The Girls They Left Behind (35 page)

Broomsticks instead of guns! Aeroplanes made out of old saucepans - ships from iron park railings. And now they were even asking for people to hand in their old binoculars because they didn’t have enough to give sailors at sea.

A proper home-made war this is, he thought in disgust.

How can we ever win it this way?

Tim and Keith were building themselves a cart with a set of old pram wheels and a couple of planks of wood that Reg Corner had given them.

‘It’ll be smashing,’ Tim declared, tying the wheels on with bits of string. They were all short bits, collected over a period of some weeks and forming a tangle of ends and knots in his pocket. ‘We’ll be able to go all over the place on it.’

‘Not up hills,’ Keith pointed out. ‘We’ll have to pull it up hills.

‘Well, I know that. But there’s lots of hills to go down. None”

of the others have got a cart as good as this.’

‘Brian Collins says he’s making one.’

‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he? He’s always got to be best.’

Tim looked up as Reg came down the garden path and stopped beside them. ‘Look, isn’t it a smasher? We’ll be able to help you on the farm with this.’

Reg squatted down beside them. His face was grave. He looked at the cart and nodded.

‘It’s a good one. You’ve done well. But you won’t be able to help me on the farm. Not for much longer.’

The boys stared at him.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m not going to be there. I’ve got my papers.’

Tim and Keith knew what that meant. Reg had been called up. He’d be going away, to fight in the war. They sat back on their heels, the cart momentarily forgotten.

‘What are you going to be? Will you be a pilot?’

‘No, I’m going in the Navy.’

‘Oh.’ Tim was momentarily disappointed. ‘I’d rather be a pilot. That’s what I’m going to be, when I’m old enough, if the war lasts long enough.’

‘Let’s hope it doesn’t,’ Reg said soberly. ‘We just want it to be over as soon as possible.’

‘Don’t you want to go and fight?’ Keith asked curiously. He and the other boys talked about the war incessantly, discussing aeroplanes, ships and tanks. They were all convinced that if the enemy invaded and penetrated as far as Bridge End, he would meet his match in the children who were prepared to defend it. They had built dens in the woods, ready to go into hiding if the need arose, and were constantly on the lookout for spies.

‘I’m no fighter,’ Reg answered. ‘I’m a farmer. But it seems you can’t be what you want to be, these days.’ He stopped. He and Edna had always tried never to grumble in front of the boys. As they saw it, they had a duty to make their disrupted childhood as normal as possible. But now it looked as if they weren’t going to be able to do that either.

Keith looked at him and saw something of his feeling in his face. He got up and leaned against Reg’s big body.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘We’ll look after Edna.’

‘And the baby,’ Tim added. Keith wasn’t so sure about the baby, but he nodded anyway.

Reg grinned but the grin faded quickly, leaving his face more serious than ever.

‘That’s just it, kids. You can’t. You see, if I’m not working on the farm any more, we can’t stay in the cottage. It belongs to Mr Callaway, and he’ll want it for someone else.’

‘But what about Edna?’

‘She’s going to go and stay with her mum.’

The boys digested this in silence. They knew Edna’s mum.

She was all right, but they didn’t think they wanted to go and live in her little cottage. There wasn’t really room, not like where Reg and Edna lived now.

‘What will we do?’ Keith asked at last. His voice was slightly wobbly and Reg put his arm round him.

‘We’ll have to find you somewhere else, won’t we?

Somewhere you’ll like just as much as being with us.’

Tim frowned. ‘There isn’t anyone else in the village who could take us.’ A sudden fear gripped him. ‘We won’t have to go and live with Miss Woddis, will we?’

Reg shook his head firmly. ‘You won’t have to go there, don’t worry. I’m sure we’ll find someone.’

‘I’d rather stay with you,’ Keith said, his voice rising a little.

‘I know, son. But you can’t. Not if I’m going away and Edna goes to her mum’s. And with a new baby, too …’ He looked at them. He and Edna had talked it over night after night, trying to see how they could keep the boys, but there was no solution to the problem.

What he was really worried about was that they might not be able to find Tim and Keith a billet together. Most of the houses in the village were already taken up, with one or two children, and he couldn’t think of anyone with enough room.

‘It’s no use,’ he’d said to Edna at last, the previous evening.

‘You’ll have to write to Mrs Budd. It’s for her to decide what to do, not us.’ And Edna had agreed and got out the writing pad, her tears dripping on to the pages as she wrote.

Jess read the letter next day and saw the marks of the tears smudging the ink.

‘Not many people want two lively boys,’ she said as she read the letter to Frank when he came home from work that evening. ‘And most of those who’ve got space for evacuees are already full. I don’t like to think of them being split up, Frank.’

‘Well, they’re not coming home,’ he said firmly. ‘Not with all these raids. And it’s not just the raids -you know what boys are, they’d be wanting to go and look at all the bomb sites. I’ve seen young Micky Baxter and his gang, clambering about all over ruined houses, collecting shrapnel and bomb cases. One of them’s going to pick up something live one day and get blown to pieces. Or get buried by a wall falling on top of them.

It’s not safe, but you wouldn’t be able to get those two young scallywags to see that.’

Jess nodded. She remembered the first raid, when the boys had been out playing cowboys and Indians. There was the problem of school, too. A few schools were open again because so many children had come back, but since the bombing had started a lot of them had been re-evacuated and it was difficult to know which schools were working and which weren’t. And nobody seemed to be checking that the children were actually attending.

‘I know they’re better off in the country,’ she said. ‘But I want them to be happy there. And I do miss them so much.’

Frank nodded and put his hand on her shoulder. ‘I know you do, love. So do I. Look, we’ll go out to Bridge End on Sunday and see them. We’ll have a talk with Mrs Corner and see what she’s got to suggest. And perhaps Mrs Greenberry will know of somewhere they can go.’

Perhaps she would. But Jess wasn’t too hopeful. Tim and Keith had fallen on their feet with the Corners, and you couldn’t expect that sort of luck twice. And when she remembered what had happened to some of the other children who had been evacuated, it made her shiver.

Better to have the boys at home, facing the dangers with their own parents, than living miserably miles away. But it wouldn’t be easy to get Frank to see that.

Mr Churchill had changed his War Cabinet and Mr Chamberlain, whom so many blamed for getting Britain into the war, had resigned. Egypt was demanding the abdication of the King of Greece, and Japan had attacked the Burma Road. Portsmouth set itself to raise a million pounds for weapons in one week, and people began to talk of rebuilding the city when the war was over. But when would that be?

The raiders were still coming, and still being fought off by the RAF. But the pretence that it was no more than a game had been replaced now by a brittle, feverish lightheartedness that was very near hysteria.

Duff and Sandy missed Geoff desperately. As long as the three of them had been flying together, it had seemed as if their luck would hold. Now the leader of the trio had gone, and each time they flew the other two strapped themselves into their seats with a sick fear that they would be next.

Duff had taken over Geoff’s little sports car, and they continued to visit the farm whenever they could manage a few hours away from the station. But without Geoff they seemed incomplete. The group of six which had careered so gaily around the countryside was now unbalanced.

‘Why not ask Dennis to come with us?’ Betty suggested one evening. There was a village hop in the church hall and the girls had dashed up to their room as soon as milking was over to get ready. Erica was standing on a chair where the sloping ceiling was highest, while Betty drew a line down the back of each leg with eye pencil to make it look as if Erica was wearing stockings. ‘I bet he can dance all right.’

Erica moved so abruptly that the pencil jerked across her calf and drew a zigzag from knee to ankle. She jumped down, inspecting the damage crossly.

‘Now look what you’ve done! It’ll never rub off. I shall look a proper fool.’

‘Well, you shouldn’t have moved. Just because I said we might ask Dennis ‘

‘I’ve told you before, I wouldn’t walk to the end of the street with that conchie!’ Erica exclaimed. ‘I’d rather stay here. I never wanted to go to the dance anyway, not really.’ Her face twisted suddenly and she turned away, clenching her arms across her body. ‘I know what it’ll be like. Stupid girls wrapping themselves round any man they can get hold of, kissing and slobbering all over each other - it’ll be disgusting.

Well, you can do that if you want to, but I -‘ She sat down suddenly on her bed and stared at the photograph of Geoffrey that she kept on the little chest of drawers ‘- I’d rather stay here.’

Her voice broke on the last words and Betty bit her lip.

Since her first outburst of grief when Geoffrey had died, Erica had refused to talk about her feelings. She had gone home for a few days and visited his parents, returning with tight lips and glittering eyes, apparently determined to get back to her normal life as quickly as possible. It had been her idea that the girls should go to the village dance.

‘I thought she was getting over it,’ Betty said as she and Yvonne went out to meet the two young airmen. ‘She hasn’t said a word against Dennis since she came back.’

‘She hasn’t said a word to him, either,’ Yvonne pointed out. They climbed into the little sports car and gave Sandy and Duff a quick rundown on what had happened. ‘She hates him more than ever.’

‘He seems a decent enough bloke,’ Sandy remarked later, when he and Betty had stepped outside the hall for a breath of fresh air. ‘He’s entitled to have his own ideas.’

‘Erica doesn’t think so. She thinks he ought to be in prison if he’s not going to fight. I tell her he’s helping his country more by working on the farm than picking oakum in jail, but she doesn’t see it that way.’

‘Erica’s still in a state. You can’t blame her.’ Sandy climbed up to sit on top of a gate and threw away his cigarette butt. ‘I shouldn’t tell you this, but we’re going on a big raid over Germany tomorrow.’

‘You are?’ Betty turned her head to look at him. He was staring into the darkness and frowning. ‘You mean bombing?’

‘That’s right.’

‘But I thought you and Duff flew Spitfires.’

‘We do. We’re going as escort. We’ve done it before.’ He was scowling. ‘Look, Betty, there’s something I want to ask you.’

She gazed at him, feeling uncomfortable. There was something odd in his manner, something she hadn’t encountered before. If it had been Graham, she’d have thought he was about to make a pass at her. But Sandy wasn’t like that.

He’d never touched her, never even tried to kiss her. He and Duff had just started coming over as company for Geoff, and then the six of them had had fun together. There had never been any more to it than that.

‘Don’t look so scared,’ he said. ‘Look, I know you’re engaged to this sailor bloke. But - well, I think a lot of you, Betty. And I’d just like to know if-well, if ever things - you know, went wrong or something between you and him - well, if you might think of me a bit, that’s all.’

He finished with a rush, his face scarlet, looking away from her into the trees. Betty gazed at him, feeling suddenly touched. She reached out and laid her fingers gently against his sleeve.

‘I do think of you, Sandy,’ she said in a low voice. ‘You’re one of the best friends I’ve ever had. But I can’t break faith with Graham, not when he’s away at sea. It wouldn’t be fair.’

‘Oh, I’m not asking you to do that,’ he said quickly. ‘It’s just - well, I’d like to know there was a chance - you know?’

Betty looked at his open face. He wasn’t as ginger as Graham, but his fair hair had a definite reddish shine to it.

Funny that she should pick up with two boys with red hair.

Maybe that was why she liked Sandy, because he reminded her a bit of Graham.

Immediately, she knew that was wrong. Sandy wasn’t a bit like Graham. He was shy where Graham was cheeky, reserved where Graham was bold. He’d never once tried to go ‘too far’, he’d never even tried to kiss her, except for a quick peck on the cheek when he arrived and one when he left. Well, no more should he when she wasn’t his girlfriend, but Betty knew very well that that wouldn’t have stopped Graham in similar circumstances. Taking a girl out to tea, or just for a run in a car, would have seemed to him quite sufficient excuse to ask for, and expect, a few kisses in return.

She thought of Graham on that last evening, demanding that she let him make love to her, almost trying to force her.

As if the fact that he was going to sea tomorrow, and might never know what it felt like, gave him a right. But Sandy went flying every day, fighting in the sky, risking his life with every minute he was in the air. And he had never so much as suggested…

If she had met Sandy first, would she have fallen in love with him? And what about Bob Shaw? And Dennis …?

Sandy climbed down from the gate. His frown was gone and he grinned, put both hands on her waist and swung her high in the air.

‘Well, it’s back to the ‘drome now. See you next weekend, eh? And then I can tell you all about the raid.’

‘Oh, I can’t,’ Betty said in dismay. ‘I’m going home next weekend. But I’ll see you the week after that. That’s if you want to come,’ she added, feeling suddenly shy.

‘Oh, I’ll want to come. You don’t know what it’s meant to me and the others -I mean, me and Duff-coming over here to see you girls. It’s been a lifeline.’ He looked at her, his eyes