A Girl Can Dream (43 page)

As one fine day after another followed the hay was gathered in, and then all the signs were that it would be a bumper harvest that year, the first bombs fell on Birmingham. No one was sure it was Birmingham at first, for the announcer on the wireless just said, ‘A Midland town’, but as the skirmishes went on, certain areas were mentioned that they all recognised. Then, on Sunday 25 August, a raid of some magnitude was visited on the same ‘Midland town’, and this time they mentioned the extensive damage to a shopping area known as the Bull Ring and the ancient Market Hall. There was also damage to the High Street, New Street and the surrounding area.

Meg’s eyes met those of Terry and Joy, for they knew that the surrounding area could easily be where their houses were, but they didn’t want to speak of it in front of the children.

It was Billy who said, ‘That ain’t a Midland town – it’s Birmingham, ain’t it?’

There was no point denying it. ‘Sounds like it, Billy.’

‘And the man said bombs damaged the Market Hall. Hope the flipping animals are all right?’

‘Huh, trust you to think of the animals first,’ Meg said. ‘People are more important, and I hope everyone is safe. All I can say is, thank God it’s Sunday and so the Bull Ring would be empty, not like it is weekdays. And Saturday especially.’

In Birmingham there was another raid the following evening, but just before the sirens went, there was a thundering knocking on the door of the flat. Doris knew Frank was expecting Richard Flatterly, so she opened the door with no sense of alarm and then was nearly knocked on her back by the men who burst through it so violently the door juddered on its hinges. The panicky eyes of Frank and plainly terrified ones of Doris were trained on the two beefy men framed in the doorway, both holding baseball bats in their hands as the siren shrilled out.

They just stood and waited till the noise abated slightly, by which time Doris was shaking from head to foot and Frank wasn’t much better, for the men were Big Bert himself and his henchman, known for their brutality.

‘Well then, Caudwell,’ he said to Doris, ‘I think you owe me some money and I’m here to collect it and then give you the biggest hiding of your life for giving me the run around.’ He strode across the room and grasped Doris painfully by the chin. ‘You will find it isn’t a healthy option to run out on me.’

Doris was unaware of the drone of the approaching planes for her whole attention was on the man in front of her as she stammered, ‘I have no money, Bert. Honest to God.’

‘Think I’ll buy that, darling?’ Bert said, and slapped Doris on either cheek saying, ‘That’s a taster for what’s to come.’

Clusters of incendiaries rattled around on the roof of the flat. One went down the chimney, fell out in the grate of the spare room still alight, and when it tumbled from the grate, orange and yellow flames began to snake across the floor.

‘You have got one minute to give me some wads of cash or I will break your fingers for starters,’ Big Bert growled threateningly. ‘And then every other bone in your body.’

Frank, hoping to appease them, was on his knees before the cupboard where he kept his cashbox when suddenly an explosion ripped through the flat, then another and another as the barrels of petrol were set alight and turned the flat into a raging inferno.

Richard Flatterly, approaching down the street to do another deal with Frank, was blown across the road in the blast from the first explosion, his clothes ablaze.

Robert, who had been tailing him some distance behind, rushed up and doused the flames with his own overcoat. Then finding him still alive, he alerted a policeman and Flatterly was taken to hospital under police guard.

The holidays were drawing to a close. Enid took the children into Penkridge the first Saturday in September as they were starting at the village school the following Monday and she declared they needed new clothes and footwear. They all ended up going except Stephen and Terry, who decided to stay at the farm as well and keep him company.

On the way there Meg listened to the children chatting and laughing together in the back of the cart, so very different from the nervous bedraggled stick-thin ones that had first arrived at the farm. The changes in them were not just physical either; Meg was delighted to see their old personalities beginning to emerge again and she marvelled at their resilience.

It would soon be all change. Terry would be returning to his job in Birmingham and the children would be moving to Penkridge to live with Lily. The Heppleswaites and Lily had looked into this and found that as Lily had already had evacuees living with her who had returned home, there was no problem in her taking in the Halletts. The children were all looking forward to this. They had met Enid’s older sister a few times and liked her a great deal.

In fact, despite the war still raging the Halletts seemed to have survived the turbulent waters that had once threatened to submerge them. Terry thought about this that morning as, with the jobs all done, he and Stephen had made a bite to eat and were sitting over a cup of tea. He acknowledged that the only one who seemed unsettled and unhappy was Meg. No one else might have noticed this but Terry he knew his sister well and had seen her face looking quite bleak at times. He even knew what was making her unhappy and that was the way Stephen was with her. He had known of their budding relationship because she had spoken about Stephen in her letters, and if she hadn’t he might have guessed anyway by the amount of times she mentioned him. When they had met he thought him splendid and was pleased and relieved that his sister had found someone special.

However, he soon realised that things were not running smoothly for her and he wondered what had gone wrong between them. He even wondered if he should speak about it to Stephen when they had the place to themselves.

He might well have done just that, but he suddenly heard a car approaching down the lane. This was such an unusual occurrence that he crossed to the window just in time to see a taxi drive into the yard and stop before the farmhouse door. His eyes grew wide with astonishment when a woman got out of the taxi holding a suitcase in one hand and the hand of a little girl in the other.

‘What the …?’ exclaimed Stephen, who had joined Terry at the window, but Terry was already out of the door and running across the cobbles.

‘Teddy,’ the little girl cried, not ever able to say his name properly, and Terry scooped her up in his arms, holding her tight while tears fell from his eyes. After a long while he watched the taxi travel back up the lane, then turned to Kate Carmichael and said, ‘I don’t know what this is all about, but if you have come to upset our Meg, you can just sling your hook and leave our Ruth where she belongs, with her family.’

‘Believe me, Terry, I mean Meg no harm,’ Kate said. ‘In fact, I have come to beg her forgiveness.’

Mollified, Terry introduced Stephen and put Ruth down to explore her surroundings. His mind was teeming with questions, but when he attempted to ask them, Kate said Meg should hear first.

‘Meg?’ Ruth said.

‘She’s in town.’ Terry said. ‘Back soon.’

‘Back soon,’ Ruth repeated.

‘Yes, I wonder what she will make of you.’

All in all they hadn’t long to wait – just about an hour – but it seemed the longest hour of Terry’s life. In the end he left Stephen and Kate Carmichael talking and took Ruth to show her around the farm. She loved all the animals and didn’t even mind the smelly pig, but her favourites were the two boisterous dogs and she clapped her hands with glee when Terry threw balls for them both, and showed Ruth tricks that his sisters had taught them. They were there in the yard, still playing, when the cart rumbled in and the Hallett children saw the sister they thought they would never see again, playing with their big brother. Meg was out of the cart before it stopped, almost staggering towards Ruth, so great was her shock at seeing the child. Then she lifted her into her arms, and Ruth wound her arms around her neck and gave a great sigh of contentment: ‘Ah, Meg!’

There were tears in Enid’s eyes and Meg was totally unable to say anything at all. It took a little while for her to gain control of her emotions and then she carried her little sister into the farmhouse and set her on the floor, and saw Kate Carmichael for the first time.

‘What’s all this about?’ Meg asked, watching Ruth touching each of her siblings in turn as if she couldn’t believe she was back with them. ‘What you doing here?’

Kate ignored Meg’s angry tone, knowing she had reason to speak to her that way and said, ‘I’ve brought you news of the death of your stepmother.’

The words brought Billy’s head up. ‘She’s dead?’ he asked in delight.

‘Yes, she is.’

‘Well, thank God for that.’

‘Billy!’

‘What? I’m not going to cry over her.’

‘I’m not asking you to.’

‘Leave it, Meg,’ Terry said, trying valiantly to stop his own face from breaking into a beam of happiness. ‘Let’s hear the rest. Did she die in a raid?’

‘Yes,’ Kate said, ‘but not in the way you might think. She died on Monday but there was a fire and so there were problems with identification. The fire was because an incendiary fell down the chimney and ignited the illicit petrol stored in wooden barrels in the spare room.’

‘She was a black marketeer,’ Terry said. ‘I knew she was up to summat fishy. Fancy Doris being a black marketeer.’

‘Yes, her and a man called Frank Zimmerman,’ Kate said.

‘Who’s he?’

‘A friend of her ex-husband, I believe,’ Kate said. ‘Oh, and that is another thing: looking through her records the police found she was probably never properly married to your father. Her husband went on the run after killing someone and somehow she had a hand in it. Apparently she was in a lot of debt and had to leave the North. Certainly when she met your dad her husband was alive, though he was killed later.’

‘Why marry Dad then?’

‘I don’t really know,’ Kate said. ‘Because he was available and in full-time work, so there was security for her and she probably thought him easy to manage.’

‘Oh, I’ll say he was,’ Terry said with feeling. ‘Putty in her hands, he was.’

‘It was a way of changing her name as well in case anyone was looking for her,’ Kate said.

‘So when did this Frank whathisname turn up?’

‘No one is quite sure about that, but when he did she was back with him doing drugs and then, with the war starting and rationing, anything going, I suppose.

‘But how come we’ve got Ruth back?’ Meg asked.

‘Well, that’s down to your father,’ Kate said. ‘He left a document behind when he went to war, a legal document drawn up by a solicitor and witnessed, stating that if anything happened to him or Doris, you were to be the children’s legal guardian till they come of age. The solicitor had charge of it and, hearing about Doris’s death, took it to Rosie and she took that to the children’s welfare department. Nicholas came to find me and asked me to stand as character witness for you.’

‘Character witness?’ Meg cried incredulously. ‘But you believed all those lies Flatterly told you about me.’

‘I know,’ Kate said. ‘Please forgive me. I should have known better. I seem to have had blinkers on where that man was concerned.’

‘I hope they are well and truly off now,’ Stephen said. ‘Meg has told us all a little bit about him and he is a nasty piece of work and needs teaching a lesson.’

‘Oh don’t worry, Stephen, he is being taught a lesson right now,’ Kate said. ‘He is in hospital and very badly burned. He was caught in the blast and that was because he was going to the flat to get his supply of cocaine. In his car around the corner were three petrol containers. He told me he got extra petrol because he was on the council. He also told me he had a defective heart and so was passed as medically unfit for the services, but that wasn’t true either. In fact, he paid another man who did have a defective heart to stand in for him. It was your uncle Robert who found out about this man and went to see him. To save his own skin he spilled the beans about everyone he has helped, and Richard Flatterly was top of the list.’

‘What will happen to him?’

‘If he survives, and he is so badly burned there is doubt about that, he will probably hang.’

‘Shall you be upset?’

‘Not in the slightest,’ Kate said. ‘I have a father who was badly injured in the last war and a brother fighting in this. Richard Flatterly deserves all that he has coming to him.’

‘This is unbelievable,’ Terry said. ‘That was what Uncle Robert hinted at but wouldn’t tell anyone about.’

‘Can’t blame him for not telling you,’ Stephen said. ‘Couldn’t risk it getting out.’

‘I understand now,’ Terry said. ‘He said I’d know soon enough.’

‘So was this paper enough with what you said about Meg to get Ruth out of that place?’

‘Well, it wasn’t just me,’ Kate said. ‘Nicholas did his work well: he brought the solicitor, the priest and the doctor as well as me. The doctor was marvellous. He said how good you were with all of the children, Meg, and the little mother you have had to be to Ruth – the only mother she has ever known – and he could not recommend that she should go to strange people living in another country when she has a loving family here. Added to that your father hadn’t ever signed the forms that allows a child to be adopted. No one had checked that, apparently.’

‘I wonder why he did that?’ Meg said.

‘Well, we’ll never know now,’ Kate said. ‘But you were so fond of the child maybe he thought if you married or something and you had the chance of bringing her out of there sometime it would easier if he hadn’t signed the forms.’

‘There have been tales of children adopted without any forms, though.’

‘Maybe,’ Kate said. ‘But in Ruth’s case they also had the letter, and important people knew those forms weren’t signed. The priest is in a position of power in Catholic orphanages and he was firmly on your side. Anyway, they also brought up the question of your age.’

Meg groaned. ‘No getting round that.’

‘There is if someone is there to oversee you until you turn eighteen,’ Kate said, ‘which the doctor pointed out is less than a year away. Rosie offered straight away.’