‘No,’ I protested faintly. ‘I have to get to school.’ All I could think of was that I’d get into trouble with Mrs Connop if she realized I hadn’t been in school at that time of the morning.
The farmer lifted me up onto the back of the trailer and drove me slowly through the lodge gates and up the long driveway to the school building. The trailer bumped around causing me a lot of pain, and the journey seemed never-ending. When we got to the school, the farmer explained to one of the nuns what had happened, then carried me inside and sat me down on a chair.
Mrs Connop was phoned to come and get me and, meanwhile, one of the nuns began cleaning and dressing the wound.
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ I told her as soon as the farmer had gone. ‘It was his fault for shouting at me to get off the trailer without even stopping it. He was trying to make me hurt myself.’
She ignored me and carried on dabbing at my knee. I couldn’t look down at the wound without feeling sick at the sight of all the ripped-open flesh and the blood still oozing out.
Mrs Connop drove me home in her pony and trap, and then called out the district nurse, who took one look and said the wound had to be closed up with metal clips. I don’t remember how many she put in because I was almost faint with the pain, but she used a machine like a stapler to insert them right round the wound and then placed a big dressing on top. After she left, I tried to get up and put my weight on the leg but it was agony. All I could do was hop to the kitchen, where Ginger gave me a piece of bread and jam to help me forget about my injury.
I was off school for a couple of weeks and every day that sadistic nurse came round to change my dressing. She was no Florence Nightingale, that one. She’d sit me down on a chair in the hall and rip the bandage off, saying ‘This will hurt me more than it will hurt you.’ Of course, it was a black lie. Every tug caused stabbing pains that made me cry out loud. She didn’t soak the lint with water to loosen it up so the area of bandage that was stuck to the wound pulled off a layer of flesh with it every time.
‘Stop with your crying,’ she’d say. ‘A good tug and the pain will be over quicker.’
Underneath the wound was still jagged and messy and it made me nauseous every time I caught sight of it.
One day the pain was so bad as the nurse tugged at my dressing that I jumped to my feet, slapped her on the face, and hopped down the hall into the kitchen. I was trying to escape but she caught me before I reached the back door.
‘What a big baby you are!’ she exclaimed, but after that incident she agreed to soak the lint before trying to pull the dressing off, which made things slightly more bearable.
I was a healthy, growing boy, so the wound healed and before long I could run about again, but there was a jagged crimson scar running the length and breadth of my kneecap, which duly impressed the boys at school when I finally got back to show it to them.
‘Good one,’ said Dennis, running his finger along it almost as if he was jealous he didn’t have one as well. ‘It’s like a war wound.’
The new skin that grew in the area was pink and shiny and over the next few months the scar turned from crimson to purple. It was ugly to look at but I saw it as a sort of badge of courage. Nothing could defeat me now. I was a survivor.
In the autumn of 1943 Ginger announced she was leaving the Connops’. Over the last two and three-quarter years she’d become a good friend to us, almost like a big sister, and Dennis, Freddie and I were distraught. We ran out to our den in the chicken shed and had a good old cry together. Freddie was particularly inconsolable because she’d become a substitute mother figure for him. He liked to sit on her knee and have a cuddle, and she would always oblige. We weren’t ever told why she was leaving. It was just another of those occasions when grown-ups made decisions that affected us and only informed us later.
We watched as she carried her bag down the front path, waving goodbye, and we tried not to cry in front of her. I felt cross with her as well as sad. Why was she leaving us? What reason could possibly be good enough?
‘We’ve got a new maid starting tomorrow,’ Mrs Connop said kindly. ‘I’m sure she’ll take just as good care of you. Don’t worry about that.’
But we didn’t want a new maid; we wanted Ginger. When the next girl started, we registered our protest by giving her a hard time. We’d play up while she was trying to get us ready for bed, and disappear when our tea was on the table. She had a bad cold when she arrived and was always blowing her nose so I’d chase her round the house calling ‘Snotty nose! Snotty nose!’ It must have driven the poor girl to distraction. Dennis used to do an imitation of her sneezing that had us in stitches, although he was far too nice to let her see it, as I would have done.
At around this time, Dennis left the Sisters of Charity School, which was just a primary school, and moved up to a Church of England secondary school on the outskirts of Yarpole. I don’t think he was very happy there. One day he came home and told Mrs Connop, with barely concealed disgust, that they were having a cookery lesson the next day and he was supposed to bring the ingredients with him.
Freddie and I teased him all night, telling him he was turning into a girl because only girls did cookery.
‘Bloody idiots, what d’you know anyway?’ he snarled, and we giggled even more.
He set off for school the next day clutching his bag of ingredients and looking rather downcast, but it was a different story when he came home at four o’clock, holding out a golden-brown apple pie. He seemed very proud of it and Mrs Connop said it was a ‘perfect piece of baking’. Needless to say, we all helped him to eat it and I have to say it wasn’t bad at all.
The problem with Dennis being at another school was that I had no one to stick up for me on the walks to and from school when Dick and the other village bullies started shouting out names or throwing stones at Freddie and me. There were several incidents that came to blows and I was always getting told off by the nuns and, latterly, by Mrs Connop. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Boys had to learn to defend themselves in the world and if you didn’t stand up for yourself you’d get walked all over. It was just one of those things. On a couple of occasions I heard Mr and Mrs Connop talking about our ‘trouble with the local boys’ but frankly I didn’t see why they should worry about it. It was up to me to sort it out.
It was in June 1944 that Mr and Mrs Connop called us into the drawing room one night looking very grave. I racked my brains to think of any mischief I’d been up to that they might have found out about, but nothing sprang to mind.
‘Boys,’ Mrs Connop said, ‘we’ve been aware for some time about the tension between you and some lads in the village. We had to talk to Newport council about it because they have a responsibility for your welfare, and anyway…’ She turned to Mr Connop as if looking for back-up. ‘A decision has been made that you should go to stay elsewhere.’
‘But it’s not our fault,’ I cried out. ‘They’ve been picking on me all along.’
‘That’s beside the point. It’s all arranged now,’ Mrs Connop said. ‘A man will be coming to collect you on Wednesday to take you to your new home. I’m sure it will be lovely. We’ll miss you, of course, but I know you’ll be well taken care of. Lots of people are looking after your best interests.’
We stood frozen to the spot with misery. ‘Why can’t we stay?’ Freddie asked quietly.
‘It’s for the best,’ Mrs Connop said, in a tone of voice that made us understand there was to be no negotiation.
‘Why don’t we all go and listen to the radio?’ Mr Connop suggested. The Allied Forces had landed in France earlier in the