shouted out, “Where? Who? We never go on trips.” When no answered her, she let out a loud wail. Her mum interrupted her wailings and told her to run outside and ask someone on the street for the time.
“Go! Now!” she demanded when Marjorie stayed put. Marjorie wanted an explanation, but the unfamiliar tone in her mum’s voice made her head towards the stairs. She leapt down taking two at a time, swung open the door, and ran onto the sidewalk. Whitley Road was strangely quiet, but she noticed a man entering a building a few doors down. She ran up to him and asked him for the time. She watched as he slowly reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out a watch. He told her it was almost eight o’clock and suggested that she should be running along to school. Thinking he might be a truant officer, she quickly turned and ran back without a thank you.
Marjorie pushed open the door and yelled up that it was about eight o’clock. Winifred gasped, and hurried everyone.
“We will miss the train,” she told them. “Now let’s go. Get your coats on. Out the door!” She turned to her four-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Jean, and told her to stay put and mind her little brother, Lawrence. “Do not go outside. Do you understand me?” she yelled back as she hurried the children down the stairs without waiting for an answer.
Jean had never been left in charge before. Proudly, she took Lawrence’s hand, but a loud wail followed them before the door slammed shut. Jean yelled again asking them to come back, but Winifred was too intent on her other four children to even notice her cries.
Winifred leaned on Phyllis as she rushed the group along Whitley Road. The four children followed closely behind. Joyce held Audrey and Kenny’s hands. Marjorie lagged a little behind. She wanted to run off and go to school. She would be late. Her teacher probably wondered where she was. She could not remember ever wanting to go to school so badly before. The punishment for arriving late today and the strap for not going to school all last week would be worth it. A cross teacher would be easier to bear than walking any further into this unknown. But she followed when her mum turned up Station Road. The Whitley Bay train station was just ahead.
The train station — that was where it all started this morning, even though it was all set in motion last week. Everyone was so upset after the visit from those awful men. Nothing had been the same from that day on. At first, Marjorie thought it was odd that their mum did not make them go to school. She said that she wanted to spend more time with them. She told them that school could wait. Instead, they spent the afternoons down on the beach. Their mum seemed sad and distant, but the children busied themselves with exploring and running after seagulls and watching waves crash on the shore and they were able to forget the sadness for a while. That had been Winifred’s hope.
No one had said a word on the walk to the station. It was pointless to demand answers. Nothing made any sense to Marjorie. She did not run off though, she had just followed along and walked past Clarence Crescent, Algernon Place, and all the familiar alleys, and walked right up to the train station and now here she was — lying in a cot in some strange and scary building.
Marjorie could not settle her mind. She looked over at Joyce and watched her get up and gently put Audrey back into her own cot. Audrey had finally fallen asleep. Marjorie called over in a choked whisper as Joyce climbed back into her bed. The look Joyce returned stopped her in mid-sentence. Joyce told her to hush, since she was afraid of waking up Audrey and of getting caught talking. Strict warnings had been given as to not make any noise after the lights were out.
Tossing with exhaustion, Marjorie wondered what would happen tomorrow. These people terrified her. They had not seen Kenny since they arrived. Where was he? Was he okay? She made up her mind that she would run away. She had no idea where she would go, but she would find Kenny and the four of them would run back and try to find the train station. She was certain she could remember the way. Neville Street, Neville Street played in her head. They should not ask for directions. It might seem suspicious. Maybe they would find the nice old woman at the train station. Maybe she would help them get back to Whitley Bay. This thought eased Marjorie’s mind enough that she was finally able to drift off into a fitful sleep. In the middle of the night she yelled out for her mum.
Joyce rubbed her back as she told her it would be okay. “Wake up,” she whispered, and assured her sister that she was just having a bad dream. Joyce climbed back into her cot and choked back a sob as she lay in the darkness, wishing it were just a nightmare and that they would all wake up in their own little flat. “Oh, Mum, I need you.”
Four
Winifred’s Sorrow
Where are my children?
I want them home!
Where are you taking them?
They must feel so alone.
February 8–9, 1937
Winifred felt the eyes of her children glued to her as the train pulled away. The brave face she worked so hard to keep fell to pieces once the door shut after them. When the train pulled away, it wrenched something deep inside of her and the tears followed fast and furiously. She did not want her children to see her like this. She had been holding herself together for days, fighting to curb the growing feeling of defeat. For the sake of her remaining three children, she had to find the strength to continue. If they took them away too, then there would be no point — no fight left in her. She tried to be brave so they could remember her that way. Lord knows, they would need to be brave.
Winifred watched the train disappear. In her heart of hearts she felt it was the last time she would ever see these four. It was bad enough when they took her older sons. No one told her the worst was yet to come. At least she had a chance of seeing her boys again. Fred and Norman were in the country somewhere, but these four would not be staying in England. She tried to find a way to explain to her little children what was going to happen to them. But it was beyond her understanding why her country would ship young children so far away. She had struggled over the past week for the right words, the right time, but when she started, she faltered. The words stuck in her throat. She was a coward, afraid of what her own failure would look like in their eyes. In the end, she thought it was best not to tell them, that way she could pretend it was just a nightmare, at least until they left.
Winifred stood on the platform and tried to see the purpose of everything. The horrid man told her that the children would stay in Newcastle for a day or two, and then they would send them to the Middlemore Emigration Home in Selly Oak on the outskirts of Birmingham. She wrote that down right away, not wanting to lose track of where they were. Birmingham was so far away. She would never be able to visit them. She wanted to smack that man when he told her that it was men like John Middlemore that made this country great. He told her Middlemore’s first home for children had opened in 1872 and they had been emigrating children of the poor ever since. He told her that Middlemore Homes now worked closely with the Fairbridge Society and assured her that Kingsley Fairbridge’s plan was sound. He opened a book and read from it:
Every year tens of thousands of boys and girls seek admission to the labour market only to be told that there is no need of them, and they are flung back on to one or other of the great human scrap-heaps which lie at the gates of every one of our great cities — derelict little vessels on the Ocean of Life, children doomed to a blind alley existence and the squalor of the slums.[1]
He said her children would go “from these slums to sunshine.” The man was daft. Obviously, he had never seen her children play in the sun down on the Whitley Bay sands — a site to gladden any mother’s heart with its fresh air, sea breeze, sun, and sand. Her children had all the ingredients for a healthy life; she just needed a little more help from her husband. That damn letter — that was not the kind of help she needed.
