“Well, this was a bloody stupid place for Agnes to send Susan and Anne then, wasn’t it?” Dad cried back at her. “It was hardly safe round here in the war with Hitler just over the water — bloody Battle of Britain up in the bloody air — without all this other ruddy rubbish. What the hell was their ma thinking of, sending them here? They’d have been better off at home in London, even with the Blitz. We got through it all right, me and Ma.”
“Well, I’m not sure. Agnes had to work in the factory at Woolwich — you know that. Then — then you know about all her trouble — you know … having babies. It was either sending the girls here, to family, or off somewhere hundreds of miles away to strangers. Agnes wouldn’t have done that.”
“Well, she bloody well should have done, then there’d never have been this whole bloody mess. I’d have had a bloody easier life, I’ll tell you that. Agnes was too ruddy old to be having another baby at her time of life after Anne was lost. It bloody killed her, didn’t it, and that good-for-nothing crooked husband of hers, One-Eyed Jack Swift, going off and leaving Susan on her own. It was good of my old ma to take Sue in; otherwise she’d have had nobody.”
I was too tired. I didn’t know what they were talking about. I knew Agnes was Auntie Ida’s sister, Mum’s mother, who died having a baby in an air raid, and One-Eyed Jack Swift was her husband. But who was Anne? I’d never heard of her before.
“Well, it’s always easy to see things with hindsight,” Auntie said. “At least, thank God, you’ve come to take Cora and Mimi home. It’ll be such a weight off my shoulders. Anyway, Cora’s too curious, poking and prying around the house. She’s really been getting on my nerves. I can’t have it, Harry.”
There was a long, heavy silence.
“Ida …” Dad said quietly. I felt that he wasn’t looking at her while he spoke, that he couldn’t look at her. “There’s nowhere else, Ida. I’ve got to work. I’ve got this deal on. I’ve got to pay the rent. Ma lives in Scotland now. How can I have them? I don’t know the first thing about looking after kids, specially girls. They’d be wandering the streets all day. If the Council knew, they’d take them away and put them in a home. What am I supposed to do with them… . ? And then there’s these people… . you know, if they cottoned on there weren’t nobody watching my kids … I don’t know… .”
I could feel the wooden floor under my numb feet. It was hard and cold. Suddenly everything in the world was hard and cold.
“Why did you bloody well come, if you weren’t going to take them home?” Auntie Ida cried. “What about that neighbour of yours — Susan wrote to me about her once — kind woman, unusual name — beginning with B, I think. Why can’t she take them in?”
“B? Oh, Bedelius — Ivy,” said Dad. “To tell the truth, Ivy’s not too good herself. Then there’s four others still at home, apart from Dick, of course. How can she do it? I ask you, Ida.”
“I don’t want them here, Harry. Anything could happen!”
“Ida, don’t be tough on me,” said Dad, sounding wrung out. “I wanted to see them… . I wanted them to see their dad… .”
I couldn’t be bothered to hear any more. I didn’t understand any of it, except that Auntie Ida didn’t want us and, worst of all, neither did Dad. Mimi and I were nothing but a nuisance.
I crept back upstairs.
I almost had to drag Harry by the scruff of his collar and make him go into their room to kiss them good-bye. Even then he only went in because he knew they would be asleep. He hardly touched them he was so frightened of waking them up and making a scene.
I heard Dad come into our bedroom before he went away. He leaned over and kissed my forehead, so light it was like a breath, but I kept my eyes tight shut.
I watched him go down the Chase, his kit bag swinging from side to side. He didn’t look back. The sun was up, and the air was already warm for his walk to Daneflete to get the first train to London. If he had waited until the buses started, he would still have been in the house when the girls got up, so he walked.
Everyone turns their back on this place in the end.
Agnes, stupid Agnes, going off with that rogue, Jack Swift, coming down here looking for labouring work, saying he’s lost his eye on the Somme, milking it for all it’s worth. It turns out it got gouged out in some brawl on the Mile End Road. Of course, he used it to his advantage. All the girls thought he was winking at them.
I lost count of the stillbirths, the miscarriages she had. Susan and Anne. Just Susan and Anne. Just Susan.
Susan screaming — hysterical, running down there in the dark and ripping that little knitted soldier off the gypsy tree in the churchyard where I’d hung him.
I didn’t think. It’s just what we’ve always done.
I was making a pot of tea in the kitchen when Cora came down the stairs. I could hear by the sound of her footsteps that she knew he’d gone back without them.
I became so weary that morning — of Mimi’s crying and Cora’s silence.
I don’t know — they’d only been here for a little while, but it was funny to think of them back in London. I suppose it would feel like a dream soon, almost as if they’d never come at all. People come and go … it happens, Mum said. A few more days and you’ll even start to forget what they looked like.
We hung around the house a bit, Pete and me, even though the day was really hot and sunny. We didn’t feel like the woods after Malcolm and the flick knife, we didn’t think we’d better go down the church, and we didn’t fancy the Patches, either. Mum got out the chemistry set Grandma Bardock gave me for my birthday, but I couldn’t be bothered with all the instructions, so I shoved it back in the cupboard.
Then she sent Pete and me down to Mrs. Aylott’s with a list, but Mrs. Pratt, from Dry Street over near Hobb’s Lane, and Mrs. Cleaver, Tooboy and Figsy’s mum, were already in there, so we had to wait.
“Yes, Anthony said he saw them in the woods… .” Mrs Cleaver was saying in a low voice. I sometimes forgot Tooboy’s name was really Anthony. He looked nothing like one.
“A disgrace, if you ask me,” said Mrs. Pratt. The three ladies had gathered their heads close together as if they were cooking up something stinky in a cauldron. The bell tinkled when we came in, but they were so busy huddled up talking they didn’t even turn round to look at us.
“She shouldn’t have been allowed to have children down there,” Mrs. Pratt carried on, “after what happened, you know — and two little girls as well, I ask you …”
Suddenly Mrs. Aylott caught sight of us and stood up straight.
“Two tins of garden peas was it, Beryl?” she said loudly, rolling her eyes in our direction. Mrs. Pratt and Mrs. Cleaver turned and looked at us and beamed.
“Hello, Roger, Peter,” said Mrs. Cleaver. “No, processed if you don’t mind, Dulcie. Girls not with you today, boys?”
“Erm, no. They’ve gone back to London,” I said. “Their dad came for them yesterday.”
“And not before time,” said Mrs. Pratt half under her breath as she turned back to the counter.
Auntie Ida sent me to get the milk from down the end of the Chase where the milkman left it every day in a big tin box. Two pints — one pint extra now that Mimi and me were here, and I had to put the money in the box for him to take when he came next. Auntie said she used to have a cow in the barn for the milk, but she never got another one after it died.
It was smashing weather, lovely and sunny. The mud in the Chase was going hard again. I’d been in an irritable mood since Dad left, but walking back up to Guerdon Hall, picking buttercups with my spare hand, and feeling the warm sun on my face, I felt a bit better.
I arranged the buttercups in a jar of water and asked Auntie if we could go up to Roger and Pete’s. I think she was glad to see the back of us.
Mimi started skipping as we went down Ottery Lane, in and out of the shadows of the big trees. She seemed to have forgotten all about Dad, even though she’d screamed herself purple the whole day after he left wi
thout us.
Roger and his brothers were in the garden, fishing stuff out of the pond. There was a stinking muddy mess all along the edge, and as we came round the side of the house, they were poking about in it with sticks. Roger was so surprised when he saw us that he nearly stepped back into the water.
“Blimey!” he shouted, a big grin coming over his face. “What the heck are you doing here?”
“Roger! Watch it!” cried Terry. “You’ve stood right on my best fish!”
“Why aren’t you in London?” said Pete, running up. “We thought you’d gone with your dad.”
“No,” I said, “he’s got so much work on right now, but he’s coming back to get us really soon. He wanted to make sure we were all right. Came to see us, that’s all.”
Mrs. Jotman appeared with some orange squash and biscuits and almost dropped the tray.
“Good heavens!” she said. “What a surprise. I’ll go and get some more.”
“You coming to the cricket tomorrow?” Pete asked as we sat on the grass.
“I dunno,” I said. “I ain’t never been to cricket.”
“Our dad’s absolutely the best bowler in the whole team,” said Roger.
“Well, Graham Crawford’s nearly as good,” said Pete. “They’re playing Clevedon Mortimer, over on the field. You must come. Roger and me put the scores up. You can help as well, if you like. Then there’s a smashing tea. Mum’s already made loads of cakes. Everybody goes, and the weather’s going to be brilliant, Dad says.”
The distant tinkling sound of “Knick-Knack Paddy-Whack” drifted into the garden. It stopped for a while, then started up again, closer this time.
“Mum! MUM!” shrieked Dennis. “DAD! It’s the ice-cream man!”
He went running into the house, then shot out again. “Roger! Mum’s given me half a crown! Come on!”
We all got up and rushed down Fieldpath Road to where the ice-cream van had stopped outside Mrs. Wickerby’s.
“Mum and Dad want wafers,” Dennis said, jumping up and down as we waited behind some other children. At last we got our cornets and raced back to the house. Dennis was running so fast that, as he whizzed up the veranda steps with the wafer for his mum in one hand and the change and his cornet in the other, he tripped. His ice cream shot out of its cone and landed with the money in a heap on the wooden floor. A penny rolled round and round, then slipped through a crack between the planks. There was silence, then suddenly Dennis started screaming.
Mrs. Jotman came rushing out, thinking his leg must have come off at the very least.
“Oh, dear,” she said, picking him up from where he was thrashing about on the veranda floor. “Here, have my wafer instead.”
“Don’t — don’t like wafers!” he yelled. “Want my cornet!”
We could hear the ice-cream van going off down the lane towards North Fairing. Everyone was eating their cornet really fast so they wouldn’t have to share it with Dennis. Mrs. Jotman disappeared into the house and came back with a spoon. She picked up his empty cone and spooned the ice cream from her wafer into it for him.
“’S not the same,” he said, sniffing.
“I’ll have it, then,” she said, and pretended to go for a lick. He snatched it off her and started to eat it, and she went back in the house for a cloth, biting bits off the empty wafers.
It was going to be a real scorcher. The sun streamed in around our curtains where they didn’t quite fit the window.
I leaned over the side of the bunk. Pete was still asleep. I picked up a sock roll off the top of the cupboard at the end of the bed and chucked it at him.
“Oi! Stop it, will you!”
“It’s cricket, Pete!”
He was so excited he shot out of bed like a mad thing, yelling, “Cricket! Wheeeee!” and jumping high in the air, thrusting up his arms in two fists.
After breakfast, Mum made Pete and me help her make ten tons of sandwiches — cucumber, ham, Spam, cheese and pickle, and some really posh ones with tinned salmon. When she had to go off to feed Baby Pamela, we helped ourselves to some fairy cakes and stuffed the paper cases deep down in the bin.
After dinner, Cora and Mimi turned up with a large fruit cake in a tin.
“Auntie Ida made it for the cricket,” said Cora, and Mimi gave Mum a box of Roses chocolates in a paper bag.
“Auntie said for the raffle,” said Mimi. “I didn’t eat none.”
“Oh, that’s really nice of her,” said Mum, putting the bag with the other things.
Dad came in looking very smart in his blazer and whites but irritated because his cap had disappeared.
I remembered Dennis had been in the garden with the cap on his head, practising batting with a big stick. When I went outside to fetch it, he had thrown the stick and the cap away and was chasing a cat through the long grass. Earlier in the morning, Mum had wet Dennis’s hair to smooth it down, so when he took the cap off, his hair had dried into a really weird shape like a fried egg.
“Where’s Dad’s cap?” I yelled after him, but he didn’t even look back.
It was lying in the dirt. Rubbing spit in made it even grubbier.
Mum came out. “I’ll see to that,” she said. “You put the stuff in the pram, and don’t squash it all.”
We loaded up the pram with tins and bags and plates of sandwiches covered in tinfoil, then off we went, Pete and Dennis reluctantly pushing it between them, Mum carrying Pamela, and Dad swinging his cricket bag.
The way to the field was up a grass track alongside Mrs. Aylott’s shop. It was just wide enough for a car, and we had to stand on one side while the Treasures passed us in their shiny black Rover. Mr. Treasure was driving in his straw hat and his big white coat because he was always the umpire. A few other cars came up, but mostly they were bringing the other team, Clevedon Mortimer. I told Cora that she wasn’t to cheer or clap for anyone wearing a blue cap with a red badge, but only for the men with the purple caps and gold badges, because they were the Bryers Guerdon and North Fairing team. She said she’d just do what I did.
The ladies set everything up in the Scout Hut. They covered the long trestle tables with starched white tablecloths and laid them out with big plates of sandwiches, cakes, and sausage rolls. We helped put out small plates with a serviette on each one, glasses, and jugs of lemon barley water and orange squash. It looked so tempting, but we didn’t dare pinch any of the food because the ladies had eyes everywhere.
I could see one or two of them looking at Cora and Mimi and whispering behind their hands.
While the men were getting into their whites in the changing room, Cora, Pete, and me went outside to make sure the scoreboard was all ready. We checked that all the black metal plates with the numbers on were in the right order. Mr. Bannister from the Elms, farther down Ottery Lane, was going to keep the score on his special pad and make sure we put the right numbers up.
“Clevedon Mortimer’s won the toss,” he told us. “They’ve decided to bowl first.”
We saw Bob Slattery going into the hut, late. I bet Pete sixpence, the next time I ever had one, that Bob Slattery would be out for a duck. His glasses were so thick his eyes looked like big marbles.
“Look,” I said to Cora, “over there — it’s the Treasures. That’s Maisie’s pimply brother, Tobias. He never plays cricket for us, thinks he’s too posh probably. And that’s Father Mansell and Mrs. Mansell, and that’s our doctor who lives at North End down the road. He’s Doctor Meldrum, and that’s his wife, Mrs. Meldrum, and that’s their daughter, Caroline, who’s a bit older than Maisie Treasure but I think they go to the same school.”
They were sitting in the shade around a table spread with an embroidered cloth. It was set with china teacups and saucers and dainty sandwiches, crusts off, on lace doilies. The Treasures, the Meldrums, and the Mansells were all wearing hats, the men in panamas, and the ladies, including Maisie and Caroline, in jaunty little things with a bit of netting. Their wide flowery skirts cascaded down to the grass, com
pletely hiding the small folding chairs they sat on.
Mrs. Campbell came out of the Scout Hut with a tray. I’m surprised she didn’t curtsey as she placed a milk jug and sugar bowl with silver tongs on their table. Then she lifted off a huge teapot, covered with a knitted cosy like an enormous Christmas pudding, and nudged it in amongst the little teacups.
Just as she was going back into the hut, the teams came out, so she waited with her tray to let them go by. We all clapped as they came down and took up their positions.
I hardly had a clue what was going on. Mr. Bannister called out the number of runs, and Pete gave the numbers to Roger, and he changed them on the scoreboard. At one point, a man called Dick Lorimer hit the ball with such a mighty crack it landed over a fence way across the other side of the field, and everybody whooped and shouted, “Six!”
Roger started to change the numbers, but I said what was he doing, because the chap hadn’t even bothered running, but Roger said don’t be stupid, it was a six, and I said how was I supposed to know what a six was? Then Mr. Bannister said to Pete to go and fetch the ball from Councillor Henderson’s garden, and Pete shot off right across the field to climb over the fence and get it. He threw it back to the bowler, who rubbed it on the front of his trousers and made a red mark. I thought it looked a bit rude, actually.
Not long after that, Mr. Granville hit the ball really hard. As it sailed through the air, I started to cheer. A very tall man in a blue cap leaped into the air and caught it. Instead of everybody else cheering like me, they groaned. Roger put a number 1 on the hook where it said WICKETS. Then his dad went in to bat, but I lost track of how many runs he got.
I looked over at Father Mansell and his wife, who sat quietly in the shade, drinking their tea, the same sort of pepper-and-salt hair peeping out from underneath their hats, half brown and half grey.
I wondered if Father Mansell would know when Gussie’s Father Hillyard had been rector.
“Roger, Roger,” I hissed.
“Not now, Cora, hang on — Yes! Whoopee! A four! Well done, Dad!”
Long Lankin Page 13
