The Heart of the Family (13 page)

‘So you decided to tek me advice after all, did you, lass? Give you a decent blanket, did they?’ She reached out, rubbing the thin fabric between her thumb and her finger, and then snorting with derision. ‘Call that a blanket? It’s no more than a bit of barearsed rag. Just as well it’s a warm evening.’

She put her hand on Lena’s arm, holding on to her as she turned away to shout into the crowd, ‘’Ere, our Gavin, I’ve found that lass I was telling you about. She’s decided to come along wi’ us after all. You stick with me and our Gavin – we’ll see you right,’ she told Lena.

It was mean of her to feel so uncomfortably conscious of the picture the poor woman made, especially when she was trying to be so kind. She was in fact the only person, apart from Charlie’s sister, who had shown her any kindness, Lena reminded herself.

‘What’s your name then, lass? Mine’s Dolly. Daft Dolly, some call me.’ She laughed, her whole body shaking with amusement. ‘But it’s them what’s daft, not me.’

‘Lena,’ Lena told her automatically, and then wished that she had thought to make up a different name for herself. Not that it was likely that anyone was going to come searching for her, especially not here. She gazed round at the stream of people filling up the transport, both relieved and slightly shocked to realise how ordinary they looked. Somehow she had expected them all to be as colourful as Dolly, and even slightly disreputable-looking, but instead they appeared just like anyone she might have seen in the city going about their ordinary business.
There were families huddling together, and then larger groups of people who all seemed to know one another and who were laughing and joking together.

Nudging her, Dolly said, ‘See that lot over there just getting in that truck? The Hinford lot, they call themselves ’cos they allus head out for Hinford. That’s how it’s got now for all of us: we’ve all got our own villages what we go to. Our Gavin’s found us ever such a nice one. Proper pretty, it is, wi’ a farmer who lets us sleep in one of his barns.’

‘Come on, Gran, otherwise we’ll be going without you.’ The male voice was teasing.

‘Giveover, our Gavin. You’d never go off and leave me behind.’

So the Gavin to whom Dolly had been referring wasn’t her husband but her grandson. Disinterestedly Lena looked at him. Just over medium height and solidly built, he had a shock of thick wavy brownish-fair hair that needed cutting and fell down over his forehead into his eyes.

Lena frowned. A well-set-up lad like him ought to have been in uniform.

‘Lena here is coming wi’ us, Gavin,’ Dolly informed her grandson determinedly. ‘Homeless, she is, and on her own.’

‘I dunno, Gran. You’re a one for picking up waifs and strays, you are, and no mistake. Well, I dare say we can make room for her.’ The grin that accompanied his words might have been intended to take the sting from them but Lena wasn’t in any mood to be placated after everything she had already been through.

Instead she bridled and told him coldly, ‘There’s no need to go putting yourself out on my account.’

‘Tek no notice of our Gavin, Lena,’ Dolly laughed. ‘He’s just pulling your leg. Allus liked a joke, he has. I hope you’ve saved me a comfortable seat on one of them buses, Gavin, ’cos I’m not travelling in one of them lorries again. Bruised me old arse black and blue, it did.’

‘What, with all that padding you’ve got? Where’s your stuff?’ he asked Lena, bending down to pick up the basket his grandmother had been carrying.

‘Lost everything, she has, poor little soul,’ Dolly answered for Lena.

‘Still got her temper, though, Gran. Now come on.’

Somehow, without having any intention of going with them, Lena found that she was being bundled onto one of the buses, Dolly’s basket thrust unceremoniously into her arms whilst Gavin helped his grandmother onto the bus. There was no seat for Lena and she was almost jerked off her feet when the bus pulled off, making her fall heavily against Dolly’s grandson.

‘Ooh, looks like Lena’s falling for you, Gavin,’ Dolly cackled. ‘You’d better tell her about that girl of yours wot your mam’s allus going on about.’

‘Go on with you, you’re just jealous ’cos I said that her mum was a good cook.’ There was genuine love for his grandmother in Gavin’s voice as well as laughter.

‘Tek no notice of him, Lena,’ Dolly warned. ‘Allus trying to wind me up, he is.’

She turned round and looked down the bus, calling out, ‘Come on, we’re on a chara so let’s have a singsong!’

Vi lay in bed unable to sleep. She’d gone to bed far too early but she’d been bored sitting downstairs all
on her own. She put her hand on her chest to try to ease the uncomfortable feeling that her heart was beating too fast and unsteadily, which she got so often these days. The other side of the bed was empty. Edwin still hadn’t returned from his office. It was shameful the way the Government was making him work so hard and such long hours. Vi blamed that useless young woman he’d been forced to take on.

Her heart was jerking all over the place. It was entirely that dreadful creature’s fault, of course. And if females of her type weren’t something that no respectable woman would ever refer to she’d have had something to say to Charles the next time she saw him. Of course, it was obvious that the girl had been the one to instigate things, taking advantage of Charles in the way that her kind did. She’d taken one look at Charles and known she was on to a good thing. The gall of her, coming up here in the way that she had. They could have been entertaining one of Edwin’s fellow councillors, or she could have had some of her WVS friends round. She just hoped that Muriel from next door hadn’t seen her. She was a dreadful gossip and Vi wouldn’t have put up with her if it wasn’t for the fact that she had such good contacts for getting ‘things’.

It was a relief really that she wouldn’t be able to invite Jean and her family to the wedding. They’d have stuck out like sore thumbs and shown her up. She was going to have to talk to Bella as well, and point out to her that this could be a chance for her to meet someone and find herself a much better second husband than her first one had been. After all, Edwin couldn’t be expected to support her for ever.

It was well gone ten o’clock. Edwin wouldn’t come back in now. At least he had a decent bed in his office so that he could snatch a bit of sleep in between doing all this paperwork the War Office kept on demanding. He should take on a proper clerk and get rid of that young woman. She was giving herself far too many airs and graces. Vi hadn’t liked the way she’d looked at her when she’d seen her the other day, not one little bit. Smirking like a cat that had got the cream, she’d been, and well she might with Edwin paying her what he was. There now, her heart was jumping all over the place again …

Seb was being transferred to Whitchurch. Of course she mustn’t be silly and make a fuss about it, but even so, she couldn’t help wishing that he was staying here in Liverpool, Grace admitted. It wouldn’t change things between them, of course – how could it? – and she was pleased for him getting his promotion. But even so …

Lou lay in bed wide awake, staring up at the ceiling. She knew that Sasha was asleep; she could tell from the sound of her breathing. She wanted to reach out and wake her twin so that she could beg her to reassure her that things weren’t changing, that
they
themselves weren’t changing, but she knew that they were.

She didn’t want to become a telephonist. She wanted to do something exciting. She wanted … She didn’t know what she wanted, Lou admitted, only that what was happening was something she did not want. She couldn’t tell Sasha that, though. She would be upset. How had it happened that she was keeping secrets from her twin when they had
always shared everything, always known everything there was to know about one another?

Did Sash keep secrets from her? Like really being sweet on Kieran Mallory? A sharp pang of pain pierced her. It was only because of her and Sash, that was all. Nothing more. It was not because of Kieran. Not one little bit.

Lena stared around in disbelief.

‘You mean we’ve got to sleep here?’ she demanded, waving her hand in the direction of the gloomy interior of the vast and, to her, alien and even slightly intimidating barn, with its dark corners and its hayloft and its country smells that struck so sharply against her town nose. Several bales of straw were laid out on the stone-flagged floor of the barn itself, obviously intended to be used as ‘beds’.

‘Well, you can always sleep out in one of the fields if you want to,’ Gavin told her cheerfully. ‘Although you’ll have to watch out for the cows. Not too keen on townies, they aren’t.’

Cows! Lena shuddered. She had seen some of the huge strange-looking creatures as the bus had driven them into the first village where most of the trekkers had got off, leaving only a third or so of the bus full for the second stop in the village they’d just left to walk up a track that that been alternately muddy or so sharp-stoned that Lena had worried that the stones would cut right through the soles of her shoes, in the growing dusk. How on earth Dolly, in her white high heels, had managed the walk Lena did not know, although of course Dolly had had her grandson to help her. Lena would never have come with them if
she’d know what they were coming to, or that it would just be the three of them.

‘Nothing quite like sleeping out under a hedge, especially when you’ve had a bit of nice fat roasted hedgehog for your supper,’ Dolly announced, smacking her lips. ‘Allus said there was nowt like an hedgehog, my granddad did.’

‘Gran’s grandparents were Romany folk,’ Gavin explained calmly to Lena.

‘Aye, they were, and I’m not ashamed to say so neither – not like that mother of yours,’ Dolly told her grandson roundly.

Lena’s eyes had rounded as she listened to their exchange. She’d seen the Romany women coming round selling heather and pegs, and now as she looked at Dolly she realised that she did bear a passing resemblance to them. Thieves and worse, her mum and her auntie had called them, but they’d been scared of them as well on account of their curses and their ability to read folk’s futures in the tea leaves.

‘If my mam hadn’t married me dad then I’d have grown up a Romany meself,’ Dolly was saying sorrowfully. ‘I were lucky that her mam and dad had owt to do wi’ us ’cos there’s many a Romany family turn their backs on them of their own that marries out.’

Whilst Dolly was speaking, her grandson was busying himself lighting several lanterns and hanging them on nails, obviously put there for that purpose, in the wooden beams.

‘There’s no smoking allowed in here,’ he warned Lena. ‘We don’t want to set the place on fire, do we, Gran, otherwise we’d be the ones that would end up roasted.’

Whilst Lena shuddered again, Dolly laughed.

‘You’ll have to make sure that you cover the straw with your blanket,’ Gavin told Lena, ‘otherwise, you’ll be scratched to death.’

When Lena looked fearfully at the nearest bale as though it was alive with vermin, Dolly grinned and told her, ‘He means that the straw will chaff you, love. Gavin, go up the farmhouse and use them good looks of yours to some purpose and get us all a mug of tea from the farmer’s daughter.’

As he turned to leave she called after him, ‘And don’t spend half the night there wi’ her neither. We don’t want to come back tomorrow and have her dad coming after you with his gun.’

As soon as he had gone Dolly turned to Lena and said proudly, ‘Not that I’d blame her if she did take a fancy to him ’cos he’s a fine-looking lad and good with his head as well as with his hands.’

‘I’m surprised he isn’t in uniform,’ Lena told her, unable to stop herself from making the comment. There was something about the way Dolly’s grandson looked at her that made her bristle defensively. It wasn’t so much that his face said she wasn’t good enough for him, it was more as though somehow he felt sorry for her. Well, Lena didn’t want anyone’s pity.

‘Course he’s in uniform. He’s training to be a pilot on one of them boats that bring in the convoys,’ Dolly told her proudly. ‘My Janet might like to give herself airs and graces, but she’s certainly done well by her kids. Her hubby worked down the docks before he got killed in an accident, and with her insurance money she got Gavin apprenticed, like, on one of the pilot boats, and her two girls have both
joined up. Hilda’s in the ATS and Veronica’s joined the Land Army.’

The door to the barn opened and Gavin came in carrying a tray with three steaming mugs on it.

‘Got you a bit of bread and cheese, an’ all,’ he told Dolly, ‘although I dare say you’ll be complaining that it’s given you indigestion.’

‘I dare say I will,’ she agreed, but Lena saw that she was tucking into it eagerly enough as she sat down on the straw bale where Gavin had spread his own blanket.

‘’Ere, you’ll never guess what, our Gavin. Lena has just asked me why you aren’t in uniform.’

Lena’s face flamed as she saw the comprehension in his gaze when he turned to look at her.

‘Thought I was skiving off doing me bit, did you?’ He was smiling as though it was a joke, but Lena suspected that he didn’t really think it was a joke at all.

‘Course she didn’t. She probably thought you’d got flat feet or summat,’ Dolly told him. She was obviously enjoying herself hugely, having Lena as a captive audience and taking the opportunity to boast about her family, Lena guessed. ‘Anyway, I’ve put her straight and told her as how you’re training to pilot one of them boats wot brings in the convoys. You know what, Lena? I’ve really taken to you,’ Dolly announced. ‘And I reckon it’s on account of you having a bit of a look of me when I was a young ’un. I had them same dark curls. You’ve got a bit of a Romany look about you.’