“In the war,” she said at last. “Lifetime ago. And I come back after, back when I was a domestic.”
Audrey did not especially like the part of her brain that wasconstantly dissecting other people’s lives to see if they’d make good human interest pieces. If she was honest, she’d always had it. Even now she was only half sure which of her childhood stories were things she actually remembered and which were things she’d told herself over and over again until it felt like remembering.
“So”—Audrey tried to convince herself she was taking a friendly interest, not an intrusive one—“were you evacuated here?”
Doris’s eyes grew sharper and warier. “No flies on you, are there? That’s right. I come off the train in thirty-nine, got picked up, brung out to Patchley, and stuck in one of them rooms like the ones we’re in right now.” She pointed up the hill towards the Lodge. “They was put up for us, originally. Meant to be temporary but it would’ve cost more to take ’em down. Used as servants’ quarters for a bit they was too.”
Audrey was trying extremely hard to stop her auto-narrativiser from piecing this woman’s scattered recollections into a Timeless Tale Of How Far We Have Come and was failing, hard. “You must have some stories.”
“A few. But not as the likes of you would care for I’m sure.”
“The likes of me?” Doris had been okay with Audrey telling her she was gay, so sheprobablydidn’t mean it homophobically. But the phrase had such connotations that Audrey’s mind went there anyway.
Doris smiled in what Audrey was pretty sure was a non-homophobic way. “Young folk have better things to do than listen to an old woman talk about rationing.”
“I really don’t.” The sad thing was it wasn’t even a lie.
“Well, you should.”
This seemed like a good time to deflect. Admitting her social life was so limited that anecdotes about doodlebugs and paintingyour stockings on with gravy browning looked good by comparison felt like a personal low. “It’s heritage,” said Audrey instead. “Heritage is important. Like the recipe you made today—that’s part of where we come from, and it was good to have it on the show.”
“I just thought Wilfred’d like it.” Doris looked almost embarrassed. “And the judges was right, him-in-the-hat did better this week.”
“Joshua,” Audrey filled in instinctively.
“Why don’t men wear hats no more? I used to like a man in a hat.”
Audrey took Doris gently by the arm and started leading her back up the hill towards the Lodge. “I don’t want to be dismissive of Joshua’s preferences or yours, but I think a big part of it is that they make you look like a wanker.”
“Didn’t make you look like a wanker in my day. Made you look very dashing.”
“I’m not sure I’d be the one to judge,” Audrey admitted. “Not really how my bread’s buttered.”
Doris gave a wistful smile. “Reckon girls can look dashing in hats, too. Some girls, anyway.”
“Some, maybe,” Audrey agreed, trying not to think about Natalie, who had been known to rock a hat or two when she was feeling particularlyHis Girl Fridayabout things.
Slowly, they walked back to their rooms. And as they walked, as if to nobody in particular, Doris started talking.
September 1939
I had a carrot cake with me then, as it happens (Doris was saying). My mum and dad walked me to school and when I got there we all lined up to get took to Paddington by the volunteers. You’ve probably seen the pictures—not of me, like, but of some of us from them days. All lined up in our warm coats with our bags or boxes or what-have-you, ready to start new lives away from the bombs.
We was being sent all over, some nearby, some as far off as Devon. Some even went up north, though that was mostly folks from closer-to, Manchester and that. I was lucky to get Surrey, it meant it weren’t far to go. And I sat on the train with my carrot cake on my knees wrapped in paper. There was this boy sitting opposite me. I don’t remember his name or much of what he looked like, but I gave him a bit, broke it off in my fingers and handed it to him, and he swallowed it down like he’d not eaten in a week. I remember that alright, though it’s been near on eighty years.
As a kid I’d barely been outside Stepney so it was odd to see all the trees and grass and fields and such going by the train window.And when we got to Tapworth the ten of us as was going to Patchley got out in a big mob and the marshals met us at the other end to walk us up the hill to the big house. It weren’t a hotel in them days of course. Family owned it, name of Branningham—I don’t think they was the ones what built it, that would’ve been some bugger named Patchley I suppose. But it was the Branninghams when I got here in thirty-nine.
It looked the same, mostly. These kinds of places always do—you ain’t allowed to do much to the main house, and the grounds don’t change much neither. Course it looked bigger to me, because I was smaller then. Not by much, mind. Twelve I must have been, perhaps thirteen. One of the older girls, though I was the youngest at home. Anyhow I’d been put in sort of charge on account of that, and I had to help lead the others up that long drive, what you probably saw on your way in, and then line them all up in front of the house so Mr. Branningham—Sir Arthur Branningham, he was actually, been a big deal in the last war but sitting this one out—could inspect us.
So there we was, me and nine others, all lined up by height likeThe Sound of Musicand Sir Arthur comes down with his whole family. It’s not big, just him, the missus, two sons and the little girl. My age, she was, standing just apart from the rest, wrapped in this long blue coat with fur trim, hat pulled down over her ears. And her eyes—like she was looking at the whole world all at once and seeing things you’d never see.
I remember Sir Arthur walked up to us and did his welcome bit. “You’ve come a long way,” he said, “and you’ll find we do things very differently here from what you’re used to, but keep your backs straight and your heads down, and I’m sure you’ll fit in all right.”
Then he told us where we was going to be staying—that placethey call the Lodge now—and how we wasn’t to bother the family or the staff, but we was to have meals provided for us and could have the run of the grounds so long as we stayed out the flowerbeds and didn’t drown ourselves in the river.
And that was that. Me and this boy called Tom—nice lad, we stayed in touch ’til he died in ninety-two—got the other eight together and took them back down to our rooms. And they was cosy. Not as cosy as they is now—things have come on a bit since the war—but better than a lot of us was used to. I’d never had my own room in my life. I slept like a dead horse that first night and most nights after. Missed my mum and dad of course. And my sisters. My brothers had both gone off to fight, though one had lied about his age, which made Mum upset. But they was good times all in all and I kept busy.
Most days we went to a little school in the village—it’s not there anymore and it was mostly your three Rs, not like now where you learn all kinds of stuff. And we had church on Sundays of course—the churchisthere, I saw it when I come up for the contest—and Saturdays we had to ourselves.
