Jenny's War (24 page)

Her heart pounding, Jenny walked on, trying to make out she was more interested in getting home than in a parked vehicle. The man shrugged and walked on, catching her up. It wasn’t as far as she’d thought to the school and there she insisted she knew the way, that she’d be fine, and thanked him for his kindness. She bent and patted the dog and then hurried away from them both and was soon swallowed up in the darkness. As she walked on, she began to breathe more evenly, but now a new anxiety crept into her mind.

What if Arthur hadn’t heard the commotion? What if he was still blithely unaware that she was no longer standing outside the fence on guard? What if . . . ?

At that moment, she heard the chugging sound of a vehicle behind her and she stepped on to the grass verge. Arthur’s van slowed and stopped near her. He pushed open the passenger door. ‘Get in.’

She couldn’t tell from his tone of voice if he was angry with her, but at least he was obviously safe or he wouldn’t be here. She scrambled in and, as she settled herself in the seat beside him, he patted her knee. ‘Well done, darlin’, I heard you crying loud and clear and hid behind the vehicles. When you went I hopped it back to the gate, locked it up and got in the van.’

‘That man remarked about your van,’ she told him. ‘He wondered what it was doing there.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll mind not to park there again. In fact, we’d better not use that place again. I only took a little out of each vehicle so that no one will notice. On this game, Jen, the thing is not to be greedy. If you take too much of anything, they’ll notice and then you’ll get caught. See?’

Jenny didn’t answer. He talked as if it was quite all right to steal just so long as you took only a little; just so long as you didn’t get caught.

Not for the first time, Jenny wondered with a sinking heart what Georgie would think of the life she was leading now. And inwardly, she wept.

Life continued in much the same way for a while. Christmas came and went but just as she always had, Dot couldn’t be bothered to try to make the occasion special. So long as Arthur loaded her with presents, she didn’t give a thought to anyone else. But this year the weather was bad with snow drifting against their door. Arthur couldn’t drive his van anywhere and only the farm tractors could get about, doing their best to move the snow from the local roads.

‘’Ow can yer make puddings and a cake’ – Dot had excused her laziness, ‘when you can’t get hold of the stuff to make ’em?’

‘Yer’ve got eggs and plenty of sugar.’ The latter had come from a night raid on a local grocer’s shop in the next village just before the bad weather had set in with a vengeance, when once again Arthur had picked the lock on the back door of the premises. Jenny had been terrified; the shop was in the centre of the village and she couldn’t think of a plausible story if she was asked what she was doing hanging about outside a shop at midnight and a long way from home too.

‘I took just one or two items from the back of the shelves,’ Arthur said, pleased with his night’s work. Sugar, butter, tea and other rationed items lay in the back of the van under a rug. But as they drove home, Jenny was still quaking. If they were stopped, how could Arthur possibly explain away the goods in the back of the van?

He couldn’t.

Only when they reached the cottage, had unloaded the goods and stacked them on the pantry shelves, did Jenny start to feel safer. Safer, but not safe. She doubted she would ever feel safe again, not while she was with Arthur Osborne – Mercer, as she must remember to call him now. If only . . .

Tears prickled her eyes as thoughts of Ravensfleet filtered unbidden into her mind, but resolutely she pushed them away. There was no way back. They didn’t want her.

‘I was so frightened,’ she blurted out as she sat sipping the hot cocoa Arthur always insisted that Dot made for the girl when she’d been out at night helping him. ‘I thought an ARP warden might come along at any minute.’

Arthur, drinking cocoa too, though his had a drop of whisky in it, stared at her above the rim of his mug.

‘Air Raid Precautions Warden,’ he murmured softly. ‘Now there’s a thought.’

‘What is?’ Dot snapped. She was rarely in a good mood these days and the winter weather in the cold, damp cottage was making her even more irritable. She missed the busy streets of London, the camaraderie as they all faced the wartime hardships together. She even missed the rows with her neighbours. She hated it here and couldn’t understand why Jenny didn’t too. Her daughter was a city child, like her, and yet Jenny had changed ever since she’d come back from Lincolnshire. How Dot wished she’d never sent her there. But now she was staring at Arthur. She knew that look he’d got on his face. He was up to something. ‘What’s a thought?’ she snapped again.

‘Becoming an ARP warden. They’re out and about all night with never a question asked, now aren’t they?’

Dot snorted. ‘You? An ARP warden? A representative of law and order? Don’t make me larf.’

Arthur’s eyes gleamed. ‘But think of the pickings. There’s been a lot of bombing in Sheffield. If I could get taken on there.’

Dot’s eyes widened. ‘Why? Why would you want to go into danger deliberately? You’re a fool if—’

He leaned towards her. ‘Sheffield was very badly bombed in December 1940 for three or four days. I’ve seen it with me own eyes. Bomb-damaged houses, Dot. Just think of it. All that stuff just lying there, waiting to be picked up. And in uniform, no one would question why I was there. Why I was rooting through the rubble. And they still get the odd raid now and again. And if an enemy plane misses its primary target, say Manchester or Liverpool, then Sheffield cops it.’

Realization began to dawn on Dot’s face and Jenny, too, understood what he was suggesting. Dot jabbed her finger towards Jenny. ‘You couldn’t take her as lookout.’

‘Wouldn’t need to,’ Arthur said promptly and Jenny’s heart lifted. ‘I’d be there legitimately, wouldn’t I?’

Dot laughed wryly. ‘That’d make a change.’

Arthur stood up. ‘I’ll ask around as soon as the weather improves. Find out what I have to do. I’m sure they’ll be glad to have a fit feller like me.’

Dot stared up at him. ‘But you’re not fit, a’ yer? You’ve got a heart condition, so that bit o’ paper in your pocket ses.’

Arthur winked at her. ‘Oh aye, but they’ll tek anyone they can get in the ARP and the Home Guard or whatever they call themselves now.’

Dot snorted, huddling closer to the fire, which was burning a sack of coal that Arthur had brought home, taken, Jenny believed, from someone’s backyard in the black of night.

‘Three or four days of bombing!’ Dot muttered, thinking about what Arthur had just said. ‘When we had months. They don’t know they’re born.’

Jenny glanced at her mother, marvelling yet again at her selfishness. Could she never think of anyone else but herself? However long or short the bombing lasted, it was just as devastating for those caught up in it.

‘Anyway,’ Arthur was saying, his mind made up. ‘It’s the ARP for me. That way I’d get a chance to be on my own now and again patrolling the streets watching for folks showing lights and that. But there’d be no chance of that in the Home Guard. All that drilling and guarding stuff. I’d be unlikely to get the chance to be on my own.’

‘Aye, guarding stuff from folks like you,’ Dot said grimly. ‘You want to watch yerself. One of these days—’

‘Don’t you worry, darlin’, I’ll be careful. They’ll never catch Arthur Osborne. I promise you that.’ Even he forgot for the moment that he was now supposed to be Arthur Mercer.

When the weather improved, Arthur travelled to Sheffield, joined the ARP in the city and was welcomed by those who thought he was really trying to ‘do his bit’.

‘He didn’t need to join us,’ the other wardens agreed. ‘He’s not from these parts. You can tell that by the way he talks and he’s got that piece of paper that says he’s got a bad heart. He doesn’t have to do anything. He could sit out the war doing nowt. But no, he’s volunteered. Good on ’im, I say.’

So Arthur set off in his van three or four nights a week, able to obtain and use petrol legitimately now. Jenny breathed a sigh of relief that he no longer needed her. But, contrary to what he’d said, Arthur’s greed began to get the better of his common sense. Perhaps, if the pickings in the city had been better, Arthur might have been content. But he hadn’t a ready market for the belongings of people who’d been bombed out.

‘It’s not as easy as I thought,’ he grumbled to Dot, and Jenny felt a flicker of fear.

‘Don’t knock it,’ Dot said, happily trying on dresses, coats and even shoes that Arthur had ‘rescued’ from bombed-out homes in the city. ‘I can’t think why all this stuff has still been left for folks to find. Why haven’t the people who owned them come back for them?’ Then the awful thought seemed to strike her – the reason that Jenny had already thought of. Maybe the folks who’d lived in the houses had been killed. Dot paused a moment, eyed herself in the mirror and then shrugged and carried on trying on yet another frock.

‘I can’t take all this stuff to a second-hand dealer or a pawnbroker’s. I can’t make money on it.’

Dot stared at him. ‘Have you tried?’

Arthur looked suddenly shifty. ‘Yeah, one, but he started asking awkward questions. How had I come by it? Was it mine to sell? That sort of stuff.’

‘And what did you tell him?’

Arthur moved uncomfortably in his chair. ‘I said we’d been bombed and that – that me wife had died. But he still didn’t want to know.’

Dot blinked and then said sarcastically, ‘Oh thanks, I’m sure. Since I’m supposed to be your wife now, that was meant to be me, then, was it?’

‘Don’t be so touchy, Dot,’ Arthur said testily. ‘I had to think of something quick.’

‘You’ll wish it on me,’ Dot said petulantly. ‘If we get bombed and I’m—’

‘Don’t be daft. We don’t get no bombs out here. Just be thankful I couldn’t sell ’em. Least you’ve got some new clothes.’

Dot snorted. ‘Hardly new.’ Then she capitulated and smiled at him. ‘But it’s better than nothin’. Thanks, Arfer.’ And she moved to kiss him. Then she turned to Jenny and pointed at another bundle lying on the floor. ‘There you are, Jen. Your dad’s brought something for you an’ all. There’s girl’s dresses and shoes in there. An’ about your size. Go and try them on.’ When Jenny stared in horror at the sack, but didn’t move, Dot gave her a push and said again, ‘Go on.’

Reluctantly, Jenny moved and picked up the sack.

‘And say “thank you” nicely to yer dad.’

Jenny smiled weakly. ‘Thanks, Dad,’ she said dutifully and turned away to take the bundle upstairs. She shut the door of her bedroom firmly and put the sack on the floor. She sat on the bed and stared at it, making no effort to open it. She shuddered. Whatever was in there – and she had no intention of looking – belonged to some poor girl who, at best, had had her home bombed out and who’d now lost her clothes or, at worst, was dead. Perhaps it would have been easier for Jenny if she’d known the girl was dead, but to think of the unknown girl weeping because her things were gone, brought Jenny close to tears. She jumped up suddenly from the bed and stuffed the offending sack into the back of the wardrobe and slammed the door. She’d never wear whatever was in there; she didn’t even want to look at it.

She curled up on her bed and picked up her pencil and sketch pad, which Arthur had given her for Christmas. In a few moments, she was lost in her own world, drawing a picture of the beach at Ravensfleet – and walking along the sand was the figure of a tall man in RAF uniform and beside him skipped a young girl.

By the spring of 1942, Arthur was running short of money. Their only income was from the odd jobs he did for the local farmers, since his ARP work was still voluntary.

‘I don’t know why we can’t move into Sheffield and you sign on as a full-time warden instead of just three or four nights a week. You’d get paid then.’ Dot smiled wryly. ‘Not like you, Arfer, to do something for nothing.’

Arthur glared at her but couldn’t argue. ‘I’ll have to start getting stuff locally again. I’ve still got my contacts in the city.’ Jenny’s heart dropped at Arthur’s words; she knew what was coming next. ‘And I’ll need you to come out with me, Tich.’

Dot glanced at the girl but said nothing. She doesn’t even stick up for her own daughter being dragged into a life of crime, Jenny thought bitterly. Now, if it had been Charlotte . . . She turned her thoughts away. She mustn’t think about them; it only made her sad.

Despite Dot’s goading, Arthur still intended to keep on his duties as an ARP warden. ‘You never know when somewhere useful might get bombed. Like a grocer’s or a butcher’s or . . .’ The list went on and Jenny shuddered. He talked as if the enemy was dropping bombs on these poor folk purely for Arthur Osborne’s benefit.

On his next night off, he came downstairs dressed in his balaclava and dark clothes.

‘Ought she to be in something black?’ Dot asked. Far from trying to stop Arthur taking the young girl with him, Dot was encouraging their escapades. The only thing that seemed to annoy her was that she was not needed too.

‘Yeah, maybe so tonight. Go and get that black coat of yer mam’s. You’re growing so fast, it’ll nearly fit yer.’

‘’Ere,’ Dot protested half-heartedly. ‘I don’t want that ruining.’ But then she relented. It was no use arguing with Arthur and anyway, she was running short of money too. ‘Just you be careful with it, Jen.’

‘Get a move on then, Tich.’ He tweaked Jenny’s nose playfully, but she only frowned at him. She did as she was told but she was still trying to think of a way out of all this. More than once, she’d packed her clothes, her sketch pad and pencils in readiness to run away. But at the last moment, common sense had prevailed. She’d only be found and brought back and then, not only would her Mum and Arthur be mad at her, but also the authorities might start asking awkward questions. Much as she wanted to be out of this, she didn’t want to be the cause of trouble for Arthur. In a lot of ways, he was still kind to her and her mother was less handy with her slaps when he was around. Jenny sighed. If it wasn’t for the thieving, she’d have been quite happy really. Well, as happy as she was ever going to be now that she knew she could never go back to Ravensfleet.