Once Upon a Wardrobe(47)

The war was coming, and any sense of safety in London was obliterated. Trenches were dug around the city, sandbags scattered around doors and windows, tape placed across glass to keep it from shattering. What was a mother to do? A father? How were they to keep their children safe?

In September of 1939, the signs about Operation Pied Piper were posted and sent home. Train schedules were established, and mothers and fathers began to pack up their children, who then gathered at their schools with their valises overflowing. To keep them safe from bombs, the children would be sent to live with relatives or even strangers in other cities.

Every parent was given a list of what their children must take with them on their journey: a gas mask, a change of underclothes, plimsolls, spare stockings and socks, combs, and more. They must label their luggage and take a warm coat, for who knew how long they would be gone?

Some children were sent off with nothing. Their families didn’t have the money or the time to gather it all.

It wasn’t just their luggage that was labeled. Every child wore a tag as if they, too, were baggage that could become lost in the shuffle of travel. These tags stated their names, schools, and other important evacuation information to help officials keep track of them. After taking their seats on departing trains, children waved out the windows to their parents and older siblings, clinging to teddy bears or their suitcases or their siblings’ hands.

Some of these children were sent to the Kilns.

That autumn of 1939, at the Kilns, Jack Lewis sat in his upstairs study writing a letter to his friend Arthur in Ireland, his ink nib hoisted in the air and a drop of ink falling to his desk. He looked away from his letter and stared out the window to see the clutter of gold and red leaves. He stood and walked over to gaze down at two young girls chasing Jack’s big lopey dog, Bruce, through the hedges. He smiled.

He’d written to his brother, who had been stationed in Yorkshire, “Our home will be a harbor.” And now it was.

At the time, in addition to the gardener and man of all work, Paxford, women now lived in the Lewis household: Minto and her thirty-three-year-old daughter, Paddy’s sister, Maureen.

Only weeks before, on September 1, as the air had turned colder and winter hinted its arrival with morning frost on the grass, Jack had said good-bye to Warnie, who again donned his military uniform and set off to war through Catterick. The very next day three girls from London arrived: Annamaria, with long dark hair; Sheila, with a scared look of the lost; and Rose, with the defiant stance of the frightened trying to look brave. They’d arrived carrying their little bags, bundled in their coats and hats with their names hanging around their necks, their socks puddled about their shiny shoes, their tentative smiles dampened by the unknown.

Although Jack had felt completely inadequate around children and was quite nervous about it all, he wrote to Arthur, “Oh, the pencil boxes of childhood. How could I have known?”

The girls seemed happy, but Jack thought that nights were possibly quite frightening for them without their mothers and fathers and their familiar beds and homes. He hoped that his house—with loads of rooms scattered about like secret places, with enough books to keep anyone busy for two lifetimes, with warm fireplaces, with Bruce, and with acres of land on the property to run about, which included two old kilns where bricks had once been made—would make them happy. Although there was only one bathroom, the children all bathed in the one lake, as it were.

Jack opened the window a crack to hear Sheila complain to Maureen, “Oh, there is nothing to do! Nothing at all!”

And Maureen, now about to be married, crouched down next to the young girl and said, “There are books enough to find a thousand worlds. You can play in the woodlands or write home or mend your socks. It is only for lack of imagination that you are bored.”

Jack laughed loud enough to have them all glance up at him. He waved. Maureen was right. The echo of his own childhood rang in his ears—the wondering about what to do all day as the grown-ups went about their very important business, how to fill the time and the imagination as he and Warnie had in the little end room.

Jack closed the window and sat down. He thought of these children and of their lives upended. He thought of their parents and of their grief, and he thought of the war. Jack didn’t know what to give them but his home and stories. So he began regaling the children with long-remembered childhood tales, and he’d told them about his favorite childhood books by E. Nesbit and about Squirrel Nutkin and about fairies, about the Northern Norsemen. Jack tutored some, read to others, and showed them about his acreage.

A month in, Sheila had grown taller and a bit more confident. Her little gingham dress was too short already. She had pointed to the old family wardrobe and asked, “Is there anything behind this linen cupboard?” Jack had looked at her and at the wonder on her young face. Was there anything behind the wardrobe?

Later, as Maureen gathered the hollering girls outside for a hike to the lake and a bath, the rambunctious one, Rose, who always disappeared into the woods and lake, ran ahead of them all. Jack picked up his pen and wrote:

“There were four children, Ann, Martin, Rose, and Peter.” The first sentence flowed from his pen. “But it is most about Peter, who was the youngest. They all had to go away from London suddenly because of air raids, and because Father, who was in the army, had gone off to the war and Mother was doing some kind of war work. They were sent to stay with a kind of relation of Mother’s who was a very old professor who lived all by himself in the country.”