Jenny's War (23 page)

‘Gawd, I hope we’re not stopped by a copper,’ Dot moaned. ‘There’s no hiding what’s in the back now.’

But they reached the cottage safely and took the three hens and two ducks into the shed at the back of the house. Arthur threw down some corn and the birds soon quietened.

‘I reckon what I ought to do,’ Arthur mused when they were safely back in the house and Dot had made them all a mug of hot cocoa, ‘is to get a few hens and ducks all above board, like, and—’

‘Then we wouldn’t have to steal any,’ Jenny said before she stopped to think.

Arthur glared at her, but he couldn’t argue with what she’d said. What they’d done this night was stealing and there was no getting away from it.

Except that they had got away with it. This time.

‘It’d hide the ones I – acquire.’

‘Why can’t you get rid of ’em straight away and why do you have to keep ’em alive?’ Dot wanted to know. ‘If you’d wrung their necks, we wouldn’t have had all that racket.’

‘Two reasons,’ Arthur answered sharply. ‘One, I can’t be running backwards and forwards to the city with three chickens and a couple of ducks. ’Tain’t worth the petrol and besides,’ he admitted sheepishly, ‘I don’t know how to kill ’em.’

Dot and Jenny stared at him. ‘Then you’d better learn pretty quick, hadn’t you?’

Arthur looked at Jenny. ‘Maybe you could ask your friends at the farm how I’d go about getting some chickens and that. Tell ’em we’re trying to do our bit for the war effort.’

Jenny stared at him and her insides quaked. The last thing she wanted to do was to ask such questions.

‘Don’t you have to have permission from the authorities?’ Dot put in. ‘There’s that many rules and regulations these days.’

‘To keep a few chickens?’ Arthur laughed. ‘Nah.’ He paused, was thoughtful for a moment before adding, ‘Do you?’

Dot put her mug on the table and got up. ‘Anyway, I’ve had enough for one night. I’m off to bed. You too, Jen. You’ll never be up for school in the morning.’

Jenny dragged herself wearily up the stairs, but she slept fitfully, waking every so often in the middle of a nightmare where she was surrounded by huge cackling hens pecking her.

‘I’ll come up to the farm with you, Jen,’ Arthur said on the Saturday morning. ‘I want to talk to Mr Fenton.’

The stolen chickens and ducks were still shut in the shed at the back of the cottage. Arthur fed them every day from a sack of grain that had suddenly materialized.

‘Oh Uncle Arthur, I don’t—’

‘Dad! You must call me “Dad”.’

Jenny bit her lip. She’d never had anyone to call ‘Dad’ and the name didn’t come easily. She was much more used to ‘Uncle’. ‘Won’t he think it funny we’ve suddenly got chickens?’

‘I’m not going to tell him we’ve already got some, silly. I want to find out about getting some. What I have to do.’

‘Build a hen house and feed ’em,’ Dot put in rationally. ‘What more can there be to it than that?’

‘He might be willing to sell me a few and – he might teach me how to kill them.’

Jenny shuddered, but there seemed no way she could get out of Arthur going with her to the farm.

‘Morning, guv’nor,’ Arthur greeted Mr Fenton jovially. The big man glanced at Jenny and smiled, but the look he cast at Arthur was wary and certainly not so friendly. ‘I wonder if you could give me a bit of advice. Now we’re living in the country, we’d like to do our bit – ’

Jenny scuttled away towards the back door of the farmhouse; she didn’t want to hear any more. But even when she found Beryl and they began to play Ludo, her mind was still on what was going on between Arthur and Jack Fenton in the farmyard.

Jenny’s fears were unfounded. To her surprise, Jack Fenton was only too willing to help. But then, she thought, Uncle Arthur could be very charming and persuasive when he wanted to be. And he’d have laboured the point about wanting to do his bit, she knew.

‘He’s told me where to buy what I need to build a hen hut,’ Arthur told Dot and Jenny later. ‘There’s an old wood yard not far away. I don’t have to use new wood, he said. And he’s agreed to sell me a few chickens and a couple of ducks to start us off. He wasn’t sure about regulations for someone starting out to keep livestock, though he did say there were definite regulations about keeping a pig. You have to have a licence to kill a pig.’ Arthur grinned and patted his pocket. ‘As if I didn’t know that. Already got one or two of the very documents.’

Dot blinked. ‘Whatever for? And however did you come by them?’

‘They’re forgeries, yer daft mare. I thought they might come in handy if we ever moved to the country.’

Dot’s eyes narrowed. ‘’Ave you been
planning
leaving London for a while, Arfer?’

Arthur shrugged. ‘Just bein’ prepared, Dot. Like a good boy scout.’

‘You – a boy scout? Don’t make me larf!’

Mildly, and with a wistful note in his voice, Arthur said, ‘Actually, I was once.’ Then he cleared his throat and said briskly, ‘But as far as the chickens and that are concerned, Fenton just said I’d better inform the Ministry.’ Now Arthur laughed uproariously. ‘Just to keep on the right side of the law, he said.’

‘And shall you?’

‘What?’

‘Inform the authorities.’

‘Nah, ’course I won’t. I don’t want officials coming round here poking their noses in.’

Yet again, Jenny shuddered.

So life fell into a pattern, but it was a pattern that Jenny didn’t like. She had to hand it to Arthur that he was resourceful. He built a chicken hut and actually
bought
some feed for his hens and ducks so that at least part of his operation was legitimate. He learned from Jack Fenton how to kill the hens by wringing their necks. Jenny hated to see the poor things hanging limply by their legs and still flapping their wings even though they were dead.

Soon their livestock increased. Every week they went out at least one night, and ‘collected’ another hen or two, never taking any more so that the farmer was unlikely to notice the reduction in his numbers. Hens were notoriously difficult to count and as long as there was not a noticeable difference, Arthur seemed to be getting away with it. He always chose a different farm and never visited the same one again for several weeks. Their number of hens grew and lessened as more came and then more were killed and taken to the city.

But Arthur never took Dot or Jenny to Sheffield or Manchester or wherever it was he went, though Dot begged to be taken into the shops. ‘I’ll die if I don’t get to go shopping soon,’ she wailed.

‘How do you think I can get the petrol to go gallivanting into town?’

‘You can get it to do your dirty business,’ Dot snapped back.

‘That’s different and it’s at night. Petrol’s rationed and you have to have a good reason to be travelling about. If I get stopped . . .’ He didn’t need to say any more but Dot cast him a baleful look. ‘And that reminds me, I’m getting low on petrol. I need to get some. Jen, I’ll need you to come with me tonight and be ready to do your bit of play-acting if necessary.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Dot offered, but Arthur shook his head. ‘You can’t act that you’re lost. Besides,’ he added with a smirk, ‘if they see you hanging about on street corners, they might think you’re up to something very different.’

Dot gasped and slapped his face, but it was done playfully, almost coquettishly, and Jenny turned away, feeling sick.

If only she knew they wanted her back at Ravensfleet, she’d run away. But Dot had been adamant that the Thorntons had sent her back, that they didn’t want her there. And they hadn’t written to her – not once – since she’d left, even though she’d written to them three times while she’d been back in London. She was sure her mother would have posted her letters and, even allowing for wartime postal delays, they’d had time to write back. So maybe Dot was right; the Thorntons really didn’t want her. And now Jenny couldn’t write to them and she daren’t go back to London either. Dot and Arthur would soon come after her and besides, Aunty Elsie would ask too many awkward questions.

The summer school holidays dragged. Jenny saw Beryl and Susan occasionally but both girls were busy helping with the harvest and she felt excluded. So she spent the long days on her own. The only time she was truly happy was when Arthur took Dot out and Jenny could bring her drawing book and paints down to the kitchen. But before long she’d used up all the paper which Charlotte had given her. And there was no hope of being given a new supply for her birthday, which, as usual, passed by without any comment from Dot. No card, no ‘Happy Birthday’ and certainly no present. She remembered the belated party the Thorntons had given her. How she wished she could go back there, but she couldn’t. She was trapped here, being led into a life of crime and there was nothing she could do about it.

The days were much shorter and the nights darker towards the end of the year and late one November night, Jenny was out in the van with Arthur. He parked down a side road and then crept towards a fenced yard next to a large barn. This was more dangerous; it was not in the open countryside, but on the outskirts of the village where Jenny went to school and there were houses just across the road. They got out of the van and Arthur removed a petrol can and a long piece of rubber tubing from the back.

They began to walk up the road towards the yard.

‘What – what are you going to do, Uncle – Dad?’

‘Syphon petrol,’ he muttered.

‘Where from?’

‘Those vehicles in that yard.’

‘But there’s a big fence and the gates are padlocked. I can see it from here.’

Arthur’s chuckle came out of the darkness. ‘Never you mind what your dad’s doing, you just keep watch and be sure to tell me if you see anybody coming.’

‘Won’t there be guard dogs or – or a night watchman at a place like this?’

‘Nah – I’ve already checked. And once everybody’s nicely tucked up in their homes with the blackout curtains drawn, nobody comes out much. I’ve been watching this place for several nights now. Right, you stand just there and keep yer eyes skinned.’

‘Uncle – Dad, I really don’t want to—’ she began but his hand was heavy on her shoulder as he murmured, ‘Be a good girl now.’

Jenny sighed and pulled her coat around her. The night was cold and fear was making her shiver. She stepped close to the fence and glanced up and down the street. All was quiet and the faint rattle as Arthur tried to open the padlock with a bunch of keys seemed to echo loudly in the night air.

‘He’ll never manage it,’ Jenny muttered, but even as she said the words the gate swung open with a squeak that sounded even louder. Then she saw Arthur creep into the yard and disappear behind the line of six vehicles – two cars and four vans very much like the one he drove. Now he was out of sight, Jenny felt even more vulnerable.

He’d been gone what seemed like a long time, when the door of the house opposite opened and a man, briefly framed in the light from inside, came out. A small dog yapped and ran excitedly up and down the path. Jenny watched in horror as the man came down the path, opened the small gate and stepped out into the road. There was nowhere she could hide as she saw the man glance across the street and catch sight of her. She could see he was bending his head forward as if squinting through the darkness at her.

Jenny didn’t have to feign the tears that Arthur had told her to shed if someone saw her; she was frightened enough for them to be real. She put her hand to her eyes and began to sob. The man came across the road, his little dog following him and bounding towards her.

‘Hello, love. You all right?’

‘No,’ Jenny wailed loudly, hoping that Arthur would hear her and be warned. ‘I’m lost.’

‘Lost? How come at this time of night? Does your mother know you’re out this late?’

Jenny hiccuped convincingly. ‘I’ve been at a friend’s and – and I said I’d be fine walking home, but I must have taken a wrong turn.’

‘You’re not a local, are you?’ he said, coming closer. The little dog was jumping up at her, licking her hand.

‘I’m a vaccie,’ she wailed loudly again.

‘A what, love?’

‘A ’vacuee.’

‘Oh, I see. Aye, we’ve got a lot o’ them come. A’ you staying round here, then?’

‘Yes, but I don’t know which way it is.’

‘Well, you tell me and I’ll walk along with you.’

Now a fresh fear flooded through her. Arthur would be dreadfully cross if this man took her all the way home.

‘I – ’ she began, not sure what to do or to say now. She wanted to glance behind her, into the yard to see if she could catch sight of Arthur, but knew she mustn’t. Her action might give him away.

‘Do you go to school here?’ the man was asking again.

Relief flooded through her. ‘Yes, yes,’ she said in a loud voice, still trying to make sure that Arthur had heard her and knew there was a problem. She was sure now that he must have done, because the little dog suddenly began to bark and run a little way along the road towards the unlocked gate and then back again to them, as if asking them to follow him. But the man took no notice of his dog; he was more concerned with the lost girl.

‘If you show me where the school is,’ Jenny said, the relief in her voice genuine as she thought of a way to stop him accompanying her all the way to the cottage, ‘I know the way home from there. I’ll be fine.’

‘If you’re sure,’ the man said worriedly. ‘I’d walk with you all the way, but the wife isn’t very well and I don’t want to leave her for long, but Nipper here has to have his evening walk, haven’t you, boy?’

Jenny was actually speaking the truth now. She didn’t know where the school was from here, but once there, she knew the way back to the cottage up the long lane.

‘Come on, then,’ the man said, also sounding relieved at her suggestion. ‘Best foot forward.’

They walked along, the man matching his strides to the girl’s. Jenny dared not glance behind her and she crossed her fingers hoping that Arthur knew what was happening.

The little dog bounded ahead, running back to them every so often and barking excitedly. Surely, Arthur must have heard the dog if nothing else.

They passed by the van and Jenny’s heart skipped a beat as the man paused and looked at the vehicle. ‘Funny,’ he murmured, ‘I don’t recognize that van. Wonder what it’s doing here?’