Free Kisses on a Postcard by Terence Frisby Page A

references to the ‘saint’ that were lost on me but which left me uncomfortable. I got the impression that he was a missionary who had died of something or other in darkest somewhere or other. She liked to open herself, no matter how slightly, to me and even patted my head once and gave me a half-hearted hug, which enveloped me in a two-level, sweet-and-sour sickly smell that nearly caused me to run for it. But we were used to being the recipients of unwanted embraces or cuffs and were skilled at dodging them. After that I generally managed to keep the plentiful furniture between her and me. Somehow I had slipped through the net of her disapproval of all things young – and especially vacky – and had her bottled-up affection.
    I used to hope for Elsie to rescue me from all this if she was in, but when Miss Polmanor answered the door to me with my sixpence and empty bottle Elsie was gone in a flash and I am sure that Miss Polmanor was glad to see her go in spite of her constant denunciations of Elsie’s unwillingness ever to stay in – probably to avoid yet more futile, pious indoctrination.
    Miss Polmanor rode her bicycle into Dobwalls to shop and do her good works, often, so Auntie Rose said, to the exasperation of Buckroyd. She was soon round the Wesleyan minister’s neck about us vackies playing in the Methodist graveyard at dinner break. ‘’Tis sacrilege, Mr Buckroyd. Disturbin’ the dead like that.’
    ‘I don’t think the dead mind too much, Miss Polmanor.’
    ‘They make up profane words to hymn tunes. I’ve heard they.’
    ‘So do our children, Miss Polmanor.’
    ‘But not so profane as they.’
    ‘Well, they’re more – er – inventive.’
    ‘More sinful.’
    ‘There’s a war on, Miss Polmanor.’
    And, in the rumour and gossip that always rides in tandem with war – I mean our private war – stories abounded of vackies who behaved outrageously or were treated with cruelty.
    ‘Have you ever heard? Over to Tremabe they chopped off all the chickens’ heads. Every living one o’ ’em. Two little savages, only seven years old.’
    ‘No. Is that so, my dear?’
    ‘And down to Warleggan they slaughtered lambs in the fields, fired a rick. ’Tis bloody mayhem, I’m telling you – oh, sorry, Mrs. I didn’t mean to – but ’tis terrible.’
    ‘ ’Tis like a plague: the eleventh plague of Egypt, the plague of children.’
     

     
    ‘Oh, no, no, no. We got two. They’m nice. I like ’em. My missus dotes on ’em.’
    And, after their gossip, villagers strode off down the main road along which Dobwalls was strung, tut-tutting or doubting, according to their views.
    There was one story that was ubiquitous, told in every village in the county. ‘You know that farmer up the edge of the Moor, Penmalligan. He had two vackies billeted on he.’
    ‘Ar. Boy ’n’ a maid.’
    ‘Well, he locked they in the linney all night, then took his strap to ’em after breakfast. His breakfast. They din’ get none. They was nine and ten years old. Well, their father got to year. In the Guards, he is. Grenadiers. Back from Dunkirk.’
    ‘Yes, they was there, I read it.’
    ‘Well, he went AWOL, went to Penmalligan’s farm, punched he all round his own farmyard, then took his kids off with him back to Lunnon. ’Twas a proper job.’
    ‘Have you heard of anyone else giving they vackies what for?’
    ‘No. Everyone round yere be giving it up for Lent.’
    And though such events always took place in the next village but one, the mythical guardsman was a famous and cautionary figure.
     
    Uncle Jack took Jack and me in hand. ‘Who started it all?’
    ‘They called us slum kids.’
    ‘And what did you call them?’
    ‘Turnips.’
    ‘What else?’
    ‘Yokels.’
    ‘What else?’
    ‘Clodhoppers.’
    ‘Hmm. Who called who names first?’
    This was lost in the mists of time.
    He put his arms round us confidentially. ‘Listen, boys. You can’t call people names when you’re living in a village