I started this on a Tuesday night and ended up crying in a café on Thursday morning. I can’t remember when I’ve been so moved by the ending of a story. There is a book within the book. When the former ended a bit too neatly I was a slightly disbelieving, until I realised that actually, well, I’m giving no spoilers, but it’s a war story, after all. I’m not usually known for my tears.
The whole story ties in well with my current interest in stories of those who immigrated to New Zealand down the years, and why they came. Children evacuees from London bombings? I had no idea. Can you imagine sending your children out of a bomb zone, and not to the close countryside, which would be wrenching enough, but through a war-infested sea to an unknown land at the far ends of the earth? And yet people did.
There is a nice zing to the story as it alternates between a modern day girl on a plane, reading a book about her grandfather’s evacuation in 1840, and the world of the grandfather. The grandfather is a part player in a story about Ruth, a London teacher who volunteers for the CORB – Children’s Overseas Reception Board – and who escorts a group of ten young lads from Glasgow to Australia and New Zealand on the ship Batory. The present day grandfather is, in the old story, one of Ruth’s young charges, a fragile boy called Fergus for whom she is determined to do her very best. Ruth is smashing. I liked her. She’s a posh London girl who takes one small belligerent step in disobeying her mother and her fiancé to answer a call for help in wartime, which opens her up to an extraordinary life. There are other volunteer escorts on the ship, between whom friendships and relationships develop that are close and feel real. And if you don’t know about the ship Rangitane, which carried some of the CORB escorts home again, torpedoed by the Germans off the East Cape in the Pacific, here’s a cheeky bit of background to whet your appetite for this fascinating tale.
The authorship of the inner book and how it relates to our girl on the plane is a nice twist and allows for both the intimate feel of the narrator’s life and a slightly wider perspective, too.
Back on the plane, sitting next to our reading girl and being slightly irritating, is a bloke. I know relationships that have started on planes. Planes and boats – I like it when people travel in a kind of limbo that leaves them open to surprises. Anyway, the pair hit it off, both becoming invested in the grandfather’s story (New Zealand to England is a long flight) and the building chemistry makes theirs a good co-story to the historic book they’re sharing. Both stories feature a complication of the heart and a choice.
Interesting history, great read.
Cristina Sanders' blog 