The train journey the next day was even more gruelling than she had expected. The main line north had been bombed and not yet mended, so the train crept around by branch lines, last in priority after troop trains and even goods trains. At Rugby an American soldier got on and tried to flirt with Patty, who had no idea how to respond and stood frozen until he apologized and said he had thought she was older than she was. She was about to have her eighteenth birthday. She knew other girls her age flirted and joked and were at ease with men.
At Lancaster, which should have been five hours from London but which had been eleven, the train came to a permanent halt. She stood on the platform of the Victorian station, part of a group of stranded travellers. “There’s nothing going north tonight,” the guard said. “Not unless you want to go around by the Cumbrian Coast line. There’s a train just starting for Barrow, and it’ll go on up that way. But you’d do better stopping the night here.”
“Does it go to Carlisle?” somebody asked.
“Yes, all the way round the coast to Carlisle. It’s slow like, but it gets there in the end.”
Patty climbed into the little train which rattled along the rails. It was full of workers in overalls making for the Vickers yards at Barrow-in-Furness. One of them, a gray-haired man with a lined face, prodded his younger companion into giving Patty his seat. “Can’t you see the young lady’s tuckered out?”
Patty sat gratefully. “I am. I’ve been travelling all day.”
“Where have you come from then?” the man asked.
“London.”
“That’s a step! What took you there?”
“I had an interview yesterday at an Oxford college, and I spent the night with my mother just outside London.”
“Oxford!” The man was gratifyingly impressed. “An Oxford scholar! You must be a brainy one then.”
Patty smiled. “They’re taking more women because the men are off at the war. I’ve been wondering whether I should go even so, or whether I should be doing war work.”
“If you have the chance to better yourself you should take it,” he said, and though his manner was completely different he reminded her of her father. “I’m a fitter, and I’ve done as well for myself as I can. Now our Col who gave you his seat, he’s a fitter too, but he’s taking night classes and after the war he means to get on.”
“Your son?” she asked.
“My nephew,” he replied, and was silent a moment, then changed the subject. “Now, where are you going tonight? Are you going to school?”
“Yes, back to my school. It’s been evacuated to Carlisle.”
“Carlisle! You won’t get there tonight!” As if to emphasize his words the train slowed to a stop.
“The guard on the platform in Lancaster said this train went around the coast to Carlisle,” Patty said.
“Well, so it does, but not until tomorrow. I don’t know if we’ll be in Barrow before midnight, but whenever we get there the train will stop there until the morning and go on to Carlisle then. Tom, what time does the train go out to Carlisle in the morning?”
The man addressed had a little rabbitty moustache. He pulled a booklet out of his pocket. “Ten oh eight,” he said after a moment’s perusal. “Why’s that, Stan, what do you want with going to Carlisle?”
“It’s not me, it’s the young lady here. They told her in Lancaster she could get to Carlisle by this train, but it’s not so is it?”
All the men looked at Patty, who blushed under their attention.
“Well, whatever they told her she won’t get further than Barrow until ten oh eight tomorrow morning. You’d have done better to have stopped in Lancaster, lass,” Tom said.
“Don’t worry, you can stay with my Flo and me,” Stan said reassuringly. “Flo will make you up a bed in no time and find something for your supper too, as I expect you’re hungry.”
“I’m always hungry,” Patty said, sincerely, but all the men laughed.
She slept that night in a worker’s cottage in Barrow-in-Furness. She woke early to the sound of seagulls calling. She had not known Barrow was by the sea. She opened the blackout cautiously and saw gray waves by the gray daylight. It was just before seven in the morning. She dressed quickly. The room was a boy’s room with a carefully made hanging model of a Spitfire and framed amateur perspective drawings of birds. She wondered where that boy was, dead or away at the war? She remembered Stan’s face when he had said that Col was his nephew. She went downstairs. Flo was in the kitchen already, making up the fire. “You’re an early bird, Patty,” she said. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“You’ve been so kind, and I would like a cup of tea, but I just saw from my window that we’re by the sea. I haven’t seen the sea properly since before the war, and I thought I might just slip out quickly for a walk now, first, before I do anything.” As she said it Patty thought she was being silly, but she remembered the clean-swept sand and the sound of the sea.
Flo looked skeptical. “It isn’t the proper sea, just the bay, like. You need to go around to Morecambe for the proper sea with a bit of a beach and things to do.”
“There wouldn’t be anything to do at this time of the morning anyway. I just want to run down and see it.”