Gull Island (9 page)

As they walked through the gathering gloom, a raggle-taggle procession of shabbily dressed children with Barbara and Luke at the head, in clothes
equally ill-fitting and worn, she explained her need to leave the shelter and safety of the Careys and find a place for herself and Rosita.

‘But why this farmer?’ Luke asked. ‘He won’t have changed. It’s no use expecting him to be different. If you go back it will be seen as tacit
agreement
to share his bed. Just by returning, you’ll be agreeing to his demands.’

‘I’ll make myself clear on what I expect,’ Barbara said with the
confidence
of youth. ‘I’ll make sure he understands. Besides, he might not take me when I insist on taking Rosita.’

‘Look, wait for a week. I’ll try and find something. I hadn’t realized how you were situated. I thought you’d stay with the Careys. I should have thought and sorted out something before this. I’ll find you and Rosita a place to live. A room and a position where you don’t have to do menial tasks for a man like Graham Prothero. Things that do this to your hands.’ He reached for her hand and touched the roughness. ‘There must be some easier way for you to earn your keep.’

‘It’s nice that you care, Luke. I’m so lucky having you for a friend. But I can’t see anyone taking me in, not anyone decent. If my own parents are too disgusted to acknowledge me and Rosita, then how can I expect a stranger to help?’

‘I’m a stranger and I want to help! I can’t be the only sane person in the world.’

‘You aren’t a stranger.’ She smiled in the darkness, her eyes luminescent, turning up to look into his face. ‘It’s odd, Luke, but although you’re different – I mean, you talk posh and have an important job of work – we are friends, aren’t we?’

‘I hope we always will be, Barbara.’ He leaned over and lightly touched her cheek with his lips. ‘Friends for always.’

‘For always,’ she echoed, but when she tried to return the kiss, her lips touched his woollen hat and they both laughed. It really didn’t matter.

Rosita had been grizzling for a while but then she began crying loud enough to make their ears pop and nothing Barbara could do would pacify her. Luke took the protesting child from Barbara’s arms and
cwtched
her under his coat. With a drawn-out, shuddering sigh, she ceased her crying and went to sleep. Smiling, Luke said, ‘And we’ll be friends too, Rosita and I.’

Barbara began the singing that always accompanied their walks and soon the children joined in, their voices brave and confident, rising up into the night sky. Rosita snuggled against Luke’s tattered jumper inside his jacket, and slept on.

The dark lanes changed to pavements, buildings loomed out of the dark and the nearness of other people was a threat to their happy
companionship
. An intrusion. Their footsteps slowed as they reached the
neighbourhood where streets, all similar to each other, gave shelter to large numbers of families. It was no longer a place for singing and apart from their dragging footsteps there was no sound to disturb the early evening. Most were inside eating their teatime meal or discussing the latest war news.

Nearer home there were a few young people gathered around the street lamp where the lamp-lighter had recently passed, touching each mantle with his long pole before cycling on to the next. The murmur of voices was low, fitting their mood, and tiredness dragged at their feet.

Then the air was disturbed in a way that made them stop and cling to each other in fright. They heard screams, sudden and bloodcurdling. Then the shouting of angry voices reached them and the crashing of objects being thrown about. Some atavistic instinct told Barbara it was the Careys before they dared to take one step further and reach the corner of the road.

They ran down to the house and in the pale yellow light from the
oil-lamp
within, they saw a pile of boxes and odd shapes, which, on closer inspection, turned out to be all the Careys’ possessions.

In a now-silent tableau, Mrs Carey, with the new baby Meriel held protectively close, was being comforted by her husband. With the children gathered around his legs, Henry stared at the small collection that was all his family’s possessions, in perfect stillness, as though transfixed by a spell.

‘The landlady decided not to wait till Saturday,’ he told them in a dazed whisper. ‘Them new people, they’re coming tomorrow.’

A
FTER THE INITIAL
explanations and recriminations had been said, amid the cacophony of cries and screams from the frightened
children
, their first priority was to try and carry their most valued belongings to somewhere the children at least could get some sleep.

‘There’s a barn on the Cardiff Road,’ Henry Carey said, with an attempt at lightness. ‘Warm it’ll be and there’s a good roof if it turns to rain before morning.’ They discussed this in low voices, each wondering if they had the strength to carry their pitifully few possessions even that short way.

‘It’s right on the road, mind,’ Mrs Carey said in a whisper. She had no strength to speak normally; all the breath had been forced out of her by the cruel loss of their two rooms. ‘Dangerous for the children it’ll be, with not an hour going by without half a dozen carts passing, and motor cars and lorries too.’

‘It’ll be all right, Molly. Get it real comfortable in a few days, once we find a place to have a fire. We’ll manage just fine.’

‘What about the house I found, Dad?’ Richard said, and from the
impatient
tone of his reedy voice, Luke and Barbara guessed it was not the first time he had suggested it, even though, stunned by events, they had not been aware of him speaking.

‘Tomorrow, boy, we’ll think about it tomorrow,’ Henry said quietly. ‘Don’t worry us now with your daydreams.’

‘Excuse me, sir,’ Luke said politely, ‘but I think your son is right. Why spend energy getting settled into an unsuitable place which you’ll probably have to leave in a few hours’ time once the farmer finds you there?’

‘But it’s miles away. These children can’t travel out there at this time of night. It’s over by Gull Island!’

‘We can,’ Richard argued. ‘It isn’t that far. Be there in no time we will.’

‘I’m terrible tired, Mam,’ Idris wailed, and Richard glared at him and hissed, ‘Be quiet or I’ll swipe you proper!’

‘Leave him, Richard, he’s trying to be brave,’ Mrs Carey said, hugging her golden boy.

‘Two miles it is,’ Barbara said. ‘They’re all tired but they’ll think of it as an adventure, a game, if we put it to them like that.’

‘Forget it’s night-time,’ Luke encouraged. ‘Just think of it as hours we can use. Come on, I bet you know where there’s a cart we can borrow. With a handcart we’ll do it in two journeys.’ He turned to Richard. ‘Where can we borrow a handcart?’

Leaving the others still standing like the shell-shocked injured waiting for someone to tell them what they must do, Luke took Richard’s arm and led him away. They disappeared around the corner of the back lane and within minutes a rumbling of wheels heralded their return with the required item. Still bemused, Mrs Carey sat on the cart hugging Meriel and with her arms around some of the younger children, nursing the
mantelpiece
clock with several of the hastily packed boxes tucked around her feet. Then she shook her head.

‘No, this won’t do. Feeling sorry for myself won’t help get us settled and that’s what I have to do.’ Getting down ungainfully from the cart, she added another box of assorted china in the place she had previously taken. The unlikely group moved slowly off, two cats on the sack of bedding, the dog running around barking in excitement. Barbara, Rosita and Mr Carey stayed with the other children.

‘I should have told Molly before,’ Mr Carey muttered. ‘She should have been warned. If only I’d told her.’

‘You did tell her. She knew days ago.’ Barbara continued to settle Rosita to sleep on the pavement, wrapped in several blankets, then sitting beside her. Blaming himself and talking nonsense, she tutted impatiently. Tired and frightened and worried he must be, but he should be thinking about how to
deal
with what had happened, not trying to think how he could have prevented it. As he repeated his words she felt mildly irritated. For the first time she recognized that Henry was a weak man.

‘Knew ages ago I did,’ he went on, half to himself.

‘Uncle Henry Carey, you
did
tell your wife, there just wasn’t time for her to find somewhere else. She told me almost a week ago. She’s been asking ever since but there are no rooms to be had, not with all these children. No one is willing to take on these children. It’s a large family, you’ve got remember, even though the twins have gone to live somewhere else and two of the boys have left home.’

She was cold and it would be ages before the cart came back to take them to somewhere they could sleep. She kept touching Rosita to make sure she was warm, and she added another blanket from the pile in the road thrown from the Careys’ rooms.

‘I knew at Christmas,’ he surprised her by saying.

‘Christmas?’

‘I couldn’t tell her, see. I was hoping the landlady would change her mind.’

‘You knew you were going to be thrown out and you did nothing?’

‘It was when she knew about another baby coming, see. You won’t say, will you? I thought the landlady would be too sympathetic to really chuck us out. Molly always pays the rent reg’lar. I was sure she’d change her mind.’

‘You knew at Christmas and did nothing?’

‘Sorry I am.’

Barbara thought she would explode. She wanted to hit him for his stupidity in allowing his wife and children to reach the present situation, then she let out her fury in a long breath. What was the point? As she had told him, there was no sense in worrying about what had happened today, best to get on thinking about tomorrow.

‘The house on the beach will serve for a while. You’ll get something before next winter,’ she said softly. ‘It’s near enough for you to keep selling newspapers.’

‘It’s two miles! I’ll have to get a bike!’

Temper flared at his selfish remark but she was saved from replying as the handcart, with Luke pushing a sleeping Richard on board, came back, the dog still in attendance. The rest of the goods were loaded on. It looked precarious but Luke and Richard stacked it as safely as they could.

The night was dry and clear with stars making a pin cushion of the sky. There was no one to see them as they trundled along the silent lanes, except for a fox crossing their path and pausing to look at them curiously, and an owl gliding softly overhead.

They all had a strange, heart-thumping feeling of invading someone else’s space as they entered and took possession. Mrs Carey shared blankets and the youngest children were given priority. Each one was wrapped into a cocoon of warmth, then they were rolled together like a row of sausages, giggling until sleep claimed them. By the time they were all settled to sleep in the cold and rather eerie house on the beach, dawn was showing pink and yellow fingers and a calm sea was touched with the glory of it.

The children slept on, but Mr and Mrs Carey and Barbara rose early. Luke was sitting outside, waiting for them to wake. A fire burned close by and a kettle simmered at the edge of it. In an attempt to cheer them, Luke gave them Richard’s list of suggestions to improve the house.

‘He’s had some very good ideas. Give him a problem and he solves it so fast, quicker than me quite often! It’s hard to remember that he’s only six. He talks and thinks like an adult.’

‘Miniature adult is what he is.’ Henry smiled proudly. ‘Never one to play with other children, our Richard. Spends all his time with me or listening to grown-up talk.’

‘Then you’ll look at his ideas?’

Mr Carey shook his head. ‘I can’t think straight, boy, and that’s a fact. Best we
cwtch
down here and see what happens. It’s all beyond me.’

Henry seemed to Barbara to have shrunk. The responsibility for the disaster was his and no one else’s yet he hadn’t the glimmer of an idea how to deal with it.

‘Richard thought that if the floor was repaired above the porch there would be three usable rooms upstairs and, at the back of the house, a
lean-to
might make a useful storeroom for wood that can be gathered from the beach,’ Luke went on, determined to encourage the man out of his lethargy. ‘It wouldn’t cost very much, just a few planks of wood and a pound or two of nails.’

‘With two miles to walk to work before I start my paper round I’ll need shoes with some urgency.’ He seemed not to have heard Luke’s words as he stared at the battered shoes he was wearing. One had worn right through and was lined with cardboard.

‘I have an idea.’ Luke ran to his boat and returned with a pair of
good-quality
leather shoes, old but polished so his own face was reflected in the toecap. ‘You look as though you take the same size as I do. Take them, get them tapped and they’ll last a few weeks at least. You can get some
second-hand
boots when you get straight.’

Mercifully, some of the window glass was still intact, although caked with mould and dirt, and Luke had mended others. The back door was missing, probably taken to replace one in another house, Luke thought. But with a screen made from a blanket nailed to the architrave, the house was already looking habitable. ‘Shut out the weather and it’s a home,’ Luke encouraged. There was even a high shelf above the empty hearth on which Mrs Carey placed her clock. Its ticking gave a feeling of comfort to them all and even Rosita slept on.

The sun was well above the horizon, shining and giving warmth to the newly occupied house when Luke left them. He went first to the boat and changed from the scruffy clothes he seemed to prefer and put on his suit, tie, hat and scarf, carried an umbrella and a briefcase and walked to the station with his feet covered only by socks. If anyone noticed his lack of footwear he didn’t seem aware of it.

After depositing his briefcase at the bookshop, shoeless and unshaven, he bought himself some shoes and stopped again at a barber’s shop for a shave. An hour later he returned to his office and asked his newly acquired
and rather surprised assistant for a cup of tea to be sent in with the day’s post. Metamorphosis complete, he began to look at his diary and plan his appointments for the day.

He kept losing the thread of what he was dealing with and allowing his mind to drift back to the family on the beach. Poor as they were, he envied them. Needing so much, yet self-sufficient in the things that counted in life, they were easily content. A full belly and the company of each other was all they required to be uncomplainingly happy. To be a part of a family like the Careys seemed to him to be the very essence of contentment.

It was not the same for Barbara; she wanted more. There was a
restlessness
about her, that strange way she had of glancing around without moving her head as if she were looking at things secretly, unwilling to share her vision of the better things that only she could see. She wouldn’t be as easily pleased as the Careys. She coveted another, more comfortable life.

He wondered whether he could help financially but thought not. For one thing, he had very little himself. The business of secondhand books was precarious. More so now he had taken on an assistant, a young woman called Jeanie, who had to be paid every week, however badly he did. There was the constant need for him to travel and buy stock and he used every penny he earned to replenish those shelves, keeping only the very minimum he required for basic expenses. The other consideration was that he wondered whether giving money would help or hinder.

Sometimes giving money unconditionally only made things worse. A little extra gave a false security and that, added to the relief of having cash to spare, frequently led to further debts. And miraculously, debt was
something
Mrs Carey had somehow managed to avoid so far. A few pounds might give Mr Carey some ease and reduction of his worries but it might also persuade him he needn’t try so hard. The Careys’ lives were a
precarious
balancing act and the wrong kind of help might tip them into an abyss. Helping them to help themselves, that was the only way.

There was also condescension in giving money, a feeling which he wouldn’t relish, and it rarely helped for more than a few euphoric moments.

Pushing aside the work, he stepped over to the window. His office was on the north side and so shaded from most of the sun. The bright sunshine across the street made his own room seem even darker and he sighed. How he hated being indoors.

Shadows gave his thin face an almost skeletal appearance; his eyes were clear, bright and far-seeing but now they looked deep-set and hooded. He was usually tanned by the weekends spent on the beach but after winter it had faded to a pale and rather sickly pallor. His long fingers pulled at his collar, longing to discard it, but convention insisted on a man in his
position
wearing one. Today it irked him more than usual, thinking of the Carey children, ragged and carefree, exploring their new home.

He looked out on the busy scene below him. Women walking past with their shopping baskets filled with whatever food they had managed to buy that day, stopping occasionally to look in a shop window, always hoping for a bargain or something in short supply to eke out their rations. A
newspaper
seller on a corner, speaking in gibberish only understood by other newspaper sellers, hoping someone would be curious and read what the headlines announced. A group of gypsies wandered past offering artificial flowers and hand-carved clothes pegs to passers-by, most of whom shunned them fearfully.

A farm cart went along the street with dirty hay on the back and several net-covered boxes containing young chickens. He looked at the man guiding the horse through the busy mid-morning throng and thought of Graham Prothero. Barbara must do better than that. He took up pen and began writing the names of people who might be willing to help. There were regrettably few.

Living on the beach was more difficult for Barbara. There were the two miles to walk into town and she had to take Rosita. Mrs Carey was engrossed with her newest child and had less time now for the crotchety Rosita. Twice she saw her father as she struggled to her first cleaning job, pushing the crying child in the broken old pram. He turned away, whistling, increasing his pace until he was out of sight.