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NEW AUTHORS SHOWCASE
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6M P3 |
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Don’t Know Where, Don’t Know When by Anne Brackley |
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Outline The narrator Jenny Galloway is not quite fourteen when, during the London Blitz, she is evacuated with her young brother to Kent. Within days she is drawn dramatically into the war during the Battle of Britain when she discovers a German airman hiding in woods where he had parachuted. Thomas believes (as German aircrews were told) that he’ll be shot if captured. This appals Jenny and though he is ‘the enemy’ she secretly looks after him while he recovers from an injured leg. In the hide they become very close. She hatches a crazy escape plan. Before he goes he says Ich liebe dich. That means / love you, for all you have done for me.” He says the war will soon be over. Then he will come back to England and take her to his home in Hamburg. She meets David, a public schoolboy of 17 soon to join the RAE. He knows nothing about girls. She knows nothing about boys. She is in awe of his knowledge and his self-assurance and moved by his romantic nature. They lie together under the willows by the river as the Battle of Britain rages above them. Jenny’s parents are killed in the Blitz. In her misery, loneliness and need for affection she gives in to David and becomes pregnant. This is not discovered until she has a miscarriage. David is sent away from home and Jenny is eased out of the friendly home by being offered a job as a kitchen-maid in a large and stuffy house. No one will tell Jenny where David is. After the war Jenny has moved to Yorkshire and has rebuilt her life. She has a good job in a department store and is buying a cottage. Out of the blue Thomas returns. He has been in Canada since the war and has made two trips to England looking for her. He is still alone and says he’ll send her a ticket to join him. It has been eight years, They are not the same people they were. But he promises her a good life. Her best friend Millie encourages her. I’d go if I were you.” “But you’re not me.” He writes to her from Canada reminding her of what he said: Ich liebe dich. She is torn.
Opening of Book
Millie, who works with me in the linen department, says that if I want to make a new start here in the North I shouldn’t be spending my evenings at home listening to the wireless and reading. I should go to dances and join some kind of a club where I can meet nice young men. Even if I wanted to I don’t have time. I work six days a week and don’t get home till half past six. When I’ve got my tea and tidied up the evening’s almost gone. Millie means well. She introduced me to some of her friends but the young men have nothing to talk about except cricket and football. Or motor-bikes - I ask you! If they take you to the pictures they seem to think that just for the price of a ham roll, a packet of crisps and a couple of barley wines they can take all sorts of liberties. One lad did try to be romantic, trotting out corny lines he remembered from films. Why aren’t boys taught the art of pleasing girls? Their mums don’t teach them about courting. Such things are not spoken of in working-class families. I couldn’t imagine my mum ever feeling the way I did when I was with David. Shakespeare could have put it into beautiful words. He probably had in the sonnets, but I didn’t understand poetry the way David did. I’m sure most girls go on feeling romantic about their first love long after it’s over. Maybe for years. Boys aren’t like that. A boy can love you truly, so he says, and go off to war and slowly forget you. I’m not likely to meet anyone at work. The younger men are all married or have girl friends. Or they’re peculiar. If a nice young man did turn up and liked the look of me enough to want to take me out and I said no, he wouldn’t take no for an answer. If he had any gumption he’d come back and ask again and again until I said yes. One fellow did. He brought me a bunch of flowers and said pretty things so I agreed to go on an outing with him to the Dales. He was well spoken and nicely mannered but soft. I knew I was wasting my time after spending a whole Sunday with him on a coach trip to Grassington. He looked flattened when I turned down his next invitation but he didn’t press me any more. I felt mean after all his trouble and expense, but I want a man who makes me feel good just by being with him, not a well-mannered escort. And when the time comes for a goodnight kiss, I want to feel more than just obliged. By careful housekeeping and cutting down on outings and fripperies, I have been able to put aside a few pounds each week ever since I came up here. My attitude to work was noticed at the store and when I was only twenty-five I was put in charge of the linen department on a wage that helped me get a mortgage from the firm’s bank. I bought an old terrace cottage just outside town and felt truly independent for the first time in my life. My mum would have been proud of me. But then things went wrong. One of the trusses in the roof split and looked like it might give way. That was when I realised the structure of my home wasn’t the only thing that needed support. Every Christmas a card arrived from the Priestlands with a note hoping I was well and happy. This year I got a letter as well, asking if I would like to spend my holiday on the farm, as a guest. I could come any time during the summer. If I wanted something to do, I could help with the strawberries and cherries in June or the plums later in September. Telling me I could help with the harvest seemed like a way of saying I’d be earning my keep. Mrs Priestland knows I hate feeling obliged. I can’t afford to go away. It costs too much to stay anywhere, even in a cheap boarding-house, and I need every penny for the cottage. But though I would only have to pay my rail fare to Kent, going back was not a good idea. Mrs Priestland knows David’s mother and she could still be living in the village. Suppose David visited his mum while I was staying at the farm? We might meet anywhere. That would be unbearable. Even going to church (which I’d be expected to do if I stayed with the Priestlands) would be disturbing. And how could I resist going to the path along the river bank with the trout pool and grassy bank under the willows? I find it hard to forgive Mrs Priestland for not telling me what happened to David during the war until the last moment when I was already on the train to London and it was moving out of the station. She must have known where he was living just as she knew when he was sent away by his mother. Is he married now? Perhaps to the pretty girl he brought to the party at Welconbury. It would have been a big wedding in a smart London church, like the ones I read about in old copies of The Tatler at the doctor’s. All the ladies in expensive clothes and the men in uniform or morning dress. And they would have had a honeymoon ‘somewhere abroad’. Damn David! I had put him out of my mind as far as possible, and now here he is again! He deceived me. Pretending to love me. He never meant the pretty things he said. He just saw me as the kind of lower-class girl he could impress and have fun with before he went off to the war. He was brave enough to join the RAE but not brave enough to be honest with me. He would never have treated a girl he wanted to marry like he treated me, would he? I wrote to Mrs Priestland to thank her for her letter and said I was sorry but couldn’t get away because of work to be done on my cottage. I hoped they were both well. I had told her the truth, but not the whole truth. |