A Girl Can Dream (33 page)

‘Let go of my arm,’ Meg said, struggling to free herself, but it only made Richard hold tighter. ‘You’re hurting me,’ she cried. ‘Let me go.’

‘Just so we understand each other,’ Richard said, releasing her so quickly she staggered.

‘Don’t you dare lay a finger on me again,’ she warned, as she stood rubbing the red weal he’d made on her arm.

‘Or you’ll do what exactly?’ Richard demanded with a sneer. He smirked at her lasciviously as she fell silent. ‘They could all be found safe and sound,’ he said, eyeing her carefully.

‘You don’t know where they are,’ Meg said. ‘You would have said before.’

‘And what if I do?’ Flatterly asked, a self-satisfied smile on his face. ‘What would you give to have them returned to you?’

Meg stared at him and felt revulsion flood through her body and she said, more bravely than she felt, ‘What if I was to tell Kate about this?’

‘Go ahead,’ Flatterly said. ‘She won’t believe you. I’ve already told her about the way you used to come on to me when I was collected the rent, flaunting yourself, offering yourself to get the rent reduced.’

‘But … but that isn’t true, none of it,’ Meg said hotly, getting to her feet. ‘Kate wouldn’t believe that. She knows me.’

‘Correction,’ Richard said, crossing the room to stand in front of her, ‘she
knew
you, and was very surprised you had turned into such a slut.’

Meg felt her heart plummet. She had thought Kate her ally and friend. She had noticed a coolness in her attitude, but put it down to her being busy and, as Joy had mentioned, it being a long time since she’d left school. That was true enough but she had thought there had been some rapport between them and felt saddened that it seemed to have been eroded away.

And now to find Flatterly had been blackening her name to Kate filled her with frustrated rage and while she was still collecting her thoughts he leaned forward so his face was inches away as he hissed threateningly, ‘You whisper one word of this to Kate and I will say you came after me, seeking me out when you knew I would be alone and offering your body in exchange for information about those brats you have such feeling for. I would tell her how I had to fight off your advances. Who do you think she will believe?’

Meg felt her heart sinking for she knew who Kate would believe Flatterly over her any time. ‘If you want to see those children again,’ he went on ‘I will do my best to help, but you know what you must do. In fact,’ he said, pulling her towards him, ‘we could start right now.’

Meg was transfixed with terror for a moment as she felt his whole body pressing into hers. She felt him harden, and when she felt his hand slide between them and start to undo his zip, she found the almost superhuman strength to throw him from her and escape to the other side of the desk. She leaned on it, gasping, eyes desperately searching for the exit.

Flatterly was also a bit breathless but he fastened up his trousers and said, ‘All right, I will not force you yet, though I could. But the time will come when you will be begging me to take what I want to save those kids. And by then,’ he warned her with a smirk, ‘the price might be higher. And don’t forget,’ he added, ‘no police. All sorts of nasty things happen to children if police are involved.’

Meg was so frightened for her young sisters and little brother that she was finding it hard to draw breath. Richard saw this and it amused him. ‘Think it over, my dear,’ he said gloatingly. ‘I’m sure you’ll come to your senses in the end.’

Meg went back to her aunt Rosie’s house for it had been decided that for her week’s stay Rosie’s son Dave could stay at Nicholas’s house so Meg could have the attic. There was only Dave at home now because his older brother, Stan, had been called up as soon as he turned eighteen and was in the Royal Warwickshire’s like her dad and Uncle Alec.

Robert had arrived from work. The meal was ready so Meg waited until they were seated round the table before she told them what had transpired in Flattery’s office. She had thought to tell them an edited version, but in the end she decided that she had protected Flatterly long enough and they all sat agog: Rosie, Robert, Nicholas, Dave and even Terry, who’d come in during the telling. Eventually, aghast at Meg’s words, Robert cried,

‘You mean this man tried to … That he nearly—’

‘If I hadn’t managed to push him off, he would have raped me,’ Meg stated simply. ‘I knew that I was taking a chance because he showed his true colours that time he was collecting the rents.’

‘What do you mean?’

Meg recounted the flirty and suggestive remarks that led to touching and then one day he had nearly got what he desired when he’d pushed his way into the house. ‘But,’ she said, ‘Ruth bit him on the bum and caught him off balance and then he cracked his head on the wall which meant I was able to shove him into the street and close the door.’

‘Well, well,’ Robert said. ‘Why didn’t we hear about it? I’m surprised your father—’

‘I never told Dad,’ Meg said.

‘Why not?’

‘Think about it, Aunt Rosie. What would Dad have done if I had told him? He’d have decided Richard Flatterly needed teaching a lesson. Then the family would have been thrown out. How could I have had that on my conscience?’

‘Dad could just as easily have done nothing at all about it,’ Terry put in.

‘Oh surely, Terry—’

‘I bet Doris wouldn’t have believed Meg’s account of things.’ Terry said ‘And she’s able to convince Dad that black’s white.’

‘I know that Doris influences him far too much,’ Robert conceded. ‘But surely not when it concerns a man’s daughter? He knows what kind of girl Meg is.’

‘I thought Kate Carmichael knew me,’ Meg said bitterly. ‘She taught me for years.’

Rosie well remembered the name Miss Carmichael that was seldom off Meg’s lips.

‘But now,’ Meg continued, ‘because she has a passion for Richard Flatterly, though she needs her head seeing to, she believes his version of events.’

‘Her opinion don’t matter,’ Terry said, who hadn’t a high regard for the teaching profession in general.

‘It might not matter to you, Terry Hallett,’ Meg said angrily. ‘But it matters to me.’

‘I can understand that,’ Rosie said. ‘It’s horrible to be thought of so badly when there is no reason and you are unable to correct it.’

‘And it reflects on the way I was brought up,’ Meg said. ‘I was so pleased when I went to Mass that Sunday and saw she was there too and living no distance away. It was like a link with home and I thought we might be able to meet up some time. But all she has eyes for now is Richard Flatterly, who drives up every weekend.’

‘Drives?’ Robert said. ‘He doesn’t use the train?’

‘No. Why?’

‘Just wondering where he gets his petrol from,’ Robert mused. ‘The ration is only three gallons a week, and even that can’t be got at times.’

‘Must have his own private tanker then,’ Meg said. ‘Because he has enough for the bus as well.’

‘Bus?’

‘Yeah, the Catholic kids are spread about, see, on isolated farms and places like that, so Flatterly and Kate collect them up for Mass on Sunday morning In this small bus she got hold of somewhere. Richard isn’t a Catholic so he waits for her outside church.’

‘Look,’ Rosie said impatiently, ‘it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find Flatterly was buying black-market petrol. All things being equal, I’m sure by rights he should be in the Forces now. Amazing what money and influence can do. But far more important is what he said to Meg about the missing children. Do you think he knows where they are, Meg?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Meg admitted. ‘At first it was like he really didn’t know anything, and then he changed tack and said I had to be “nice” to him before he would tell me more.’

‘The dirty swine …’

‘I agree, Uncle,’ Meg said. ‘I have no trust in Flatterly, and yet he could have some knowledge or ways of finding out where they are.’

‘We should go to the police.’

‘I agree, but how can we with the threats against their safety that Flatterly made?’

‘He was just bluffing.’

‘Uncle Robert, I cannot gamble with the children’s lives.’

‘Well, Flatterly at least needs a trouncing for what he put you through,’ Dave said.

‘Yes, he does,’ Meg agreed, ‘but I don’t want anything to happen to him.’

‘Why not?’ Nicholas said. ‘No man should be able to get away with treating you so badly.’

‘Maybe he shouldn’t, but he’s going to,’ Meg said determinedly. ‘If anything happens to him, it could impact on the children if he has any lead to them at all – never mind the fact that he is your landlord. He would have you out of these houses before you could say “Jack Flash”.’

‘Hitler might do that anyway if ever these bombs come hurtling from the sky, as people say will happen.’

‘No need to pre-empt it, though,’ Meg said. ‘The streets are not too comfy this time of the year.’

No one was happy with that, and the three younger boys looked towards Robert, so they were disappointed when he sighed and said, ‘Meg is right. No one is to lay a hand on Richard Flatterly. The risks are too great.’

Later that night, however, as they undressed for bed, Rosie said, ‘You’ve got a very odd smile playing around your mouth. What are you thinking about?’

‘I’m thinking,’ said Robert, ‘that there are more ways of killing a cat than drowning it.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘You’ll see in time,’ said Robert maddeningly, but Rosie, try as she might, could get him to say nothing more.

That evening May called up at Rosie’s to see Meg and Meg told her about the missing children and going to see Richard Flatterly to see if he could throw some light on where they could be.

‘Is this Richard Flatterly the rent man we are talking about?’ May asked.

‘The very same.’

‘Bet you got a great deal of help from him,’ May said sarcastically. ‘There’s only one person Flatterly cares about, and that’s himself. Wouldn’t spit on a body afire in the gutter, that one. But God, how worrying to have the kiddies missing like that.’

‘It is, May,’ Meg said. ‘No none seems to know where they are, and Ruth of course is lost to us for good. There is only me and Terry left and I am so bloody miserable.’

‘I know, bab, I know,’ May said, and put her comforting arms around Meg.

As her week’s leave drew to a close, Rosie thought Meg might stay on in Birmingham and readily offered her a room with them and even offered to try and find her a job in the factory she worked in. Meg was grateful to her aunt for she thought a great deal of her and so she couldn’t really admit to her how she longed for the week to speed past so that she could return to her friend Joy and the Heppleswaites who had made her so welcome on the farm, far away from Birmingham and its terrible memories. She wanted to go to bed; tired enough from physical work to sleep deeply without the nightmares that haunted her at night and took way her appetite.

She knew that Rosie and the others were all worried about her, but she couldn’t assure them she was fine. She was filled with a sense of failure for her quest to find her missing siblings had come to nothing.

Years later, Meg was to remember that awful train journey back to the farm. Nicholas decided not to come back with the girls, and in a way Meg was glad it was just her, meeting Joy outside New Street Station early Monday morning as arranged. She was also very glad that they had a carriage to themselves. Joy looked at her friend’s drawn face, which in the scant week in Birmingham seemed to have lost all its colour; it was as white as lint. Her cheeks were almost gaunt and her eyes looked quite desolate.

Joy touched Meg’s arm. ‘Tell me,’ she said, and Meg told her of Doris’s reaction to the missing children and of Richard Flatterly trying to rape her when she went to see him to see if he knew anything at all to help as he was supposed to be in charge of the evacuations from Birmingham.

‘He couldn’t,’ she said. ‘Or wouldn’t and so I am no further forward in finding the children. And in the end, there is one person really to blame for all this and that is me. I shall feel guilty about letting them down for the rest of my days, because I put my needs before theirs and I shouldn’t have done that.’

‘You’re far too hard on yourself,’ Joy said, and Meg suddenly looked so immeasurably sad that the tears trickled from Joy’s eyes too and, as the two girls held each other tight, their tears mingled together.

Will was waiting for them at the station with the horse and cart. His weather-beaten face broke into a wide smile as he saw the girls alight from the train. For his sake they attempted a smile back, but Will wasn’t fooled; he was also concerned by the lines of strain on Meg’s pale face and the forlorn look in her eyes. He said nothing about it, for he left that side of things to Enid, whom he knew had been concerned as to what Meg might find on her first visit home.

He lifted up the girls’ cases as if they weighed nothing at all and tossed them into the cart, saying, as he did so, ‘By, you two are a sight for sore eyes and no mistake. Place hasn’t been the same without you pair to liven it up, but Stephen arrived home a few days ago for a short spot of leave so that bucked Enid up a bit. Like a dog with two tails she was.’

Meg felt her heart quicken ‘Is Stephen still here?’ she asked.

Will nodded. ‘Till the day after tomorrow. He’s looking forward to seeing you again and he was very impressed when he saw that field we reclaimed … Anyway, Enid thinks you never get fed properly in them cities so she has made a rich beef casserole and one of her special apple pies to celebrate your coming back.’

Meg hadn’t eaten properly for days and even the thought of food made her feel sick. So she truly hoped she could at least make a stab at the food Enid had taken such trouble over.

Joy, watching her face, covered the silence that could have become embarrassing by saying, ‘Oh, lovely, Will. And Enid is right in a way, because although there is probably enough food in the city – or at least till rationing comes in – it just doesn’t taste the same.’

It was just the right thing to say, and Will had a big grin on his face as he jiggled the reins. ‘Come on then, Dobbin.’