A Girl Can Dream

by Anne Bennett

  ‘Well I can’t.’

  ‘So Meg is going to tell them about the loss of their father and little Ruth being sent to those awful people on her own?’

  ‘It isn’t a nice thing to do, you know.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you recognise that at least,’ Nicholas said, and added, ‘I really think that you should step up to the mark; be a proper big brother and a support for Meg.’

  Terry was furious and glared at Nicholas. ‘You have no right to say that.’ But even as the words were leaving his mouth, he knew Nicholas was right. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to square it with Mr Drummond.’

  ‘I have already spoken to him,’ Nicholas said.

  ‘You have? Why?’

  ‘I’ve offered to take your place if I could persuade you to go with your brother and sisters. He thinks you should, by the way, so he agreed.’

  After two days of searching Rugeley, calling on farmers to check their outbuildings and combing fields, Sergeant Newbury put a call through to the police station in Steelhouse Lane and filled the desk sergeant in on the whole story. ‘I think they’ve made for home and are probably there already.’

  ‘I’ll get someone check it out now,’ the desk sergeant promised.

  That same day he was able to report that he had seen and spoken with the children; they were safely back in Birmingham but would shortly be spending the summer on a farm near Penkridge with their sister who worked there as a land girl.

  ‘Oh, that is good news,’ Sergeant Newbury said. ‘I can rest easy now.’

  ‘They seemed quite concerned about Lady Hammersmith,’ the desk sergeant continued. ‘They know she did wrong but they don’t want her punished for it. They say she never meant to harm them and she was always kind.’

  Sergeant Newbury recalled the last time he had seen Lady Hammersmith, her eyes vacant and her mind elsewhere, but what he said was, ‘Tell them not to worry. Lady Hammersmith is in a lovely comfortable home where there are people to look after her and care for her.’

  ‘Oh, that is good news, sir,’ the desk sergeant said. ‘I will make sure that is passed on.’

  He made a point of visiting the children again to tell them and, as Jenny said, ‘We can really look forward to our holiday now. Lady Hammersmith was on my conscience a bit.’

  They weren’t the only ones looking forward to the holiday. Meg was ecstatic that the children would be coming to the farm, and Stephen saw her true radiance shining out of her. More than ever he realised the cloud she had been living under. For Meg, though, there was still deep concern about Ruth, but if she allowed herself to think of that small child’s future, it hurt her unbearably, so for the sake of her own sanity she had to push it to the back of her mind. She had to put on a happy front for the children, as Aunt Rosie had told her how they had also suffered.

  So she was there to meet to meet them at Penkridge Station, and thought her heart would burst with happiness as she hugged them all tight. Back in the farmhouse, Enid exclaimed at their pasty complexions and remarked on how thin they were, and Joy and Meg smiled at one another over the children’s heads, knowing Enid would see it as her bounden duty to feed them up.

  Meg always believed in meeting trouble head-on, and the same went for unpalatable news, and so straight after a delicious roast chicken dinner followed by apple crumble and custard, Meg took the children up to the room she shared with Joy. Terry, mindful of Nicholas’s censure, followed her. Meg sat on the bed, and with Jenny one side and Sally the other, the boys standing in front of her, told them gently of their father’s death.

  There were tears, but not the outpouring of grief she had half expected, and it saddened her a little that the children had become so distanced from their father.

  ‘It doesn’t seem real yet,’ Jenny said thoughtfully. ‘’Cos he’s still away and that. Maybe we might feel it more when the war is over and all the other dads come home.’

  ‘I dunno,’ Billy said. ‘I wish he wasn’t dead, but I didn’t much like him as a dad when he was with Doris.’

  Meg thought about censuring Billy for saying that, but realised that it was so similar to what she had said to her father before his marriage that she hardly had the right, especially with Jenny and Sally nodding vigorously in agreement with their young brother.

  ‘You can hardly blame them feeling that way about Dad, Meg,’ Terry said to Meg later as she showed him around the farm. ‘He brought it upon himself. And if you want the truth, though I didn’t want him to die either, he was so besotted about that Doris that it’s maybe better he died with the memory of her intact than to come back to see what she is reduced to. She’s moved back into the flat she had in Bristol Street permanently now. And there is a man living with her. Tell you something else as well: Richard Flatterly is a fairly regular visitor.’

  ‘Richard Flatterly? What’s he doing there?’

  ‘Well,’ said Terry. ‘Maybe he is a lover of the white powder himself or perhaps he’s a lover of Doris’s wares?’

  ‘Ugh,’ Meg said. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me about Flatterly, anyway. He’s a horrible slimy toad. I can’t understand what Kate Carmichael sees in him but they are definitely in some sort of relationship.’

  ‘Are they? Bet she wouldn’t like to hear that he had been visiting our Doris then.’

  ‘Maybe not, but how do you know?’

  ‘Uncle Robert told me.’

  ‘And how does he know?’

  ‘He’s keeping tabs on him.’

  Meg was surprised by that. ‘Why?’

  Terry shrugged. ‘He won’t tell me,’ he said. ‘All he would say is that he is nearly ready to make his move and I will know all then.’

  ‘I hate people who just tell you half of a thing.’

  ‘Me too’

  Meg gave a sigh. ‘Come on, we best go in.’

  ‘Are you sure you should tell the others about Ruth as well as Dad today?’

  ‘Well, if they’d have been really upset about Dad I might have waited a bit, but they weren’t that bothered, were they?’

  ‘No,’ Terry conceded.

  ‘So let’s get all the bad news out of the way,’ Meg said. ‘I’ll tell them after tea.’

  Jenny was no fool, and when Ruth had been taken to the orphanage, she had known that they probably wouldn’t be able to get her out again. So she wasn’t as surprised as Billy and Sally when Meg said that someone had offered to adopt Ruth, although she felt a deep sense of loss because she had loved her little sister dearly. But she told herself that if someone wanted to adopt her they would look after her well, and she imagined a young couple unable to have children of their own, perhaps, and visiting the orphanage and falling in love with Ruth’s winning smile.

  That mental image shattered into a million pieces when Meg told them who the adoptive parents were. Her lips curled back, and Sally and Billy, who had almost been taken to Ireland with Liam and Sarah Mulligan, began to scream and shriek. And when Meg attempted to hold them they lashed out with hands and feet as tears cascaded down their cheeks.

  The sounds of their distress brought Will and Enid to see if they could help, but it was some time before the children were in any way calmer. When Enid heard what it was about she asked, ‘Is there nothing can be done to stop this adoption?’

  Meg shook her head. ‘Nothing,’ she said.

  ‘This is dreadful, Meg, my dear girl,’ Enid said. ‘Simply dreadful.’

  Meg knew to her cost that there was nothing to be gained by constantly talking about it and keeping it in the forefront of everyone’s mind. The children had to learn to cope – as she did – with the loss of their little sister.

  They were subdued for a few days and she was very gentle with them, but the rhythm of the farm helped them recover as it had helped Meg. She watched Will teaching them how to build a haystack as he’d taught her and Joy when they had arrived on the farm a year ago. She saw her sisters bringing the solid old horse up the lane to load the trailer, and they would
fetch the eggs in the morning. They all had a go at milking, too, Terry and Jenny being not bad at all. Billy and Sally played endlessly with the dogs. They were not at all used to getting such constant attention, and Will said they would have both dogs ruined, but he said it with a twinkle in his eye so they knew he wasn’t really cross.

  All in all the children fitted into living on the farm as if they’d always lived on one; they seemed to grow taller with sun-kissed cheeks and brown legs and arms, and Meg saw the tension seeping out of them. So Meg should have been happy and content, but she wasn’t because she was missing the closeness and time with Stephen. She hadn’t been aware there was anything wrong at first because her time had been taken up with her brothers and sisters; then she wondered if that was it – that he was jealous of the time she was spending with them.

  But he seemed fine with the children. Terry thought him a fine fellow and Stephen seemed to have endless patience with the younger ones, and when he teased them sometimes it was always gentle teasing. But for her there seemed to be barely a glance any more, and little conversation. He had been to the hospital and had his plaster removed not long after the children arrived. He’d always discussed what the doctor had said in the past but not this time, and when she’d asked him how it had gone his answer had been a shrug and a muttered, ‘S’all right.’ She was concerned, but with so many in the house, and the farm being so busy, finding any time alone to ask him what was wrong was almost impossible.

  As one fine day after another followed the hay was gathered in, and then all the signs were that it would be a bumper harvest that year, the first bombs fell on Birmingham. No one was sure it was Birmingham at first, for the announcer on the wireless just said, ‘A Midland town’, but as the skirmishes went on, certain areas were mentioned that they all recognised. Then, on Sunday 25 August, a raid of some magnitude was visited on the same ‘Midland town’, and this time they mentioned the extensive damage to a shopping area known as the Bull Ring and the ancient Market Hall. There was also damage to the High Street, New Street and the surrounding area.

  Meg’s eyes met those of Terry and Joy, for they knew that the surrounding area could easily be where their houses were, but they didn’t want to speak of it in front of the children.

  It was Billy who said, ‘That ain’t a Midland town – it’s Birmingham, ain’t it?’

  There was no point denying it. ‘Sounds like it, Billy.’

  ‘And the man said bombs damaged the Market Hall. Hope the flipping animals are all right?’

  ‘Huh, trust you to think of the animals first,’ Meg said. ‘People are more important, and I hope everyone is safe. All I can say is, thank God it’s Sunday and so the Bull Ring would be empty, not like it is weekdays. And Saturday especially.’

  In Birmingham there was another raid the following evening, but just before the sirens went, there was a thundering knocking on the door of the flat. Doris knew Frank was expecting Richard Flatterly, so she opened the door with no sense of alarm and then was nearly knocked on her back by the men who burst through it so violently the door juddered on its hinges. The panicky eyes of Frank and plainly terrified ones of Doris were trained on the two beefy men framed in the doorway, both holding baseball bats in their hands as the siren shrilled out.

  They just stood and waited till the noise abated slightly, by which time Doris was shaking from head to foot and Frank wasn’t much better, for the men were Big Bert himself and his henchman, known for their brutality.

  ‘Well then, Caudwell,’ he said to Doris, ‘I think you owe me some money and I’m here to collect it and then give you the biggest hiding of your life for giving me the run around.’ He strode across the room and grasped Doris painfully by the chin. ‘You will find it isn’t a healthy option to run out on me.’

  Doris was unaware of the drone of the approaching planes for her whole attention was on the man in front of her as she stammered, ‘I have no money, Bert. Honest to God.’

  ‘Think I’ll buy that, darling?’ Bert said, and slapped Doris on either cheek saying, ‘That’s a taster for what’s to come.’

  Clusters of incendiaries rattled around on the roof of the flat. One went down the chimney, fell out in the grate of the spare room still alight, and when it tumbled from the grate, orange and yellow flames began to snake across the floor.

  ‘You have got one minute to give me some wads of cash or I will break your fingers for starters,’ Big Bert growled threateningly. ‘And then every other bone in your body.’

  Frank, hoping to appease them, was on his knees before the cupboard where he kept his cashbox when suddenly an explosion ripped through the flat, then another and another as the barrels of petrol were set alight and turned the flat into a raging inferno.

  Richard Flatterly, approaching down the street to do another deal with Frank, was blown across the road in the blast from the first explosion, his clothes ablaze.

  Robert, who had been tailing him some distance behind, rushed up and doused the flames with his own overcoat. Then finding him still alive, he alerted a policeman and Flatterly was taken to hospital under police guard.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The holidays were drawing to a close. Enid took the children into Penkridge the first Saturday in September as they were starting at the village school the following Monday and she declared they needed new clothes and footwear. They all ended up going except Stephen and Terry, who decided to stay at the farm as well and keep him company.

  On the way there Meg listened to the children chatting and laughing together in the back of the cart, so very different from the nervous bedraggled stick-thin ones that had first arrived at the farm. The changes in them were not just physical either; Meg was delighted to see their old personalities beginning to emerge again and she marvelled at their resilience.

  It would soon be all change. Terry would be returning to his job in Birmingham and the children would be moving to Penkridge to live with Lily. The Heppleswaites and Lily had looked into this and found that as Lily had already had evacuees living with her who had returned home, there was no problem in her taking in the Halletts. The children were all looking forward to this. They had met Enid’s older sister a few times and liked her a great deal.

  In fact, despite the war still raging the Halletts seemed to have survived the turbulent waters that had once threatened to submerge them. Terry thought about this that morning as, with the jobs all done, he and Stephen had made a bite to eat and were sitting over a cup of tea. He acknowledged that the only one who seemed unsettled and unhappy was Meg. No one else might have noticed this but Terry he knew his sister well and had seen her face looking quite bleak at times. He even knew what was making her unhappy and that was the way Stephen was with her. He had known of their budding relationship because she had spoken about Stephen in her letters, and if she hadn’t he might have guessed anyway by the amount of times she mentioned him. When they had met he thought him splendid and was pleased and relieved that his sister had found someone special.

  However, he soon realised that things were not running smoothly for her and he wondered what had gone wrong between them. He even wondered if he should speak about it to Stephen when they had the place to themselves.

  He might well have done just that, but he suddenly heard a car approaching down the lane. This was such an unusual occurrence that he crossed to the window just in time to see a taxi drive into the yard and stop before the farmhouse door. His eyes grew wide with astonishment when a woman got out of the taxi holding a suitcase in one hand and the hand of a little girl in the other.

  ‘What the …?’ exclaimed Stephen, who had joined Terry at the window, but Terry was already out of the door and running across the cobbles.

  ‘Teddy,’ the little girl cried, not ever able to say his name properly, and Terry scooped her up in his arms, holding her tight while tears fell from his eyes. After a long while he watched the taxi travel back up the lane, then turned to Kate Carmichael and said, ‘I don’t kn
ow what this is all about, but if you have come to upset our Meg, you can just sling your hook and leave our Ruth where she belongs, with her family.’

  ‘Believe me, Terry, I mean Meg no harm,’ Kate said. ‘In fact, I have come to beg her forgiveness.’

  Mollified, Terry introduced Stephen and put Ruth down to explore her surroundings. His mind was teeming with questions, but when he attempted to ask them, Kate said Meg should hear first.

  ‘Meg?’ Ruth said.

  ‘She’s in town.’ Terry said. ‘Back soon.’

  ‘Back soon,’ Ruth repeated.

  ‘Yes, I wonder what she will make of you.’

  All in all they hadn’t long to wait – just about an hour – but it seemed the longest hour of Terry’s life. In the end he left Stephen and Kate Carmichael talking and took Ruth to show her around the farm. She loved all the animals and didn’t even mind the smelly pig, but her favourites were the two boisterous dogs and she clapped her hands with glee when Terry threw balls for them both, and showed Ruth tricks that his sisters had taught them. They were there in the yard, still playing, when the cart rumbled in and the Hallett children saw the sister they thought they would never see again, playing with their big brother. Meg was out of the cart before it stopped, almost staggering towards Ruth, so great was her shock at seeing the child. Then she lifted her into her arms, and Ruth wound her arms around her neck and gave a great sigh of contentment: ‘Ah, Meg!’

  There were tears in Enid’s eyes and Meg was totally unable to say anything at all. It took a little while for her to gain control of her emotions and then she carried her little sister into the farmhouse and set her on the floor, and saw Kate Carmichael for the first time.

  ‘What’s all this about?’ Meg asked, watching Ruth touching each of her siblings in turn as if she couldn’t believe she was back with them. ‘What you doing here?’

  Kate ignored Meg’s angry tone, knowing she had reason to speak to her that way and said, ‘I’ve brought you news of the death of your stepmother.’