Chapter 4
The two boys hurried from Mr. Perkins office, rushed up the stairs and halted outside the closed door of Miss Peskett's classroom. They knew the class had started. Neither smiled when they saw the closed door. Jeffery looked at Arthur, who shrugged and nodded. Jeffery knocked timidly on the door and opened it. Miss Peskett stood on the platform behind the large table that served as a desk. She glared at them.
"You're late. You know I don't allow late comers into my classroom. Wait outside."
"But Miss…." Arthur began. Miss Peskett did not allow him to continue.
"Don't argue! Wait outside! And don't talk out there."
They backed up closed the door and stood against the wall in silence. One escape from Mr. Perkins' cane in a day was enough. A couple of minutes of not speaking passed like an hour. Jeffery mouthed slow, silent words at Arthur. "Old Peskett will want us to know what she's teaching today."
"Ginger takes good notes," Arthur mouthed back. "She'll tell us if Old Peskett tells or sez anything new. Not likely she'll do that, though, she's already told us all she knows, and that ain't much."
Another five minutes passed. Arthur faced the wall in Miss Peskett's direction, put his thumb to his nose and waggled his fingers. Jeffery clamped a hand across his mouth to suppress his laughter. Then, getting control, he joined in the game. Right at that moment, Mr. Jones, the geography teacher, walked around the corner and the broad smile that first crossed his face changed quickly to a frown. The boys stopped. Mr. Jones walked past and said not a word. As he disappeared around the far corner, they sighed in relief. Thereafter, for the remainder of their banishment, they stood silent and moved only to shuffle their feet.
The rest of the morning passed without further trouble. The morning milk break came and went. The next class was Mr. Jones' geography class. Mr. Jones, as a young teacher, had travelled to many parts of the Empire setting up schools for indigenous populations in various countries. He'd he spoke of these places in class about the places he'd visited, and his geography lessons always held the students interest. He was a pensioner who'd come out of retirement to replace one of the many teachers who'd left and joined the armed forces.
Lunch followed the end of Mr. Jones' class. In the usual way, the girls split from the boys, each group going to a separate classroom where lunch would be served. None of the boys had any idea of what went on in the girls' dining room.
A large trestle table was stored in a small storage room behind the blackboard. Jeffery and Arthur helped to carry this into the classroom and set it up on one side near to the teacher's desk. The teachers ate their lunch at the desk. When the trestle table was ready, they took their seats and waited.
Shortly, three volunteer serving women pushed two trolleys carts into the room. One trolley held food in large metal pots, and the other was loaded with plates and dishes. They placed the pots on the trestle table and piled plates and dessert dishes at the near end. First one of the women served lunch to Mr. Jones and another male teacher. Before starting to eat, Mr Jones gave a slight nod. That was the signal for the boys to politely line up for their lunch. Each took a plate and a dessert dish from the pile and paraded past the food with plate and dish held out. The women ladled stew onto the plate and prunes and custard into the dish. Jeffery hated the custard served at the school because of the ground coconut in it. Daydreaming, as he often did, he failed to notice the custard ladle nearing his dish of prunes until the last moment. He snatched his dish away. Plop! The custard splattered down onto the table. The woman serving jumped in surprise and glared at him. "Oh! I'm sorry. I don't like custard," Jeffery said. The woman stared up toward the teachers, but if they noticed they said nothing. The woman ignored the spill and Jeffery went over and sat beside Arthur who'd already half-finished his lunch.
"Rough luck on Peter," Arthur said. Are you going to miss him a lot? I think I will."
"I suppose." Jeffery's hunger disappeared and he wished Arthur had not reminded him of Peter's death. Then, remembering the sparse fare awaiting him at the Burnett's, he forced himself to eat all his stew and prunes.
After lunch, with the trestles put away and the rain stopped, they went down to the playground. Students were not permitted to stay inside during lunch hour unless the weather was bad.
Ginger waited there just inside white line that marked off the girl's playground and stood with her back to the school.
"Jeffery," she called softly.
Jeffery looked around to make sure that no teacher watched and went over. "What is it?" he whispered back.
"I've got something to show you. Quick! Over behind the gardening shed."
Jeffery gulped. "Can Arthur come?"
"Of course he can. Hurry! There's not much time left. Go up into the playing field and across that way so no one will suspect." Then she scooted away in a diagonal direction over to the garden shed.
The outskirts of the two sunniest sides of the playing field had been dug up to make victory gardens. All the boys took gardening lessons because of the war. Digging for Victory it was called and the garden shed held the necessary tools and clogs. It was their misfortune that Miss Peskett looked out the window after leaving the girl's lunchroom seconds before the trio split up, and by craning her head had managed to see enough to guess roughly where they intended to meet.
The grass on the playing field was wet but short, so that little of the morning's rain dampened their feet. Soon they joined Ginger behind the garden shed.
"Quick," she said as she bent over to grope in the gap beneath the shed. The two boys watched and wondered as she reached in and pulled out her floral decorated, velveteen handbag. There was a piece of wood sticking from the corner at the top by the twist clasp stopping it from closing properly. It surprised the boys that she would have put her prized possession under the shed. Few of the girls had bags, and none had one quite so ornate and fancy. Ginger might not have had one either, but her grandmother had given it to her the day before the evacuation.
"To keep your bits and pieces in," Grandmother said as she pushed the bag toward Ginger. At first she'd refused to take it, but Grandma said, "Take it, girl. Who knows where the Germans will drop their bombs? They might get it, or me, for that matter." So Ginger took the bag and cried for two reasons; one because she knew how much her grandmother loved it, and two at the thought that her grandmother might get killed.
She hadn't seen her grandmother since then, but she sometimes sent Ginger letters to let her know she hadn't been killed. Bombed out, she wrote, but not hurt.
A weak, plaintive, "Meow!" came from the bag. The two boys stiffened in surprise.
"What have you got there?" Jeffery asked.
"Look," Ginger said as she opened the clasp, put her hand into the velveteen bag and pulled out a tabby kitten. Both boys gasped.
"Where did it come from," Arthur asked.
"I don't know. It came up to me last night, crying, and I didn't know what to do. I know they won't let me keep it down at the pub. They have a dog, and they and the dog hate cats, so I put it in my bag and sneaked it into the house overnight. I brought it to school this morning and shoved it under the shed. Here! Take it for a minute." She pushed the kitten towards Jeffery.
Jeffery took it and stroked its head and scratched under its ears. It liked this treatment and wriggled around until it managed to get to its feet on Jeffery's arm whereupon it climbed up to his shoulder and rubbed against his head.
Ginger turned and picked up a small cough lozenge tin that she'd placed beside the shed. Normally she kept needles and thread in the tin, but she'd wrapped these in a handkerchief for now. "I saved a few meat scraps from the stew. I hope it will eat. I tried it with a bit of toast and jam this morning but it didn't seem to like that." She picked out a piece of meat with her fingers and held it to the kitten's mouth. The kitten licked hungrily at the meat, but seemed unable to get its mouth around it to chew.
"Wait," Jeffery said. "I'll cut it up with
my penknife." There was much shuffling around. Jeffery handed the kitten to Arthur before pulling out his penknife. Then he took the piece of meat from Ginger who took the kitten from Arthur. Jeffery chopped up the meat on top of a stone. Then he gave Ginger a small bit. She held this out on the tip of her finger and the kitten began to eat.
"Arthur," said Jeffery, "Go see if you can find a tin can to get some water for it. It must be thirsty. They sometimes throw tins out from the kitchen." Arthur, though reluctant to leave show of the kitten being fed, hurried off to see what he could find.
Involved with the kitten, which now ate heartily, they failed to hear Miss Peskett come up with the tiny dog she always brought to school. Not until the dog yapped and the kitten shrank up against Ginger did they realise she stood watching them.
"What are you doing? And where did you get that animal?"
Startled, the two children were speechless.
"What are you doing with that cat?"
Ginger hesitated.
"Answer me! Now!" the teacher snapped.
Ginger hesitated for a moment longer, and then said, "I found it last night, Miss. It was lost and seemed hungry. I took it home but they wouldn't let it in the house, so I put it in my purse and brought it to school."
"The animal would have found its way home, I'm sure. Now you seem to be feeding it meat from the stew. That meat is supplied for you to eat and is not pet food. Take that thing up into the farmer's field and release it. There are always mice around on a farm, let it eat them. Go!"
The last word was snapped out again and Ginger picked up her handbag and started to make her way up the small slope that led to the sparse hedge at the edge of the farm field. Miss Peskett turned to Jeffery. "You, Jeffery Fraser, will go to Mr. Perkins office. You know the rules about secret meetings with girls during school hours." Holding her dog's leash with one hand, she pointed in the direction Jeffery was to take with the other. The dog yapped again as, head drooping, Jeffery headed in the indicated direction. As he did this, he saw Arthur dodge back behind the far corner of the school building.
When Jeffery and Miss Peskett went into the building, Arthur popped out from his hiding place and followed Ginger into the field. He'd not only found a flat tin that he'd filled with water, he'd also brought the small cardboard box that normally held his gasmask. Between the two of them, he and Ginger settled the kitten into the box with the water and managed to seal the box by placing a large stone on top of the lid so that the kitten could not lift it and escape. There was a coppice in the corner of the field where they put the box under a bush. Before they parted, they agreed that it would be best if Arthur took the kitten to the Manor House after school. There were a lot of out buildings on the manor grounds where it could be hidden.
Bomber Overhead Page 7
