Orphans of War (54 page)

‘I hope you realise just what you’re taking on, Miss Belfield, in offering your property for a hostel. Most of them don’t speak any English. There won’t be much work for them in the district. It’s not good for them to live off charity,’ said the billeting officer from the council, who sat across the mahogany desk, examining Maddy’s application with a sniff.

‘I’ve made enquiries. There’s plenty of summer farm work and domestic work. There’s the paper mill, and cotton and woollen mills close by. I’m sure we can find
them all work,’ she replied, waving her own list of arguments towards him.

‘These are educated young people, not manual workers on the whole, but students and professionals with children. They’ve had a rough time and many thought they were going to America, not Britain. Have you thought about that?’

‘Yes, I am aware of all this, Mr Potter, but we have a tradition of taking in people at the Brooklyn. My aunt, as you may recall, kept evacuees in the Old Vic for the duration of the war. I myself know what it’s like to lose my family and home and be uprooted.’ She gave him the famous Belfield intense glare.

‘Yes, yes, of course, Miss Belfield. Your aunt gave us sterling service. It is a pity she’s not available to chaperone this venture, though,’ he countered.

‘Why should I need a chaperone? I do have some staff of my own. The vicar will vouch for my respectability.’

‘Oh, I didn’t mean to suggest…but you are very young to take this upon yourself.’ Mr Potter flushed, looking at the floor, not at her.

‘Look, do you want this offer of accomodation or not?’ Maddy snapped, having no patience with ditherers.

‘If there are no local objections, I’m sure we will be able to come to an arrangement.’

‘When?’

‘We mustn’t rush these matters, Miss Belfield.’

‘Tell that to the poor sods who are camped in Butlin’s like POWs!’ she replied, sensing old Potter could be worn down by her persistence.

In the months that followed Plum’s departure, Maddy had no time to bemoan her decision, but wondered what she’d let herself in for. There was the place to clean out, decorate, and rooms to furnish with cots and beds, which she begged and borrowed from sympathetic parishioners. There was the kitchen to service, the wash house and the copper boiler to set up, the stove to decoking. It was all very shabby, but once the fires were lit the rooms were homely enough.

The first Hungarian couple who came were Ernst and Elisabetta, with a small boy, Ferenc, who had such wonderful golden curls that he stopped the traffic on market day. Then there were Elsa and Anna, young sisters who crossed the border with just the clothes they stood up in.

The local authority insisted that they must be found work in mills, factories or domestic service. Every room was filled, and the attic bedrooms bursting with smoke and the chatter of Hungarian late into the night.

Soon, the Brooklyn piano was used to practice by a music student called Zoltan and his girlfriend, Maria, who sang haunting folk songs that made everyone cry. A man from Skipton came up to teach English and the young children were signed in to school, just like the evacuees had been. There were problems, fights, misunderstandings, complaints, but they soon settled down. Every time there was a theft in town the police were called to the Old Vic as routine, but by the summer of 1957 the Hungarians were no longer a novelty around the town.

Maddy had learned to be patient, polite and political
to get what she needed for her refugees, any way she could. She wrote to Raoul Henry, begging for support, and he sent bales of materials so that her girls were the best dressed in town and sold skirts and dresses to raise funds.

Some stayed only a week or so, but others stayed for months. Some were so shocked and silent and sullen that she thought she’d never get through the barrier that was round them like a bell jar.

Working in the old kitchen garden provided an interest. They tried to grow strange crops of peppers and vegetables, for variety and to remind them of home, which flummoxed Mr Hill, who was supervising their efforts. It gave some of the young men a purpose to their days, whilst others took to walking the hills in groups. Some got drunk in the pubs and made a nuisance of themselves, others soon latched on to local girls and started courting, but there was one girl who never mixed with the others and who seemed to go through the motions of living. She snapped at the girls in the kitchen and they left her alone. No one could get through to her, her English was poor, and her silence off-putting.

Maddy took her to the Brooklyn and away from the chatter of the Old Vic, sensing she needed to be away from the incessant company of the other refugees. On her first visit she stared at the house in disbelief.

‘This is for you?’

Maddy nodded, ushering her through the door. Ava walked around each room, examining the paintings, the books, the photographs, shaking her head. ‘It is not all for you?’

‘And you and my friends.’

The girl went to her room and stayed there until the next morning. It was not going to be easy. Maddy knocked on the door in her jodhpurs and old jumper, encouraging Ava into the kitchen to eat. The girl followed her to the stables, fearful at first until she saw old Monty, his head half out of the door, eager to get some exercise.

Ava watched as Maddy saddled up and followed her out onto the hill track at a distance. Later, she watched how Monty was groomed and the next day she helped muck out and groom him and finally she smiled. Ava had found a friend.

There was something between the old horse and the girl that touched Maddy, a kinship and empathy she’d never seen before. Ava kept herself to herself, but with Monty she jabbered away, telling him all her secrets. Maddy was happy to leave him to melt the ice around the girl’s heart.

There were a few refugees she was glad to see the back of–the ones who sneered at Brooklyn Hall as bourgeois and extravagant, but who wolfed down everything on offer without even a thank you.

The
Gazette
came and did a short article on the new occupant of Brooklyn Hall, and the
Yorkshire Post
picked up the idea and ran a feature on Madeleine, the ex-mannequin who single-handedly restored the hostel. It was all exaggerated nonsense and she hardly dared put her head over the doorstep, being a five-minute celebrity. But she received letters of congratulations with cheques enclosed and
encouragement, as well as terrible condemnation and hateful abuse.

One fateful morning she went into the stable and found Monty in a terrible state, fitting, sweating and in need of emergency treatment. Anxiously she and Ava sat trying to calm the stricken beast, listening for the vet’s wagon on the gravel.

When he came there was nothing he could do. Monty was suffering. He shook his head, ordered them out and shot the horse.

It was all so quick, so sudden, so unexpected. Maddy stood shivering but it was Ava who was inconsolable, shaking, screaming, running into the stable. ‘No! No! You…No!’ She threw herself at the startled vet in fury

But Maddy couldn’t console her or understand. In desperation she called in Zoltan, who could interpret her words. He sat with Ava, trying to translate why she was so distraught.

‘She was in Budapest,’ he said. ‘The soldiers take her husband and shot him against the wall. Just like that…into the head, no mercy, no justice. Bang and he is gone.’

‘Oh, no!’ Maddy sat holding Ava, who was weeping and gesticulating wildly, Zoltan trying to keep up with her.

‘She take baby and run away with other students down to the safe border. They walk many miles and her milk go but she find powder, but then baby is sick. There is no doctor and she carried him across into Austria in the woollen shawl but baby didn’t move. It was sick.’ He paused looking up at her, crying.

‘I was there. I saw too. There was a little one wrapped in blue woollen shawl. We passed it down the line, one by one with the message he must be buried on Hungarian soil, like his father. But she not know where he is buried…’

Maddy cried. There were no words to offer comfort. She too had a baby who died that had no known grave. Where was little Dieter?

‘I’m so sorry,’ was all she could say. ‘Tell Ava I too have suffered, but not like that.’

They had all suffered loss because of the war but now this. ‘Thanks for translating, Zoltan. Monty was my friend but he’d had a good life. Poor Ava’s husband never got that chance. Perhaps one day I can teach Ava to ride another horse, but not yet.’

Ava looked up, calmer, and held out her hand. The glass bell jar was shattered; Monty had seen to that. Now Ava could start living again, but this tragedy and loss stirred up all Maddy’s own unexpressed guilt and grief again. She must find out about her own little baby. This mystery had gone on too long. Only when she heard the truth from Gloria would she ever start to live again.

Gloria was sitting at a breakfast bar trying to think up a present for Greg, when she saw the article in the
Yorkshire Post.

‘Look at this! You read it…Maddy’s got herself in the news. She’s opened up the Old Vic for refugees…look,’ she said.

Greg was shoving toast in his mouth, whilst searching for his car keys. ‘No time,’ he said. ‘Can’t stop…must dash. I’ll be late tonight. We’ve got a new site to view…Bye, Bebe!’ He pecked his little daughter on the cheek and rushed out of the back door into the double garage.

Gloria slammed down the morning paper with a sigh. Once she’d taken Bebe to school, that would be her whole day until hometime. She looked around her kitchen with satisfaction. It had fitted cupboards and Formica surfaces, Marley tiles on the floor and a built-in washing machine, a pantry stocked with tins of meat, fruit and salmon. It was like something out of
Ideal Home.

‘Come on, Bebe,’ she called to the little girl with a
mop of red curls, sitting in her expensive green school uniform. ‘Where’s your panama hat?’ It was lovely to see the child looking so smart.

‘I’ve got a tummy ache, Mummy. Do I have to go to school?’

‘Again? Have you been to the toilet?’ Gloria ignored Bebe’s usual morning complaints. ‘Hurry up!’

Gloria was the only wife in Sunnyside Drive to have her own car, a Triumph Herald with an open top, and a double garage. They had the corner plot with an acre of garden, an ornamental pond with a heron statue, a big swing and slide for Bebe, and a huge rockery in the front garden that Mr Taylor, the gardener, kept up to scratch.

Gloria grabbed her pink duster coat and straw hat as she might nip into Harrogate and do a recce round the shops, have lunch in Betty’s and spin out the day until it was time to pick up Bebe again.

‘Do I have another name?’ asked Bebe in the car. It was strange seeing her own green eyes staring back at her.

‘No, just Bebe. Why?’

‘Belinda says it’s a silly name, Bebe Byrne. Haven’t I got another name?’

Gloria shook her head. Greg had wanted her to be Beatrice Prunella, and make Mrs Belfield her godmother for old-times’ sake, but Gloria soon knocked that one on the head. Bebe was so feminine–short and different, to her thinking. It made Bebe stand out too. ‘You tell Belinda Pike you’re named after the famous actress Bebe Daniels. There’s no one else in Yorkshire with your name.’

‘Why couldn’t I have been Susan or Carol?’

‘Susans are two a penny, but you’re special.’ That seemed to shut her up. Bebe was so full of questions and into everything. She’d been a sickly baby and difficult to feed. Greg had wanted to try for a boy later but Gloria said she was never going through that agony again. She’d got herself fitted with a Dutch cap and made sure it was in on the few times they did make love.

As she sat in a café sipping coffee, she stared around at all the other well-heeled ladies in hats chattering to their friends. Why hadn’t she got any chums like that? The mums at school were stand-offish, a posh bunch who kept together and ignored her. The girls in Sunnyside Drive were older and stick-in-the-muds: they were all into the WI, church and coffee mornings that she never got invited to.

Somehow she didn’t fit in. Perhaps it was her expensive carpets and curtains, and modern G Plan teak sideboard and room dividers, table and chairs and velvet sofa, or the fact that she didn’t do church or have family to visit. Greg was always off at weekends rallying. There was ballet class for Bebe and the occasional birthday party but not much of a social life. The Afton family gatherings didn’t count. There was no smoking or drinking at their dos. A little part-time job might have been good, but Greg wouldn’t hear of it.

‘No wife of mine need go out to work. Bebe needs you to be around for her.’

The one chink in his tough armour was Bebe. Sometimes she felt as if their child was the only sun
in his sky. Every time he went away he brought her back expensive dolls and clothes.

Now she was at school all Gloria’s days were the same, at the weekend the routine was the same, and holidays were spent in hotels in Bournemouth, or else she took Bebe to stay near the farm where Sid was working in the Dales. She drove many miles out of her way to avoid Sowerthwaite, just in case she bumped into Maddy and her cronies. Sid was always glad to see them both but they lived in different worlds now.

They dutifully sent cards to Plum, and to old Mrs Batty at the Brooklyn. Fancy Mrs Plum going off to New Zealand. Maddy was now queen bee there. Sunnyside Drive was no match for Brooklyn Hall and Gloria was still jealous of her old friend, and had followed her career, perturbed why she should given it up to return north.