Little Lake Part 3

...As my Mother and I sat in the back of a small taxi to the train station my mother told me distracted and quietly that I was to be silent the entire journey until such time as we arrived at our destination. I protested, as was my nature to do so, but my mother gave me a look so frightening and un-used before that morning I knew that I had to be silent, but I did not know why.

We had to wait in a queue when we got to the station; our small train was full of evacuees being shipped off to the country. The Blitz had ended some time before in May and yet children were still being shipped off and sent to relatives for protection against any unexpected attacks from the Germans.

I felt like an evacuee myself, being taken off to a distant place without any knowledge of where and wondering if I am ever to return. My mother was impatient and panicky, it seemed the less she wanted to go to this distant place the quicker she wanted to get onto the train so that her mind could not switch ways. A humble old warden directed us to the end of the train in a partially free carriage empty of weeping evacuees and waving mothers and fathers crowding it.

Mother pushed me into the single separated and secluded train carriage, a middle aged man all dressed in black, wearing a small felt hat with two odd ringlets of hair hanging from either side of his head and ears was sat in the carriage with us. When he heard the door of the carriage open and seeing my mother and I step inside he shuffled as far as he could to the opposite side of the carriage pulling his single suitcase with him and he straightened his cracked glasses as I observed him strangely.

My mother pulled me closer to her when we sat down, she whispered in my ear for me to stay clear of him although I didn’t understand why, it seemed very rude of her to say such a thing but the comment however quiet she tried to make it did not affect the man at all he just continued to stare out of the window with a neutral expression on his face and he ignored us as much as we ignored him.

Two young women dressed in matching uniforms came on to the carriage loudly shrieking and laughing with their two beige and black suitcases which they lifted carefully above them into the wire holder above their heads. They were very chatty ladies but as we were all doing to each other they ignored everyone besides each other. It had seemed to have become a strange custom not to talk to anyone whilst on a train unless you knew of them, but I barely knew anything of trains I had only ever ridden on one twice before my evacuation from the City.

As we set off on our long tiresome journey my mother sat against the wall and occupied the window seat forcing me to sit in the middle of her and the two gardening ladies who refused to sit on the other seat whispering rudely to each other of the man all dressed in black sitting very close to the edge to the window looking as if he was about to pass out as he went as white as a ghost.

To vacate my boredom I sat and began to read the Showcase magazine that Caroline had bought for my journey, I noticed the ladies peering into my magazine impolitely and as I was in an irritable confused mood I didn’t want them to read it for they hadn’t bought it, it was a silly little thing but I was frustrated and I was not going to allow another exasperating woman read what was not hers. I closed my magazine quickly and folded it and placed it in my lap, perhaps a little theatrically but I did it all the same.

I saw out of the corner of my eye the lady sitting closest to me pulling a petulant face the other however just swore very loudly and my mother gave her such a filthy look that I was quite proud of her even though it did for the young ladies attitude!
The journey to the unknown was as boring and despondent as living at Caroline’s without entertainment was! We had to keeping stopping because of all the evacuees being left at different stations and each time we stopped at a busy and loud station I would look at my mother to see if there was any flicker of instruction to prepare to get off of the train but no indication for our arrival ever came.

The irritable ladies got off eventually, as loudly and as annoying as when they got on! As soon as they had stood up I had spread myself out a little more on the chair glad for some room because of being so cramped together for such a long time however my relief of having a seat was short lived when more people got into the carriage, some would immediately get off at the sight of the man all dressed in black, other’s would realise that there was no more space on the train and sit down beside me and whoever else occupied the seat we all shared.

A strict looking woman with a riding crop in one hand and a small suitcase in the other came into our carriage and observed us all. She had thin rouged lips and high cheekbones and a sinister stare which made me shudder. She had no problem with having to sit down on the same seat as the man all dressed in black although she did stay at the far end.

Once the train started to move from the busy station I remembered that I still had my showcase to read and I unfolded it intently and started to read the opening lines when the stern looking woman gasped and tutted at me in horror as she folded her arms and looked away from me. I felt scared to be thought of badly by the woman so I re-folded the magazine up and shuffled closer to my mother like a small child even though I was already fifteen years old.

The sinister lady spent the rest of her journey staring at a specific point on the window frame as though it was the most important piece of window frame that she had ever seen, she also kept bending her riding crop in her hands self-consciously, it kept making a funny noise, she reminded me of a severe school teacher with her pouted lips and her cross eyes.

After a few more stops an elderly old man who had no teeth and wide eyes that looked like an old lovable dog joined our carriage delicately. He had no suitcase just a little jacket slung over his arm and his ticket stub which he held tightly in his right hand, the other shook violently as he sat down next to the man all dressed in black without a care in the world. I felt sorry for him and his age but he wasn’t going far he got off two stations later, the man all dressed in black left four stations after him with such relief that I have never seen anything like it since!
The austere looking woman got off the carriage seven stations later and soon my mother and I were alone in the carriage and there were no stops for half an hour.

I took advantage of the emptiness and moved to the opposite side of the carriage and stretched out on the seat and leant against the wall, opening the window so that a soft breeze came through onto my face and I could hear the soft sound of steam pumping of the train engine in front.

It was a very long train ride, I didn’t know where I was, every street had been removed due to the war so that when we did arrive I was still warm in my seat not sure if we were leaving or not. I didn’t notice when my mother suddenly got fearful all of a sudden but when she stood with a ferocity and huge force I knew it was my short indication to prepare to leave the train.

She pulled at my cardigan the second the train stopped at a tiny wooden platform in the middle of nowhere, she pushed me off the train so fast that I we were moving faster than the train ever had! She pushed me onto the platform before she jumped down hastily off the train herself, dragging behind our small suitcases and her little clutch bag.

The train departed, with as little a warning as possible, the moment we slammed the carriage door shut. I was pushed again this time across the small platform and down a tiny set of steps on which my mother forced me to sit down on with a tough hand on my shoulder before she joined me herself and panted with anxiety.

It was mid-afternoon and it had started to get chilly yet my mother remained flustered and hot as she fanned herself with her clutch cautiously looking around the side of the platform every minute or so. I read my showcase properly for the first time since getting on the train, thankful for having not read it in the carriage after all because our wait on the platform steps seemed to take longer than our journey altogether.
The light of the day began to dim around us and the night air set in freezing me to the bone!

After forcefully finishing the magazine quickly due to the fading amount of light, I observed the land around me as best as I could.
We were in a more rural land because the landscape was open and green; there was no set roads just a train track, trees and a narrow path of sand that crossed over the train track just big enough for a car. I sighed and groaned in the boredom of the scenery at first sight. I was a city girl the large trees, green grass and yellow hills were not perfection or beauty they were ugly, fresh and horrid. I wanted entertainment and fame not the boring life of a country girl!

The moment came when there was so little to occupy to my vacant mind that I asked my mother to tell me where we were and where we were headed. She looked positively in pain when I questioned her on the reasons for my being in the countryside, but she answered.

“We are going to live with my father.” She said it plainly but with an obvious amount of distress. I was so puzzled by this and also slightly distressed myself, whenever I had heard of my grandfather it had never been a topic of pleasantries!

“Why?” I asked. My mother looked at me with clouded vision as she replied.

“We’ve become that desperate.” Her face practically told me most of the unhappiness she felt at being back in the place where she had grown up as a child but she continued to explain some very long and practical things for me to drill into my head before my imminent arrival at my grandfather’s house, she was very thorough in explaining that if I did not do as I was bid or told by my grandfather there would be consequences beyond my recognition.

I sat for the next half hour consumed by annoyance and fright, how could I have any fun in this new place when I knew nobody and was living with a stuck up tobacco chewing stranger for a grandfather. Life was over as far as I thought.

Our ride was an old Austin Seven Ruby, driving by an annoying Irish reverend with a receding hairline and the most irritating accent I have ever heard; imagine an Irishman with a welsh accent tinged with a country English ring to it. This Irishman was the village Reverend, Reverend McCormac, he was the only person in the village who knew how to drive and since the train platform was a few miles from the village itself he had to come pick us up and the moment he did I felt more out of touch with normality and civilisation that I felt like that I was being suffocated and going back in time.

When Reverend McCormac arrived he shook my mother’s hand accordingly and then mine and made a comment on how lovely we looked in our situation, it seemed that nobody wasted time in spreading malicious gossip around a village that I hadn’t even heard of before. Considering Reverend McCormac was a reverend by name I was a little surprised, it seemed to me that he may have been forced into his religion as he didn’t seem religious at all, not that I was praying for an old bloke with a full head of hair and a posh well-to-do English accent but I was expecting someone like that.

After entering the car with a sickening feeling of worry in the pit of my stomach Reverend McCormac apologised for the bumpy roads in advance and took to turning the car around on the train tracks, explaining that the trains rarely ever came through the village.
I swallowed bile as we began our journey down narrow country lanes filled with dust and dirt.

As we drove the Reverend explained excitedly, like a little boy with a new toy, about what to expect living in the small quaint village and also the people living in it. Mr and Mrs Thatcher were the freshly married couple of the village having been child sweethearts since attending the nearby country school in which I was to enrol.
I was to be taught by Miss Capital, she was a pleasant woman apparently, and a little stern and rough around the edges but being a teacher was like breathing to her, second nature and Reverend McCormac made a large comment on how he thought I would do well under her instruction.
Next in his long list of people that inhabited the village were the twins of the village, Jeremy Spirits and Michelle Watson, Michelle was previously married but lost her husband to cancer of the bowels some years before our arrival, the twins were the competitive owners of most of the local shops.

Then there was John Barbers who was the village butcher, then Farmer Matthew of Matthew’s Farm, and Farmer Cromwell, Dr Stone and his wife Peggy, the Rancit family who had more children than anyone could count and then the Jones’s.

Ms Jones was a single mother of four boys. There was Edmund Jones’s, the eldest, who was fighting in the war, then Patrick Jones who was the smartest boy of the lot, then Christopher Jones a little trouble maker with a knack for always getting caught and last Bobby Jones, who was the handsomest and most charming of the boys.
Bobby was my age and in my year group at school so I was likely to meet him on my first day.

Reverend McCormac was quite a gossiper and had a lot to talk about as we went through the plain fields along muddy and bumpy cut roads until we got to a smooth sand and gravel road that led directly into the village centre.

The narrow bumpy road that we had been travelling on magically opened up from behind a load of hedges into a thick gravelly road showing a huge village with a large church with a high steeple I had not noticed as we travelled directly in the centre of the a patch of green, surrounded by gravestones, some fresh and some not so.
The houses looked old and Victorian definitely not like the brick houses back home in London; the sunlight seemed brighter and hotter in the village than it did in the city it scorched my eyes as I looked out of my window. The shops were white with big hand painted signs above each door “Spirits and Watsons Grocers” and “Spirits and Watsons Post Office.” I was already bored of seeing signs with “Spirits and Watsons” on.
The butcher’s was tiny and the other shops were remarkably smaller than the Spirits and Watsons ones, half of them were even closed down. I gasped in horror at all these sights, but none more so than the sight in which Reverend McCormac pulled up in front of!

A large white cottage, the front covered with over growing honeysuckle vines and ivy, the door was white like the paint of the house and the front garden was clear, just emerald grass. It seemed that my grandfather took great care in his garden. My grandfather’s workshop was just visible from behind a small brown gate, at the side of the house. My mother panted uncontrollably as Reverend McCormac got out of the car and walked around the side of the car to open the door for her and assist her out. She stood unsteadily and accidently grabbed hold of Reverend McCormac’s shoulders as she steadied herself before she corrected her position and walked towards the front door of my grandfather’s house.

I watched impulsively as she did this. She knocked on the door timidly and waited for his reply. A few minutes passed and then he answered. He looked full of boredom and un-interest and was obviously in the middle of eating his dinner as his napkin was hanging out of his plain shirt. The Reverend shut the lid on the Austin Seven Ruby after retrieving our suitcases from the trunk; he looked at me oddly through my car window.

“Aren’t you going to say hello to your grandfather young lady?” I looked away from his tedious face and back to the village, I didn’t want to meet my grandfather. I had no intention of doing so when I was in London and had no intention then but if I refused to get out of the car I knew I would have been forcibly dragged, so I pulled the door lock and stepped out frustrated, sighing in exasperation.

I wished I hadn’t though because the moment I stepped out of the car I felt like I new toy for the villagers to pass around interestedly. Most of them came out of their houses just to see mother and me; it was more embarrassing and uncomfortable than imaginable.