Both in illness and childbirth, people remained in bed a lot longer than they do nowadays. It was thought to be the best remedy

After some time, Father went to the door again and came back with information that he had heard, in the distance, the sound of the allclear siren.

“Perhaps one of the bombs has hit Briarwood Terrace,” he said, teasing mother a little.

Mother didn’t reply. To lighten the atmosphere she made us a cup of cocoa and read us a chapter from What Katy Did before we went to bed.

I stayed at home next morning, as I was starting a cold. Father went off to work as usual. The thuds in the night were barely mentioned. Later in the morning the phone rang. Mother went to answer it.

“Oh my God,” I heard her say and her face went as deathly pale as it had the day France had fallen. “Was anyone hurt? The housekeeper killed, goodness me.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked when she put the phone down.

“Just as I predicted, Briarwood Terrace was hit last night by a bomb. The house two doors down from where we lived is completely demolished. The bomb landed right in front of it.

“The houses on either side are badly damaged. Fortunately they were empty at the time.”

Badly damaged

“And our house?” I asked: the house that had been our home such a short time ago.

“It has been badly damaged. How terrible. What a horrendous experience if we had been there last night. How glad I am that we moved.” I was inclined to think we had missed a bit of excitement and said so.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” she said. She was angry with me for once. “It would have been an absolutely dreadful experience and very frightening but don’t worry,” she hurried to reassure me, “you are safe enough here.”

After that occurrence, however, I don’t think she was quite so sure. It had been too close for comfort. I overheard her say to Father one evening: “What if a bomb did fall here? What if it fell on the steading and that bad-tempered bull got loose and ran amok?” Father burst out laughing. “That would be the least of your worries,” he said. In later years, when I thought about it, it seemed a rather odd thing to say to my father. It appeared she was more frightened about the bull getting loose than any damage a bomb might do – not logical but then Mother was never logical.

Mother had never been happy about us attending the village school. She predicted it wouldn’t work, especially for me.

Her predictions came true as winter advanced and germs spread through the school. Early in the New Year one of Mother’s worst fears came into being: Jean and I both caught measles.

Jean recovered quite quickly but I had a much worse bout and was still in bed when Jean was back at school.

Both in illness and childbirth, people remained in bed a lot longer than they do nowadays. It was thought to be the best remedy.

It kept one safe from cold draughts and damp rooms in poorly-heated houses. There were no antibiotics in those days, so if a cold went into pneumonia the chances were you wouldn’t recover from it.

And if you contracted TB, which was quite a common illness, there was no known cure, apart from being sent to a sanatorium in some chosen spot with plenty of fresh air, bed rest and nourishing food, where you might or might not recover.

Prone to disease

Many other potentially serious germs could be picked up at school, especially at non-fee-paying schools, Mother reckoned, because many of the children attending it could be undernourished and therefore more prone to disease.

Mother was perhaps before her time in realising how important a good balanced diet was for everyone, especially children. However hard up she was, she never scrimped on food.

The other reason she was against us attending such schools was that she wished us to grow up speaking the “King’s English”.

We were much encouraged to listen to the wireless, on which regional accents of any kind were rare.

Her family spoke broad Doric but she had been taught from an early age that to get anywhere in life one had to talk in proper English.

I was comfortable in bed in that draughty farmhouse at Lundie. I liked getting spoilt. Mother would light a fire in the bedroom and I loved to lie and watch the flames go up the chimney.

She brought me books to read, dolls to play with and jigsaws to put together, piling up the pillows behind me to keep me comfortable and giving me a large tray for the jigsaws.

I saw myself as the female equivalent of the boy in Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses playing on the “pleasant land of Counterpane”.

While I was still confined to bed, something dramatic happened in our lives. One dull winter’s day shortly after lunch, when, with my pillows stacked up behind me, I had just started on a 1,000-piece jigsaw, I heard a rather strange and ominous rumble coming from outside. I put the jigsaw tray to one side and eased myself out of bed.

On legs weakened by the measles and having been in bed for so long, I went over to the window to see if I could see what was making this unaccustomed noise.

My bedroom window faced the narrow road that passed our garden and to my great surprise, I saw approaching a long line of armoured cars and trucks filled with soldiers.

Alarmed

At first I was alarmed. Perhaps it was the invasion I had heard whispers about but, no, I reasoned, these were our trucks – they were familiar and had no swastikas on them. It was all rather exciting.

I expected them to trundle past and disappear out of sight but to my great surprise they all began to turn in to the farm steading at Pitermo.

I put on my dressing gown and, shaking, tripped downstairs to alert my mother. Before I arrived at the bottom of the stairs there was a very loud knock at the back door.

My mother went to answer it. I followed in her wake. A handsome tall man in full military uniform stood at the door.

“Mrs Pollock of Pitermo,” he said, unfolding a large map he held in his hand. “I’m sorry for this intrusion. My name is Lieutenant McKay and I and my men have come to take over your house for a period of time.” (More on Monday.)

By Margaret Gillies Brown