Far From Home

The air was heady with the subtle incense of wisteria after rain.

Other flowers were mixed in with the wisteria, and unfamiliar scents that Thomas supposed were unique to country living. About the only thing truly familiar was the noise and smoke of the train engine as it chugged along, carriages crammed full of children being sent away from London to the relative safety of the countryside.

The train had stopped twice so far, each stop requiring a delay of about half an hour as the disembarking children were checked against lists to make sure they were off at the right stop, and then again against their luggage, so that no-one accidentally wandered off with someone else's suitcase. The children that remained, other than feeling relieved at finally having some elbow room, were a bit of a mixed bag, in both attitude and appearance.

Some sturdy-looking older boys were grumbling, and not-very-quietly making plans to try and sneak away to a recruiting station the moment they disembarked. A pair of waifish-looking girls with tan skin huddled together, in silent solidarity with a cluster of children whose clothing and colouring suggested that they or their parents had already been refugees from southern and eastern Europe, before being shoved on a train and evacuated further. They hadn't spoken much English, in Thomas's few attempts to start a conversation, either.

Finally, the train stopped again, and Thomas checked his ticket to make sure that this was his stop. Off the platform, what looked like half the village was gathered, two elderly gents and a chap with one arm consulting a clipboard off to one side, with a posh-looking lady hovering over them. Good to know that Thomas's future hosts were as confused about the situation as he was.

A bunch of cats were roaming the platform, white-stockinged gingers or tiger-striped. Once Thomas was safely stationed next to his suitcase, he knelt and unlaced a shoe, making the soft 'pssht' noises that had always worked on Nan's cats. One of the foreigner girls made a crooning noise, and the cats came racing over. The one-armed chap looked amused, and once they appeared to have sorted out the clipboard, made a three-note whistle, that brought the cats running.

He knelt and petted them, sulky rumblings instantly turning into purrs. "Don't look at me like that, it's not dinnertime yet."

He couldn't be so bad, if he liked cats. One of the older gents looked amused. "Right, the list is organised by who you're staying with, so don't panic if you don't hear your name immediately. Jessop, sound 'em off."

Jessop, the slightly shorter older gent, inhaled, and immediately identified himself as retired military, probably a sergeant of some kind. "Right you are, Tully. Brown; Millie, Alice and Lavender! You're staying with the Entwhistles!"

His voice carried clearly, and an elderly couple emerged from the crowd to whisk the three girls - and their bags - away. He continued down the list, until it was just Thomas, the two waifs, an olive-skinned girl, and the older boys left.

The one-armed chap cleared his throat with a chuckle. "A pity Thomas is on shift; he'd have said it was just like old times."

Thomas jumped, but they clearly weren't referring to him. Tully gave him a slightly dour look. "And run off his feet, just like we were then, too. Right, you lads are coming with Jesop and me, and we'll be detouring via the recruitment station, because there are supposed to be two more of you, and it doesn't take a genius to work out where they snuck off too."

The burly lads started guiltily, but had enough sense not to argue. Thomas hesitantly raised a hand, as though he were back in school. "Er, I'm not sure how much English she speaks, sir."

One-Arm patted him on the shoulder. "That's all right, I was a POW during the last war, and I picked up a smattering. I'm sure we'll have something in common."

He ran through several languages, finally settling on one. After conversing with the girl for a few minutes, he turned to the rest of them. "Right then, I'm Peter Barrow, and you'll be staying with me and my brother, Thomas, who's Wardmaster at the Convalescent Hospital. Our neighbour, Mrs Hughes, has offered to look after you when we're at work, and Tully and Jessop live on the other side."

He set off, the cats following, and Thomas exchanged shrugs with the waifs, before following. "Do you have any children?"

Peter nodded, "Marigold, but she's working as a junior correspondent for a London paper. You might see her - she's touring the convalescent homes for a Personal Interest piece - but she spends most of her time on the road. Expect some of our godchildren to drop by occasionally - most of them are in the WAC or RAMC with Thomas - but they're mostly grown, too."

Golly. At least things wouldn't be boring.

Thomas-the-Wardmaster was easy to distinguish from his brother; tall and dark, with almost aristocratic good looks, who got Home Service on account of a partially-paralysed shoulder that stopped him from being able to lift or carry stretchers, while Mr Peter was blonde and round-faced. He had a very no-nonsense air about him - he must, running an entire hospital - but there was a gruff kindness beneath it. Perhaps he'd learned it from Mrs Hughes, the widow next door who had all but adopted the Barrow brothers as her own. Tully and Jessop had been Wardmaster Thomas's commanding officers and mentors in the RAMC during the Great War, before retiring nearby in the late 20s.

It was an odd sort of family, but Thomas liked it.

The waifs turned out to be Ruby and Mary, orphans who had been swept up in the Great Evacuation by luck or chance. The foreign girl was Ekaterina, from the Slovak Republic, who spoke German as a second language and was slowly learning English. Mr Peter, also formerly RAMC, had spent most of the was in a German hospital, and spoke the language fluently enough to translate and teach her.

Thomas had expected more people to make a fuss over that - one of his neighbours back home had been a linguistics professor at the university, and recieved no end of grief and suspicion for being fluent in German and Russian, among other languages. He suspected that the reason no-one troubled Mr Peter over it was the whole Prisoner of War bit, and the fact that he'd lived in the area since the end of the Great War and was liked by everyone. Besides, anyone who tried ran up against the roadblocks of Tully and Jessop, and Wardmaster Barrow, and Mrs Hughes, and any one of those options was fearsome enough by themselves, never mind in combination!

Once a week, the Barrow household would either have guests in the form of Matron Branson - Wardmaster Thomas's counterpart at the Convalescent home - and her family, or would walk down two streets to join the Bransons for dinner. The Bransons consisted of Matron and Mr Branson, an Irishman who'd loved an English girl and put down roots as Land Agent for one of the local Estates; Nurse Branson, who had recently joined the WAC and was the oldest of the many godchildren who occasionally struggled to remember that the Wardmaster was not called Uncle Thomas while on duty; a younger daughter who was studying at a Nursing School in York and sometimes made it home on weekends; and a boy about Thomas's age, Liam.

When they weren't sentenced to attending the local council school, Liam knew all the best places to explore nearby, and Thomas found himself treating the Evacuation almost like an extended holiday. Mum, when she had time to write, rarely spoke of what was actually happening back in London, but passed on when she received word from Dad, and appeared to like hearing what was going on in the country.

Thomas faithfully recorded everything of note, including the trouble some of the local kids got in for teaching Ekaterina rude words under the guise of being helpful, and the thrashing Wardmaster Barrow delivered when he caught some boys bothering Ruby and Mary.

The girls had warmed up to the older Barrow brother instantly, after that, and Thomas wondered if they might end up staying and being adopted, rather than going back to London once the war was over.

For all the trouble and suffering the War caused, perhaps it wasn't all bad.

This was written for a Historical Fiction Short Story challenge, with the category "World War 2", chosen by lucky dip. Since I don't have a huge amount of interest in that time period, I chose to focus on the masses of Child Evacuees, instead.

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