MY SOUL TO KEEP - CHAPTER 7 - OLD GEORGE 1900-1971

CHAPTER 7

OLD GEORGE

Over here in this shady corner of the churchyard, at the crossroads where the main road meets the path that runs up to the vicarage, you can just see a small stone, almost hidden by the hedge. It reads:

OLD GEORGE
Gentleman of the Road
Age unknown
Died 2.6.1971
Sadly missed

George Palmer was a quiet man. He was born in 1900, at the end of the Victorian age, into a relatively comfortable London family. His father was part-owner of a small foundry, and when the time came it was assumed that George would follow his father into the business.

His family was small for those days - he had only one sister, Jane, two years younger than him, and much care and attention was lavished on both of them. George enjoyed school, and his father was able to afford to put him through university, emerging with a good engineering degree, enabling him to be a real asset to his father’s business, which had thrived on the increased requirement for weapons and vehicles during the Great War.

His Father’s partner Cyril died round about the time George was finishing at the university, and his share of the firm eventually passed to his only child Maud. So it was that the business was united when Maud and George were married in 1925.

They were a devoted couple; they had known each other all their lives and were well suited. Maud indeed was his sister’s best friend, and she stood as Godmother when their first child Stanley was born a year later, followed in rapid succession by two girls and two more boys.

Jane was not interested in marriage; she was one of the new breed of career women, content to work in the office at the foundry, and enjoy her neices and nephews at weekends. In her thirties when war broke out in 1939, she joined up and became one of the “Fannys”, spending her time driving high ranking officers around the country. There was a hint of more secret and dangerous missions abroad, but she never spoke of this, just explaining away her absences of several weeks as ‘driving up north’.

George and Maud bought a large town house backing on to the foundry, and lived there happily with their brood until war broke out. Thankfully, the boys were too young to go to be called up, and their Father was in a reserved occupation anyway - the foundries were an important part of the war effort - so life continued as usual, with Jane staying with them when she was in town.

One day in 1941, George was away on a business trip out of London, something to do with ‘The Ministry’, very hush-hush. It was the height of the Blitz; whether the foundry was the target or whether it was just part of the random bombing was never established. Londoners were used to listening for the whine of the bomb dropping, followed by the explosion - hopefully not too close - thanking their lucky stars for their safety. On this day the Palmer family heard the flying bomb’s engine stop - there had been no warning - then they heard no more.

Silence. Followed by a sudden rush of activity - fire engines - water - people rushing about - one young woman, called Doris, frantically trying to pull a child out of the ruins of the house - too late, he was already dead. She was crying and pulling at the ruins, determined to save someone. Eventually she was pulled away sobbing by the fire crew, her hands and legs bleeding from climbing over the rubble.

That night George returned. He did not understand what he saw. Where his home had been, there was just a smoking pile of rubble. As he stood there shaking his head, unable to take it in, Ethel, a neighbour from across the road came out of her house and led him away to what remained of her own kitchen, brushing off the fallen plaster to enable him to sit down and share a cup of tea. She tried to explain to him that they were gone, every one of them: but he sat there as if made of stone, staring at his tea and every now and then saying ‘must get back to Maudie’. What few remains they had managed to find had been taken away to the undertakers near the police station. Ethel left George with his tea and went off to fetch the sergeant. When they returned, the tea had gone. So had George. He was never seen again in that part of London.

Jane returned from her duties, and in the absence of any surviving child from George’s family, the foundry passed to her. She spent the rest of her life running it to the best of her ability, and the business flourished under her care. She did get married, well into her fifties, to a retired Colonel she had met in France years earlier. He was a widower with two grown up children. They adored their clever and interesting step-mother, so the end of her life was spent happily with a growing family of grandchildren round her, and she was able to pass the business on to them when, as she turned 70, she felt it was time to let go of the reins. She had spent many months after the loss of her brother’s family trying to find out what had happened to George, but there was no trace of him and she never saw or heard from him again.

George had left Ethel’s house, then stood for a while at the ruins of his home, where he picked up a silver thimble, a bit battered but recognisable as belonging to his Maudie, a book of poetry with his son’s name scribbled on the front page, and a milk bottle which had miraculously escaped the bombing. He put the book and the thimble in his pocket and walked off towards Shoreditch, carrying the milk bottle in his hand.

He walked, and walked, and kept on walking. He walked all round London, occasionally knocking on doors when he saw a house that seemed to awaken memories in a corner of his confused brain. But he recognised no-one, and just kept on walking.

From time to time people would take pity on him, and give him a sandwich or an apple to see him on his way. His once smart suit got dirtier and dirtier, and his shoes were now wound about with rags, but still he kept walking. He spent a long time living amongst the battered streets of South London, and became a familiar sight round the houses in Deptford and New Cross. No-one actually knew who he was, but there were many such lost, homeless people wandering about, and people were on the whole compassionate and as generous as they could be in the circumstances. The local housewives would call him over as he passed by, his lips moving as he silently read from his book of poems. He would always be polite and thankful for any little item offered to him, and would generally go on his way with his milk bottle filled with fresh sweet tea.

One day there was a particularly bad raid in the area. A V2 completely destroyed a large Woolworths store in the high street and the surrounding shops, together with a passing bus. There was a huge loss of life, one of the worse incidents of the whole war. George had been sitting on the steps of the old town hall quite near where the silent killer fell, and was a witness to the devastation. The scene must have triggered something in his memory, for he started walking again, and did not stop for many days, gradually reaching the open countryside.

For the next couple of years, he wandered wherever the road took him. He slept in fields, ate anything he could find, and drank from streams or horse troughs, supplementing his diet with whatever he was offered by the people in the cottages on his route, and always getting his bottle filled with tea.

When George arrived in Amerington, the chill winds of Winter were already filling the air, and there was a promise of an early frost in the bleakness of the skies above Hampshire. As night fell, George settled down huddled up against the church wall hugging his tattered garments round him, and covering himself with an old army blanket some kind soul had given him along the way.

He woke next morning, shivering and stiff with cold. His cap and the long hair showing beneath it were all sparkling with frost. He was just attempting to move his numb limbs, when something warm and wet tickled his nose and he felt warm breath on his cheeks.

A woman’s voice said : ’Patch! What have you found?’ The little dog started yapping furiously, running back and forth between his mistress and the stranger. George managed to struggle to his feet just as the young woman came up to him. She stepped back, startled to see this unkempt man stand up, trembling, before her.

However, Doris Saunders was not a woman who could be easily scared. The war had not long ended, and she was a young widow with a toddler to look after. She had seen too much of the horrors of the bombing in London to be frightened by a poor old tramp! She looked closer at him, saw the vacant look in her eyes, and wondered if he was perhaps an ex-serviceman, for there were many who had returned from the war to find no home and no job waiting for them, and had taken to begging.

She sighed, as she remembered her own dear husband Henry. He had miraculously managed to return home after being shot down in his Hurricane, but the burns he had suffered were terrible, and he died of a heart attack just before the war ended. She glanced at his stark white memorial, just close by, and, not for the first time, shed a silent tear for him and the thousands like him who had given their all for their country.

Patch was by now barking loudly at the stranger, who, his eyes showing no fear of the little dog, was watching Doris warily.

Doris stepped forward, called the dog to heel, and said to the man: ‘Have you been here all night? You look frozen. Come back with me and I’ll get you a warm drink.’ Doris and Patch began to walk back through the churchyard, the ground still white with frost. Glancing behind her as they reached the lych-gate, she was glad to see the man following a little way behind.

She reached her cottage, where her Mother-in-law Lilian was looking after her son Peter. ‘Put the kettle on Mum’, she called as she took her gloves off. ‘We have a visitor’. But the man had not followed her inside. When she looked out, she saw him sitting quietly on the doorstep, blowing on his frozen hands. She went out to him and said : ‘Come in and warm yourself by the kitchen fire. Mum is making some tea’. She beckoned to him :’Come on, no-one’s going to hurt you’ Mind you, the expression on Lilian’s face when she saw their visitor told a different story!

The man took his steaming cup of tea and sat by the warm stove, sipping it wordlessly. He accepted the bread of cheese Doris offered him gratefully, and stood up to leave as soon as his meal was finished. ‘Thank you lady’ he said, his voice thin and gruff through lack of use. Ignoring the frowns from her Mother-in-law, Doris said : ‘Where are you going now? It’s started to snow’ The man shrugged : ‘Dunno lady. Don’t matter’.

But something in his voice reminded her of home, the familiar accent of the South-East London area she was born in. She decided to take charge of this man, who had so far shown nothing but gentleness. ‘Follow me’ she said, in an accent not to be ignored, and led the way to the old shed at the back of the house. ‘If you like’, she offered, ‘You can stay here for a bit, maybe do a bit of work around the place and I’ll see you get regular meals. You certainly look like you need some nourishment. Not to mention a good wash! I’ll sort that out later. Now, what’s your name?’

‘George’.

‘George what?’

George shrugged. Doris decided not to press the matter, and went back into the cottage to sort out some blankets and see if she could find him some decent clothes. Lilian knew better than to argue with Doris in this mood, and she had already set some water to boil and got the old tin bath out. The two women dragged it over to the shed, and brought hot water, towels, and the large bar of carbolic soap Lilian had insisted on. They called out to George, and were a bit alarmed when he came out holding an axe; but soon spotted the pile of firewood he had been busy chopping. They left him to his ablutions, and when Doris took him a cup of tea and some cake some hours later, he looked very much better, and even ventured a half-smile at little Peter, who had followed his Mum round.

George never left Amerington. Days, years and months passed peacefully and amicably at the cottage. Although George hardly ever spoke, he and Doris would often share a pot of tea in the kitchen, after George had dug over the vegetable patch or mended the fence or some such task. He sometimes spoke briefly of his years wandering the highways and byways, but he never mentioned his family or his home town, and Doris would never pry too much. Young Peter adored him, and would follow him about with Patch at his heels, and when he was old enough, would often read to George from the dog-eared book of poems he always carried in his pocket.

So the years passed, until one day not long after Lilian’s death, when Peter was at school and Doris and George had been tidying up the flower beds together and had gone back to his shed to rinse their hands under the tap in the yard, George suddenly went inside and re-emerged with a small cloth bag. He reached inside it and handed Doris three items. ‘For Peter’, he said, indicating the old poetry book they had so often read together. ‘For you’, he whispered, handing her an old milk bottle and a silver thimble. As Doris looked down, puzzled, at the gifts, the old man clutched his chest and sank to the ground.

The Doctor was called, but George was already dead.

His funeral was a quiet affair, but Doris made sure there was a good tea waiting back at the cottage for the many village friends who turned out to wish the gentle old man God Speed on his way to meet his maker.

They buried him by the church wall near the spot where Doris had found him many years before, and Doris paid for a neat little stone to be erected to her friend. It reads :-

OLD GEORGE
GENTLEMAN OF THE ROAD
AGE UNKNOWN.
DIED 2.6.1971
SADLY MISSED.

She tended the plot whenever she visited her husband and Mother in law who both rest nearby, and brought fresh flowers to his grave from the garden he lovingly tended, placing them in the mysterious old milk bottle he had kept for so long.