Dead to Me (19 page)

‘I think you just forgot to ask me,’ he said. He hadn’t got one, and one thing he needed to do was get a forged one.

‘Well, get it now,’ she suggested.

‘No, I will not. There’s better things to do right now than study identity cards.’

She laughed, and he thought that would be the end of it. It was for that night, but the next day the questions came even thicker and faster.

Was he married? Had he got children? Where was he born? Was he in the army in the Great War? Why was he hanging around in Folkestone?

He replied – the truth to some, lies to others – and said he was hanging around in Folkestone waiting for a fellow
importer to contact him. Then she asked him for his identity card again, and he made an excuse to go to his room. He packed his bag, but as he came back down the stairs she insisted on seeing the card.

He lost his patience and punched her in the jaw. She fell to the floor, banging her head hard, and Archie ran for it.

That was how he came to be in the barn. She was bound to have called the police, and although he’d told her his name was Ivan Dunstable – the name on the false passport he’d acquired in France – they might show her pictures of wanted men, Archie Wood amongst them. But there was an even stronger likelihood, particularly in view of his vague answers to Carol’s questions about what he had been doing in France, that the police would think he was a fifth columnist, recruited by the Germans to spy or spread sedition.

That was far more serious than being wanted for embezzlement.

‘I
love these light evenings,’ Verity exclaimed to her friend as they came out of the telephone exchange at nine in the evening. ‘No more tripping over things in the dark on the way home when we work late.’

‘Remember what hell it was back in the winter?’ Amy said. ‘That bitter cold snap in January? You just couldn’t see the ice on the pavements. It was either sidle along cautiously like an old lady or rush to keep warm and risk landing up on your backside.’

Verity laughed. She had been laughing a great deal since joining the Post Office back at the start of the war.

The Phoney War was what the press called it. But most people, amused by the lack of drama or activity, said, ‘What War?’ Until quite recently nothing appeared to be happening, at least not in England. Many of the children who had been evacuated to the countryside last September were back home with their mothers by Christmas, because there had been none of the expected air raids. Sugar, butter and bacon had gone on ration back in January. But apart from that irritation and the hated blackout, life was much the same as before the war began.

Other countries weren’t having it so easy; there were some awful stories circulating about what the Nazis were
doing to the Poles, and Denmark and Norway had been invaded at the start of April. Now Germany’s troops were smashing their way through the Low Countries with columns of massed tanks, motorized infantry and backed up by aerial bombing. Even the most optimistic people couldn’t fail to realize that it was actually possible that England could be invaded soon too.

Chamberlain had resigned as Prime Minister and his place had been taken by Winston Churchill. It was thought he was the man to pull the country together in its adversity.

Verity was still just as interested in world news, but since going to work for the Post Office she didn’t have much time to go off to the library and read all the papers. Now she had to rely on the wireless and the odd glance at a daily paper. Although she had been taken on as a telephonist, she was also being trained for outside maintenance and installation work. This had previously been men’s work, but with so many of them joining up, women had to be pressed into service. Young ones like Verity were nimble enough to shin up telegraph poles and didn’t mind heights.

It was this new work which was making Verity happy. Each day was different, and she liked the challenges of the job and feeling she was doing something useful for the war effort. She even enjoyed donning her dungarees and tying a scarf around her hair to climb up telegraph poles. Back at Cooks nothing had been vital, or even important, and there was no social life with the job. The other staff had been friendly, but no one really met up after work or at weekends.

It was quite different at the Post Office. In the main the
other girls lived in or around Lewisham, and they wanted to socialize. Hardly a week went past without someone inviting her to their home, for a drink or to a dance.

Amy was Verity’s new lodger. A twenty-year-old buxom brunette with a heart of gold, until she met Verity at the Post Office she had been staying in digs in New Cross. She had hated it there and missed her family in Southend badly. Verity had expected it to be hard to adjust to someone taking Miller’s place, but it hadn’t been. Amy was easy-going, enthusiastic and fun, they had a lot to talk and laugh about, and when they were working on the same shift it was so nice to have company on the way to work and coming home, especially when it was dark.

But it was light and warm this evening, and Verity thought they could sit out in the garden with a fish and chip supper, the way she used to do with Miller.

He wrote to her every week, always funny, interesting and affectionate letters. He was very happy in Scotland. The other foresters were a mixture of men too old for call-up, some who, like Miller, had been turned down because of a health problem, and some were ‘conchies’, men who for religious or moral reasons would not join up.

Verity noticed from his letters that it was the ‘conchies’ who Miller appeared to get on best with. He said the old men tended to be bossy, far too keen on boasting about their abilities as young men. Those exempted on medical grounds were often very lazy and found fault with everything, but he admired the conchies’ commitment to their beliefs, and that they were cheerful and worked hard.

‘You go and sit in the garden,’ Amy said when they got home. ‘I’ll pop down the fish and chip shop to get the grub.’

Verity put some knives and forks, the pepper, salt and vinegar on a tray and took it outside in readiness for Amy getting back. She sat down with a contented sigh, still thinking about Miller.

He’d only come back to London once, and that was at Christmas. She’d only had one full day off to spend with him, but it was still wonderful.

She understood now what people meant when they talked about ‘getting carried away’. If it hadn’t been for Amy in the house, Verity was pretty certain they would have spent that whole day in bed.

She smiled as she remembered how they kept stealing kisses every time Amy’s back was turned. Each one sent Verity’s heart pounding.

Amy had fallen asleep by the fire in the parlour after Christmas dinner, and Verity and Miller went into the kitchen intending to wash up. But instead she sat on his lap by the kitchen table for more kisses.

‘It’s so hard being away from you,’ Miller said, stroking her face with such tenderness. ‘I go to sleep thinking about you, and wake up with you still on my mind. Just having a few days like this with you isn’t enough, but what can we do?’

‘Everyone says the trains are terrible now, so very slow and crowded with servicemen,’ Verity said. ‘You mustn’t try it again until later in the year when the weather improves, it’s too difficult. Or maybe I could get a week’s holiday and come up there to see you?’

‘I could book a hotel room for Mr and Mrs Grantham?’
he suggested, and blushed scarlet. ‘I don’t mean to, well, you know, presume. I just want to hold you.’

She almost told him she loved him then. He was wearing a ridiculous yellow and red spotted bow tie she’d made him for a joke present, and a paper hat from a cracker. He was looking at her with puppy dog eyes that made her feel they could be this happy together for the rest of their lives.

But she didn’t say she loved him, or even that she’d risk booking into a hotel with him. He was her first boyfriend, and she was mindful that she had to be absolutely sure of him and her own feelings first. She longed to ask someone’s advice but the girls at work were all the kind who would laugh at such a question. Most of them had boyfriends they said they loved, who were away in the forces, but that didn’t make them all faithful. Even some of the married women with husbands away went dancing up the West End now and then. Verity found this very puzzling, she didn’t want to dance with or kiss other men, and although she went to dances with Amy sometimes, the girls always outnumbered the men, so they danced together.

Besides, she felt a girl was supposed to let the man talk of love first. Miller might have said she was the girl of his dreams, that he fell asleep at night thinking of her, but that wasn’t the same thing as declaring his love. So until he did say that, Verity wouldn’t allow herself to dream of anything more than kissing him; she certainly wouldn’t hope for an engagement or marriage. She remembered how Ruby with all her experience of boys had allowed herself to be fooled into thinking she’d found the perfect man who would love and protect her for ever. And look what happened to her.

Thinking of Ruby again brought Verity up sharp. She
wondered if she was still in Devon with Wilby, and what she was doing. She also wondered if she ever regretted their falling out. Time and even Miller, or her new friend Amy, hadn’t erased the hurt and injustice of it for Verity. Yet right now, while she was feeling happy and contented, she could only really think about what they’d meant to one another before it all went wrong.

She knew that if Ruby was to contact her, the hurt would be wiped out immediately. It was obvious Ruby had made that terrible statement in a moment of fear that she’d messed up her life for good and would lose Wilby’s love. It was understandable; Wilby was the first adult who’d ever cared about Ruby, she had in fact become a mother to her. But Verity hoped Ruby realized now that she’d cared just as much as Wilby, and it was she who had sat by her friend’s bedside afraid Ruby was going to die.

The front door banged, disturbing Verity’s reverie, and Amy came out into the garden.

‘I almost opened the paper on the way home, I’m so hungry. But then I remembered you said it was common to eat in the street,’ Amy said as she put the two newspaper parcels down on the table.

‘Did I say that?’ Verity grinned. ‘I’m a fraud, then, as I’ve been known to eat fish and chips in the street occasionally. My headmistress used to rage about us eating while in school uniform. She once said, “There is nothing worse than a large girl licking a lolly.” We all used to mimic her.’

‘You are quite posh,’ Amy said thoughtfully after they’d been eating for a little while. ‘You always put the milk in a jug, I think that’s pretty grand.’

‘We’ve got more important things to think about now
than whether to put milk in a jug,’ Verity said, sprinkling a little more vinegar on her chips. ‘I caught a bit of the news today at lunchtime and it sounds bad. Our boys and the French army seem to be on the run from the Germans. They can’t retreat much further cos they are already right by the coast, near Dunkirk in France. They say ships will be sent to rescue them, but there are so many men.’

Amy never read the newspapers or even listened to the news. She called Verity ‘Major News Reporter’, and relied on her for information.

‘I’m sure Mr Churchill will come up with a plan,’ she said, getting to her feet and screwing up the paper from the fish and chips in her hands. ‘And my plan is to go to bed now, I’m bushed.’

‘I’ll stay out here a little longer,’ Verity said. ‘Goodnight, sleep tight.’

It was good to be alone in the garden as it got dark. Before the blackout there had always been some light, from windows and street lighting. But now, once it was pitch dark, the stars and moon seemed so much brighter and nearer. She could smell the honeysuckle and see the glint of white roses just coming into flower.

Amy didn’t seem to understand the implications of the retreat from France. Sweet as she was, she was a bit dense, and actually imagined the English Channel as some impregnable moat which the Germans could never cross.

She had been just as dense when their Morrison shelter had been dropped off. ‘They expect us to sleep in that?’ she said indignantly as Verity finished putting it together. ‘It’s just a cage with a table top!’

‘Yes, it is, but it’s reinforced steel, which makes it far safer than being in our beds during an air raid,’ Verity explained patiently. ‘We’ll put a mattress, pillows and blankets in it, and if the siren goes off we needn’t go to a public shelter.’

The girls put the kitchen table out in the garden and covered it in oilcloth to prevent it getting ruined in the rain, and then they hung a tablecloth over the shelter. It was far bigger than the real table, but then it had to be so they could lie down. Amy took some persuading to try it out, but once she was in it claimed it felt like the camps she and her brothers had made in the woods when they were children.

She was stubborn about learning how to use the stirrup pump too. ‘How do they think we can put a fire out with one bucket of water and that?’ she complained. ‘Surely it’s easier to chuck the whole bucketful at it?’

‘The idea is to aim at shrapnel and cool it down,’ Verity had to explain. ‘Apparently, shrapnel is little pieces of red-hot metal which come off a bomb, and if we don’t soak them with water they could start a fire.’

A sudden knock at the front door startled Verity. But assuming it was the officious little man who strutted around the street at night checking no lights were showing at windows, she felt she must answer the door. She hadn’t drawn the curtains in her room this evening, and maybe Amy had switched on the light to look for something in there and forgotten about the blackout.

‘I’m sorry, is there –?’ she began as she opened the door, but stopped short when she saw who it was calling so late. ‘Father!’ she exclaimed, her legs turning to jelly with fright. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Forget the twenty questions,’ he said, barging his way past her. ‘I can’t stand on the doorstep breaching the blackout rules.’

She felt faint with shock, and she couldn’t believe he had the cheek to come here. ‘You aren’t welcome here,’ she blurted out. ‘Please go now, there’s nothing I want to say to you.’

‘There’s plenty I need to say to you,’ he said. ‘Now shut that front door, put the kettle on and take that look off your face. I’m not a murderer but your father.’

Verity had always thought of him as tall, with wide shoulders, but she didn’t remember him filling space the way he was now. Granted there wasn’t much room in the kitchen now with the Morrison shelter in the centre, but he took it all up. He didn’t look smart the way she remembered, either. His dark hair was long and untidy, with touches of grey, he hadn’t shaved, and his moustache was no longer trimmed and waxed. In a crumpled dark suit and a shirt with grubby collar and cuffs, he could have been sleeping rough.

Yet it was his face that had changed the most. He’d always looked so suave and well cared for. But now his face was bloated, and there was a redness to it which wasn’t sunburn. Even his eyes were bloodshot, with bags beneath them. He made her think of the man who was always waiting outside the Tiger’s Head at Lee Green for it to open at lunchtime. He was a drunk, and she’d been told he was often found out cold on the pavement outside after closing time. She could smell drink on her father too, so perhaps that was why he looked the way he did.

She put the kettle on, so nervous she had difficulty
lighting the gas. ‘What do you want?’ she asked, quaking inside.

‘Want?’ he repeated, his voice suddenly very loud and harsh. ‘Is it a crime for a man to wish to see his daughter?’