Wartime Family (21 page)

‘Say it.’

‘I promise.’

The man fingered the brim of his hat, bending it that bit lower. ‘It’ll be our little secret,’ he said. ‘If your mother asks, tell her your father gave you the money, and if
he
asks …’

‘He won’t. He’s drunk.’

The man nodded knowingly. ‘Grown-ups aren’t as perfect as they make out, are they, Stanley, especially parents. We don’t choose our parents, do we? We get what we’re given so to speak.’ He patted Stanley’s shoulder. ‘I understand how you feel, Stanley. I had the same problems myself.’

The man looked at the boy and the boy looked back. They were both silent for a moment as each weighed up the other. The man spoke first. ‘I’m always around. I’ll make sure I watch out for you. Never fear.’

Stanley stared up at him, not sure what to say.

‘When you can’t get what you want from grown-ups, you come and see me. I’ll make sure you get what you deserve. Is that understood?’

Stanley nodded. He hadn’t a clue who this man was, but he liked what he said.

‘Go on,’ said the man with a jerk of his head. ‘Get your fish and chip supper.’ Suddenly his hand shot out of his pocket. He held a warning finger before Stanley’s face. ‘But tell no one. Do you hear me? Tell no one.’

Stanley had no trouble in agreeing to the condition. As he prepared to remount the bicycle, he watched the man walk off down the street. He took big strides and didn’t look to right or left. Once he was out of sight, Stanley thought he heard a car start up. Anyone who flashed ten-shilling notes around
had
to be able to afford a car, he decided.

The boys that had been hanging around the chip shop earlier were still there, faces pressed against the steamed-up windows, their scruffy clothes flapping around their bony frames.

Stanley had no intention of waiting for his supper one moment longer. Pulling his bicycle on to the pavement, he made straight for them.

‘Right! Who fancies a fish and chip supper and a bottle of Tizer?’

Three surprised, pale faces jerked round to face him.

‘You offerin’?’

‘Yeah! Me dad gave me a ten-bob note to get rid of me.’ The lie rolled easily off his tongue.

‘Cor! Wish my dad would give me that when ’e wanted to get rid of me,’ exclaimed the gangly lad, his mouth already hanging open.

‘Wish I ’ad a dad,’ said another miserably.

The four of them piled through the chip-shop door in a conjoined mass, lining up at the counter, their sticky fingers leaving marks over the chrome trim.

‘It’s only fishcakes and chips tonight,’ said the fat lady behind the counter.

The boys didn’t care. Once they’d been served, they went outside making themselves comfortable on the pavement, their backs against the wall.

Not a word was spoken until the newspapers containing the fishcakes and chips were licked clean.

‘I’m going to join the army when I grow up,’ said one of the boys. ‘Look. I’ve got a gun.’

He pulled out a cap pistol and pulled the trigger. The cap sparked and gave off a sharp twang.
Not really like a gun at all
, thought Stanley.

‘That’s not real,’ said one of the others. ‘This is real.’

Stanley had noticed earlier that the boy’s trousers dragged down on one side. Now he saw the reason. His eyes opened wide.

‘Wow! Where did you get that?’

The boy smirked proudly. ‘My granddad brought it back from the war.’

‘Can I hold it?’ asked Stanley.

The boy eyed him warily before passing it over. ‘Only for a minute, mind.’

‘No one can be in our gang unless they’ve got a gun,’ said the third lad. He brought out a gun carved from wood and painted to look real. ‘You’ll have to get one if you’re going to join our gang,’ he said to Stanley.

‘Right,’ said Stanley, his eyes following the real gun as he passed it back to its owner. ‘I’ll get one.’

‘It’s got to be a real one,’ said the boy with the saggy trousers as he returned his grandfather’s gun to his pocket.

Stanley nodded. ‘It will be. I’ve got a friend who’ll get me one, you just see if I don’t.’

His mother was taping over a window pane when Stanley got home. ‘I didn’t do it,’ he said on seeing the bits of glass brushed into the dustpan.

‘Of course not,’ she said abruptly.

He accepted her brusqueness and didn’t ask any more questions; just in case one of his pals was responsible and his shilling a week pocket money might come a cropper. She didn’t ask him why he was home.

Puzzled, he watched as she locked and bolted the door, pulled the blackout curtains and sat shivering with her cardigan wrapped tightly around her. Suddenly, as though drawing back from somewhere, she turned on a smile and tried to look brave. ‘Did you enjoy your supper?’ she asked him.

‘Yeah!’ he exclaimed with total honesty. ‘It was the best ever!’

‘Right. Well, seeing as you’re home tonight, you can have a bath. The geyser’s working again and there’s a bar of Lifebuoy in the soap dish.’

Stanley groaned. ‘Aw, Mum! I ’ad a bath last week.’

‘Had! The word is “had”, Stanley. It has an “aitch” at the beginning. And baths should be taken at least once a week.’

Stanley baulked at the thought. ‘Mr Churchill says we ’ave to save water.’

‘Have, Stanley. And yes, Mr Churchill did say that we have to save water, but he didn’t say it meant that Stanley Randall and other boys shouldn’t wash and take a bath occasionally.’

‘I don’t like this house,’ Stanley said as his mother manhandled him to the bathroom.

‘Only because it’s got a proper bathroom,’ said his mother.

Stanley grimaced, wishing they could go back to a house with a tin bath hanging on the back wall. Trust Harry and Edgar to have an indoor one. Bath night could be put off if it was raining, no one wanting to fetch the bath in. But here there were no excuses.

Once he was in the bath, she began tidying the clothes he’d thrown on to a chair. The remaining change from the ten-shilling note fell from his pocket and rolled across the linoleum.

She frowned as she picked up the florins, the sixpences and the shillings. ‘Where did you get all this?’

Stanley was about to tell the truth, but suddenly remembered the stranger and his promise.

‘Six shillings from me dad.’

His mother raised her eyebrows. ‘He gave you that much?’

Stanley decided to elaborate on the basic lie. ‘He said that the people on the church outing gave him a big tip and he wanted to share it with me. He thought you might need a shilling or two to buy a few extra things.’

Mary Anne raised one eyebrow in a singularly surprised fashion. Perhaps Henry had turned over a new leaf after all.

Stanley was in bed when Edgar tried his key in the lock at around eleven. He knocked at the same time.

‘Everything alright?’ he asked. A draught of cold air came in with him. Mary Anne turned up the gas.

‘Yes.’

Edgar rubbed his hands before the fire’s glow. ‘Would you like a cup of cocoa?’

They sat sipping cocoa and talking about what had happened until around one o’clock.

‘I think someone is definitely stirring things up for us,’ said Edgar. ‘A few of Harry’s friends are looking into it. They think they know who’s responsible.’

He looked up at her quickly, then lowered his eyes. She sensed he’d been going to mention Harry and his connection with the black market, but hadn’t been sure just how much she knew.

‘I do know what Harry was up to before going away,’ she said.

Edgar looked her in the face. ‘You know about the nightclubs?’

Nightclubs?

‘Yes.’ She nodded curtly, as though she were telling the truth.

Edgar sighed. ‘What with this war, they’re certainly coming into their own. You can’t imagine the mix of uniforms on a Saturday night. The trouble is that with Harry being away, there’s a few trying to muscle in.’ He shrugged his narrow shoulders and pushed his spectacles back up on to the bridge of his nose.

Mary Anne was intrigued. Harry had never mentioned anything about nightclubs. She couldn’t help but want to know more.

‘How many nightclubs does he own?’

Edgar almost laughed. ‘He doesn’t own them; he’s merely got a certain interest …’

He stopped, his features freezing as he realized the truth. ‘You didn’t know.’

She held his gaze. ‘About him being involved in nightclubs?’ She shook her head. ‘Tell me.’

He glanced nervously between the milky surface of the chocolate and her face. ‘I don’t think …’

Mary Anne pointed in the direction of the broken window pane.

Edgar nodded. ‘As you know, your Harry can take care of himself. He’s handy with his fists. So he got a bit of a reputation for sorting out the rough stuff. A few of the nightclubs knew him anyway through the fags he got from Wills’s and sold via contacts. Anyway, gangsters were muscling in on the nightclubs and Harry was asked to help them out, so he did. His price was always a cut of the take, and then one club owner, Randy Kirkwood, made it legal and gave him a proper share complete with the paperwork. There’s some that reckon Harry pulled the wool over Kirkwood’s eyes and that what he took was their share. Of course, with Harry going away it’s left to me to sort things out, and I do,’ he said, rubbing his bloodied knuckles. ‘Drive me out and the coast is clear. That’s their game. That’s what they’re up to.’

‘What else are they likely to do?’

He shrugged. ‘Anything.’

Later that night Mary Anne lay in bed mulling it over. She told herself that Harry was not a true criminal; he didn’t kill people, he didn’t rob banks. On the other hand it was obvious that he’d made some very dangerous enemies.

The room was in total darkness thanks to the blackout curtains. Even so, she stared up at the ceiling, narrowing her eyes as though seeking a pinprick of light through the darkness. If only Michael were here … But he wasn’t. She hadn’t heard from him for weeks. Yet again the doubts resurfaced, made more intense by the darkness. Worries that had been manageable by day turned into ogres at night. She’d never considered a time when Michael wouldn’t be there, but anything was possible. The old habit of living for everybody else seemed the only right and proper thing to do. Michael had been an indulgence; the real world was catching up with her, and as if that weren’t enough, there were Harry’s friends to consider.

These people were frightening, and although the flat was very comfortable and central, she had to think of Stanley. But where could they go? She squeezed her eyes shut but could not blank out the notion that there was only one place really open to her.

Her sense of foreboding was like an anvil resting on her chest. If she stayed here things might get very nasty, and she couldn’t think only of herself. She had to consider Stanley.

She rolled over on to her side, her tears staining the pillow. In the morning she would write to Michael telling him to find someone else. In the evening she would go round to see Henry and offer to come back. Although unpalatable and liable to cause heartbreak all round, she had no other alternative. She had to forget about herself, about being happy. To do that she had to forget about Michael.

Wing Commander Guy Hunter had been patient with Lizzie’s nervousness and her mumbled horror on seeing the legs sticking out from beneath the tarpaulin.

‘Here,’ he’d said, hugging her against his shoulder and giving her a clean handkerchief to cry into.

That, she decided, was the moment that she fell in love with him. All reason had fled. The staunch arguments for resistance became trivialities.

On Friday he told her to stand down.

‘I have to go to London on Monday,’ he said grimly. ‘And I know you could do with some rest and recreation. It was quite an ordeal’

She nodded. Her stomach rumbled. She’d been unable to eat anything the night before and this morning at breakfast was no better.

‘You look pale,’ he said. ‘You need some fresh air. We’re both due leave. Didn’t we agree that only yesterday?’

Standing straight, hands behind her back, she picked out the memories of the morning before the bombing and the sight of the dead girls.

‘Yes, sir. We did.’

‘Stop the “sir”, at least when we’re alone.’

‘Yes.’

‘Call me Guy – but only when no one else is around.’

She nodded. ‘Yes. I will.’

He flicked at some papers lying loose on his desk, gathering them up into a folder. ‘Now go and pack your things. We’re taking the slow boat to London via a little place called Shotley.’

Lizzie felt her face growing hot with embarrassment.
A hotel?
Separate rooms, she hoped.

Guy read her concern. ‘Don’t worry about what people might say. We’re staying in private accommodation. It’s got two cabins and two beds. You need a rest. We both do.’

She wasn’t in the mood for guessing games, so didn’t quiz him on their journey.

The salt smell of sea air and the screech of gulls sounded overhead. Lizzie’s spirits lifted. She began craning her neck for a glimpse of the sea. Ahead of her she could see flint-built cottages and wooden-framed houses lining a road leading to the beach.

‘Left here,’ he said suddenly.

They turned into a narrow lane where spring flowers speckled the grass verges with yellow, pink, blue and white.

‘And left again,’ he said.

They turned at a sign saying ‘Brian’s Boathouse’ painted in faded green on what remained of a small wooden dinghy.

‘Park over there.’

She followed where he pointed, chickens squawking as they scattered before the turning tyres.

‘This is it.’

She looked round for a hotel, but saw only a boat.

It was moored alongside a wooden jetty in an inlet on the River Orwell.

‘I bought it from a man who took it to Dunkirk,’ he explained, eyeing the boat with undisguised pride. ‘He decided he never wanted to go to sea again. You can’t blame him really. It couldn’t have been pleasant motoring into the shallows in those conditions. It was sheer luck he didn’t get blown out of the water.’

‘It’s lovely,’ said Lizzie. The truth was, she knew nothing about boats, but she studied it as though she did.