Child from Home by John Wright Page A

for letting a light show after dark as the blackout regulations were being strictly enforced and a light had been spotted at her window. Malicious rumours concerning the Jews were circulating in some quarters and there were real fears of infiltration by secret agents. Stories concerning the unseen presence of German sympathisers were ‘doing the rounds’ and the press called these fifth columnists ‘the enemy within’. The suspicion became even greater if they were German nationals. This atmosphere of mistrust may have had a bearing on the governess being reported and she was fined and sternly reprimanded at Pickering Magistrates’ Court.
    Within a few months all German nationals were to be classed as aliens and interned. Most were kept behind barbed wire, patrolled by armed soldiers, in requisitioned hotels and guesthouses on the Isle of Man while their credentials were examined, but most turned out to be genuine refugees escaping Nazi persecution.
    Mam had had a good deal of experience as a domestic servant, having worked for middle-class families in a number of large residences over the past ten years. This stood her in good stead as she assisted Mrs Winnie Ruonne, an excellent cook who always managed to feed us well even in those increasingly austere times. She was a short, plumpish lady with small features and a pale, freckled complexion, and we always called her ‘Dinner Lady’. She was actually a middle-aged woman but her round baby-face made her seem much younger. She always wore a white wrap-over pinafore and an elasticated mobcap that hid most of her ginger-coloured hair, which she plaited into a thick pigtail that hung down her back.
    Winnie’s husband was a railwayman, and she saved up her off-duty days so that she could go and stay with him from time to time. Mam and Dinner Lady worked happily together in the cosy warmth of the kitchen where there was a large open fireplace and a Yorkist range of cream-coloured, enamel-coated ovens. They rose early and were getting breakfast ready long before we got up. As the porridge bubbled away in a huge pan the great black kettle steamed on the hob, and the distinctive mouth-watering aroma of home-made bread and cakes often permeated the whole house.
    Across the corridor from the kitchen was a large well-stocked storage cupboard with its shelves full of tins of ham, soup, baked beans and the like. There were even 71b tins of bully beef in it. At the other end of the kitchen there was a walk-in scullery and a large copper for washing the masses of dirty laundry that we produced every day. A local woman used to come in on a Monday to tackle it and on the following day she did the ironing. Whole days were set aside for particular domestic tasks in those times.
    A doorway led out into the side yard and diagonally across it was a coal store and the garage where Mrs Stancliffe kept her big shiny-black Humber car. Next to it was a tack room with a converted bothy on the floor above, and beyond that lay the stables and kennels. It was not until many years later that I learned that the sensuously curving pantiles on the roofs had been brought to this country from Holland as ballast in the old sailing ships.
    On my first night I was put into one of eight small beds set up in the large ground-floor dormitory that had a polished wooden floor and no carpets. There was a small rug by each bed and a wooden frame, covered in a layer of thick black material, was placed over the windows at dusk. It took me a long time to get to sleep and, in the dead of night, I woke with a start not knowing where I was; I felt lost and frightened in the unfamiliar blackness and had the urge to go to the lav (as we always called the toilet). Trying desperately to hold on, I searched under the bed for the po (chamber pot) only to find there wasn’t one. I had not been there long enough to know the whereabouts of the bathroom and, in any case, there had always been a smelly po