Women on the Home Front

by Annie Groves

  ‘Oh, Roger,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think … I mean, you didn’t reply to my letter … so I thought …’

  Connie was confused. When he’d told her she should have been on top of the world but she felt numb. Now that the initial shock had gone, she felt … nothing …

  He leaned over and pulled her closer and then his mouth searched for hers. As he kissed her she was thinking that this should have been the most wonderful moment of her life, but it wasn’t. Roger Maxwell loved her but she didn’t feel a thing. Connie took a step back and looked up at him. ‘Roger,’ she began. ‘We have to be careful. The children …’

  ‘Yes, yes of course,’ he smiled.

  As they began to walk towards the meadow, they could hear the children’s voices and the occasional scream of excitement. ‘Sounds like everyone is having a great time,’ said Connie weakly.

  Pip raced past them. Roger reached for her hand and smiled. ‘Where’s he off to in such a hurry?’

  ‘Probably scented a rabbit,’ she said and he had to stop and kiss her again.

  Jane was overjoyed to see them. ‘We could do with another man around,’ she said when she saw Roger. ‘Some of the boys are a bit boisterous.’

  ‘I thought you had men,’ said Connie.

  ‘Arnold is around somewhere,’ said Jane. ‘Oh, there he is. You haven’t met him yet, have you?’ She called his name and a tall lanky man walked towards them coming from the direction of the woods. He towered over Jane and Connie noticed how much her face softened when she looked up at him.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Jane asked. ‘You’re all covered in scratches.’

  ‘I went on a call of nature,’ he said, dusting down his trouser leg. ‘I thought I’d better walk quite a way inside in case one of the children saw me but on my way out, some dog went flying past me and I fell over a tree root.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Connie. ‘That might have been Pip. He’d probably caught a scent of something. Are you all right?’

  Arnold brushed the sleeve of his jacket and put out his hand. ‘Fine,’ he said, ‘pleased to meet you both.’

  ‘We’ve just got to get the blankets spread out,’ said Jane, handing them to Roger and Connie, ‘and then I can blow the whistle for tea. Arnold, can you and Graham organise the boys on one side and girls on the other. Where is Graham?’

  ‘Who is Graham?’ asked Connie.

  ‘The new pianist,’ said Jane. ‘To be honest, he’s been a bit of a dream this afternoon. Dad asked him to come just to swell the numbers but I don’t think I’ll ask him next year. He hasn’t helped much at all.’

  The ladies from the church had got the water boiling, so tea was ready. Jane blew her whistle long and hard and the hungry children came running.

  The first touch was always the sweetest. He groaned with delight.

  Mandy was terrified. She didn’t like this one bit. He had taken her away from the others even though Miss Jackson had said they should keep close together. The whistle had gone. She was supposed to run to Miss Jackson when the whistle went but he wouldn’t let go of her hand and she certainly didn’t like Mr Charles. Mummy always said that things down there were private. She had tried to pull away but he kept pressing her hand onto him. The man was pulling a funny face and making a funny noise and then to her horror Mr Charles began to move. The more she struggled to get her hand back the bigger it seemed to get.

  ‘No,’ she protested. ‘I don’t like it.’ She was crying now. Big tears and sobs which racked her whole body. ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘That’s a pity,’ he said huskily, ‘because Mr Charles likes you and he wants to look at you.’

  ‘No!’ cried Mandy. ‘I want to go back with the others.’

  ‘If you go back now,’ he said harshly, his voice taking on a slight edge, ‘I shall tell Miss Jackson that you’ve been a very naughty girl.’

  The child froze.

  ‘I shall tell her you wouldn’t hold my hand when I told you to. I shall tell her you made Mr Charles very cross. Do you want me to tell Miss Jackson that?’

  Miserably, Mandy shook her head.

  ‘Now let me show you my friend Mr Charles,’ he said, his voice softening again. ‘He wants to be your friend too.’

  They both heard a dog barking in the distance but the man ignored it as he fished in his open trousers. Mandy stared in horror as Mr Charles emerged.

  The children were sitting on the two blankets. ‘Sit crossed-legged,’ Jane told them, ‘and then we’ll say grace.’

  Out in the fresh air, the smell of egg sandwiches was overwhelmingly good. So were the children. They put their hands together and as Arnold said grace, Jane, diligent as ever, was busy counting heads.

  ‘Somebody’s missing,’ she announced as the first tin of sandwiches was handed around. ‘There’s only twenty-seven.’

  Connie counted with her and realised who the missing child was. ‘It’s Mandy,’ said Connie.

  ‘Has anyone seen Mandy?’ Jane demanded. The children looked from one to the other and shrugged.

  ‘I saw a little girl walking towards the woods,’ said Jeanette.

  ‘Why would she be doing that?’ said Jane. ‘I told everyone to stay out here in the open.’

  As the adults looked from one to the other their anxiety levels rose.

  Connie frowned. ‘It’s not like Mandy to wander off.’

  ‘You stay here with the children,’ Roger told Jane. ‘We’ll go and look for her.’

  The barking dog was coming closer. ‘Pip,’ she whispered and he came rushing out of the copse at full pelt and hurled himself at Stan. In the ensuing panic, Stan let go of Mandy’s hand but the child remained frozen to the spot. Stan lashed out with his foot and the dog backed off and bared his teeth, a low threatening growl coming from his throat. Mandy stumbled backwards.

  ‘Stay there!’ Stan shouted at the child and once again she froze.

  Pip put himself between Mandy and Stan and began backing into her until Mandy was forced to move backwards. Stan looked around desperately. If he didn’t know better, he would say it was exactly the same dog he’d encountered the last time. He’d been forced to let the little girl go that time. Well, it wasn’t going to happen again. Mandy was crying hard. He had to shut her up. Too much noise and they’d draw attention to themselves.

  ‘And stop that bloody racket.’

  The child sucked back her sobs and wet herself.

  Stan launched his foot at the dog again but it missed its mark. The dog was snarling and growling fiercely. He had to find some way to get this wretched animal out of the way. Looking around he picked up a solid looking piece of wood. The dog knew what was coming and rushed at him, trying to get there first. They hurled themselves at each other several times before the wood caught Pip on the side of his head. There was a shrill yelp and the dog fell to the ground. Mandy stared at him in horror. Stan stood over him gasping for breath. ‘That’s sorted you out good and proper,’ he snarled and he booted the dog in his side for good measure, but Pip didn’t respond.

  When the man turned back to Mandy, something kicked in in her mind. He had just kicked her dog. He was a bad man, a very bad man. Mandy turned and ran, screaming her head off as she flew.

  ‘Come back here,’ he shouted.

  But for once she wasn’t listening. She ran deeper into the coppice and he relaxed. The stupid brat didn’t know it but she was running away from the others, into an area where the trees hadn’t been thinned out. With a bit of luck, she’d reach a wooded wall and be trapped. He changed his tactic again. ‘Mandy, come back at once or I shall have to tell Miss Jackson what a naughty little girl you’ve been. You know you shouldn’t be running about in the woods. Miss Jackson told you not to do that, didn’t she?’

  He was quite close to her when he tripped over an exposed tree root. At the sound of his fall, she screamed again and ran in another direction. Damn it, now she was heading back towards the meadow. He couldn’t let her go back in that st
ate. There was no telling what she might say. Ignoring the painful bruise on his side, he jumped up as quickly as he could and ran after her again.

  The ground in this part of the coppice was uneven. Small hillocks fell away into quite deep ruts and the place was littered with fallen trees and broken branches. The child ran wildly missing the overhanging branches which bothered him and made him slower.

  ‘If you don’t stop this minute, I shall slap your bottom,’ he shouted. That usually did the trick. On the whole, children were anxious to please and by nature obedient to the voice of authority. He slithered and slid after her and almost caught up with her when all of a sudden, she fell with a scream and vanished.

  She’s gone down a rabbit hole, he told himself. I’ve got her now. I’ll pull her out and be nice to her. She’d wet herself, hadn’t she. That would make things really simple. He’d say, ‘Take your knickers off, darling. You don’t want to be walking around with wet knicks on do you?’ But when he reached the spot where she had fallen he couldn’t believe it. This was no rabbit hole. It was much deeper. He could see the top of her head and when she looked up at him, she was a long way down. He could have lain on the ground, leaned over and pulled her out but the ground alongside was unstable. It creaked and small clods of earth were still falling. He stood over the hole with his hands on his hips and looked down. ‘You see what happens to naughty little girls who won’t do what they’re told?’ he said cruelly.

  ‘Please,’ she sobbed. ‘Please Mr Graham, I don’t like it here. I will be good, I promise.’

  ‘I would like to help you,’ he said, shaking his head slowly, ‘but Mr Charles is very upset with you. You weren’t very nice to him, were you?’

  ‘I will be,’ she pleaded. ‘Please get me out. I don’t like it down here.’

  But then he hesitated. Her face wasn’t angelic anymore. It was dirty and bleeding from lots of little scratches. She had nettle stings under her eye and her lovely blonde curls were a mess and she’d lost both of her red ribbons. Her peachy cheeks were streaked with tears and there was yellow snot hanging from her nose. Ugh. She wasn’t his little cherub anymore. His lip curled. She might as well stay there for all he cared. She was nothing more than a dirty little slut and he didn’t want her anymore.

  He stamped his foot a couple of times and she began to slide again. He smiled. Then he heard someone calling. He looked around frantically and the stupid kid began to shout back. He grabbed an exposed tree root and shook it. The earth fell away quickly and he only just stopped himself from going into the hole himself. He scrambled backwards, then one more stamp on the ground and she was gone.

  Twenty-Seven

  ‘Has she come back yet?’ Connie and Roger had returned to the group sitting on the blanket.

  Jane Jackson shook her head. ‘I’ve got a couple of the helpers looking down the bottom of the meadow,’ she said. ‘I don’t understand it. Why would she go off on her own?’

  ‘My dog has gone missing too,’ said Connie, struggling not to give way to the panic rising up inside her. ‘I can only hope he’s run off and Mandy has chased after him to bring him back.’ Even as she said the words, she wasn’t convinced that she even believed what she was saying. She looked around at the children on the blanket eating their sandwiches. ‘Were any of you playing with Mandy? Did you see her going into the woods?’

  The children looked from one to the other shaking their heads.

  ‘You were with her, weren’t you, Graham?’ Jeanette Luxton said.

  Connie turned towards the direction of the question and frowned. Jeanette was talking to a man in a brown suit. Connie hadn’t noticed him before and she couldn’t see his face because he had his back to her and yet there was something vaguely familiar about him.

  ‘With who?’ said Graham, tapping a cigarette on his cigarette case.

  Connie grabbed Roger’s arm. She had recognised the voice immediately, but it was that tapping sound that sent a chill down her spine. It was him. How could she ever forget?

  ‘What?’ said Roger. ‘Darling, what is it?’

  ‘I know you,’ Connie shuddered. ‘Your name isn’t Graham. You’re Stan Saul.’

  Everyone turned towards the man sitting on the corner of the blanket. Stan Saul turned slowly towards Connie. Earlier in the afternoon, when nobody was looking, he’d pocketed a ball. On his way out of the woods, he’d pretended to pick it up in case someone wondered what he was doing. There was no reason to fear that they’d find Mandy and he had hoped no one would notice him until the time the coach came. Bluff it out, he told himself as he turned to face her. He didn’t recognise her and yet she knew him. ‘Do I know you?’ he smiled.

  ‘Connie Dixon,’ she said coldly.

  He smiled affably but his heart sank. ‘Connie Dixon,’ he said brightly. ‘I had no idea it was you. How are you?’

  Connie could feel her face heating. Her heart began to thump in her chest and the old fear crept back. Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself angrily. She was a grown woman now. A grown woman with a man beside her and her friends all around her yet Stan Saul still had the ability to instil a wave of sickening fear into her heart. Her hands felt clammy but she was unaware that she was wiping them up and down the side of her skirt.

  ‘What were you doing out there?’ she accused.

  He looked surprised, wounded even. ‘Me?’ he said softly. ‘I just went to look for this ball.’ He held it up. ‘Why? What’s happened?’

  ‘One of the children is missing,’ said Jane.

  ‘Missing?’ said Stan. ‘How awful. Which one?’

  ‘My little sister,’ said Connie. ‘Mandy Craig.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Stan softly.

  ‘Why have you changed your name, Stan?’ Connie accused.

  ‘It’s a long story,’ said Stan, rolling his eyes innocently.

  Jane frowned. ‘Connie, is this relevant? Shouldn’t we send someone back into the woods to look for Mandy?’

  ‘Where is Mandy?’ Connie asked Stan coldly.

  Roger laid his hand on Connie’s arm but she was too focused on Stan. She hadn’t noticed that the whole Sunday school was staring open-mouthed.

  ‘My dear girl,’ said Stan, ‘I have absolutely no idea.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Roger said taking charge, ‘if Jeanette and Graham … er, Stan saw Mandy going into the copse, it stands to reason she must still be in there. Where exactly did you see her?’

  ‘She said she was looking for a feather,’ said Stan casually. ‘I left her by that stile down there.’

  ‘That was one of the things on the treasure hunt list,’ Jane groaned. ‘Oh, I wish I hadn’t done that now.’

  Arnold put his arm around Jane’s shoulders. ‘Don’t get upset, darling. She’ll turn up, you wait and see.’

  ‘What was she doing down there in the first place?’ Jane wailed. ‘I told everyone not to go into the woods.’

  ‘Look, this isn’t getting us anywhere,’ said Roger. ‘I’m going back to look for her again.’

  ‘I’ll come with you, if you like,’ said Stan.

  ‘No!’ Connie cried.

  ‘Connie, the more people we have out there looking for her,’ said Roger, ‘the quicker we’ll find her.’

  ‘But not Stan,’ Connie insisted.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Stan, seeing the shocked expression on some of their faces. ‘I’m quite happy to stay here and help look after the children and free up somebody else to go.’

  Connie was about to say something else when Jane said, ‘I think the rest of us should all stick together now. I’ve got a pass the parcel that we can play until the coach comes back. Mrs Stevens, did you say we had some cakes?’

  The three ladies produced their cake tins and the children were happily occupied choosing them. Arnold emptied his pockets of sweets announcing that there would be one sweet for every very good boy and girl. ‘I’ll go with Roger and Connie, darling,’ he told Jane. ‘Between the three of us, we should f
ind her quite quickly.’

  Roger was asking Stan exactly where he’d last seen Mandy. He pointed to an area well away from the clearing where Pip lay and the place where Mandy had disappeared.

  ‘She was definitely walking east,’ he said in a considered tone of voice.

  ‘I’m sure Stan has something to do with this,’ Connie said as she and Roger walked back towards the trees. ‘I don’t trust him one bit.’

  ‘Listen, Miss Jackson,’ Stan said to Jane. ‘I really ought to be getting back.’

  ‘The coach will be here in half an hour,’ said Jane.

  ‘My mother is a sick woman,’ he went on. ‘I should have said something before but your father said you were desperate for helpers and I didn’t like to let him down.’

  Jane touched his shoulder. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘You must go. There’s a bus that goes to town on the hour from the top of Salvington Rise by the shops if you’d rather not wait for the coach.’

  ‘You don’t mind?’ he asked pleasantly.

  ‘Not at all,’ smiled Jane. ‘I’m sorry about Connie.’

  He nodded sagely. ‘She’s upset. I understand that.’

  Jane patted his arm. ‘You’re a very understanding man.’

  He said his goodbyes and struck out. ‘I wonder if you would be good enough to call in to the manse and tell my father what has happened?’ Jane asked.

  Stan hesitated.

  ‘If you don’t have time to call in, could you perhaps telephone?’

  ‘Of course,’ Stan agreed amicably. He turned to go.

  ‘The number …’ Jane began.

  ‘Beg pardon?’

  ‘You’ll want the number.’ She was writing it down on a piece of paper torn from the list on her clipboard. ‘It’s Goring 458.’

  He took the number and stuffed it into his pocket.

  ‘And call her name on the way back,’ Jane suggested.

  ‘Beg pardon?’

  ‘Mandy’s. You never know, she could have gone in the opposite direction.’

  ‘Good idea,’ he said waving cheerfully.

  Calling her name, he headed down Honeysuckle Lane until he was lost to view, then he stopped. It would be so much easier and quicker to go in the opposite direction. He could walk to Long Furlong and straight home but he wanted to avoid the searchers at all costs. He couldn’t afford to be trapped into staying in the woods to help them. He was in luck. The bus was parked right by the shops and because he ran, he caught it comfortably. As the bus sped down Salvington Hill, he saw the coach coming up. He smiled to himself. They could search until the cows came home but they’d never find her. Served her right, little tease, egging him on like that and then running away.