course Bonny was my favourite, right? Wrong. Bonny was one big pain, and nearly made me quit my job. She was a terrible ride, because she was a wonderful mother.

  Piper wasn’t allowed to run alongside us when I rode Bonny around the ‘school’, which was a kind of oval ring with a low barrier around it, because Letty wanted Bonny to get ready for a gymkhana, where having her foal with her wouldn’t be allowed. So I’d mount up and ride away from the stall where Bonny had left Piper, but she wouldn’t go – not a step – unless I whacked her with a crop. I hated doing it but Letty said I must make her obey. So it was Whack, whack, whack! and Kick, kick, kick! all the way up one side of the ring. Then, as we turned at the top, heading towards home and Piper, she’d take off, and gallop pell-mell down to the far end, where she’d stop dead with her nose pointing to her stall, until I’d drag her round and start whacking her again.

  Letty just stood there roaring at me. “Why is she galloping? Pull her up, can’t you? Make her walk! You’re the boss, not her!”

  Like fun I was the boss! Bonny was the boss, and in the end I told Letty I’d do without my ride if I couldn’t ride a pony who didn’t have a foal in the stable.

  Letty said, “All right. You can ride Dolly.”

  Dolly was a nice, well-mannered little pinto.

  “But – only if you agree to ride Bonny in the first pony show in two weeks. I have to show her because she’s my only Shetland, and there’s a Shetland class.”

  “I can’t! I won’t show her well. She does what she likes with me. If she races for the stables I won’t be able to hold her.”

  “OK. No ridey Bonny, no ridey Dolly.”

  Then I thought of something.

  “My cousin’s a better rider, and he’s stronger. He might be able to make Bonny behave.”

  “Right. If you can get your cousin to ride Bonny, I’ll let you have a go on Dolly. You can ride her in the show too. You’re not a bad little rider,” she admitted.

  “I’m just too feak and weeble,” I said, and she laughed.

  I earned my four dollars a week and gave half to Mummy. I felt very virtuous compared to Cameron. I thought he was selfish – he spent hours poring over his battleships. But after a while, when he’d seen them all, he tried to take the book back to the bookstore. They wouldn’t take it and told him he still owed them money.

  “How much?” I asked.

  “A lot,” he said glumly. “I’m doomed. I didn’t work it out properly. At this rate I’ll be doing my paper round for the rest of my life before I’ve paid it off.”

  This was the first time I’d ever heard Cameron admit he’d made a mistake. I remembered I loved him and said, “I’ve got some saved. I’ll lend it to you. You can give it me back a bit at a time.”

  He looked at me. “Thanks,” he said. “But that’s what I’m doing now. I think I’d rather owe the bookstore. If I owe you, I might feel, subconsciously, that I don’t really have to pay you back.”

  “Maybe you could go out and catch some more gophers,” I suggested.

  “At ten cents a tail? Two lifetimes. There must be better ways.”

  He never found one, and in the end Mummy had to cough up the rest of what he owed. But meanwhile he was very cheered by the idea of riding in the gymkhana.

  “I’d like to win a few Canadian rosettes to take home,” he said. “I wonder if Mum’s kept my old ones.”

  I kept trying to tell him about Bonny, how hard it was to make her go properly because of the foal, but he wasn’t listening.

  “A Shetland? Come on! I’ve ridden fifteen-hand hunters.”

  I shut up. Fifteen hands? That wasn’t even a pony, it was a horse.

  On the day of the show, we cycled up to the stables. The roads were pretty clear now, though there was still snow in the shadow of trees, and the gutters were roaring with meltwater. There was no real sign of spring – no bulbs coming up, or buds on the trees. And it was still pretty cold.

  I remembered our garden at home. It would be all golden-white with daffodils and narcissus by now – unless the flood from the reservoir had killed everything. But surely no flood could have stopped our pear trees from blossoming. Suddenly, tears that weren’t wind-tears came to my eyes.

  I miss it, I realised. If Daddy isn’t living there, if our house is empty, who will take care of the garden? Who will put bread out for the birds? Perhaps the noise of bombs has scared them all away. London without birds!

  Letty was waiting at the stables. She lent Cameron a pair of boots, some string gloves and a crop.

  “Don’t be afraid to give her a smack if she needs it,” she said. “As for when she wants to run, I’m putting a curb bit on her, instead of her snaffle. So don’t pull too hard, she’s not used to it.”

  There were lots of ponies and kids milling around the ring. It was quite a big event, I saw, with judges and an announcer with a loudspeaker. I felt a bit nervous, but I’d ridden Dolly a few times and she was an angel compared to Bonny. When it was my class (‘Ponies fourteen hands and under, riders under twelve years’) I led Dolly out. She still had her winter coat but I’d given her a good brush and plaited her mane and put oil on her hooves so she looked really smart. I’d even given her white bits a wash. I gave her a handful of oats to make her love me, and mounted up.

  I remembered Auntie Millie’s advice: “Head up, heart up, hands down, heels down – and don’t poke your chin!”

  I guided Dolly into the ring and followed at the proper distance behind a chestnut pony, watching its rump between Dolly’s ears, which were pricked forward eagerly. I followed the orders on the loudspeaker – trot, collected canter, walk, straight into a canter again, stop, line up for the judges. And suddenly I had a blue rosette pinned to my bridle for second prize!

  I felt a blaze of triumph. When we got out of the ring I almost fell off in my eagerness to hug Dolly and give her more oats, but Letty stopped me.

  “Enough oats! You’ll bloat her, and she’s got jumping next. Well done. Now let’s see how Big Cuzz duzz!”

  The Shetlands walked out into the ring in a line. Bonny was last because, kick her as hard as he could, Cameron couldn’t make her move till he used the crop. Then she kind of crawled along – if a pony can crawl – behind the last of the others, scarcely putting one foot in front of the other. Cameron was whacking her as hard as he could, while the people standing around started to laugh … The others got the order to trot, went round and overtook her from behind. It was like the tortoise and a bunch of hares. I could see Cameron, red in the face, whacking furiously. I waited till the turn at the t
op … And wheeee!, she was off.

  And so was Cameron – because he pulled too hard on the bit, Bonny stopped dead with her head down, and over he went, bum over tip. I gasped, and so did the crowd. As soon as her mouth was free, Bonny raced past all the other ponies. The entrance was closed, but when she reached the barrier, which was quite low, she took it in one leap, switched her tail, and was gone. Back to Piper.

  What a mother!

  The announcer, when he could be heard over the laughter, said, “These ponies are for hire to teach children to ride!”

  Meanwhile I’d scrambled over the barrier and run to see if Cameron was all right. He was already on his feet.

  “Get away, I’m fine,” he hissed at me. “You might have warned me that thing has the hide of a hippo and the mouth of a – a –” But he couldn’t think what, so he just cursed under his breath.

  There came a day when I left the house to go to school half an hour early – and there was no snow left in the back yard. It was all gone, leaving brown grass and lots of mud. And a football.

  The head!

  I stopped dead when I saw it, lying under a bush. Then I rushed to pick it up. Yes, it was the head, all right! I could see traces of the painted face, but most of it had been scraped off by the snow and there wasn’t enough left for it to be really horrible.

  Will it be enough to satisfy Mrs Hembrow? I wondered.

  I knew Mummy would still be in bed. (“Like all actors I’m not a morning person.”) For once I forgot about playing aggies and ran back into the house and woke her up.

  She focused blearily on the washed-out-looking head.

  “Mrs Hembrow needs it to be more frightening than that,” I said.

  Mummy got out of bed. “Have we got any paints? No, of course not … Well … Can I use your stable money to buy some today? And tonight we’ll paint Anne Boleyn with her tongue sticking out and the blood round her poor neck.”

  But I had a better idea.

  After school I collected the paints Mummy had bought, wrapped the head up in the Star Phoenix sports section, and knocked on the Hembrows’ screen door. Mrs Hembrow came to open it; she had been getting better with the weather. She was very tall when she was on her feet and she looked like a princess with her long plait over her shoulder and her necklace. Both silver.