The Girls They Left Behind (56 page)

It had to be left to the people at the top, even if they were the ones that had got the world into it in the first place. And meanwhile, men were fighting each other on land, sea and air and Dennis was training for one of the most dangerous jobs of all, so dangerous that even the training could kill him.

Erica touched her arm and Betty turned. Her blue eyes were serious.

‘I’m sorry, Bet. I know I’m not the only one. We’re all worried half out of our minds. And I’m sorry for the things I said about Dennis, too. I never did think he was a traitor, not really.’ She smiled waveringly. ‘Don’t let’s fall out. We’ve all got to pull together now, whatever we really think.’

‘I’m thankful our Betty’s out in the country, anyway,’ Annie Chapman said. ‘At least I know she’s safe.’

Soon after the first blitz she had volunteered to work in an Emergency Centre for those who had been bombed out. Like Elsie Philpotts, she worked day and night, serving out cocoa and hot soup to those who no longer had a home.

‘There’s hardly space for them all in diose schoolrooms, but we have to cram them in somehow. And at least there’s a good store of clothes in Pompey now, since the Lady Mayoress set up that collection. But what most of ‘em wants first off is just a shoulder to cry on. And a bit of a joke to cheer ‘em up.’

She sat back in Frank’s armchair and sighed. She had called in for a cup of tea, worn out after a morning at the Centre, cleaning floors on which children had been sick and washing sheets from beds that had been wet or soiled. Yet, exhausted as she was, her own house was kept as spotless as always, for Annie refused to let her standards slip ‘just because of Hitler’.

Jess could not help in Emergency Centres or canteens because of Maureen. But she had her own war work, making sailors’ square rig collars and stitching on the rows of tapes whenever she had time to spare from her housework.

‘It’s just as well I’ve got this to do,’ she observed. ‘There’s precious little dressmaking to be done these days, what with hardly any materials in the shops. And they’re talking about putting clothes on ration too. I reckon we’re going to have worn out every frock in the England by the time this lot’s finished. I’m already cutting down my old jacket to make a winter coat for Rose, and some of Rose’s things are going to have to do for the baby. I don’t know how women who can’t sew are going to manage.’

Annie went back to get Ted’s supper ready. She had been gone only ten minutes when a knock brought Jess to the front door. Mike Simmons was there, looking grey and tired. He had come home a few days ago, not that there was a home for him to come to, and had called over to see his two little girls, who were staying with Jess.

Jess brought him into the back room and sat him down in her own armchair. She could sense the shock he’d had in seeing the ruins of his house. She still felt it herself, every time she went up October Street and saw the gap, like the hole left by a rotten tooth.

‘I’m ever so sorry, Mr Simmons,’ she said. ‘It’s a terrible thing to have happened. But she couldn’t have known anything about it, you know.’

He shook his head. ‘I know. Everyone’s told me how quick it was. But - she shouldn”I have died, Mrs Budd. She was too young. And the baby, little Tom, I only saw him the once, at Christmas.’ His face twisted and the tears ran down his cheeks. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled, wiping them uselessly with his hands. ‘Letting myself blubber like a kid. I don’t seem able to stop, somehow.’

‘Don’t try. If you can’t cry when you lose your wife and baby, when can you? It’ll do you good.’ She gave him one of Frank’s handkerchiefs. ‘Stay there and I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

He did as he was told. Jess could see he was just about at the end of his tether, all his strength gone, like a little boy again. Well, perhaps the best thing was to treat him like one, be a mum to him for a little while, give him something hot and sweet to drink and let him have his cry out. He’d have enough to face from now on, what with two little girls to think about, and being away at sea most of the time. It was a miracle he’d been able to get home now.

‘What am I going to do?’ he asked later, when he’d drunk two cups of tea liberally laced with Jess’s sugar ration. ‘I’m really grateful to you for looking after the girls, but I’ll have to do something about them. I suppose they’ll have to go out to the country somewhere, but the ship’s only in for a day, I’m not going to have time ‘

He was sounding desperate again and Jess spoke quickly.

‘You needn’t worry about the girls, Mr Simmons. I know somewhere they can go, that’s if you’d like them to. My boys are out in the country, at Bridge End. It’s a nice village and they’ve been there nearly eighteen months.’ She bit her lip, thinking how much she had missed of their boyhoods.

‘They’re really enjoying themselves,’ she went on determinedly, ‘and the place they’re staying at has got room for some more children. Your Stella and Muriel could stop with them.’

‘With your boys?’

‘That’s right. Tim and Keith, they’re eleven and nine. Just a bit older than your two, so they’d be able to look after them a bit. They’re good boys,’ she added, thinking that he might be doubtful about his daughters staying in the same house with the two young Budds. ‘I mean, they get into a bit of mischief now and then but they wouldn’t do anything, well, anything you wouldn’t like.’

‘I reckon any kid of yours’d be a good friend to my girls,’ he said. ‘But what sort of place is it? A farm? A big house? I don’t know as they’d like anywhere too posh.’

Jess smiled. ‘I suppose you could call it posh, but not the way you mean. At least, I don’t think so. It’s a vicarage.’

‘A vicarage?’

Jess laughed. ‘That’s right. There’s just the vicar there, he’s quite old, and a housekeeper. She looks after the boys mostly, sees to their meals and their clothes and that. But Mr Beckett takes quite an interest. He’s never had any children of his own, you see, and I think he quite enjoys having youngsters about.’

Mike looked worried. ‘But, well, we’ve never been much of a family for church. I don’t know if the girls ‘

‘Oh, that doesn’t matter,‘Jess said cheerfully. ‘He likes the boys to go to the morning service on a Sunday, but he always lets them out before the sermon. And then Mrs Mudge cooks them a proper Sunday dinner. They have their supper with him every night, and their breakfast in the mornings.’ She laughed again. ‘The last time I saw them, Tim told me they sold him their sugar!’

‘Sold him their sugar?’

‘That’s right. He’s got a sweet tooth, you see, and they don’t drink much tea or anything like that, they’ve always liked plain water best, and a cup of cocoa at bedtime, so they sell him their sugar ration at a halfpenny a spoonful. Mind, I think myself he does it just out of kindness, but it did my heart good to see them measuring it out and adding it all up. It was a sort of family thing, if you can understand what I mean.’

Mike found that he could. He listened while Jess told him more about Bridge End and its vicar. Mr Beckett was in his sixties and had always lived alone, it seemed. He was as thin as a spider, in spite of all the sugar, and went everywhere on an old sit-up-and-beg bicycle. He was forgetful and more than a little eccentric, but he was kind and although it was very different at the vicarage from the Corners’ house, Tim and Keith were happy with him.

‘I was a bit worried when the boys first went there,’ Jess confessed. ‘I thought they’d hate it. I thought he’d be strict and make them read the Bible all the time - not that there’s any harm in that, I read the Bible myself when I’m in church, but boys wouldn’t like it. But he seems more like a boy himself. Second childhood, Frank calls it.’

‘And you think he’d have room for the girls? You think he’d take them?’

‘I know he would. The last time I was there Mrs Mudge said they would probably have to take more children anyway people are sending them away again, after the blitz. If I were you, I’d take them out there straightaway.’ She hesitated, then said diffidently. ‘As a matter of fact, they’re almost expecting you. I wrote last week and said you might be looking for somewhere for the girls.’

She left Mike to think about it for a few minutes while she went out to the coalshed to fill up the scuttle. Coal was scarce again and the pile she’d got in during the summer had almost gone. She scraped about with her shovel and lifted out something that wasn’t coal at all.

Puzzled, Jess carried it out to daylight. It was black with coal dust and a bit damaged, but she brushed it off and saw that it was a donkey, made of wickerwork. She stared at it.

Mike came out through the back door.

‘Let me get the coal in for you. And I was thinking, I’d like the girls -‘ He stopped, his eyes on the wickerwork donkey.

‘Where did that come from?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve just found it in the coal. I’ve never seen it before in my life.’

Mike Simmons reached out and touched the dirty, broken ornament. His fingers traced it gently. They began to shake and Jess looked at him in surprise. His eyes were full of tears.

‘Mr Simmons, Mike, what’s the matter? What is it?’

‘We had a donkey just like this,’ he said, his voice cracking.

‘I brought it home from Gib one time. Kathy kept it in the front room, on the mantelpiece. It got lost in the bombing.’

Jess looked at it again. ‘Our Annie’s got one too. I thought for a minute it might be hers, but I know she’s still got it. I don’t know where this one came from.’

‘I could swear it’s the one I gave Kathy,’ Mike said. ‘One of its feet was a bit broken, just like this one. But I know it can’t be, not really. How could it have got into your coalshed?’

He took the donkey and held it, his hands trembling. Jess saw his shoulders begin to shake and knew that he was on the verge of breaking down again. She took his arm and led him back indoors.

‘Sit down there,’ she said gently, and he sank back into the chair with the donkey on his knee. Jess sat with him, listening to the voices of the children outside, thinking of Kathy and the baby Thomas, thinking of her own children at Bridge End and of all the friends and neighbours who were facing pain as Mike was facing it now, a pain that ate into their hearts and would never go away.

Would anyone ever be able to forget the things that were happening in this terrible war?

Gladys had begun, almost without knowing why, to see more of Graham Philpotts. She hardly looked upon him as a boyfriend - she was still writing to Colin Chapman, still hankering after something more than friendship there, and in any case Graham was a year or two younger than she was, and had always been her brother Bob’s mate. But she liked his cheery, freckled face, and the way he always had a joke on his lips, and it was nice to have a boy to go about with a bit, when there was time, which wasn’t often these days.

All the same, she probably wouldn’t have given him much more thought if he hadn’t arrived on the doorstep one Sunday afternoon. Peggy had answered the door, surprised to see him there, but had let him in without comment thinking he had called to see Bob. But although the two lads had looked pleased enough to see each other and had chatted for a few minutes, it was only when Gladys had come downstairs that she’d seen his face light up and realised why he had really come.

‘Hullo, Gladdie,’ Graham said, rather selfconsciously. ‘I just thought I’d look in to see how you got on in the raid the other night.’

Gladys shrugged. She was blushing to the roots of her hair, Peggy noticed with some surprise, and wasn’t that lipstick on her mouth? Had she heard Graham’s voice from upstairs and hastily done herself up a bit before coming down?

‘I was all right. Bit tired, that’s all. And I wish they’d give me a better van.’

‘It looked a bit past it,’ Graham agreed. ‘Still, you drove it pretty well. I didn’t know you could drive, Gladdie.’

‘No reason why you should, is there?’ She sounded a bit sharp - didn’t know quite how to take it. Obviously she hadn’t expected him to come. Still, Peggy thought, there was no harm in it. Why not encourage them a bit, let ‘em have a bit of fun? Gladys hadn’t had a boyfriend for a while now, not since she’d started carrying a torch for young Colin Chapman. It’d do her good to have a boy who wasn’t always away at sea.

‘Why don’t you two go in the front room and have a talk?’

she suggested. ‘I lit the fire in there after dinner, seeing as it’s a Sunday. And then you can stop and have a bit of tea with us, Graham, if you’d like to.’

Gladys sat down on the settee and patted the cushion beside her. ‘Well, don’t just stand there, Graham, you make the place look untidy. Tell us what’s been happening.’

Graham sat down awkwardly. Now that he was here, he wasn’t sure what to do. He hadn’t sat in a girl’s front room since the night he’d walked out on Betty. He’d almost forgotten what you did with a girl who wasn’t a tart.

‘Not much,’ he said. ‘Been working on bombed houses, mostly. You wouldn’t think I’d joined the Navy, more like a flipping builder’s yard.’

‘That’s what our Bob says. He’s down in Wiltshire or Dorset or somewhere, putting up huts for the RAF. Why can’t the RAF build their own huts?’

Graham shook his head. ‘I dunno. Seems a daft way to run a war to me. I don’t reckon any of them know what they’re doing.’ He glanced sideways at her. ‘You - you don’t mind me coming to see you like this, do you, Gladdie?’

‘Mind? Why should I mind? You were lucky to catch me in, that’s all.’

‘I suppose you get plenty of boyfriends,’ he said wistfully.

‘As many as I want, I s’pose,’ she answered. ‘Don’t have much time for that sort of thing these days, what with the ambulance and First Aid classes and all that. Why d’you want to know?’

Graham shrugged. ‘No reason, really. Well -‘ he hesitated, then blurted out, ‘I just wondered if you might go to the pictures with me one night. I mean, ever since me and Betty broke up, I’ve been a bit, well, you know. I won’t try anything on,’ he added anxiously. ‘I know you’re a decent girl. I just thought - well, if you hadn’t got anyone to go with …’

He stopped, feeling the blush run up his neck and flood his cheeks. He had never felt so awkward with Betty. He’d always been sure of himself with her, taking every opportunity to kiss her or let his hands rove over her body. Maybe that was why he was in such a state now, because in the end she’d turned him down. Since then, he’d not been with any girl who wasn’t a whore, and whores never turned you down.