Above Us the Sky Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Find out more about Milly Adams

  Copyright

  About the Book

  June 1940, Waterloo Station.

  On one of the hottest days of the year, newly-qualified teacher Phyllis Saunders is evacuated with her school to Dorset.

  As she struggles to control the crowd of tearful children, she sees Sammy. Her oldest and dearest friend is on the way to join his submarine, and as he kisses her goodbye, everything changes for them.

  But now that war is tearing them apart, is it too late?

  Phyllie throws herself into village life, determined to protect and nurture the children in her care. But war leaves no one untouched, and Phyllie will need all the support of the community to help her through the next few years, as she waits and prays for Sammy’s safe return . . .

  About the Author

  Milly Adams lives in Buckinghamshire with her husband, dog and cat. Her children live nearby. Her grandchildren are fun, and lead her astray. She insists that it is that way round. Above Us The Sky is her first novel.

  Above Us The Sky

  Milly Adams

  To the gorgeous girls of the Downley Village

  Evening Women’s Institute.

  And my very own ex-submariner.

  Acknowledgements

  My dear friend, Kaila Shabat, led me to a wonderful friar in Jerusalem who explained how closure could be brought to Jake. Thank you both.

  The Women’s Institute was formed in Canada in the late 1800s, and arrived in the United Kingdom in 1915. During the First World War the WI encouraged countrywomen to become involved in growing and preserving food to support the war effort. The WI did the same in the Second World War but also collected herbs for medicines, and salvage for all sorts of things. Bravo, I say, and to the Guides and Scouts who did their bit. Let’s hear it for all their unsung efforts.

  Today we think of the WI in terms of jam, Jerusalem, and perhaps a saucy calendar. As a member of the Downley Village Evening Women’s Institute – bring it on. But we’re more than that. As a movement we care for one another and the community, we have monthly speakers who add to our knowledge, and every year we choose resolutions that could bring about real change at local and national level on the issues that matter.

  Also, I write of submariners. My husband, Dick, was a peacetime, well, cold war, submariner, and has been an invaluable source of information, though all faults are mine.

  I bow my head to the memory of all those who served, and still serve.

  Above Us the Sky is my tribute to all these organisations. It is written from the heart.

  Chapter One

  Friday 14 June 1940, Waterloo Station

  PHYLLIE GRIPPED HER clipboard, red pencil poised, then hesitated, mesmerised. Her two classes – one of seven-year-olds, one of eleven-year-olds – had transformed themselves into a seething mass intent on competing for noise with the troop train arriving on the adjoining platform. For heaven’s sake, she had been a teacher for six months; she was too young, too inept, too everything to be taking these children away. And for how long?

  She braced herself and shouted, ‘Children, I need your attention; now, not when you’re ready.’

  It was a lost cause, and she took a moment to draw a deep breath for another go, but clearly it was a breath too long. Further along the platform Mr Stevens, the headmaster, rose onto his toes beneath the banner bearing the words Ealing Close School. Similar banners, with names of schools throughout London, festooned the station.

  ‘Miss Saunders, take your registers at once,’ he bellowed at her. His children, aged twelve, were lined up like well-behaved skittles, the boys in their grey shorts, the girls in their red dresses. There was barely a word between them all. How did he do it?

  ‘I have, Mr Stevens. I took them when we first arrived at Waterloo, and, anyway, I have the Class B seven-year-olds as well as my Class A eleven-year-olds, while you have just the one class.’ She stopped, then added, ‘Sir.’ This, though, was swallowed up by the shriek as the train opposite eased to the buffers. The other classes had been evacuated a few days earlier – where to was anyone’s guess. Sulphuric smoke, smuts and dust caught in her throat.

  ‘Take them again,’ Mr Stevens ordered, in a voice that would carry over a volcanic eruption. ‘One of your charges could have been dragged off by a hysterical mother. For goodness’ sake, Miss Saunders, do keep up.’

  Stevens was usually impeccably dressed, but this morning his homburg was slightly awry. What would he think if he could see himself? It was said he had been yanked out of retirement a year ago to take the place of young Mr Taylor who was – well, where?

  Train doors were swinging open opposite. The walking wounded and the weary spilled onto the platform – the remnants, she assumed, of the evacuation of Dunkirk.

  The children turned and started to clap. The men just shrugged and walked, or limped, towards the barrier, with a sergeant bellowing, ‘Head for the clock on the main concourse where the good ladies of the Women’s Voluntary Service might even have a cup of tea, though I’ve never seen such a bunch of ne’er-do-wells in the whole of me bleeding life. Assemble there, and get rid of that damned dog, Braithwaite. How you got it on the boat in the first place, I’ll never know. How you kept it with you while they sent us towards Aldershot, and then bloody decided to send us on up here after bloody all, when we should be at Victoria, I don’t know either. What a bloody pig’s ear, that’s all I’ve got to say.’

  Phyllie heard a terse reply from a pale young private. ‘Couldn’t leave it, Sarge, could I? Scared to death it was.’

  ‘You’ll be bloody scared in a moment. I’m worse than any beach being bombed to buggery.’

  Phyllie knew her mother would have whispered: ‘Language, if you please.’ She tucked her clipboard beneath her arm, rammed her pencil in the pocket of her grey cotton jacket and put her wicker shopping basket at her feet.

  A guard blew a whistle nearby. Why hadn’t she thought of that? She put two fingers in her mouth. The children swung round, the soldiers too, as her whistle pierced the chaos. She waved the clipboard as the children moved nearer, but then the soldiers started wolf-whistling back at her and the children turned again. It was like a pantomime. The chatter restarted.

  To her left, Mr Stevens shook his head in apparent despair.

  Phyllie adjusted her grey beret, which had slipped, feeling sad for the lads, and unsure, because if this was the general state of the British army, what was to stop the Nazis from jackbooting their way over the British or bombing them to smithereens? It was all so unreal, panic stirred, as it had when the cinema news had shown the Dunkirk beaches. Had her friend Sammy, the one who’d taught her to whistle, been out there, his captain watching helplessly through the submarine’s periscope?

  Phyllie whistled once more. ‘Pay attention, children. The train isn’t ready for us quite yet, and w
e still need to tick off names.’

  ‘Not again, miss.’ It was Ron Cummins, standing at the back, showing off in front of the passing troops, one of whom was smoking a cigarette just behind the lad. Wasn’t that the pale young man with the dog? Yes, there it was, barking. Poor creature. What would happen to it now?

  Phyllie dropped her pencil. Young Jake, who lodged with his father next door to her, in Sammy’s home, dodged forward, and handed it to her. Ron shouted from the back: ‘Oooh, teacher’s pet is at it again.’

  Phyllie smiled at Jake. ‘Thank you.’ It was unbearably hot. Her girdle was hitched up, and her left suspender unsafe because the rubber button was perished and she feared it wouldn’t last the journey to … wherever they were heading. They had not been told – evacuees never were, it seemed.

  Mr Stevens stabbed a finger towards her clipboard. She nodded. ‘All right, children,’ she said, her voice strong, ‘I will call your names and when I have ticked you off, you are to move to the left and form a line.’

  A soldier with a bandaged head yelled as he limped past their group, ‘You do what your teacher says now. She’d make a good sergeant major, so she would.’ His mates laughed. She half waved and smiled, beginning to call – almost to scream – the names as their train gushed smoke and steam. Across from them, the last troops were slamming doors as each carriage emptied. The WVS women were visible now, directing the men to the main concourse. The WVS had also arrived to help with the evacuees and could be seen dotted about amongst the various schools but they had not reached Ealing Close School yet.

  She began to tick the names. The cinema news had said the Nazis were near Paris. It had also announced that children who hadn’t gone in the first wave of evacuation in September were being given the chance to move to safety now. A headache was beginning.

  She was well over halfway through her list of names, and the children were moving to the left. She continued ticking but found the familiar questions bothering her. Why wouldn’t her mother evacuate too? Why did she insist on moving into the East End to help Phyllie’s brother Frankie at his Roman Catholic presbytery? She ticked the last name, and smiled at the children, who were in lines as immaculate as Mr Stevens’.

  They looked so small standing quietly in groups, their gas masks huge somehow, even on the eleven-year-olds like Ron and Jake. Now that the train opposite was quiet, they were watching their cases, which had been stacked further along the platform, and were being put in the guard’s van. A porter called across to the children, ‘You’ll enjoy your holidays.’

  ‘It is the seaside where people go for holidays, isn’t it, miss? I’ve never been.’ Melanie was seven, and her ankle socks were perfectly white, as usual.

  ‘Sometimes it is,’ Phyllie said, hunkering down to talk to her, brushing back strands of the child’s ginger hair that had escaped from her single plait. ‘But sometimes they go to the countryside, and I think that’s where we might be going. They have lambs in the countryside.’

  ‘I like lamb, when it’s had its throat cut and been cooked. It’s best with mint sauce,’ said Ron, looking round for approval. His friends’ laughter was loud. Melanie’s lip quivered.

  Phyllie whispered to her, ‘If there are lambs, you’ll see how they leap in the air.’ She stroked the child’s face, and then rose.

  She’d have to deal with Ron, yet again, but not here, not now, and fat lot of good it would do anyway. Melanie was starting to weep and if it caught on, then there would be hysteria. ‘Melanie, I’d like you to hold my pencil, and Jake, I need you to make sure you stay by her side. If you pull that face, my lad, and the wind changes, you’ll stay like that. Is that all right, Melanie? It’s a very important job.’

  Melanie swallowed, brushed the back of her hand across her eyes, and took the pencil. ‘Yes, miss.’

  Jake stood beside the smaller child who reached for his hand. He folded his arms. Phyllie checked her watch. Fifteen minutes before departure. Would her mother get here? She’d said this morning she wanted to make sure that Phyllie had a key to their Ealing home, which they were letting. ‘You must have one, just in case,’ she’d said.

  ‘Just in case’ had become a phrase as common as breathing since the war began. Her mother had also taken the opportunity to slice in between Phyllie’s ribs as usual, saying, ‘Especially as I won’t know where you are for ages, what with you running away when you should be here, bearing whatever comes.’

  The fact that teaching was considered essential war work for women and older men, and that Phyllie’s request to transfer to one of the services had been refused, had not impressed her mother.

  Phyllie snatched a look towards the barrier. There was no sign of her, but there were many parents waiting, and all along the platform were bustling WVS, and the press of other schools, banners and porters.

  The parents would be allowed through only when the children were embarked and the train leaving, to prevent last-minute scenes. A few troops were still hobbling up the platform on the other side, their eyes to the front. She heard barking again. A small girl tugged at her flowery cotton skirt. ‘Please, miss, I’m tired.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you are, Dorothy, but soon we’ll be sitting down, leaving London behind and finding lots to look at out of the windows.’

  She heard a shout then, a loud one, and one she recognised but couldn’t believe. She swung round and her heart leapt. It was Sammy.

  ‘Hello, hello; where’s my lady friend?’ Two sailors were running towards her, dodging and sidestepping their way through the crowd, leaping over several cases.

  Phyllie snatched a look towards the headmaster, who was further down the platform and deep in conversation with the guard. ‘Sammy,’ she cried, ‘what on earth?’ But he was here, swinging down his kitbag and pulling her to him.

  ‘We’re going up north, from down south.’ He winked. ‘Can’t say any more. Got to get to Euston. Isaac wanted to see Jake as we came through, so I thought I’d come and see you too. No time to get to Ealing to say goodbye to Mum and Dad.’

  Sammy Williams and Phyllie had formed their own gang since the time they could walk, playing Cowboys and Indians, and swinging on the ropes his dad, Bill Williams, and her own, Cyril Saunders, had hung on the oak tree at the back in the allotments. Four years ago, at the age of nineteen, Sammy had joined the submarine service. A year later, when she reached nineteen, Phyllie started teacher training. She pulled away and looked at him. ‘You be careful wherever it is you’re going, do you hear me, you great dollop? And while you’re being careful, have a bath.’

  He roared with laughter. ‘Can’t do anything about the smell of submarine diesel so don’t you start being a fusspot, Phyllie. Talking of fusspots, where’s your mum?’

  She grinned and slapped him, then saw Ron Cummins staring at them. Phyllie remembered where she was, and turned to Isaac, Jake’s father. Rachel and Isaac Kaplan had arrived in England in 1934. Originally from Krakow in Poland, they had worked in Germany for a few years, before lodging in the attic flat of the Williams’ house. Isaac had joined the submarine service at the same time as Sammy. The Williamses had let their house from today, to fit in with Jake’s evacuation, and were probably on their way to Wales, so Sammy would have missed them anyway.

  Jake ran towards his father, and Isaac held him tight, his face alight with joy. Releasing him, he crouched down and dug into his kitbag. He pulled out a parcel and handed it to Jake as though it was the crown jewels. Phyllie and the children watched as Jake unwrapped it slowly. Then he threw the gift to the ground. Not just that, but he stamped on it, screaming, ‘Why, Dad, why? No one knew.’

  The porters stopped in their work, the children were silent but, next to her, Sammy cursed quietly. Phyllie was frozen, unable to believe what she was seeing until, at last, as tears streamed down Jake’s face, she moved towards him. Sammy, though, pulled her back. ‘I told him not to,’ he ground out. ‘He doesn’t understand that the fascist buggers he left in Europe are here too. That�
�s the trouble; he thinks England’s so bloody marvellous.’

  Isaac was picking up the soiled Jewish shawl, the precious family tallit, which he had just given his son. He looked pale and shocked. In spite of the station noise, and the activity of the porters who had returned to work, it seemed as though a silence remained. A silence that was broken by Ron, his mousy hair long and unwashed, elbowing his way through the others to the front and bellowing, ‘Jake’s a bloody four and two, a Yid, that’s what he is. My mum and dad would have a bit to say about us being evacuated with the likes of that.’

  ‘Dad,’ yelled Jake, beating at his father. ‘You see, now you’ve ruined it.’

  Sammy was still gripping Phyllie and now he whispered, ‘We’ve got to do something. Ron’s father’s a fascist, you know – a blackshirt – and I expect some others have grown up that way too. Their leader, Mosley, might be in clink, but it’s not going to stop this bloody Jew baiting.’

  All she could think was that he was wrong; these were children, so surely they didn’t … But then she saw the expression of hate on Ron’s face. Behind him the other children were whispering. His best friends, Ernie and Jonny, jeered: ‘Bloody hell, it’s a four and two, a bloody Jew’s coming with us. Bloody disgusting, it is.’

  She started towards the boys, but Sammy’s grip was firm. ‘Work with me,’ he demanded. ‘We need a distraction because anything else will escalate the whole damn thing, and it’s Jake who’ll suffer.’

  He released her and leapt across to Jake, pulling him close. He reached for a few others. Sammy then flung himself down on one knee. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Isaac still holding the tallit, his face deeply sad as he looked across at her. He mouthed, ‘Please, Phyllie, take care of my boy.’

  ‘Always,’ she answered and he nodded. Near him Ron spat on the ground. Phyllie felt as though she’d been slapped and a wave of anger surged over her. She simply did not know what to do, because she feared she’d do too much, and that would be of no help to anyone.