by Joanna Toye
‘Oh, Kenny.’
He shrugged.
‘I don’t care.’
‘I know you don’t, that’s the trouble!’ flared Dora. ‘But you should! Oh, and throw that stick, will you, that dog’s making me giddy running round in circles!’
Kenny threw the stick and Buddy galloped after it. They watched him in silence.
‘I had a dog,’ Kenny offered suddenly. ‘As a kid. A little Yorkie terrier, a stray. Rusty, I called him. Not very original. I loved that dog. He was a dog biscuit short of a pound too, just like this one. Ran out in the road after a ball, straight under the wheels of a rag-and-bone cart.’
‘That’s a shame.’
‘I was only six. Cried my heart out. My dad said I couldn’t have another – I should have kept a better eye on him.’
‘You like animals, then?’ Dora ventured, as Buddy brought the stick back and dropped it at her feet. She nodded to Kenny to pick it up. He did so, and hurled it away again. Kenny sniffed and pulled his muffler tighter round his neck.
‘I had a pet squirrel in this one camp. In this forest, we were.’ He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘Used to come for crumbs. But they weren’t feeding us much and it was cold and one day when I was at the latrines, the other blokes killed it for meat. I come back and they’ve stuck it in the stove.’
Dora sighed. It was horrible but understandable. Stories were coming out about what people all over the continent – and not just the prisoners or the many others who’d been rounded up into camps – were having to eat: dogs, rats, rotten potatoes. Grass, in some cases.
Buddy was back with his stick, dropping it this time at Kenny’s feet.
‘There you go, boy.’ Kenny threw the stick again. ‘I tell you something, we’d all have been goners if it hadn’t been for them Red Cross parcels.’
‘Really?’ Dora had packed thousands of them. Her local depot had had letters from headquarters from time to time thanking them and telling them where they’d been distributed, but she’d never before met anyone who’d been on the receiving end. ‘That bit of tobacco …’ Kenny went on. ‘Socks, soap – soap was like rubies out there – maybe a bit of chocolate or sweets …’
‘I’m glad,’ Dora smiled. ‘I’ve packed plenty of those parcels.’
Kenny looked at her sidelong.
‘Yeah, you’re a bit of an all-round do-gooder, aren’t you? That’s the impression I get.’
Dora smiled again, to herself. She didn’t think he meant it as a compliment and she didn’t think of herself that way; she was doing her best, doing her bit, that was all. But if Kenny had observed that much, he couldn’t be completely wrapped up in himself.
‘I wouldn’t put it like that. But I should get back to it now. I have got things to do – not good works, this time. Housework.’
‘Lucky you.’
He was back to his usual laconic self.
‘Buddy!’ Dora called the dog. He’d met an old friend, a collie, and they were bobbing around each other while the collie’s owner looked on indulgently.
‘You can walk back with me if you like,’ Dora added. ‘You can peel off for the café. But if you want to take Buddy out any time, and save me a job, you’re more than welcome.’ Kenny didn’t react, apart from giving another sniff. ‘Oh and for goodness’ sake, get yourself a handkerchief!’
Chapter 24
Kenny didn’t come round for the dog next day and he wasn’t in the park either, nor the next, and Dora was disappointed. She’d thought she’d made a bit of progress – it was the first time, as far as she knew, that he’d volunteered anything apart from monosyllables or moans about his situation. But the day after that, Kenny turned up at the back gate just as she emerged with Buddy on the lead. He must have been watching from his bedroom window.
‘Want me to have him?’ he said, without preamble.
‘Help yourself.’ Dora handed over the lead. Buddy looked up briefly, then continued his studied examination of Kenny’s shoes.
‘Fancy a change?’ asked Kenny. ‘We could go down the canal.’
‘Fine.’ Dora tended not to go there on her own even with the dog – there could be some funny types hanging around. With Kenny there too, however, she felt safer. ‘You’ll have to keep him on the lead, though. If he sees a moorhen, he’ll be straight in the water and I don’t want a dripping dog to deal with.’
‘Fair enough.’
They set off down the cinder path that ran down the back of the houses. When they got to the steps to the canal, Kenny stepped back to let her go first. She waited for him at the bottom, and even saw the ghost of a smile on his face as Buddy lived up to expectations, straining at the leash to scan the scummy water and overgrown banks for traces of bird life. The walk they took was only a short one – it was Dora’s heavy housework day and she was turning out the bedrooms – but after that, Kenny was at the back gate every day. If Dora fancied some fresh air they’d go together; otherwise, Kenny would take Buddy off for as long as an hour at a time. Whichever it was, they’d have a cup of tea afterwards. If Dora went too, it ate into her mornings, which meant she had to hurry through her tasks and rush or skip lunch to finish them or get off to her volunteering, but it was worth it to draw Kenny out and Jean declared she was eternally in her debt.
‘The difference you and that dog’s made!’ she said. ‘I never would have believed it! You’re too good for this world, that’s what you are, Dora.’
‘It’s hardly a transformation,’ said Dora modestly. ‘But maybe it’s a start.’
Lily and Jim were impressed too, and Sid, when he learnt of it in letters.
‘You’ll get your crown in heaven, Mum,’ he wrote. ‘But meanwhile, Lily tells me you haven’t yet got your outfit for the Wedding of the Year. I know you’ll be worried about the money so I enclose a postal order – and make sure you DO spend it all at once!’
Lily was thrilled at the prospect of kitting her mother out. Dora hadn’t had anything new from a proper shop since the blouse she’d bought when Sam first came to tea. The rest of her clothes, like Lily’s, were from jumble sales or prime examples of ‘make do and mend’. Beryl had already offered Dora the pick of her mother-of-the-bride outfits but, though Beryl would have let her have it for free, Dora had been uncomfortable, refusing to be ‘gussied up’ in anything too fancy.
Now, she insisted, if she was going to buy something, it would have to be an outfit she could wear more than once. Lily could see the sense in this, and tried to convince her mum that Sid’s postal order meant she could buy something that was really good quality and would last – even something from Marlows. But when Lily coaxed her to come into the store and they went round Ladies’ Fashions together, Dora nearly passed out at the prices.
‘I don’t care whose model it’s a copy of,’ she said when Lily had persuaded the attentive saleslady to leave them alone as they really were ‘just looking’. ‘What’s it made of? Cloth of gold? I’m sorry, Lily, but I could make it myself for a tenth of the price! I wouldn’t encourage them!’
Lily shook her head in despair.
‘Mum, you are not making your own outfit for my wedding!’ she insisted, ‘for the same reason that Sid’s treating us to a posh lunch after! It’s your day as well!’
But Dora was already on her way to the lifts. Lily followed and saw her off the premises, with Dora promising she’d go and have a look in C&A.
Lily slipped along to Beryl’s shop for another look at her own dress. Beryl had spotted it for sale in the classified adverts in The Lady (‘So you know it’s come from a good home!’) and had gone all the way to Hereford to get it. It was pre-war, so no skimping on fabric – a silk slip with lace overlay, a scooped neckline and elbow-length sleeves. Lily loved it, and she knew Jim would too. The main thing was that though it felt luxurious, it was still simple, with no fussy details. She knew she could wear it happily all day and still feel like herself.
Jim had a new grey suit which he was paying fo
r in instalments. Gladys had lost her baby weight and was borrowing an ‘occasion’ dress from Beryl’s stock; Beryl herself would be resplendent in a cherry red suit with a fake leopard collar. Bobby had a little sailor suit; Sid would be in his dress uniform. There was only Dora left. But Lily knew her mother; even for her daughter’s wedding, old habits die hard, and Dora’s of economising – and putting herself last – were very hard to break.
January slipped into February; the weather was milder and the first signs of spring began to show. Snowdrops and aconites, planted long before the war, poked up again; buds started to form on the avenue of beeches and the huge horse chestnut in the park. On some days, Dora and Kenny didn’t even need to sit in the shelter. It was warm enough to sit on the low stone wall round the war memorial – to the Boer War. Its stone plinth was topped by a bronze cast of two soldiers, one standing, one crouching, with winged Victory in her chariot between them. They were the lucky ones. Below, on bronze plaques, were the names of the dead.
One day, Kenny read them out.
‘Tanner, G. H. Private. Taylor, L. Private. Taylor, J. M. Armourer. Tucker, C. V. Private. Turnbull, W. Gunner …’ He tailed off. ‘Turnbull … I knew a Turnbull. My mate Wilf.’
‘Oh yes?’ Dora kept her voice deliberately casual. She’d found it was the best way to keep Kenny talking.
Kenny sat down. He didn’t look at her.
‘He was right behind me at Dunkirk. We’d stuck together all the way there. Shared what we had – my last fag, his last bit of chocolate. They told us we’d be safe if we got to the beach – it was the only way to get us all out. At the same time, you could see it was plain stupid.’
‘It was the only way, surely, to get you out?’
‘That’s what you know! You don’t think they told you the whole truth, do you? All we hear about is the ones who got home, the miracle of the “little ships”. They don’t play up those that didn’t make it, do they?’
‘Well, no …’
‘You should have been there, night and day on that beach, waiting – no shelter, nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide, sitting ducks for the Jerries.’ Kenny looked up at the sky as if a German plane might appear even now. ‘Dunno where the RAF were – holding them off further inland, they say – well, maybe they were, maybe they weren’t. Still left us exposed. All I know is it was a living hell. I was glad to be took prisoner, I can tell you.’
Dora hesitated. Of all that Kenny had haltingly revealed to her over the weeks and months, she felt she was finally getting close to something significant.
‘And Wilf? Your friend? Was he taken prisoner with you?’
Kenny didn’t seem to hear her.
‘We could hear the planes coming. You could tell from the sound it wasn’t one of ours – we’d had enough practice. We were that tired and hungry, fed up, cold … you just thought “not again”. But you ran anyway, zig-zag like, trying to dodge the bullets, heading for the dunes – not that they were any cover but you could try and burrow a bit. But the sand was spraying up in great jets with the machine gunning, you couldn’t see a thing … we were together, me and Wilf. Then I tripped, he ran into me, and we both fell flat, him on top of me.’
Dora waited.
‘I didn’t realise. I thought he was just lying doggo like me. But when the planes had gone, I rolled over, and he rolled off me and I knew. There was blood coming out of his mouth. They’d got him in the back, twice. He’d saved me, saved my life. I should have got those bullets, not him.’
So it was that, was it, that had driven Kenny so low?
‘Kenny,’ Dora said gently. ‘You can’t say that. You can’t blame yourself for your friend’s death – it doesn’t work like that. The only person to blame was the gunner up in that plane doing the firing.’
Kenny wasn’t listening.
‘His eyes were still open. I had to close them for him. I couldn’t even give him a decent burial. It was chaos, the ships were arriving, and the little boats. They tried to herd us into them … I’d seen a bit of that already – the Jerries were picking men off as they waded out. I just went off on my own. No one was looking, no one cared. I hid in the dunes till the Jerries found me.’
Buddy, who’d been off in the furthest reaches of the shrubbery, returned with a stick, ready for his usual game. But after standing hopefully in front of Kenny, head on one side, stick in mouth, he seemed to realise that his playmate wasn’t interested. With an almost audible sigh, he dropped the stick and lay down.
‘Is that the reason, Kenny?’ asked Dora. ‘Why you won’t do anything about your arm? Get fitted for a limb? You’re punishing yourself?’
Kenny shrugged.
‘It all seemed so pointless after that. The war, everything. I didn’t care if we won or lost. I hadn’t even got the spirit to stand up to the guards, let alone try to escape. And then what happened to my arm’—he picked at his empty sleeve—‘I didn’t care about that, either. On the farm, they’d told us – in German, but we knew enough by then to understand nein and nicht and all that – they told us never to touch the knife blades on the thresher. But I looked into the drum when it jammed and I just stuck my hand in. I thought … I dunno what I thought but I freed the straw and the knives suddenly turned and that was it, whoosh – a big slash half through my arm.’ He looked at her for the first time. ‘You don’t feel it, you know, at the time. I feel it now, the arm and the hand that isn’t there. It hurts sometimes – throbs – but I don’t mind. I like it that way.’
There was no doubt in Dora’s mind now. Kenny was punishing himself. Torturing himself, almost, over something that no right-minded person could ever have said was his fault. But who was to say what he should think, or how anyone could be right-minded who’d been through what he had – along with hundreds of thousands of others – and on both sides of the conflict. They said the end of the war was coming, and that was something everyone was hoping and praying and living for. But the realisation struck Dora all over again that while that was something to celebrate of course, the aftermath would stay with everyone who’d been through it for years to come – for some, maybe for the rest of their lives. Just as with the Great War. Nothing would ever be the same again.
She sneaked a look at her watch. It was time they got back; she had her ironing to do, and the WVS tea bar in the afternoon and somehow she sensed that Kenny had finished. He hadn’t exactly answered her question, but he’d said enough to convince her of what was going on in his mind and why he stubbornly resisted any practical solution to the loss of his arm. She touched his sleeve lightly.
‘Shall we go?’ she said. ‘I’m starting to get a numb behind from sitting on this stone.’
Kenny roused himself.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve been talking too much.’
‘No, you haven’t, not at all.’ Dora gave a rare smile to reassure him. ‘Better out than in, I always think.’
That evening, she told Lily and Jim some of what had passed between her and Kenny.
‘Poor bloke,’ said Jim. ‘All that bottled up.’
‘It explains why he’s been so miserable,’ said Lily. ‘But now he’s started to spill it out, this business with his friend … Well done for getting it out of him, Mum.’
As usual, Dora modestly refused to take any credit.
‘It was the war memorial really,’ she said. ‘Once he’d started, all I did was let him talk. But now he has, perhaps he can start to pull himself together. Get that arm seen to.’
‘I knew she’d make him her mission,’ smiled Lily to Jim when Dora had gone off to the WI. ‘He’ll be invited to the wedding next!’
‘You wouldn’t mind, would you?’
‘Not at all, as long as he doesn’t drink all the champagne!’ Mr Marlow always sent a bottle of champagne to any staff member getting married, so Jim and Lily were in line for two. ‘But as they’re such pals, maybe he can get Mum to settle on her outfit. There’s only six weeks to go and I’m not having much luck!�
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When Lily asked later if her mum had been into C&A again to see if their lighter-weight spring coats were in, Dora assured her she’d do it the next chance she got, but Dora knew that if Kenny came round and wanted to open up again, she’d have to let him. Six weeks to the wedding maybe, but it had taken him nearly six months to start talking and now he had, she couldn’t deny him the opportunity.
Chapter 25
Dora couldn’t have known it, but another opportunity was about to knock next door.
‘You’ll never guess what’s happened!’
Jean Crosbie burst into the back kitchen one morning as Dora was putting the finishing touches to a pie. It was a frequent gambit of Jean’s for starting a conversation, but since it could augur anything from a juicy scandal to a blocked drain, not always one to pique interest.
‘I doubt it,’ said Dora mildly, who’d long since given up trying. All you could be sure of was that the revelation would be nothing to do with the last subject she and Jean had discussed and on which a sensible person might reasonably expect a follow-up.
Jean plumped down on the kitchen chair, almost fanning herself with excitement.
‘Kenny’s had a letter!’
Dora placed the pastry lid on her pie.
‘Who from? The Labour Exchange? The Ministry of Health?’
‘No! From a girl!’
Dora, who’d been holding the pie up on the flat of her hand to trim the edges, put it down carefully.
‘A girl?’
‘Phyllis,’ said Jean in triumph. ‘Seems he knew her in Liverpool!’
‘Jean,’ scolded Dora. ‘You haven’t read the letter behind his back?’
‘No!’ Jean looked hurt. ‘He told us – he had to. She’s coming to visit!’
When Kenny came round for the dog next morning, Dora could see a change in him. He’d been looking better day by day ever since he’d started walking with her and Buddy; his face was less pasty, he held himself better, and kept himself cleaner. But this was another marked improvement. For the first time since his arrival in Hinton, he actually looked – what was the word? – chipper, and truly alive.
