Evacuee Boys by John E. Forbat Read Free Book Online

school.
    Charlie Robbins, the father, was away in the army, where he was a cook, and his rusting bicycle languished in the shed, un-ridden, till I could persuade Mrs Robbins – Maud – to let me clean it up and use it. At last, I could ride around Melksham with the other boys and, instead of cadging a bike for the five and a half miles to the Trowbridge swimming baths, I could ride ‘my own’. When Charlie was invalided out of the army and worked at the RAF ‘Camp’ as a navvy, my pedalling freedom ended and I was back to cadging again. More accident prone on foot than on a bike, I slipped on the Robbins’ front path and broke my forearm into a nice curve. The day my plaster was cut off I fell on it again. Hearing the ominous crunch, I walked the mile to the hospital, where an unbelieving sister put it in a sling and sent me home. After several painful weeks, mother took me to Charing Cross hospital during a visit home. I was mystified by the roars of laughter from the medical students surrounding the doctor attending me, when this 12-year-old Scout complained how a stupid Sister had tested his arm for crepitus, to check if my ‘green stick fracture’ had been re-broken. Another few weeks in plaster left me with a strong – if still slightly bent – forearm.
    Maud Robbins banned us children from the sacrosanct, linoleum-covered front room, which was reserved for visits from better-off relatives. Instead we spent all of our indoor time on the hard chairs round the kitchen table, where we listened to the wireless. Week in, week out, without variation, Sunday dinner (really lunch) was roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, with (only ever boiled) potatoes. Cold cut leftover beef on Monday was followed by corned beef on Tuesday, my favourite ‘Zoop’ stew Wednesday, sausages Thursday and lamb chop Friday. I was sent out for the fish and chips on Saturdays. Sunday’s pudding was invariably prunes and custard, when Charlie counted out the prunes as he served one at a time onto our plates in turn. He was responsible for baking the weekly cake, evidently the result of his army training.
    A lot older than Charlie, Maud Robbins was really stepmother to Ruby and Michael. Thin and scraggy, she was easily agitated. When wearing her Sunday-best clothes, which on such occasions included a corset, her normally absent bottom took on a curiously square shape. An ‘egrivating’ good-for-nothing, I only had to knock the handle off a jug for her to fly into a rage and, leaping out to the back doorstep, lift it high over her head and smash the offending remains into a thousand pieces with apparent relish. Then to my incomprehension, with venom she would invite me to ‘go have a deep one’, after which she would feel better.

    Charlie and Maud Robbins. (By kind permission of Michael Robbins)
    I managed a couple of weekends to London by hitching a ride with local overnight lorry drivers for two ‘bob’, and for an 12-year-old it was wonderful to see the dawn en route – without any thought or fear about safety in the care of a stranger. Mother awaited my arrival on the street corner, wearing a worried frown – I didn’t know why. She would have had more cause to worry later, had she known how I was taken to the ‘rec’ and beaten up by three bigger boys, for letting on about their thieving at W.H. Smith.
    By then I was well on through puberty and growing fast – though so were these older thugs. To my satisfaction, I was no longer in a position to be humiliated, as when two years earlier one of my 13-year-old tormentors had shamed me in the boys’ lavatories by comparing his superior penis with mine. ‘What d’ya think you’ve got there? Now this is a prick!’ Nip Reese boasted, hanging it out for me to admire. When I reached 13, the big thrill was Dad shaving the thick growth of hair off my upper lip when I visited home.

    13 March 1940
    Dear Mum & Dad,

    I hope you will not faint, receiving a letter so soon after the last