The Twisted Way Read Online Free

said that it was extravagant to have both. He entered into the contagious benevolence and shared his small packet with the other children. Nobody noticed the lack of butter. It was wartime and hunger soon overcame any inhibitions as the group merged together. Middle class, lower class and slum dwellers became for a short time homogeneous.

Chapter 2
The Evacuee
    Tom arrived at Everton railway station in the Midlands county of Russetshire with forty other children aged  between five and eleven. They were herded onto a rattling  old bus and taken to Enderly where they were to be allocated billets with local families. The children sang lustily as they were driven to the village hall which was a small dilapidated building that had been erected in the centre of the village shortly after the First World War. ‘Run rabbit run’ and ‘Hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line’ and other popular wartime songs recently learned permeated the air and lifted their flagging spirits, although several of the younger children had begun to cry.
    On arrival they were given a glass of lemonade and a plain rich tea biscuit. Official-looking local ladies adorned in obligatory 1930s felt hats sat at a long trestle table with a list of names in front of them and did their best to pair the children up with suitable hosts.
    Tom wondered for a few moments if he had been delivered to a cattle market. He had heard somewhere that cattle were sold or chosen by local farmers in such places, though he was not sure what the procedure was. The cold atmosphere increased his discomfort, fingers and feet merging on numbness, and a sad sinking feeling settling like a lump of lead in the pit of his stomach. The rain rattled on the thin corrugated roof of the hall and the rough painted concrete floor was unpleasant underfoot. He thought of his mother and longed to be home once again, to feel her warm young arms around him and toast his feet by the old black range. He was directed, along with several of the other children, to sit on one of the low wooden benches that had been placed round the edge of the main room of the hall. The majority of the evacuees soon became decidedly restless. There was a small kitchen at the back where a young girl of about fourteen was washing up the lemonade glasses in soapy water before wiping them with a scruffy tea towel and placing them in a shabby wooden cupboard above the sink. Tom could just see her and watched her work. Hunger clawed at his insides but apart from the small glass of home-made over-sweet lemonade and broken rich tea biscuit it seemed nothing more was to be offered to the children. At least he could not see any food. His stomach rumbled, his eyes felt heavy and his mind drifted for a while as he waited.
    ‘I want a little girl,’ he heard one woman say in a strident tone. He woke up from his reverie with a start. ‘I want one who will be company for my Lizzie,’ she continued. Nobody it seemed wanted a small timid boy.
    Tom sighed. He had started to wet himself, not much but it was getting difficult to hang on. His bladder ached but fear stopped him from asking for a toilet and he pressed himself further into the shadows in one corner of the room.
    ‘Oh, Mum – come and fetch me home,’ he mumbled under his breath. ‘Perhaps they’ll forget all about me. I might escape and catch a train home ... oh Mum.’
    Mrs Alicia Merryweather looked with interest at the sad little boy. She had come to help with the refreshments and had decided not, after all, to take in an evacuee because her husband was far from well, although she had earlier arranged to have one when the possibility of having evacuees in the village had first been put forward. One look at Tom’s forlorn face convinced her that she would take one after all.
    ‘I’ll take that little chap, Madge,’ she said to her friend who was officially in charge. Madge was relieved. It looked as though they were going to be short of people to take in all