Round his neck was the label declaring where he had come from and where he was being sent. And of course who he was. Though it seemed to Ronnie that during this period of his transportation, of this general harsh reshuffling of lives, even his identity had become uncertain.
He had no clear idea where he was going. ‘Oxfordshire’. Where was that? And the address of his destination began not, like most addresses, with a number, but with a baffling name: ‘Evergrene’. What did that tell him?
It was a long time before it struck him—words could have a way of slipping by you then suddenly speaking: Evergrene. It chimed softly with his own name, as it did with his place of birth. He didn’t know whether this was an encouraging sign or a dark omen. As he inclined towards the latter, fear began to replace mere misery.
But it’s remarkable how quickly, especially when you are only eight, the whole mood and tilt of things, even the very nature of the world itself, can change.
• • •
This great exodus of children had many consequences, not all benign. There would be horror stories. Some went to dreadful encampments. Some went to so-called ‘good homes’ to be imprisoned, enslaved—worse. Some would even feel compelled to escape from their sanctuaries, slinking back, like aliens in their own country, to take their chances with the bombs.
But Ronnie was to arrive at a house in the depths of the countryside—he had never known countryside before—where, except for the blackout curtains and a few other minor privations and inconveniences, you might never have known that a war was going on. Evergrene.
He soon forgot about the war and quickly began to believe that this place he’d been sent to was where he really belonged, even that his previous life, including his home in Bethnal Green and the existence of his own parents, Agnes and Sid, must have been the result of some mix-up or misunderstanding.
In this house lived Mr and Mrs Lawrence, Eric and Penelope, now in their middle years, with no children of their own. They had been only too willing to do their bit, in their charitable and non-combative way, by taking in this ‘Ronnie’. But it seemed to Ronnie, almost from the start, that it might be him doing them the favour. He was like a gift they were gladly receiving. There was gratitude on their side too, not just the gratitude that he’d been told he ought to feel towards them.
‘Remember to say thank you, Ronnie’ had been among his mother’s most fervent parting words, though clearly uttered between tight lips.
But he did feel gratitude, and rapidly overcame his determination not to express such a cowardly emotion. He soon began to wish, though he knew he was to be transplanted only ‘for the duration’, a once appalling phrase which he knew might mean years, that he could stay in Evergrene for ever. Though this would be like wishing (but Ronnie soon stopped thinking about this too) that the world’s current bout of slaughter and destruction might never end.
Evergrene was unlike any house in his experience. For just two people it was enormous. It had separate rooms for doing different things in. It had a dining room for dining in. What was dining? It had a bathroom with a huge white tub in it. It had a sitting room—a room just for sitting in. It had two separate little rooms for shitting in.
Even the garden—garden!—which seemed to extend indefinitely till it merged into trees, had separate bits: a vegetable patch, a lawn, flower beds, a greenhouse and a cold frame. What was a cold frame? There was even an ancient, withered but clearly strong man called Ernie who came now and then to ‘do’ the garden. For a brief period Ronnie thought that Ernie lived in the greenhouse.
As if the house and garden were not enough, there was also a car. Thanks to petrol rationing, it was sparingly used, but Ronnie would get his chances to ride in it and would often sneak into its rickety wooden garage just to check it was real.
To all of this he had responded, in his first astonishment, with an unspoken expletive that he would never have used aloud in front of the Lawrences, nor indeed his own mother—he was only eight and still basically a good boy—yet it was proof, as was his accent and other things about him, that he’d known the rough life of the East End.
‘Fucking ’ell,’ Ronnie said to himself. ‘Fucking ’ell.’
• • •
Here, anyway, Ronnie began his new (his proper?) life. Here he existed, while the world disintegrated, in security and comfort—in luxury, by any standard he had known.
More than this. Here he was fondly looked after and appreciated—the word really began to be ‘loved’—by Mr and Mrs Lawrence, so that it gradually became a struggle to think of his mother, dodging bombs and thus to be pitied, in Bethnal Green. Where was Bethnal Green, and were bombs really dropping on it? Or to think of his father. Where was he? Where had he ever been?
It was part of Eric and Penelope’s earnest commitment to their responsibilities that they strove not to supplant Ronnie’s parents and to ensure he kept in touch with them. But this was difficult and in the case of Ronnie’s father impossible. Agnes herself had once declared that ‘out of touch’ was Sidney Deane’s middle name. For all the Lawrences’ scrupulous efforts, Ronnie came to seem more and more like their own child.
Evergrene had a telephone. Ronnie’s mother was encouraged to call at any time. It was vital anyway, when the air raids began, that they should all know she was safe. Ronnie was unable to convey to Mr and Mrs Lawrence what an extraordinary object a telephone would have been to his
