Shore Street, by Ailsa Murray

An original novel extract set in the twentieth century.

The Belgians came to Kirkhallow in the October of 1914, and I do not think the town had ever been so pleased with itself. The pipe band met them off the Dundee train. The provost made a speech that neither of them understood, and the minister’s wife had furnished the empty house on Shore Street with donations from every parish in the presbytery, so that it had four kettles and no kitchen table.

There were only two of them: Madame Peeters, who was perhaps thirty and wore black, and her son Jules, who was my age, eleven, and wore short trousers that the boys at school found very funny. Nobody ever told us what had happened to Monsieur Peeters. My mother said it was not our business, in the voice that meant it was very much her business and she had not yet found out.

That first winter we could not do enough for them. My mother took round soup on Mondays. The Guild knitted Jules a jersey in Kirkhallow colours. When Madame Peeters sat in her front window making lace on a cushion stuck with pins, so many people stopped to watch that the baker complained his queue was blocked.

I am not sure when it began to change. I think it was after Christmas, when the newspapers stopped printing pictures of Belgian children and started printing lists of Fife men. The soup stopped on Mondays. Then it stopped altogether. Somebody said Madame Peeters had been seen buying butter, real butter, as if that proved something. Mr Kinnear the coal merchant said he was not a charity, and charged her a penny a bag more than he charged us. At school, Jules was called a Fritz, which made no sense at all, because the Germans were the ones who had burned his town, and when he fought back it was Jules who got the belt.

My mother said it was a great shame, and that people forgot, and she did not go round any more either.

I went, though not often, and not on days when anyone might see me. Madame Peeters would make me cocoa and teach me the names of the bobbins in French, and Jules would sit on the stairs and pretend not to listen. She never once complained to me about the town. Only once, when I said that the boys at school were stupid, she put her hand flat on the lace cushion and said, in her careful English, ‘They are afraid, I think. It is easier to be angry with us than with the war.’

In April they left for a hostel in Glasgow, where there were other Belgians. There was no pipe band. The minister’s wife went to see them off, and so did I, and I am sorry to say that was all.

When I got home I found a small square of tissue paper in my school bag, which Jules must have put there when I was not looking. Inside was a piece of lace no bigger than a playing card, and worked into the middle of it, so fine I had to hold it to the window to read, were my initials.

I have it still. I have kept it flat in my Bible for sixty years, and I have never been able to decide whether it is a gift or a reproach.

“The people of Kirkhallow are presented as kind and generous towards the refugees.”

To what extent do you agree with this view?

You should write about:

• your thoughts and feelings about how the people of Kirkhallow are presented in the extract
• how the writer has created these thoughts and feelings

You must refer to the language used in the text to support your answer.