by Katie King
Connie was clearly furious with both of them, and as people watching began to go ‘Ooooooooowaaah!’ in the long-accepted manner of signalling that each lad had just been bested by a girl, she turned to stare confrontationally at the crowd as if urging anyone else foolhardy enough to come forward and have a go.
So ferocious did she look that everyone fell silent, even the fifth-formers.
Jessie wondered for a moment how his sister had even come to be there, let alone be brave enough to break up the fight, since she was supposed to be recuperating at home from her tonsillitis.
But before Jessie could make sense of it all, three schoolmasters pushed roughly through the crowd, and Dave, Aiden and Connie were grabbed and then unceremoniously hauled off back towards the school buildings, the boys going quietly, while Connie screamed at the top of her voice, ‘Get your damn hands off me!’
Other teachers arrived en masse, and then nobody was allowed to leave until a list had been compiled of everybody there, and those running the tote had been made to give everyone who had placed bets their money back, although there were a few brave souls who had bet on Aiden and who tried to argue that as Aiden had drawn blood and Dave hadn’t done anything, then they should receive their payout.
‘Detention!’ barked several teachers crossly to those calling out, and then to those who had been taking the bets, which meant more time wasted on a second list being made of everyone who had been given a detention. It was quite a long list.
And in this way order was more or less restored; Jessie thought probably a quarter of those present had ended up with detentions, although fortunately he, Larry and Tommy had had the sense to keep quiet once the teachers were there, and so they had avoided this.
Still, it was a while before everyone was told to go home, with there to be no loitering outside the school gates and no other fights.
Connie and Aiden were nowhere to be seen as Jessie and his pals slowly made their way back to Tall Trees, although Angela was waiting for the boys by the school gates.
As they headed home, she explained that it was down to her that the fight had been stopped before too much damage had happened.
Apparently, she had heard two fourth-year girls talking about the fight when she had been in a cubicle in the lavatory at afternoon break, and once she had worked out what was planned, she realised that Aiden was in trouble.
‘I didn’t know what to do, other than I had to try to stop it, even if Aiden and Connie hated me afterwards for all time,’ Angela said, hamming it up just a little.
‘You were very brave,’ said Tommy admiringly, and Angela looked up at him appreciatively, clearly enjoying being the centre of attention in a way that was for once nothing to do with her being in a wheelchair.
‘My last period was domestic science, and so I put my hand up to ask to go to the school nurse,’ Angela continued. ‘It’s one of the few advantages of being in a wheelchair as nobody will ever question me if I say I need to see the nurse. I couldn’t think who else I could tell without everyone watching me, or who would act immediately.’
‘I think you told exactly the right person,’ said Tommy.
Jessie thought Tommy was verging on the smarmy now, and he and Larry shared a look of disgusted agreement in this.
Angela pinkened, and then she added, ‘The nurse listened very carefully, and then she took me to the headmaster, and at once he telephoned Tall Trees and sent a teacher around to the family Dave is billeted with as they don’t have a telephone. Then the bell went for us all to go home, and the nurse and the head got as many teachers together as possible, and I waited near the school gates for you all as the ground was too rough for me to manage it in my chair. I saw Connie run in through the gates when she arrived so I guess she overheard the call to Roger, and I saw her, Aiden and Dave being dragged inside school again even though it was the end of the day. The headmaster’s face was very red.’
‘I bet it was,’ said Jessie, and he nodded his approval of what Angela had done as she had indeed been very resourceful.
‘You know the rest,’ said Angela. ‘Maybe Connie answered the telephone at Tall Trees and pretended to be Peggy – but whatever happened, the moment Connie found out about the fight, she must have got out of her nightie and then run all the way to school like the very wind to sort it out.’
‘It’s a shame Connie didn’t arrive a little bit later,’ said Larry, ‘as I would have liked to see them go on scrapping for a bit longer, as Dave could have come back and taken the scrap on.’
‘But they could have hurt themselves if that had happened!’ said Angela. ‘What about if Aiden or Dave of them had a head injury like I did? And ended up in a wheelchair, or in hospital like Jessie and me did. Did any of you think of that?’
Larry and Tommy had the grace to look shamefaced while Jessie thought how, yes, he had definitely considered that possibility – and much worse besides, as likely outcomes.
But to stop it all getting very serious, what Jessie said to the others was, ‘Well, that’ll be the only time in her life that Connie ever runs to school wanting to get there as quickly as she can.’
His chums roared at his joke, even though Jessie knew it wasn’t as funny as they were making out, although it did make him feel better as he laughed along with them.
Later, Jessie wondered if in fact Tommy and Larry and Angela had secretly been almost as worried as he had been, and so their laughter had been more a way of letting off steam after the event than in finding him funny.
But before Jessie could ponder further on that, naturally Peggy, Roger and Mabel had their say.
Chapter Thirty
Peggy didn’t think she’d ever felt quite so angry. And to judge the shocked and subdued looks on the children’s faces, she could tell that they had never seen her so enraged.
By the time Jessie and the others made it home, the headmaster had been on the telephone to Tall Trees once more, and this time he had spoken to an astounded Roger, who told Peggy what had happened. The pair then drove over to Aiden’s house and picked up Aiden’s father, and then they went to the school to collect Connie and Aiden. Connie had indeed pretended to be Peggy, when the headmaster telephoned.
‘I don’t care what the reasons behind the fight were,’ said Peggy, once all the children had been given some milk to drink and were seated at the kitchen table.
Connie opened her mouth to say something, but Peggy yelled, ‘Be quiet, Connie!’
Peggy noticed that Connie looked very pale still, and definitely not one hundred per cent. But she was too livid to suggest, as she ordinarily would have, that perhaps Connie had better go back to bed for a rest, and Peggy would bring her up a hot drink.
Connie looked down sulkily, as Holly, who was in Peggy’s arms, began to cry.
‘I didn’t think you were so stupid, Aiden, and as for you, Connie, well, words fail me,’ Peggy continued, refusing to pay attention to Holly, which only made her daughter bawl the more. ‘You just wait until Barbara and Ted hear about this, my girl. We’ve all got to go back to school on Monday morning, and have a meeting with the headmaster. Dave will be there too, and an adult from his billet. The headmaster is going to decide over the weekend whether any of you deserve to stay in the school. He may well expel all three of you.’
Aiden looked horrified, and very chastened, and Connie didn’t look much better.
‘Aiden, Roger and Mabel are thinking that maybe you should go back to your parents to live as it’s only down the road and having you here is more a favour than you needing it because of being evacuated,’ said Peggy, who was now marching up and down the kitchen as she fumed in temper. ‘I know they won’t be pleased as it will be a tight squash for them with their evacuees, but then it’s not fair on Roger and Mabel either, having to deal with this, is it?’
‘No!’ screamed Connie. Clearly not having Aiden around every day was suddenly a horrible thought for her. He had been allowed to lodge at Tall Trees so that his parents could m
ake a bit of government-subsidised money to eke out their meagre income by having two five-year-old evacuee brothers sleep in his bedroom.
Not wanting to be sent home in disgrace, Aiden looked to be swallowing back tears. But then Jessie noticed him and Connie glance at each other, at which point Connie began to say repeatedly to Peggy that she was sorry, which she squeaked out between gasping breaths of panic so vehement that her whole body trembled.
Despite Connie’s obvious despair, Peggy’s face remained stony.
Mabel and Roger had been in Roger’s study along with Aiden’s father, with the door firmly shut so that their discussions could be in private.
The three of them came in, all nearly as cross as Peggy, and so while Peggy went into the study to phone the Jolly in the hope that Barbara or Ted might not be volunteering that night and perhaps somebody in the public house could fetch either one of them to the phone, Roger and Mabel and Aiden’s father made their feelings very clear.
They asked Tommy, Larry, Angela and Jessie to leave the kitchen, and they shut the door, although from what the excluded children could hear as they craned to listen from the passageway, it was clear from the raised voices that Connie and Aiden were getting a furious dressing-down.
At one point Connie’s voice reached a crescendo, quickly followed by Aiden’s, but it was clear that the adults were doing most of the talking.
‘This is worse than what happened when we all got into trouble about the apples in the orchard last year,’ Jessie hissed to Tommy as they stood next to each other in the corridor. That particular day had ended with the police bringing them home in a police car, and there had been ructions back at Tall Trees as the children had inadvertently blundered into an experimental crop a government department had been growing and there had been the threat of legal action, as anything against the Government could be deemed as treason in times of war.
‘I was just thinkin’ o’ that,’ said Tommy. ‘I thought that were t’ worst that could ’appen.’
‘Me too,’ agreed Jessie.
And Larry, in the dim light of the hallway, nodded before he lifted his lip to show the black gap where a tooth should be. It had been knocked out that day.
But one look at Peggy as she had stalked back past them to return to the kitchen, and it was plain for all to see that she was still even more angry than she had been after the orchard incident. The furious set of her jaw told them she was massively disappointed in every single one of them, as how could it be that only Angela had had the good sense to raise the alarm, and even she had only managed to do that in the nick of time? And as for Connie and Aiden’s behaviour, well, words nearly failed Peggy.
All Jessie could hope was that Dave was being admonished with equal vigour somewhere else in Harrogate.
It wasn’t Peggy’s day as later that evening she was helping Mabel sort some clothes in the church hall for a bring-and-buy sale at the weekend for the war effort, and she overheard two women helpers gossiping.
‘I reckon the rector’s goin’ to take some flak if ’e ends up with a woman divorcee under ’is roof. ’E must think it’s shameful,’ one said conspiratorially, definitely emphasising her final word.
‘Yer right there. It’s against all teachin’ and I won’t approve,’ replied the other. ‘She must be no better than she should be.’
With a foul sinking sensation deep within her Peggy knew without a shred of doubt that these two women were brazenly talking about her, and the fact that as a church minister, Roger would be placed in an awkward position having Peggy live at Tall Trees should she go on to become, in the legal sense, a single woman.
Somehow the news was out that she wanted a divorce, but Peggy understood that was only to be expected.
Secrets were hard to keep at the best of times and the rectory was a hub in the community, and so anything that happened there was considered fair game by all and sundry.
Suddenly, just for an instant, she wished she’d kept her cards closer to her chest. But then she told herself not to be so daft. While it was regrettable that it hadn’t worked out long-term between her and Bill, she had nothing to be embarrassed about. It wasn’t she who had broken her marriage vows.
Peggy knew that after the way Bill had behaved the night of the fight, that Roger – even if rather herded into this by Mabel – was broadly supportive of Peggy staying at Tall Trees. He abhorred violence and – as he described them – ‘small-minded attitudes’. And he preached regularly that the more vulnerable people in society needed protection, and Peggy understood because he’d told her so that if he asked her and Holly to leave, what signal would that then give to his congregation and the instructions he gave them from the pulpit that they all took care of one another?
Already frazzled by her dealings with the children only an hour or so earlier, Peggy wasn’t in the mood to take what these women were saying lying down.
She stood up from where she had been crouching down sorting shoes, presumably hidden from the gossiping parishioners by a rail of coats.
‘Excuse me!’ she said firmly as she looked challengingly at the women. ‘Is there something you want to say directly to my face, or are comments like that for only behind my back?’
The look of shock on both of the women’s faces was priceless, Peggy thought. They clearly had had no idea that she was there.
Wordlessly they picked up their handbags and their coats, and hightailed it out of the church hall.
Mabel, who had been in the kitchen, looked on in surprise as they scooted past. ‘Whatever’s up wi’ them?’ she said to Peggy.
‘They’ve just been reminded of the perils of scurrilous talk,’ said Peggy.
Mabel frowned as she obviously still felt at sea as to what precisely had just occurred.
But Peggy’s uncharacteristically expressionless face told Mabel that now probably wasn’t the moment to probe further into what might have gone on.
As far as Peggy was concerned, today wasn’t the day to test her patience. Especially as she was wise enough to understand fully already that what she intended to do as regards her and Bill wasn’t going to be applauded across the board, and that nearly everyone who knew her would have an opinion one way or another as to whether she was doing the right thing.
Naturally a private person, Peggy felt dejected and peeved. But instead of allowing herself to walk away in shame, she reached into her handbag, found her crimson lipstick and visited the lavatories to apply it.
Mabel nodded in what Peggy hoped was approval when she came back into the church hall where all the jumble was.
But Peggy didn’t respond.
She was too busy thinking that if some thought her a scarlet woman, she would own it, but only on her own terms. And with that she allowed herself a little pout of defiance, as if all the better to accent her vermilion mouth.
Chapter Thirty-One
After all the shouting had died down for the evening and Tall Trees began to revert back to its usual happier atmosphere, Aiden was sent home in disgrace with his father for at least a night or two, and an equally shamed Connie was told to go to bed ignominiously early and that she should sleep in Gracie’s old bed on the attic floor across from Peggy and Holly’s bedroom rather than in with Angela, so that Peggy could ‘keep an eye on her’.
Peggy softened by taking her niece a glass of hot milk as she was definitely looking peaky still. But Connie knew that Barbara would be telephoning back at nine o’clock in the morning, and really Peggy didn’t want Connie talking to the other children before then, and that meant not even Jessie. This wouldn’t be because Peggy believed the children would help Connie cook up a story whereby she had less of a central role to play, but more because her aunt thought that Connie would benefit by having a little time on her own so that she could consider what had happened without everyone else chipping in with their two penn’orth.
Connie agreed with this to an extent as she did want to spend a little time thinking quietly about what had happe
ned.
But this was only until she realised that never before had she and Jessie been prevented from speaking with each other. It almost felt as if a part of her had been cut off, and she didn’t like it at all.
And so Saturday morning turned out not to be much of an improvement on Friday evening, at least for Connie and Jessie as Peggy made sure they didn’t spend any time together prior to their parents telephoning.
Barbara and Ted spoke in turn to both the twins, the conversation with Connie lasting a lot longer, even though Connie only ever said back a subdued yes or no to whatever it was that was coming down the telephone line from Bermondsey.
Jessie listened to Connie’s one-sided conversation with their parents as he stood in the passage outside the study so that his sister had some semblance of privacy for her conversation, and after Connie had said goodbye she scurried past him looking down so that he couldn’t see her face, before she ran straight outside to the back yard.
Jessie’s time on the telephone felt much shorter than usual and he thought both parents sounded uncharacteristically abrupt and quite wretched, if he were honest, which gave him a small clench of worry in the bottom of his tummy. ‘I’ll try harder,’ he tearfully promised Barbara and then Ted, once they had finished telling him how mad they were with him and Connie for bringing the family into disrepute and how Jessie should have raised the alarm with a grown-up before things got so serious.
‘See that you do,’ was the gruff answer from Ted, who then hung up without his normal ‘cheerio son’.
Before Jessie could work himself into a tizzy about his parents being so curt with him, Peggy asked Jessie to come with her to look for Connie.
They found her sitting dejectedly on a patch of grass with her arms around Porky, who was standing beside Connie with a deliriously contented look on his face as she burrowed her face into his shoulder. In fact Porky looked so made up that Peggy thought it almost appeared as if he were smiling, although this was more because of the angle she was gazing at him. Still, girl and pig looked very sweet together.
