Ian laughed. ‘Spy, eh? Well, I’ll tell you this fer narth’n, that stuff don’ belong to no spy. It’s mine.’
‘Why you ’idin’ it ’ere?’ Donny’s cheek worried Lenny, but he admired his brother for his courage. ‘I reckon you don’ want people to know about it.’
‘Have you told anyone?’
‘Wouldn’t do that, Mr Moreton. It’d all be took away if we did.’
‘Ah, I see, you don’t want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.’
‘Don’ know what you mean.’
‘Never mind. How good are you at keepin’ secrets?’
‘Very good, Mr Moreton.’
‘You swear it. You swear you’ll never tell a soul what’s in this ’ere summer house.’
‘It depends.’ Donny was pushing his luck and it made Lenny gasp with fear. Mr Moreton was not a very big man, but he had a temper, everyone in the village knew that.
Ian gave a great guffaw. ‘Man after me own heart,’ he said. ‘I like that. Now, this is the deal. You say nothing about this to anyone, anyone at all, and I’ll make sure you don’t lose by it.’ He opened the locker and took out a bar of chocolate. ‘I know you like chocolate, you’ve had one already.’ He put the chocolate in Donny’s hand. ‘Now, I’m relying on you.’
‘We wanted something for our Pa. One o’ them bottles of booze.’
‘Cheeky bugger! If you want any more, you have to earn it.’
‘We don’ mind workin’, do we, Lenny?’ This was said eagerly. ‘What you want us to do?’
‘Narth’n right now. Later, perhaps. Now cut along and not a word. You’ll know what to expect if you let me down.’ He picked up one of the cricket bats and stroked it gently. They knew exactly what he meant and scuttled away, glad to have escaped in one piece. The sound of Mr Moreton’s laughter followed them as they fled.
Steve had returned to his squadron to discover there was a new intake of pilots. ‘Babes in arms’ was Oxo’s comment, which made Steve smile, considering the boy had only been operational himself a few months. He had survived his first few critical weeks and was now a seasoned and sensible pilot. Brand had been shot down over the Channel and Oliphant had been grounded on medical grounds and now spent his time in the ops room. There were changes in the rest of the squadron too. Pilots were shot down or transferred for one reason or another, and others arrived, young, fresh-faced and eager. Steve was beginning to feel like an old man. Patrolling the skies, peering through the darkness for the familiar formations of Heinkels and Dorniers, he knew from the information radioed to him that the raid was a heavy one. London, after a few weeks of respite, was having another pounding.
‘Skip, there they are!’
He saw them at the same time, dozens of them. Angry and frustrated he might have been but he was not reckless; his training and experience kicked into action and he went after the last one in the formation with cool precision. He had no hatred for the enemy airmen, tried not to think of them having families, just as he did. What he was after was an aeroplane, a thing made of metal and other inanimate materials. When it went down in flames, he rejoiced that it would never invade the skies above his homeland again, could not threaten Laura. She was constantly in his thoughts. He found himself thinking of her trim figure, her violet eyes, the sheen of her dark hair, her smile, and looked forward to seeing her again. When he had time off.
‘Why don’t you go into the country?’ Anne asked Laura. They were sitting in the Anderson shelter, listening to the sounds of a raid, trying to ignore the thumps and whistles and crashes. They had heard it all before and though they could never be blasé about it, they had come to accept this semi-underground existence as normal. Each morning they woke and went out into the early morning dawn to find their house still intact, though they had lost a window on one occasion and the garden had been showered with shrapnel more than once. Judging by the noise, this was an especially heavy raid, which was what had prompted Anne’s question.
Laura, like her mother and everyone else, was tired. Her pregnancy was obvious to everyone now but she stuck at her job, shifting uncomfortably when hours of sitting at a table sorting piles of resistors into boxes by size and colour made her back ache and her bottom numb. She had given up nursing and taken factory work as soon as she realised that long hours on her feet and lifting heavy patients was too risky for her unborn child. She needed to keep going until after Christmas at least, so she wore loose smocks over a skirt she had let out and hoped the manager would not look too hard at her and decide she was corrupting the morals of the other girls in the factory. That was a laugh. Some of them were far more immoral than she was. They talked of nothing but the pictures and the dance halls and boyfriends – where they had gone with them and what they had done; it seemed to be all they lived for. She ought not to blame them when death stalked them every night and their daytime jobs were so repetitively boring. She missed the hospital. There she felt she had some purpose in life, that she was helping people and making a difference. The work she was doing in the factory, so they were constantly told, was vital to the war effort, but it didn’t feel like it; it was deadly dull. She listened to Music While You Work and Forces’ Favourites relayed over loudspeakers and dreamt of the child she was expecting.
‘Mum, how can I go? At the moment I’ve got a job of sorts and I must work as long as I can. Where would I find work in the country? Any employer would take one look at me and shake his head.’
‘You’ll have to give up work sooner or later.’
‘I know that.’ When the time came, the responsibility for their keep would devolve entirely on her mother with the help of the small savings she had managed to accumulate, and the prospect of that worried her constantly. Mum was looking tired, almost gaunt. The fat had dropped off her, so there was nothing much left of the plump, cheerful woman she had once been. She said it was the war, but Laura suspected it was more than that. She had tried several times to persuade her to see a doctor, but she had refused. ‘I’m not going to the doctor just because I’ve lost a bit of weight. They’d laugh at me and tell me they’ve got more important things to do with their time. Anyway, I was always too fat.’
‘I’ll go if you come too,’ Laura said.
‘I can’t leave here, it is my home, the one your dad and I worked so hard to get. It’s more than bricks and mortar and a few sticks of furniture to me. It’s my life.’
‘Mum, you can’t say it’s your life, that’s morbid. It could be bombed out of existence, but that doesn’t mean you can’t survive without it. Now, stop talking like that and tell me where you think we should go.’
‘I’m going nowhere.’
‘Then neither am I.’
Anne gave up for the moment, but she was worried. She worried about Laura, about the baby, about her own failing health, about what would happen if she could no longer work. Some days she had to drag herself out of bed, she felt so exhausted. And hiding the pain from Laura was becoming more difficult. Sooner or later something would have to be done to make sure Laura and her child were cared for. She thought she had shaken off the past, but she was going to have to face it again.
Laura was three years old, nearly four, when Anne found herself face to face with Helen Barstairs. She had been sitting on a park bench watching the child play when she became aware that they were being watched. The woman was tall and dark, wearing a fur coat and a felt cloche that shouted money and privilege. ‘Who are you? What do you want?’ she asked.
‘I mean no harm. You see, I had a little girl once…’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
And then her world fell apart when the woman said she was Laura’s mother, that she had given birth to her at the St Mary and Martha clinic on the fifth of March, 1918. ‘She was taken from me,’ the lady said. ‘Pulled out of my arms and carried away. Given to you.’
Anne desperately wanted to get rid of her, and was worried that Laura might overhear. She might not understand, but she might say som
ething about a strange lady to her daddy. ‘You didn’t want her.’
‘That’s not true. I did want her very much. Shall I tell you about it?’
‘I don’t want to hear it.’ She could have stood up and walked away, but something kept her glued to the seat. And the woman who was Laura’s mother told her a tale of such heart-breaking misery it brought tears to her eyes. Lady Barstairs! She had known Laura’s mother was well off, but that she might be titled had never entered her head. That she had wanted to keep her child was something she had never allowed herself to dwell on. Lady Barstairs had been hard done by but that did not mean Anne would ever relinquish Laura. Never. Never. What she did was to offer her a little consolation, a promise to keep in touch if she left Laura alone. Reluctantly, Lady Barstairs agreed, but Anne did not feel safe after that.
She grew over-protective, hardly liked to let Laura out of her sight, afraid that Helen would break her promise and try to take Laura from her or come to the house when Tom was there. What would he do about it? When Laura started school, she had to leave her there, terrified someone would tell the child, ‘Your mummy is not your mummy.’ Though she tried to hide it, she was jumpy and irritable, and Tom soon realised there was something wrong. It came to a head one evening after Laura had gone to bed.
‘What’s the matter, love?’ he asked, putting his arm round her and drawing her away from the sink where she was washing up. ‘You’ve been edgy for months. Are you ill?’
‘No, I’m just tired.’
‘It’s more than that. Come and sit down and tell me what’s wrong.’
‘I c-c-can’t.’
‘Of course you can. Come on, out with it.’
She took a deep breath. ‘I’ve done something wicked.’
‘You? Wicked?’ He laughed. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘But it’s true.’
‘And you are afraid of what I will say?’
‘Terribly afraid.’
He led her into the front room and sat with her on the sagging second-hand sofa, taking both her hands in his. ‘Now, tell me what this wicked thing is.’
Little by little, it all came tumbling out: her dejection at losing her own baby; how she was told she couldn’t have any more and couldn’t accept it; about the lifeline offered by Mrs Bates and how she had meant to tell him when he came home from the war, but when it came to it, she couldn’t find the courage.
He was silent for a long, long time and she wondered if he would ever speak to her again. When, at last, he did it was not to offer words of forgiveness but to ask about Laura’s real mother, something she had studiously avoided mentioning. ‘Who is she?’
She had planned to tell him the whole truth, but balked at the last hurdle. ‘I don’t know. I was told she passed away on the day Laura was born. They were going to put her into an orphanage, Tom. Even if the mother hadn’t died, she had no intention of keeping her. I couldn’t let her go into a home, could I? I know what that’s like.’
‘So why tell me now?’ His voice was controlled but she could see the angry colour mounting in his face and it frightened her.
‘It’s been on my conscience.’
‘I should just about think so. All these years! Living a lie, letting me think the child was mine. I don’t know how you could do it.’
‘I know I should have told you, but I wanted her so much. You should have been there when she was put into my arms. She was so tiny and helpless. I simply couldn’t let her go and I’m sure you wouldn’t have been able to either. I hoped you would understand.’
‘Who else knows you’ve made a complete fool of me?’
‘No one.’
‘Mum said she wasn’t mine, but I didn’t believe her.’
‘She was only guessing.’
‘What else don’t I know?’
‘Nothing. You love Laura, don’t you? You can’t suddenly turn off that love because she’s not your flesh and blood.’
‘Ah, but is she your flesh and blood?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean. How could you pull the wool over everyone’s eyes for nine months if you weren’t really pregnant? People round here are not that stupid. Who was he?’
She could not believe he had asked the question, that he could even consider that she had been unfaithful and stared at him in shock. ‘There’s no one, there’s never been anyone but you, surely you know that? I stuffed myself with padding. I was deceiving myself as well as everyone else. Try to understand. Please don’t let this make any difference. Laura doesn’t know, there’s no need for her ever to know. Please, Tom…’
He pushed her away and stormed from the house. Wearily, she climbed the stairs and went to bed, laying awake, listening for him to return and worrying what she would do if he never did. She heard him come in at two in the morning and collapse on the sofa. She went down to find him snoring in a drunken stupor, covered him with a blanket and went back to bed. At least he had come home. He had gone to work when she came down the next morning; the blanket was neatly folded over the back of the sofa. She spent the day on tenterhooks, trying to do all the things she normally did, taking Laura to school, doing the shopping, a bit of dusting and ironing, cooking the evening meal, wondering if he would come back for it.
He came in the back door at his usual time and went through to the dining room, where Laura was laying the table for her. She hardly dare breathe, listening to what they were saying.
‘Have a good day at school, love?’
‘Yes. I came top in English. Miss gave me a gold star.’
‘Well done, sweetheart. What else did you do?’
‘Sums. I got some of them wrong. I’m supposed to do them again tonight.’
‘Would you like me to help you after we’ve had our tea?’
‘Oh, yes please.’
Anne breathed a sigh of relief. At least if he was angry it was not with Laura. She took the casserole into the dining room, trying to put on a cheerful face. They ate together as they always did, and if there was a constraint between her and Tom, Laura did not seem to notice it. The child helped her wash up and then settled down to her homework. It was so normal, Anne began to hope.
Tom never really forgave her, but in the end he told her coldly that considering she was in every other way a good wife and an exemplary mother and Laura’s happiness was important to him, they would try and make a go of their marriage. But it was nothing but a pretence and their relationship was never the same again. Soon after that they moved into the house in Burnt Oak, and two years after that Tom died from a chest infection, made worse because of the mustard gas he had inhaled.
She had kept her secret, was still keeping it, years after Tom’s death, even after her mother-in-law had confronted her at Tom’s funeral, calling her a tart, saying she’d killed him with the worry of it, and she never wanted to see her or her bastard again. She had been sending Helen the occasional snapshot of Laura but she stopped sending them after that. Helen didn’t know their new address and she hoped that was an end of it. But it wasn’t, was it? But not yet, please God, not yet.
Ian had not been joking when he said he would put the twins to work, not because he particularly needed them, but by involving them, he could control them. He used them as messengers; a couple of evacuees wandering about the village attracted less attention than he would. ‘Tell Mr Wareson I’ve got a few bottles of whisky in,’ he would tell them. ‘Catch him coming outa his house, don’t speak to anyone else.’ Or, ‘Tell Mrs Cook, her in that big house on the Attlesham Road, I can get her two jars of jam and a tin of golden syrup. Tell her it come to four and a tanner in advance.’
All their business was done in the summer house. Here the boys received their instruction and were paid their ‘wages’, usually chocolate, but sometimes other things which they intended to use for Christmas presents. They had even inveigled a half bottle of whisky out of him to give to their dad. Always there was the threat of what would happen if they told
anyone. ‘I’ll see you go to clink for thievin’,’ he warned them.
‘You stole the stuff in the first place.’ Donny was always one to push his luck, though he usually backed away when he saw Mr Moreton’s face turn red.
‘No, I did not. It’s honest tradin’, that’s what it is. I don’ make a song an’ dance about it on account of everythin’s in short supply an’ I have to choose who I let hev it.’ He had reached out and grabbed the lobe of Donny’s ear. ‘You c’n understand that, can’t you?’
‘Yeah.’ It was a squeal of pain as his ear was twisted.
‘Then run along and do as you’re bid.’
Today, they had skipped Sunday school and would have to invent something about the hymns they had sung and the lesson to tell Aunty Kathy. They had become adept at that. Donny was blasé about it, but Lenny was deeply unhappy. He hated telling lies and usually let Donny do all the talking.
‘Are we going home now?’ he asked, scuffling his feet in the fallen leaves which had collected at the side of the road. It was nearly dark and he hated to be out in the dark when there were no street lamps and the bare trees, moving in the wind, cast strange shadows, and owls hooted and things scuffled in the undergrowth. He knew Donny didn’t like it either, though he pretended not to care.
‘Might as well.’
‘How many days to Christmas is it?’ Christmas was large in their minds. Mum had said she would come down and perhaps, if Dad’s ship came in, he would come too. When they asked Aunty Kathy if that would be all right, she had said, ‘Yes, of course. They will both be welcome. We’ll have a grand time, won’t we?’
‘One day less than it was yesterday when you asked.’
‘Mum will come the day before, won’t she? She won’t leave it until Christmas Day. I want her here when we open our stockings.’
‘How do I know? She never said which day. You saw the letter.’
Summer House Page 13
