by Lily Baxter
Jeanne shot a warning glance at Miranda. ‘Well, I have to go on a training course, and Miranda will be going to spend the summer with her grandparents in Dorset.’
Miranda said nothing. She adored her grandparents but the last thing she wanted was to leave London and spend the rest of the war in the country. If Maman could do something brave for the war effort, perhaps she could too. One thing was certain: she would not be content to laze around on the beach all day. There must be something she could do for King and country.
As she stepped off the train Miranda realised that the war had spread its deadly tentacles even further than she had imagined. Despite the fact that her mother had been convinced that Weymouth was a much safer haven than London, the neat row of guest houses abutting the station were sandbagged and their windows taped as a precaution against flying glass. Childhood memories of long hot summers, golden sands, waves gently lapping on the shore, Punch and Judy shows and ice cream stands were receding rapidly as her fellow passengers rushed past her heading for the barrier with their tickets clutched in their hands, and their gas mask cases hitched over their shoulders.
The train had been packed with men and women in uniform and the smell of cigarette smoke clung to Miranda’s clothes and hair. She had been reading a copy of The Times that someone had left on the seat when they got off the train in Bournemouth, and suddenly the war in Europe seemed too close for comfort. The news that German troops had moved through France to occupy the Channel Islands, and that their army was just a hop, skip and a jump away from England, had made the threat of invasion frighteningly real.
She glanced up and down the platform but there was no porter to help her with her heavy suitcases, and when she finally reached the station concourse it was crowded with white-faced women trying to cope with tired, fractious children. For a wild moment Miranda thought that the Germans must have landed on the local beaches and the town was being evacuated, but from snatches of overheard conversation she realised that these were some of the evacuees from the Channel Islands. The reality of what war could do to people had become even more apparent, and she realised how lucky she was to be going to her grandparents’ home where she was assured of a warm welcome.
She made her way outside but there was no sign of her grandfather’s car, and there were no taxis waiting on the rank. She put her cases on the ground, wondering if Granny and Grandpa had forgotten that she was due to arrive today. Maybe they had mistaken the time of her arrival, which was a distinct possibility as Granny was notoriously absent-minded, and they might turn up at any moment full of apologies. She decided to wait for a while before going in search of a telephone box. She pulled her straw hat down a little further over her eyes to shield them from the bright sunlight and made an effort to be patient.
The crowds dispersed and still there was no sign of the ancient Bentley that Grandpa George loved almost as much as his wife. Granny had never bothered to take driving lessons and, even if she had been so inclined, Miranda doubted if Grandpa would have allowed her to get behind the wheel of his precious car. She waited a while longer but she was beginning to fret. If Uncle Jack had been at home he would have come for her in his black and yellow roadster, Chloe, but he had broken with family army tradition and joined the RAF. She had not given it much thought until now, but the house would seem terribly dull without him, and Jack would not have left her standing here alone and abandoned like a lost parcel. With their home in ruins and her parents off fighting the war in their different ways, Miranda realised that she was just as much a refugee as the unfortunate Channel Islanders.
She wiped her eyes, overwhelmed by a sudden and unexpected wave of homesickness. She sniffed and opened her handbag searching for her hanky, but with a sigh of resignation she realised that hers were buried in the ruins of number twenty-seven Linden Avenue. This was ridiculous; she would be twenty at Christmas. She was legally old enough to be married, even if she was still considered to be a minor in law, and yet here she was snivelling like a baby.
‘What’s up with you, ducks?’
A cheerful voice at her side made Miranda look round. She found herself face to face with a skinny girl roughly the same age as herself. ‘Nothing. I’ve got something in my eye.’
The girl pulled a grubby hanky from her skirt pocket and offered it to her. ‘Hurts, don’t it?’
Not wanting to appear ungrateful, Miranda accepted it and dabbed at her cheeks. ‘Thanks.’ She glanced at the girl’s shabby clothes and battered cardboard suitcase. ‘Is anyone meeting you?’
‘I dunno. They was supposed to, but it looks like I’ve been forgotten too.’ She slapped Miranda on the shoulder. ‘I’m Rita Platt from Stepney. What’s your moniker, love?’
‘Miranda Beddoes. I’m from London too, but I’m spending the summer here with my grandparents.’
‘I’m going to live with some old fogey I hardly know and all because of bloody Hitler.’ Rita’s grey eyes filled with tears and her bottom lip quivered. ‘It was just Mum and me until she got sick. A ruptured appendix they said it was, but I blame the munitions factory. I reckon they poisoned her with their chemicals. Anyway, she was a goner and me nan’s doolally. They packed her off to Barley Lane loony bin, so that left me on me tod.’
‘Oh dear, how terrible. I’m so sorry.’ Miranda shuffled her feet, not knowing quite what to say. ‘Haven’t you got any other relations you could go to?’
Rita threw back her head and laughed but it was not a merry sound. ‘I got no one, ducks. That is, except this old biddy what me mum used to char for before she moved from London to this bleeding dump. I wanted to stay in our flat and keep on with me job in the chippie, but the landlord chucked me out. Said I was a minor and too young to rent on me own.’
‘So do you know where you’re going?’
‘Someone was supposed to meet me. Maybe the old girl changed her mind and don’t want the bother.’
‘Perhaps she’s been held up. My grandfather was going to pick me up and he’s not here yet.’
Rita pulled a face. ‘Well, I ain’t going to stand around here all day like a lemon. I’ll go and find a copper. They’ll have to take me in a squad car to the old besom’s house, unless of course she’s gone and snuffed it. That would be just my blooming luck.’
Miranda forgot that she had been feeling sorry for herself. She had met someone in a far worse plight. She laid her hand on Rita’s thin shoulder. ‘Why don’t you come home with me? Grandpa is a JP. He’s a magistrate,’ she added, seeing Rita’s blank expression. ‘He’ll know what to do. He might even know the lady who’s going to take you in. He knows just about everyone in this town.’
‘It don’t look like that would take much doing,’ Rita said, glancing round with a cynical grin. ‘Seagulls and sand, that’s all you got here. I’m going back to London as soon as I’ve got enough money saved up.’
‘Really?’ Miranda stared at her in amazement. ‘But you can’t be much older than me. How will you manage on your own?’
‘I’m nineteen, and I left school four years ago. I got fed up with them trying to cram me head with useless rubbish. I’m going to get a job as a pin-up girl with me photo plastered all over magazines. That’s what I want to do.’
Miranda gave her a speculative glance. Rita was quite pretty in an obvious sort of way, but she had a figure like an ironing board. ‘I think we ought to start walking,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘It’s only two or three miles.’
‘What? I can’t walk that far. Not with this heavy bag, I can’t.’
Miranda had not given any thought to the heaviness of her luggage and she decided that Rita had a point. Looking round in desperation, she spotted a familiar face. As a boy, Tommy Toop had occasionally run errands for her grandmother, although more often than not he had ended up in the magistrates’ court in front of her grandfather. He must be at least twenty now, but he still looked like a callow youth with a head that seemed too big for his body and ears that stuck out at right angl
es. He had always fascinated her, mainly due to the fact that she had been forbidden to have anything to do with him. The Toops were a notorious family of troublemakers. The father was a drunkard and he and his two eldest sons spent more time in prison than out of it. Poor Mrs Toop, a downtrodden little mouse of a woman, had worn her fingers to the bone working as a char by day and washing glasses in a local pub at night. Tommy, no doubt, was a chip off the old block, but he seemed to be in possession of a rickety-looking handcart and was touting for business. Time was moving on and Miranda was convinced that her grandparents had forgotten that she was arriving today; the choice was simple. She waved her hand. ‘Tommy. Tommy Toop, over here.’
Chapter Two
HALFWAY ALONG THE beach road, one of the oddly assorted pram wheels spun off its axle and rolled into the water-filled dyke that drained the salt marsh. Miranda could feel blisters forming painfully on both heels, and her head was beginning to ache. The sun beat down from a cloudless sky and she took off her straw hat, wiping the sweat from her forehead. ‘I didn’t think that contraption would take the weight of three suitcases,’ she said, ramming her hat on with an exasperated sigh.
‘What d’you expect for blooming tuppence?’ Glaring at her, Tommy slumped down on the grass verge.
‘Get up, you lazy devil,’ Rita said, nudging him with the toe of her sandal. ‘Fix the wheel on and let’s get going. I’m getting freckles on me nose and that’s no good for me career.’
Tommy shrugged his shoulders. ‘Can’t fix it. Got no tools.’ He was pale beneath his tan and he looked as though a puff of wind would blow him over.
Miranda was beginning to feel sorry for him. She frowned at Rita, shaking her head. ‘Nagging won’t help.’ She turned to Tommy, leaning down to pat him on the shoulder. ‘Come on, Tommy. We’re more than halfway there. You can’t give up now.’
‘I’m getting burnt to a crisp,’ Rita said crossly. ‘I can see me nose getting redder by the second.’
Miranda took off her straw hat and thrust it into Rita’s hands. ‘Here, wear this and stop grumbling. You’re not helping.’ She shaded her eyes, squinting into the distance as the road stretched before them in a line as straight as a pencil sketch in a child’s drawing book. With the salt marsh and reed beds on their left and the sea on the other side of the beach wall, they were caught in a no man’s land of heat and dust. The fresh briny smell of the sea was tainted by the stench of rotting vegetation and warm mud emanating from the marsh. It was all achingly familiar to Miranda, but it was a shock to see the defences constructed from barbed wire and scaffolding that made it impossible to climb over the wall or to walk along it and enjoy the view of the bay. The only sounds she could hear were the mournful cries of the seagulls circling overhead, and the waves sucking gently at the pebbles on the shore.
‘You’ve broken me cart,’ Tommy said, struggling to his feet. ‘I should have charged you sixpence for giving me so much trouble.’
‘Oh, shut up, you miserable sod.’ Rita glanced up and down the deserted road, screwing her face up as if she had been sucking a lemon. ‘Ain’t there no buses in this godforsaken hole? Nothing’s gone past since we started out on this trek to nowhere.’
‘Petrol’s rationed,’ Miranda said sternly. ‘You should know that, Rita.’
‘Oh, sorry, miss. I weren’t listening in class. We can’t afford cars where I come from.’
Miranda decided that she was fighting a losing battle with both of her companions. ‘I’m going to Elzevir Shipway’s cottage. Maybe he’ll give us a lift on his cart.’
‘Who’s he?’ Rita cocked her head on one side like an inquisitive robin. ‘That’s a daft name if ever I heard one.’
‘No need to bother him,’ Tommy said, springing to his feet. ‘I’ll fix the wheel.’ He scrambled down the bank into the ditch where he waded knee-deep in foul-smelling water, splashing around until he found what he was looking for. He clambered out, grumbling all the time as he attempted to fix the wheel on by hammering it with a small rock.
‘You’ll not do it that way.’ Rita pushed him aside, aiming a kick at the wheel.
‘Here, don’t do that,’ Tommy protested.
‘It worked, didn’t it?’ Rita stood back, smirking. The wheel, as if to prove her point, stayed on.
‘It won’t hold,’ Tommy said, flinging the rock back into the muddy water.
Miranda decided it was time to take charge. She was beginning to feel like a schoolmistress dealing with a couple of squabbling infants. ‘You don’t know until you try,’ she said firmly. ‘Anyway, you can’t abandon us here, Tommy. I’ve paid you to take the luggage to Highcliffe House and that’s that.’
He grabbed the handle and gave it a heave, but after pushing the cart for a few yards the wheel wobbled and fell off again. The suitcases slid onto the ground and Rita uttered a roar of displeasure as the rusty locks gave away and her case burst open, spilling its contents onto the road. ‘Bloody hell,’ she exclaimed, scrabbling about and gathering up her belongings. ‘Give us a hand, you twerp.’
Tommy’s face flushed a deeper shade of red and he glowered at her. ‘Shut up.’
He looked so much like an angry pixie that Miranda had to stifle the urge to laugh. She felt a bubble of hysteria rising in her throat but she controlled it with difficulty. She was hot, thirsty and could quite happily have walked off and left the two of them to fight it out, but she could not leave her cases blocking the road and they were too heavy to carry very far. ‘It’s no good. I shall just have to ask Elzevir for help.’ She pointed to a cottage which stood alone on the edge of the marsh: a ramshackle one-storey building with tall chimney pots, one at each end, sticking up like rabbit’s ears from the corrugated-iron roof. Elzevir Shipway, whose official job was to operate the sluice gates twice daily in order to drain the water from the marsh, supplemented his meagre wage by selling logs and doing odd jobs. He lived with his spinster sister, Annie, who had been the daily help at Highcliffe House for as long as Miranda could remember.
‘You can count me out,’ Tommy said crossly. ‘I don’t want nothing to do with old Elzevir. Evil-Eye, that’s what everyone calls him.’ Grabbing the handle of his cart he turned it around and started off towards the town, balancing it precariously on three wheels.
Rita stuffed the last sock back into her case, closed the lid and sat on it. ‘What’s up with him?’
‘He’s scared of Elzevir, because years ago he and some of the other local boys used to throw stones at his windows and call him names. I could hear Elzevir yelling at them from my grandparents’ garden and he’d box their ears if he caught any of them. He’s a big chap and I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him. Anyway, his muscle is what we need now so I’ll go and see if he’s in. You wait here.’
‘Can’t do much else,’ Rita said gloomily. ‘The bloody locks are busted.’
Miranda frowned. ‘Er, you might want to watch your language when you meet my grandparents. They’re a bit old-fashioned, if you know what I mean.’
‘Stuck up, you mean.’ Rita pulled a face. ‘Don’t worry, Miranda, mate. I can act like a lady when I want to.’
Miranda had no answer to that and she set off for the cottage. What should have been a ten-minute drive with her grandfather had turned into a tiresome trek, and when she knocked on the door and received no answer she was beginning to feel quite desperate. She went back to where Rita was still sitting on her suitcase. ‘He’s out,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘We’ll just have to walk. It’s only about half a mile from here.’
Rita gave her a pitying glance. ‘So how do you suggest I carry this thing? It won’t shut and I got nothing to tie round it. We’ll have to wait for a bus.’
‘I don’t even know if they run buses on this route these days. We’ll just have to leave our luggage here and get someone to pick it up later.’
‘What?’ Rita’s voice rose to an agitated squeak. ‘Some bugger will come along and pinch everything. This is all I got left i
n the world.’
‘I’m sure they won’t,’ Miranda said, making an effort to sound calm. ‘If we pile them up on the grass verge we can get my grandfather to collect them.’
‘I ain’t budging. You might be trusting but I ain’t. I’m sitting here until someone comes to my rescue.’
Miranda opened her mouth to tell her that she might be waiting for a very long time when, as if by some miracle, she heard the sound of a car engine coming from the direction of the town. She leapt into the middle of the road, waving her arms frantically at the speeding vehicle. The car came to a halt with a screech of brakes and the smell of burning rubber. A young man in RAF uniform leapt out of the driver’s seat, his face ashen. ‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing? You might have been killed, dancing about in the middle of the road like an idiot.’
Rita jumped to her feet. ‘Steady on, guv. You was driving like a bat out of hell anyway.’
He looked from one to the other and suddenly his grim expression melted into a smile. ‘Fair comment, I suppose.’ He fixed his gaze on Miranda and was serious again. ‘Are you all right? You aren’t going to pass out on me, are you?’
Miranda shook her head. She was feeling slightly sick and a bit dizzy, but she was not going to admit it or that she had acted in a reckless manner. ‘I’m fine, thank you. But we need help.’
He glanced down at the damaged case and at Miranda’s slightly battered but expensive leather luggage. He nodded his head. ‘I can see that. Where are you two ladies going?’
Miranda pointed to the hill at the far end of the road. ‘Highcliffe House. It’s not very far, but we can’t manage the cases.’
‘That’s Major Beddoes’ house, isn’t it?’ he said, frowning.
‘Yes. He’s my grandfather.’ Miranda sensed a change in his attitude, but she knew that her grandfather was extremely outspoken and quite often offended people. She met his gaze with a determined lift of her chin and held out her hand. ‘Miranda Beddoes. How do you do?’
