Kisses on a Postcard Read Free Page B

park keepers.
    One of them caught us one day and gave us a severe lecture. ‘Before you kids came here nightingales sang in these woods. Where are they now, eh?’ I went home and reported this to Mum. Her mouth set in a hard line. Never one to take on authority directly, she put on her coat, went and found the keeper and harangued him on the subject of how much disturbance he thought regiments of soldiers created as they erected campsites and tested their guns in comparison to a few kids trying to creep about and not be caught. I don’t know what the keeper said in answer, if anything, but he still went on chasing us. It wasn’t long before those guns and rockets were in nightly use. No nightingales have since sung in Oxleas Wood to my knowledge.
    Then in May 1940 , the Second World War broke out in earnest as far as Britain was concerned: the Germans attacked; their panzer divisions swept through the Low Countries and France; the British and French armies were brushed aside; the disaster-cum-deliverance of Dunkirk happened, and what I call my ‘other childhood’ began. Jack, aged eleven, and I, aged seven, became evacuees – vackies – and were carried off to another world.

C hapter T wo
    We were all up early that morning, 13 June 1940 . Two little brown cases were already packed, sandwiches and pop at the top for easy access. Dad was first to leave, off to work. I don’t remember him hugging or kissing us; men didn’t go in for that in those days. He may have shaken our hands. What he did do, to demonstrate his authority and reassure us, was to tell us that he knew where we were going, but he could not tell us because it was a war secret – a heavy wink accompanied this – and we would like it there. It would be in the country, fun; perhaps even – dare we hope it? – the seaside. No, he wasn’t going to tell: wait and see. We were to be sure to look out on the left just after Wandsworth Road station as our train would go over his office, which was in the arches under the railway there, and he would wave. We knew then that we would be on a train that would leave Welling and cross south London, on to the Western Section, not a scheduled route of our Eastern Section suburban services to Waterloo, Charing Cross and Cannon Street. We knew our train would be special. We were railway children and proud of it and of our privileged knowledge. And if Dad knew we were taking that route he must be privy to the whole secret evacuation plan.
    ‘It’ll be a steam engine.’ Another clue that we were going well out of our electrified world, an impressively long journey. We knew the exact stations where electrification terminated in all directions.
    ‘Cor, what? A namer? What?’ we asked, excited. ‘Schools-class?’
    ‘Don’t think it’ll be a schools class,’ he said. ‘Not big enough for your journey: only a 4 - 4 - 0 .’ He dismissed an engine which pulled the Dover boat trains and we loved, a compact modern design sitting on its four driving wheels and four bogies. We often saw them on trips up to Charing Cross on our Eastern Section of the railway, cosier than the bigger Western Section locomotives used for the longest routes out of Waterloo. ‘Could be a King Arthur.’ This was a 4 - 6 - 0 express with three drivers a side. ‘Maybe even a Lord Nelson.’ Another 4 - 6 - 0 , the biggest engine on the Southern Railway, only used for the West of England runs. We digested this with a sense of importance as he went off to work.
    Mum had a tie-on label in her hand with my name and address on it in block capitals. ‘Here, let me put this on you,’ she said.
    ‘Ah, no. I know who I am.’
    ‘That’s in case the Germans capture you,’ said my knowing brother.
    ‘Honest?’ I was fascinated.
    ‘Don’t be silly, Jack. Come here.’ Mum was sharp. She had another label for him.
    ‘I haven’t got to wear one too, have I?’ Jack was disgusted.
    ‘Yes, both of you.’
    The two labels also had our school,