by Anne Bennett
‘I agree, but how can we with the threats against their safety that Flatterly made?’
‘He was just bluffing.’
‘Uncle Robert, I cannot gamble with the children’s lives.’
‘Well, Flatterly at least needs a trouncing for what he put you through,’ Dave said.
‘Yes, he does,’ Meg agreed, ‘but I don’t want anything to happen to him.’
‘Why not?’ Nicholas said. ‘No man should be able to get away with treating you so badly.’
‘Maybe he shouldn’t, but he’s going to,’ Meg said determinedly. ‘If anything happens to him, it could impact on the children if he has any lead to them at all – never mind the fact that he is your landlord. He would have you out of these houses before you could say “Jack Flash”.’
‘Hitler might do that anyway if ever these bombs come hurtling from the sky, as people say will happen.’
‘No need to pre-empt it, though,’ Meg said. ‘The streets are not too comfy this time of the year.’
No one was happy with that, and the three younger boys looked towards Robert, so they were disappointed when he sighed and said, ‘Meg is right. No one is to lay a hand on Richard Flatterly. The risks are too great.’
Later that night, however, as they undressed for bed, Rosie said, ‘You’ve got a very odd smile playing around your mouth. What are you thinking about?’
‘I’m thinking,’ said Robert, ‘that there are more ways of killing a cat than drowning it.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘You’ll see in time,’ said Robert maddeningly, but Rosie, try as she might, could get him to say nothing more.
That evening May called up at Rosie’s to see Meg and Meg told her about the missing children and going to see Richard Flatterly to see if he could throw some light on where they could be.
‘Is this Richard Flatterly the rent man we are talking about?’ May asked.
‘The very same.’
‘Bet you got a great deal of help from him,’ May said sarcastically. ‘There’s only one person Flatterly cares about, and that’s himself. Wouldn’t spit on a body afire in the gutter, that one. But God, how worrying to have the kiddies missing like that.’
‘It is, May,’ Meg said. ‘No none seems to know where they are, and Ruth of course is lost to us for good. There is only me and Terry left and I am so bloody miserable.’
‘I know, bab, I know,’ May said, and put her comforting arms around Meg.
As her week’s leave drew to a close, Rosie thought Meg might stay on in Birmingham and readily offered her a room with them and even offered to try and find her a job in the factory she worked in. Meg was grateful to her aunt for she thought a great deal of her and so she couldn’t really admit to her how she longed for the week to speed past so that she could return to her friend Joy and the Heppleswaites who had made her so welcome on the farm, far away from Birmingham and its terrible memories. She wanted to go to bed; tired enough from physical work to sleep deeply without the nightmares that haunted her at night and took way her appetite.
She knew that Rosie and the others were all worried about her, but she couldn’t assure them she was fine. She was filled with a sense of failure for her quest to find her missing siblings had come to nothing.
Years later, Meg was to remember that awful train journey back to the farm. Nicholas decided not to come back with the girls, and in a way Meg was glad it was just her, meeting Joy outside New Street Station early Monday morning as arranged. She was also very glad that they had a carriage to themselves. Joy looked at her friend’s drawn face, which in the scant week in Birmingham seemed to have lost all its colour; it was as white as lint. Her cheeks were almost gaunt and her eyes looked quite desolate.
Joy touched Meg’s arm. ‘Tell me,’ she said, and Meg told her of Doris’s reaction to the missing children and of Richard Flatterly trying to rape her when she went to see him to see if he knew anything at all to help as he was supposed to be in charge of the evacuations from Birmingham.
‘He couldn’t,’ she said. ‘Or wouldn’t and so I am no further forward in finding the children. And in the end, there is one person really to blame for all this and that is me. I shall feel guilty about letting them down for the rest of my days, because I put my needs before theirs and I shouldn’t have done that.’
‘You’re far too hard on yourself,’ Joy said, and Meg suddenly looked so immeasurably sad that the tears trickled from Joy’s eyes too and, as the two girls held each other tight, their tears mingled together.
Will was waiting for them at the station with the horse and cart. His weather-beaten face broke into a wide smile as he saw the girls alight from the train. For his sake they attempted a smile back, but Will wasn’t fooled; he was also concerned by the lines of strain on Meg’s pale face and the forlorn look in her eyes. He said nothing about it, for he left that side of things to Enid, whom he knew had been concerned as to what Meg might find on her first visit home.
He lifted up the girls’ cases as if they weighed nothing at all and tossed them into the cart, saying, as he did so, ‘By, you two are a sight for sore eyes and no mistake. Place hasn’t been the same without you pair to liven it up, but Stephen arrived home a few days ago for a short spot of leave so that bucked Enid up a bit. Like a dog with two tails she was.’
Meg felt her heart quicken ‘Is Stephen still here?’ she asked.
Will nodded. ‘Till the day after tomorrow. He’s looking forward to seeing you again and he was very impressed when he saw that field we reclaimed … Anyway, Enid thinks you never get fed properly in them cities so she has made a rich beef casserole and one of her special apple pies to celebrate your coming back.’
Meg hadn’t eaten properly for days and even the thought of food made her feel sick. So she truly hoped she could at least make a stab at the food Enid had taken such trouble over.
Joy, watching her face, covered the silence that could have become embarrassing by saying, ‘Oh, lovely, Will. And Enid is right in a way, because although there is probably enough food in the city – or at least till rationing comes in – it just doesn’t taste the same.’
It was just the right thing to say, and Will had a big grin on his face as he jiggled the reins. ‘Come on then, Dobbin.’
‘Oh, I don’t know why you are bothering, Will,’ Joy said. ‘Dobbin has two speeds, slow and stop.’
Will gave a wheezy laugh. ‘You’re right there, lass. When all’s said and done, we’ll get home eventually and nothing’s spoiling, but I know two people who will be impatient to see you both.’
Enid was impatient and excited, but her smile of welcome faded a little when the girls came in the kitchen door and she turned from the range and caught sight of Meg’s face. Her heart contracted, and so did Stephen’s, for Meg looked so wretched and unhappy. He knew her so much better now, because of the letters they had exchanged in which they had both found that many more things can be committed to paper than can be said face to face. He thought her a wonderful girl with a heart big enough to encompass the whole world. He would have been happy for just a small part of it and, young though she was, he had been determined to speak to her, but seeing her suffering, he wondered if now was the time.
She managed a watery smile for him as he helped her off with her coat and she said, ‘In your last letter you never mentioned leave.’
‘Because I didn’t know,’ Stephen said in that lovely musical voice she had loved from when she first met him. He pulled a chair out for her at the table as he went on ‘It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, as they so often are. As soon as I was told, because you had told me you were going to be in Birmingham, I sent a letter to the house.’
‘I never got any letter,’ Meg said. ‘I was staying with my aunt.’
‘Does she live far away?’
‘No, no distance at all. Doris could have come up with it or, failing that, sent word and I would have called in for it.’
‘So you had no idea I had
written?’
‘No,’ Meg said. And that doesn’t surprise me, but I would have come home sooner if I’d known.’
‘That stepmother of yours wants locking up, if you ask me,’ Enid said as she put a steaming casserole on the table and Joy followed behind with a bowl of buttered potatoes. ‘Your house was the only address I had for you, see. You’d think she’d have said.’
‘Yes, wouldn’t you?’ Meg said. ‘Like any normal human being might. But she doesn’t operate using ordinary rules.’
‘Anyway, you’re here now,’ Will said. ‘And that’s all matters. Let’s eat while the food is hot. Can’t have good food going to waste.’
Stephen noticed straight away that Meg, who had once had quite a voracious appetite, was just pushing the large helping of casserole his mother had served around her plate. She made no attempt to eat it and took no potatoes at all.
Just the sight of the food on the plate made nausea rise in Meg’s throat. Joy ate hers with gusto and said it was delicious, but Meg said nothing. Her head was down and her eyes seemed fastened on her plate, and Joy wondered if she was crying. She felt a well of sympathy fill up inside her as Enid said gently, ‘Can’t you eat a wee bit of it, Meg? You definitely need more meat on your bones.’
Meg lifted her eyes, brimming with tears. She shook her head and her voice was little above a whisper: ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry,’ Enid said. ‘For it’s obvious something ails you. Have you been ill?’
‘Not ill,’ Meg said. ‘Just very sad.’
Joy was well aware Meg was near to breaking point. She said, ‘Meg, would you like me to tell Will and Enid and Stephen what happened to you in Birmingham?’ and she wasn’t surprised when Meg nodded. But Meg, unable to bear hearing about it again, left the table and slipped out of the door, glad of the chance to be alone.
It was a while later before Stephen came to find her. He was overwhelmed with sympathy for what she had gone through and that is what he said when he found her in the orchard among the sweet-smelling trees. His words seemed to open the floodgates, and his arms went around her as she cried as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Meg felt strangely comforted and she cried out against all that had happened to her and, more importantly, to her sisters and little brother. ‘I can’t help feeling that it’s all my fault really,’ she said at last, though she felt no desire to move out of Stephen’s embrace.
‘How could it be?’ Stephen asked.
‘Well you know Mom put them in my charge.’
‘And when you mother did that she had no idea that there was going to be a war,’ Stephen said. ‘Nor that in the event, parents in industrial cities were advised to send their children to safer locations.’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘Well, it was your father who signed for the children to be evacuated,’ Stephen said. ‘So you couldn’t have done anything to stop it. And even if you stayed in Birmingham you wouldn’t have known they had disappeared. Joy told me of your old teacher who is here with evacuated children and how she bumped into your cousin, Nicholas, and it wasn’t until they talked together that anyone realised there was any sort of problem.’
‘There were the postcards,’ Meg said. ‘I would have known if no postcards had come.’
‘Would you?’ Stephen said. ‘Or would you just assume that your stepmother wouldn’t tell you. She didn’t let you know I had sent a letter.’
‘Nor did she give Dad my address when he was called up,’ Meg said. ‘He wanted to say goodbye, Nicholas told me, but Doris said he said she didn’t know where I was.’
‘And she did?’
‘Course,’ Meg said. ‘As soon as it was official that we were staying here I sent her the address to send to the children. So I suppose you’re right. If she said she hadn’t received the postcards, my immediate thought would be that she was lying and I might think she kept details of where the children were to stop Dad seeing them. I’d think of all that before I’d think of them going missing.’
‘So you see,’ Stephen said and he squeezed her a little tighter as he went on, ‘None of this can be your fault. It is really worrying that you don’t know what’s happened to your brother and sisters, but you must stop blaming yourself.’
Meg lay back against Stephen. Nothing had altered, Stephen had no magic wand to change anything and yet she felt comforted and felt the guilt that seemed lodged in her heart lessen.
‘It seems quite amazing that we can talk together like this when we haven’t know each other that long,’ she said at last.
‘Do you still think that?’ Stephen asked. ‘I feel I have got to know you so much better through your letters and I love it that you are so open and honest too, so I will be and tell you from the heart that I love everything about you.’ Meg struggled from his arms and he held her hands as she stared at him, ‘You do?’
‘I do,’ Stephen said. ‘You must know how I feel about you?’
Meg remembered Joy claiming that Stephen was sweet on her. She had refuted it at the time and wasn’t absolutely sure that things between them had changed that much. So she said tentatively. ‘I think … I mean I know you like me.’
‘Like be damned.’ Stephen said. ‘I love you.’
Meg gazed at him in stupefaction and Stephen said, ‘You have stolen away quite a large chunk of my heart, Meg. There are not many minutes of the day when I don’t think of you. You have even got between me and my sleep.’ He sighed and went on, ‘I wasn’t going to speak of this today because you are very young and vulnerable at the moment. But they say this leave is embarkation leave and so I may not get another chance.’
Meg hadn’t spoken, As she looked into Stephen’s eyes it seemed as if the scales had fallen from her own and she felt her heart swell with love for him. Stephen however thought she was silent because he had spoken words she had never expected to hear. He berated himself inwardly for being a fool. He had frightened the girl – and small wonder – and so he said, ‘I’m sorry. Meg, please forgive me and forget anything I said.’
‘Why? Didn’t you mean it?’
‘Oh, I did, every word but …’
‘I … I don’t know much about love, love like this between a man and a woman,’ Meg said hesitantly. ‘I only know that my heart is jumping all over the place and I really think I love you too, Stephen Heppleswaite.’
‘Oh, my darling girl,’ Stephen cried in delight, ‘That will more than do to be going on with.’ He caught her up in his arms and kissed her, Meg had never been kissed in that way and she sighed in contentment and Stephen smiled at her as he said ‘Shall we go in now before they send out a search party for us?’
‘Yes, I think we had better.’
Everyone in the kitchen knew that something special had happened between the two young people who came in hand in hand, but Enid couldn’t blame her son for telling Meg how he felt. She knew that a week’s leave wasn’t given lightly so she was pretty sure it was embarkation leave. However, remembering what Joy had said had happened to Meg in Birmingham, she did say, ‘You didn’t have to come back, Meg, not if you weren’t up to it. You could have stayed on, claimed compassionate leave. We’d have understood that you needed to be with your own folk.’
‘I wanted to be back here where I feel I am doing something useful and working really hard so that I can sleep,’ Meg replied. ‘I’ve not done much of that lately.’
‘Nor eat, neither,’ Enid said.
‘Sorry,’ said Meg.
‘Nothing to be sorry for,’ Enid said. ‘But we have a hefty afternoon of apple picking in front of us and you’ll not perform at all well on an empty stomach. Do you think you could have a bit of apple pie and custard?’
Meg nodded. ‘Yes, I think I could manage that,’ she said determinedly.
‘Good,’ Enid said. ‘I did the plums and damsons while you were away and made a bit of jam, but the apple trees are heavy with fruit just now. And so apple picking is what we
will be at next.
TWENTY-TWO
Meg and Joy thoroughly enjoyed apple picking, even the teetering on ladders to reach the upper branches of the fragrant trees. Everyone helped – Will and Stephen too – and they were taking over the milking so the girls didn’t have to break off their work in the orchard.
The girls soon found that apple picking wasn’t as straightforward as they had imagined. The different kinds of apples were earmarked for certain things, as Enid explained as she led the way to the orchard that afternoon. Will and Stephen carried ladders while she carried numerous hessian sacks, and the girls a selection of wicker baskets. ‘There are some cider apples, which we’ll pick first,’ she told the girls, weaving between the trees, ‘as they are grouped together at the back end. There are lots of them,’ Enid went on. ‘You two love a glass of cider, don’t you?’ she asked the men.
They nodded enthusiastically. ‘Not half,’ said Will. ‘We make a big batch every autumn.’
‘I’m right glad you are here,’ Enid told the girls, ‘because I think my days of mounting ladders are over – though to be honest I was never one for heights anyway, but the men can’t do everything.’
There were dozens of trees in the hollow facing them, some of the branches bowed down with the weight of the fruit, the windfalls liberally littering the ground, mixed in with the fallen leaves.
As the afternoon wore on, Enid fetched Dobbin attached to a small cart, and as each sack was filled, they were loaded onto the cart for Dobbin to pull to the barn where the cider press was kept.
Full darkness had fallen by the time they had stripped all the cider apples from the trees. ‘Tomorrow, we shall have the whole day at it,’ Enid said with satisfaction as they made their way back to the farmhouse. ‘Get a lot done then.’
Later than night, in bed, Will said to Enid, ‘Shocking tale young Joy told us about Meg earlier.’
‘Dreadful.’
‘I knew it was terrible what happened to the young one, and it must be hard for Meg to be parted from her with such finality, but she at least knows she’s safe.’
