Jenny's War (18 page)

Jenny had been home two weeks. She was back at school, back in Miss Chisholm’s class, and she was reasonably happy at home. Dot was better tempered when Arthur was around and, if Jenny kept out of their way, life was bearable. Though she still longed to be back at Ravensfleet Manor and to make matters worse, as she had threatened, Dot began to take the fine clothes that Jenny had been given to the pawnbrokers. She spent the money she got on new clothes for herself. A skirt and two blouses had already disappeared by the time Arthur noticed what was happening and said, ‘Yer don’t need to take the kid’s stuff, Dot. I give you enough to buy whatever you want.’

‘She don’t need posh clothes. She’ll only get ’em dirty. She’s a scruffy little urchin.’

Arthur winked at Jenny, who was watching sullenly as her mother folded two of the dresses that Charlotte had bought her ready to pawn.

‘Not so scruffy now. She keeps her hair ever so nice and—’

Dot rounded on him. ‘Are you sayin’ she didn’t before she went away? Are you saying I can’t look after me own kid? She’s always had a bath once a week and washed her hair, so don’t you go sayin’—’

‘No, ’course I’m not, Dot, but she’s growing up. Why don’t you let her keep the things she’s been given?’ Craftily, he added, ‘There’s a lot of wear in them and it’d save you having to buy more for her.’

Dot paused, undecided now. To press home his point, Arthur threw two pound notes on the table. ‘There, that’s more than you’d get up the pop shop, darlin’. Let her keep her stuff. I’ll see you right, you know I will.’

Grudgingly, Dot muttered, ‘All right, then, but she’d better look after ’em.’ Then she wagged her forefinger in Jenny’s face. ‘You’d better say “thank you” to your uncle Arfer. He’s very good to you, he is.’

Jenny grinned at Arthur as she scooped up the dresses from the table before her mother could change her mind and scuttled upstairs to hang them back in her wardrobe. Just as she was closing the wardrobe door, the now familiar sound of the wailing air-raid sirens began and she heard Arthur shouting up the stairs.

‘Look sharp, Jen. Get down here.’

‘Let’s go to the underground. It’ll be safer,’ Dot was saying as Jenny burst into the kitchen.

‘No time,’ Arthur said, pushing them both towards the front room where the Morrison shelter had been constructed. ‘I can hear the planes . . .’

The roaring and the thud of bombs dropping went on for what seemed hours. Squashed into the oblong metal box-like shelter with its steel-plate top and wire-mesh sides beside Dot and Arthur, Jenny clutched Bert closely and covered her ears. It had never been as bad as this in the country. Just a few noises in the distance, but this was right overhead. Any minute a bomb might fall on their house . . .

Dot lay with her head buried against Arthur’s chest.

‘We’ll go down the underground another night before it starts,’ he promised.

Dot raised her head to say accusingly, as if it was all Arthur’s fault, ‘
If
we get through this one.’ At that moment there was a loud whistling and a tremendous crash and the sound of breaking glass. The whole house, even the ground beneath them, shook. Dot screamed and clung to Arthur, whilst Jenny curled herself into a round ball. Dust choked her and she began to cough.

They emerged unscathed into the cold light of dawn, but when Arthur opened the front door it was to see that a house on the opposite side of the street had taken a direct hit.

‘Is Bobby’s house all right?’ Jenny asked fearfully, pushing her way out beneath Arthur’s arm.

‘Yeah. ’Sides, I reckon they went down the underground. I saw ’em setting off with blankets and pillows before the air raid started.’

‘And that’s what we’ll be doing in future,’ Dot said firmly. ‘I ain’t standing another night like that.’

It seemed as if Hitler was determined to break the spirit of the Londoners. But if he could have seen them lying in rows on the station platform, sharing their food, joining in a sing-song and playing games with the children, he might have realized it was going to be a much harder task than he’d envisaged.

Elsie greeted them the following night when they arrived on the underground platform. ‘Come on, you lot, make room for Jenny and her mam. Ronnie, help Arthur spread the blankets out. There we are, all nice and cosy.’

Dot glanced around her and turned up her nose. ‘Is this where we sleep? On the draughty platform?’

‘’Fraid so,’ Elsie laughed and eyed her neighbour done up in her best clothes, full make-up on, her brassy hair piled up on top of her head and wearing high heels and silk stockings. Now I wonder how she’s come by them? Elsie Hutton thought. But she had no need to wonder for long; Arthur. He was a wide boy right enough. A spiv, as his sort were being called. She glanced down the lines of makeshift beds to see Arthur had settled himself at the very end, next to Ronnie, Elsie’s eldest boy. She frowned, worried to see that Arthur Osborne was engaging her son in whispered conversation.

‘Come on,’ she raised her voice, trying to break up the cosy chat. ‘Let’s ’ave a sing-song. “My Ol’ Man . . .” ’ Her voice was tuneless, but soon she had the whole crowd joining in and, to her delight, she saw Arthur shrug and abandon trying to talk to Ronnie above the noise. The boy turned and saw his mother watching them even whilst she was leading the singing. To her relief, Ronnie winked and grinned at her.

That’s my boy, she thought. He’ll have none of Arthur’s goings on.

They sang raucously, trying to drown out the sound of the dull thuds from above ground, trying desperately not to think of the damage being caused to their homes and, maybe, even the loss of life. Dot moved her position to sit next to Arthur, clinging on to him and making a great show of being frightened.

Someone handed them mugs of tea; others were giving out sandwiches, sharing their precious food with anyone who needed it, but all the time they kept singing. It went on until the small hours when the grown-ups realized that it was time the children settled down to sleep, if any sleep were possible.

Jenny, Bobby and the other youngsters, wrapped warmly in blankets, fell asleep but for some of the adults the night was long and restless. When they emerged into the daylight at the sound of the all-clear it was to see devastation all around them.

‘Let’s get home, Arfer,’ Dot said, suddenly subdued. ‘That’s if we’ve still got a home to go to.’

Their street was just as they’d left it. The house further down that had been hit the previous night was still in a state of collapse, but no other damage had been done.

‘Thank Gawd for that,’ Dot said, opening her front door. ‘Hello, door’s not locked. Didn’t you lock it, Arfer?’

‘’Course I did,’ he said irritably, then a look of fear crossed his face. He pushed past Dot and Jenny and hurried upstairs. He came down with a face like thunder. ‘Me stuff’s gone.’

Dot gasped. ‘All of it?’

‘Yeah. If I catch up with whoever’s—’ He frowned and murmured, ‘I wonder.’

He strode out of the house and banged on the Huttons’ door. Dot and Jenny stood watching.

‘What’s goin’ on, Mum?’ But Dot didn’t answer.

‘Ronnie – Ronnie, come on out here,’ Arthur shouted. Families, trooping back cold and tired after their night in the underground, glanced at him curiously.

The door flew open and Elsie Hutton stood there. She was not her usual warm-hearted, friendly self. Jenny was shocked as Elsie folded her arms across her chest and said harshly, ‘What d’you want?’

‘Your son, that’s who!’

‘Which one? I’ve got three.’

‘Ronnie.’

‘He’s not ’ere.’

‘Yes, he is. He was coming along the road just after us, his arms full of blankets, so where else would he be going?’

‘Work. He’s gone to work. Got a job on the docks now, he has.’

Arthur grunted. ‘I know that.’ He glared at Elsie. But the woman returned the scowl in equal measure and thrust her face close to Arthur’s with such menace that he took a step backwards. ‘You stay away from me an’ mine, Arthur Osborne. I know what your little game is. Black market, ain’t it? Now you listen to me a minute. ’Cos you’re shacked up wiv Dot now, you’re one of us. More’s the pity. And we don’t grass on our own even though the whole street knows what you’re up to.’

‘Then where’s me stuff, I’d like to know?’

Elsie blinked. ‘What stuff?’

‘Stuff I’d got hidden in the house, in the girl’s bedroom.’

‘In Jen’s—’ Elsie gaped at him, robbed of speech for a brief moment before she spat, ‘You’ve been hiding your ill-gotten gains in that little lass’s bedroom? Is there no depths you lot won’t sink to? I suppose you thought no one’d look in a kiddie’s bedroom.’

Jenny glanced at her mother, but Dot had disappeared back into their house.

‘It’s not nicked, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m no thief,’ Arthur added indignantly.

‘As good as,’ Elsie muttered. ‘Wheeling and dealing in black-market goods, I know. But I ’spect you get others to do your dirty work for yer, so you can come up smellin’ of roses. And I saw you talking to my Ronnie down the shelter. Trying to get him to nick stuff off the docks, were yer?’

Arthur didn’t deny Elsie’s accusation. Instead, he changed tack as his voice softened. ‘Now listen, Elsie. Any time you want a bit of extra food for that growing family of yours, you just say the word.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘Know what I mean?’

‘Oh I know what you mean, all right, and I wouldn’t touch it wiv a barge pole.’

‘Where’s the harm? It’s all bought and paid for, Elsie.’

Grimly, Elsie nodded. ‘Aye, and well above the going rate an’ all, I ’spect.’

There was silence until Jenny heard Arthur say in the tone of voice she’d heard him use so many times to Dot, ‘Aw, now come on, Elsie. I can put a bit of money your boy’s way if he’ll do me a few favours now and again—’

He got no further for Elsie gave him a violent shove in the chest that sent him reeling backwards. He almost lost his balance but managed not to fall as she yelled, ‘You keep away from my lad, Arthur Osborne, if you know what’s good for yer, or I’ll tell my Sid when he comes ’ome on leave.’ Then she slammed the door with such finality that even Arthur, frantic to find where his ‘stuff’ had gone, dared not knock at her door again. And the thought of her burly husband, strong from years of work as a docker, coming after him with flying fists made him think more than twice.

As he turned, he saw Jenny standing against the wall. He crossed the space between them and stood over her. Though she was quaking inside, fearing that somehow she was going to get the blame for his belongings having disappeared, Jenny faced up to him squarely. But he was not angry with her; instead it seemed he needed her help. ‘You’re mates with those lads, aren’t you?’

‘Ye-es,’ Jenny admitted.

He squatted down in front of her, bringing his face down to her level. ‘Then do your uncle Arthur a favour, will you? Ask ’em if young Ronnie took my stuff, will yer?’

Jenny stared at him. ‘It was still there when we went to the underground shelter.’

‘How d’you know that?’

‘Because I wanted to take Bert with me and he was on the floor, half under the bed, and when I fished him out I saw all the boxes still stacked there.’

‘You sure?’

Jenny nodded vigorously.

‘You wouldn’t tell your uncle Arthur porkies, would you?’

Now she shook her head just as vehemently. ‘Cross me heart . . . And,’ she went on, ‘Ronnie was in the shelter with us. The whole family was there when we got there and they were walking home behind us when we came home, so he couldn’t have nicked your stuff, Uncle Arthur, could he?’

‘Mm. It was a long night, Jen. He could have slipped out when we was asleep.’

Jen laughed. ‘He wouldn’t have dared. His mam would have leathered him up and down the street if he’d so much as poked his nose above ground during an air raid.’

‘We-ell,’ Arthur said slowly, ‘you could be right.’

‘’Sides, you know what Aunty Elsie’s like? Where would Ronnie hide it away from her beady eyes?’

‘That’s true. Now that is true. I can see that.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘Fiery piece, ain’t she?’

‘Aunty Elsie?’ Jenny smiled too. ‘She can be, but she’s lovely really. She’s—’ Jenny stopped, afraid that what she’d been going to say would sound very disloyal to her own mother. But it seemed Arthur understood, for he squeezed her shoulder and said softly, ‘I know, I know. Elsie’s good to you, ain’t she?’

Jenny nodded. ‘I really don’t think she’d have any truck with her lads being involved in – well – anything,’ she added lamely, not quite sure exactly what it was that Arthur did. She’d no idea what the term ‘black market’, which she’d heard Elsie use, meant. But from the tone of the woman’s voice and the accusation in it, it didn’t sound good. To the young girl, it sounded next door to stealing.

Arthur was thoughtful. ‘If it weren’t him, then who was it?’

Jenny shrugged. ‘It could have been anybody. Aunty Elsie said everybody in the street knows.’

Arthur looked grim as he patted her curls and said, ‘Well, you just keep your ears open for yer uncle Arthur and if you hear anything, you let me know and I’ll buy you a nice present. How’d that be?’

Jenny smiled thinly. Though she didn’t dislike Arthur now, she really didn’t want him buying her presents; it always made her mum resentful and Dot took it out on her.

Arthur and Dot were twitchy; that was the only word Jenny could think of to describe how they were acting. Both the front and the back doors were securely locked day and night, even though East Enders never normally locked their doors. Warm-hearted and friendly and secure in their own community, there’d never been the need. But now Dot and Arthur were decidedly nervous about something. They were forever looking out of the front windows. They jumped physically if a knock came at the door and they wouldn’t even answer it until they knew who was there.

‘Don’t you go opening the door to anyone, Jen. You tell me, see?’

‘Yes, Mum.’ She paused and added, ‘But it’s all right if it’s someone I know, isn’t it?’

‘No, it ain’t. Aren’t you listening to what I say?’ Dot raised her hand and Jenny said swiftly, ‘Yes, Mum.’