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quillsandadverbials · 4 years ago

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It won’t be home.

Alice was first evacuated in September 1939, but she soon returned home for Christmas. After several months of vicious dogfights across the country, the war in the air had stopped and the Jerrys began bombing the largest cities in the country. The German’s had bombed many buildings close to Alice’s home in London. The most terrifying concern was that a house, hit by an incendiary bomb, had been entirely demolished seven doors down from hers. Alice’s mother knew that she would have to return the children to Grimethorpe. Grimethorpe, where the Smith’s family had taken them in with open arms, was a place of safety.

On Saturday 14th June, Alice awoke amongst a sea of bodies. She felt lonely, afraid and tense. Ridges of shoulders, hips, and waves of hair surrounded every inch of floor as far as the eye could see. Beside her, Georgie, her little brother lay still. His chest rose and fell slowly, and she watched him for what seemed like an eternity. After a short while had past, she nudged his shoulder. Georgie woke with a start.

“Mum?” whimpered Georgie.

“It’s ok. Mum will be back soon, and we will be setting off,” shushed Alice.

“She’s not back?” questioned Georgie with a frown on his face.

Alice whispered calmly, “Her shift with the service ended thirty minutes ago.”

Georgie’s eyes lifted upwards as he called, “Mummy!”

Alice and Georgie’s mother stumbled over the many blankets, boxes and bodies that scattered Piccadilly underground station. Her face was weary, but she smiled a dazzling smile. Her night would have been chaotic, and she would have been putting out at least a dozen fires with the Women’s Auxiliary service. The bombing would have raged through the night, and Alice thoroughly understood the danger that her mother would have been in. Alice’s mother would have remained in an Anderson shelter until the noise of the Luftwaffe and their military ammunition had disappeared. When it was deemed clear, she and her colleagues could bring out the hundreds of metres of hosepipes and begin putting out the fires that licked furiously at the burning rubble.

��As they walked out of the underground with trepidation, acrid smoke filled the air. Dark clouds of soot and ash filtered down to the ground. In front of Alice, was a smouldering pile of brick and rubble. Timber embers glowed weakly amongst damp and sodden trinkets and building material. The faces of the people, who had bunkered down in the underground, were drawn out and their eyes filled with water. Sobbing and weak whimpers could be heard all around. Alice’s mother held both children firmly, and she pulled them along through the crowds. The twenty-six minute walk from Piccadilly to Waterloo station was gruelling. Not one of them talked. Their bags had been packed the night before last. At what seemed like an age, the little family arrived at Waterloo. Children rushed forwards clinging to their mothers. The trains on the platform hummed gently. Alice, Georgie and their mother stopped at a long wooden table covered in a white sheet. List upon list of children’s names were splayed out on top.

“Name?” said the elderly gentleman behind the desk.

“Georgie and Alice Brown,” said Alice’s mother.

“Gas mask, sandwiches and belongings listed in the guidance with them?” questioned the man.

Alice’s mother spoke confidently, “All there. I checked and double checked two nights ago.”

“Carriage three. Mrs Brown, you must hurry. The train will be departing in three minutes,” gestured the man as he held out two nametags, one for each child.

Tired and worn out from the night’s work, Mrs Brown ushered the children to carriage three. She took Georgie’s hat off his head, and she smoothed down his hair. Georgie took his hat, but he did not replace it onto his head. He tightly held it against his chest, and streams of silent tears rolled down his face. Mrs Brown took out her handkerchief and mopped his damp cheeks. She turned to Alice and kissed her gently on her forehead. Mrs Brown soothed them onto the steps without a word. They did not say goodbye. Perhaps, the children would see their mother in a month or two. It was not a long stay, but at least the Smiths had invited her up north for a short break away from the bombing raids. It would give her the relief she craved when she missed her children far too much.

As the train pulled away from the station, Mrs Brown waved them off, and she held back the tears behind her eyes. She had to appear strong, for she did not want her children to know the pain that she felt in her heart. The children would be safe, and she would be dousing the fires amongst the city of London. She would be busy.

Before long, the trained chugged along the tracks at a steady pace. Puffs of smoke and steam hurtled past the carriage window. Alice watched emotionlessly out of the window. Georgie’s face was puffy and red, yet he had stopped crying. Green trees, lush emerald grass and creatures with smooth, spotted fur whizzed out of sight. The view was a source of entertainment for all of the children packed into small carriages. One field, which was plastered in an assortment of colourful flowers, was home to what Alice first thought were balls of white clouds. She had read about these animals in class. They were sheep. Along the journey, she would be tired of seeing the bumbling creatures before they arrived at their destination.

Soon, they arrived in Barnsley. It was a strange town. Alice and Georgie had been there not long ago. The people talked in a foreign language, and the air was much chillier up north. It would never be home. After they had piled out of carriage three, a young woman in a beige Macintosh escorted them. The coat looked old. It had been repaired at the shoulder seems with a grey cotton. The cotton did not fit in with the coat, and it stuck out like a sore thumb. It was a sign that the effects of the war were everywhere. Make do and mend was the slogan that rung in Alice’s ears as she marched up towards the town hall. The Smiths would be waiting there with their son Thomas.

Within twenty minutes, they were in a large reception room within the grand town hall. They waited nervously. Alice was perched on a prickly, wooden bench, and Georgie played with his tin car at her feet. Alice’s glossy eyes darted around the room, and she was disappointed. Georgie kept glancing up at Alice, but she did not return his gaze. He knew that she was panicking. He couldn’t help her. He was only eight. She was four years older, and she was the responsible one. Her coat was buttoned up tightly, yet it fit loosely around her shoulders. It had been their mothers. A hand-me-down present for her twelfth birthday. She fiddled with the string above the box that poked at her side. Her short hair bristled against her shoulders. Mrs Brown had not smoothed her hair down as she had Georgie’s. Alice would have fought her off as she was too old to be coddled. All the blood had drained from her cheeks, and her lip quivered with fear. Occasionally, assigned families had failed to pick up the evacuees from the reception points, and families were separated. She feared the unknown, and she did not wish to be torn away from her younger brother. Several hours passed extremely slowly, and the hope in Alice’s eyes began to fade. Georgie had stopped glancing at his sister as it was giving him nauseating butterflies in his tummy. He looked at the impressive, ornate wooden doors of the room. The handle of the door twitched, and a family of three squeezed through. The Smiths had arrived. Alice swabbed her eyes. They had not abandoned the children after all. The family’s promise to take them in, a second time around, would be fulfilled. They would have a roof over their head, and warm substantial meals would fill their belly. Now, the children had only one worry. They would pray nightly. Their only wish was for their mother to be safe in the distant city of London.

#evacuees #ww2 #german #mother #children #non-fiction #writer #writing #freewrite #stranger #fear #makedoandmend

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quillsandadverbials · 4 years ago

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Jerome’s Magic Quill

Slowly and carefully, Jerome tiptoed downstairs and into the kitchen. The table was bare, and there was not a single crumb to be eaten in the house. His father had been visiting his elderly relatives in Swat Valley, and his mother was away with the army in Afghanistan. Jerome’s belly gave a rumbling cry.

“Harry! Do we have any money for some food?” Jerome bellowed upwards towards his brother’s room.

“No,” Harry groaned.

“Then, we might as well set off for school,” Jerome mumbled to himself in disappointment.

With an empty, sickening feeling in his stomach, Jerome nervously packed his bag ready for school. It wasn’t his empty stomach that gave him an anxious feeling, but the chaos that had been occurring around schools in Pakistan. For months, there had been many riots outside the school gates. The extremists, who had said that boys’ schools should be closed for good, sparked the protests and riots. They did not believe that boys should go to school. They thought that boys and men should stay at home, looking after the house and the family. Jerome’s mother disagreed, and sent the boys to school anyway. She had even given him an elegant quill to write with. It had been passed down through the generations. It was a gift from Jerome’s grandmother to his mother and it now belonged to Jerome. She had told him that a person’s voice, their knowledge and their writing was the best weapon against extreme military rulers. Jerome did not know what this meant at the time, but he would soon come to know the true meaning of her wise words.

As they walked along the crowded streets of Peshawar with their school bags on their backs, women jeered at them and gave them ice-cold stares. The boys’ hearts thumped inside their chests. They needed to get to school as quickly as possible because they could feel the tension in the air. Occasionally, boys would be stopped and searched for school equipment. If they were caught with any school apparatus in their possession, they would be beaten and sent back to their homes. Harry and Jerome needed to get to the secret boys’ entrance at the back of their school. They picked up the pace and marched like the women they had seen at their mother’s army graduation parade.

After a short while, they arrived at the secret entrance. The door was locked.

“Something isn’t right,” Jerome whispered, “We need to get inside.”

Harry sighed with a breath, “I don’t think we are going to get in.”

Without warning, a rattling voice screeched behind them. A voice that they did not recognise. The boys stood statically, too afraid to turn around.

The woman screeched again, “I said, what do you think you are doing here?”

Jerome was frozen with fear. Harry began to fumble with his words.

“We, we, we were coming to school” Harry blurted.

He could not think of a lie quickly enough and he knew that the woman, who towered over them, would see through anything he could make up on the spot. The boys turned around to face the villain behind them. She was a tall, svelte woman in shiny red stilettos and a strangely crisp two-piece suit. The boys were in trouble. They recognised the woman from the news. She was one of the Matriarch extremists that had made them hide the fact that they were going to school in the first place. Suddenly, the boys felt bony hands around the scruff of their necks and before they could get free, they were being huddled into the school grounds. They could see their fellow classmates in front of the school steps. They were thrown into the sea of boys that huddled together in the cobbled stone yard. Jerome knew that he had to do something. But, what? He had no weapons, and no way of contacting his mother or father.

He searched his thoughts. Think, think! What would mother do?

As quick as a flash, he grabbed Harry’s hand and pulled him further into the cluster of boys.

“What are you doing?” Harry yelped, “We need to get out of here. Something bad is going to happen!”

Jerome had no time to reply to his terrified brother. He could hear the screeching women interrogating the boys around him one by one. Voices like nails running down a chalkboard filled the air. Hurriedly, he rummaged around his bag for a piece of paper. Already, his quill in his hand. He hunted for a pot of ink within the depths of his bag. No Ink. He felt his courage fading. He frantically looked around for something that resembled ink. In the corner of his eye, he noticed a slick pool of mud underneath the boys’ feet. He dipped his quill into the sludge. On the piece of paper, he wrote desperately. Jerome’s words glistened on the paper.

All children have the right to go to school.

“All children have the right to go to school!” Jerome shouted at the top of his lungs.

In that moment, the clouds and the fear that had been hanging over the boys’ heads started to lift. The women that had thrown the boys into the schoolyard were silent. Jerome and Harry made their way to the edge of the crowd. Where the women had been stood, were pools of steaming, black, oozing, grime.

“Jerome! Harry!” a recognisable voice cried out to them.

“Mum!” the boys whimpered in relief.

Their mother comforted them, “Who knows what those evil women would have done to you. But, you are safe now.”

“Mum? How?” sobbed Jerome.

“I told you that your words are more powerful than any weapon,” their mother whispered wisely.

“I stopped those women?” Jerome asked in bewilderment.

She calmly replied, “The pen is mightier than any sword.”

In that moment, Jerome knew what she had meant. The quill had saved him from a terrible fate. He had written exactly what he needed to in his moment of need. He had spoken out against the women with twisted beliefs. He had bravely been the voice of those who could not speak for themselves. He had saved boys’ and girls’ education from the tyrants, who had tried to take it from them. All that was left of the Matriarch extremists were puddles of black secretion. Perhaps, their very souls were as dark as the pools of ooze that is left of them, Jerome thought triumphantly.

From that day, boys and girls were allowed to learn together again. They could be anything that they wanted to be. The quill had set them free.

#writers #freewrite #children #school #education #freedom #oppression #persecution #non-fiction

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