The prisoners who lost their childhood

Some were abused mentally, physically and sexually. It was while I was having psychotherapy and discovered how my own start in life had left such a troubled legacy, that it occurred to me that there must be many evacuees just like me.

There is no research about the long-term psychological effects of that traumatic wartime separation, which is why I decided to write Prisoners of War.

I was evacuated from Newcastle in 1940 when I was two-years-old. I have a photograph in my mind of my mother, wearing a dark brown fur coat, walking away down the back lane on the opposite side to where we were. I was being held in the right arm of this strange woman; my sister, Joyce, was standing on her left side. I was screaming. My mother never looked back - she was probably crying, too.

We were to call this strange person Aunty Jenny although she was not a relation. She was a tiny, wiry little woman with large glasses that distorted her eyes, frizzy black hair and she always wore a wraparound pinny. For the next five years she was, to all intents and purposes, my mother.

It was not a good start to life for she was, at times, a monster. Hung on a nail next to the fireplace in the front room was a brown leather belt, which she used to beat us. I have no idea why she hit us; luckily the memory of the physical pain goes, although the psychological scars remain.

There was no predicting what might merit a thrashing with that belt. After she hit me I used to run upstairs and hug Lady, a black and white collie which often came to lie on my bed. I sobbed into Lady's coat, convinced she wasn't really a dog. I thought, somehow, she would rescue me from this nightmare. The skin on my legs was burning from the belt and often, when I was crying like this, waiting for Lady to transmogrify into my rescuer, I would see Aunty Jenny watching me through the gap in the door frame.

Her other punishment was locking me in the cupboard under the stairs. It was pitch black in there and she made me stay locked up for what seemed like hours. Nowadays I cannot go into my own cellar unless the two lights are blazing. Recently one of the bulbs at the bottom of the stairs went and I had to ask a builder next door to come and replace it. There was no way I could descend those stairs in the dark.

Although I used to scream, she would not let me out of that prison until she saw fit. She also constantly threatened us with 'the bogeyman will come and get you', so naturally I thought the bogeyman was in the cupboard somewhere.

I cannot remember now what reason Aunty Jenny used to give for the beatings. There is only one incident which I shall never forget and which gives some idea of her unreasonableness. One of my cousins, who was evacuated with a real aunty in the same village, invited me to her birthday party. Parties are always exciting for children but they were particularly rare in those days. I rushed home after school and told Aunty Jenny I was going to Margaret's birthday party. She not only refused to allow me to go, she gave me the belt for asking. I can still feel the injustice of it today and am as mystified by her attitude now as I was then.

Another sadistic trick Aunty Jenny used to play was to frighten us with her false teeth. She used to chase us with them, holding them in her hands and snapping them open and shut. Once we locked ourselves into the pantry while she was outside with her teeth, screaming at us. Looking back I think she must have been mad.

My childhood was not all a horror story. We enjoyed tremendous freedom. There was no traffic to worry about and I can't remember us ever getting lost. There was a game we used to play called Arrows. One gang chalked an arrow on a tree, or marked one on a slag heap, and the other gang had to try and find them. It was a game that could go on all day.

The war never intruded on our lives, we never even heard a bomb drop. The question people always ask is, did we tell our parents about the cruelty? And the answer is, I don't think so. My mother used to visit us occasionally but I imagine Aunty Jenny was always there and we were probably too frightened to talk about it in front of her.

I saw my father only twice during the war, and afterwards I imagine there were so many other problems, such as finding us a home and finding him a job, that what had happened to us was pushed to the back of our minds. Most of the evacuees I have interviewed say that even when they did tell their parents or teachers they were not believed. And some soon discovered there was no point in telling anyone.

Another evacuee was billeted with a couple in their forties who had two teenage sons and the wife's father, in his seventies, living with them. A none-too-subtle form of blackmail attached to her coveted grammar school place reinforced her feeling of powerlessness.

She told me: "Although I was well fed, my 'aunty' made it quite obvious she thought evacuees had to supplement their keep by being a servant to the household.

"My duties before going to school each morning included emptying all their washing water from the wash basins in their bedrooms, and emptying their chamber pots, too. After laying the breakfast table, then washing the dishes, I had to make all the beds. They all had feather beds and I had to shake their eiderdowns and dust and mop the bedrooms.

"It was impressed upon you that if you didn't stay in your billet, there would not be another one available and you would lose your place at the grammar school."

She acknowledges that constantly being told you are a burden and made to feel worthless damages your self-confidence, something most of us who were treated cruelly suffer from, although you learn to disguise it behind a seemingly extrovert or aggressive personality.

In those days a mantra among grown-ups was that children should be seen and not heard. But even if children had sympathetic people in whom they could confide, many of them could not talk about what was happening because they were ashamed. And still are.

Another woman and her twin brother, aged seven, were billeted with a family who had three sons.

The eldest was a few years older and the ringleader of a gang which picked on them. She was sexually abused in front of her brother.

"Then they used to make us bend over and be a 'horse and cart' and ride us around the field. After that they would push us into cowpats. Every Sunday lunchtime the foster father would stand at the meal table and swing his leather buckle belt in front of us, then he asked which end we wanted first for a good thrashing, although he never actually hit us."

The woman never married because of what happened to her as an evacuee. Her experience prevented her trusting men.

In my case, I had two children and when they were aged five and seven, I had to divorce my husband because of his infidelity. I was also forced to sell our wonderful home on the Sussex coast and I returned to London to find work.

I coped with all this remarkably well, but when my daughter became a troublesome teenager I suddenly found myself weeping and ranting. A colleague recommended a psychotherapist. With help, I discovered that the feeling of being abandoned by my mother was a wound that was gouged open when I was abandoned by my husband, and it knocked me sideways.

I was also taught how to forgive myself: I was, after all, only eight when the war ended. For, of all the diabolical things, when I left Aunty Jenny's at the age of seven, I cried as much as when I was left there five years before.

As an adult that was incomprehensible to me, something that made me feel guilty because it must have hurt my mother. That feeling is layered on top of my suspicion of my mother's motives in leaving us at such a tender age. True, we lived in Newcastle, a prime target for German bombs, and there was enormous pressure on parents to save their children, in particular, from the expected gas attacks.

Government posters exhorted mothers to let their children go. They were a form of emotional blackmail, women were made to feel they were not good mothers if they did not take the Government's advice. However, it also has to be said that some mothers were only too happy to off-load their off-spring. Was mine one of those?

I know, from my experience of adopting two children, at the ages of seven months and four months, that in even that short time psychological damage can be done which emerges later. But equally, I now know that if you understand your past, you can help yourself to change your own fate.

l Do you have memories of being a wartime evacuee? Write and tell us at Features, The Northern Echo, Darlington, Co Durham, DL1 1NF