Tin Hats and Gas Masks (6 page)

‘Some I salted down in the summer,’ Mrs Dover told them proudly. ‘Come on now, start eating.’

When they had eaten their fill and Johnny had pronounced the meal, ’especially that stuffing’ as ‘scrumptious,’ Mrs Dover took the plates through to the kitchen and returned with a raspberry jelly and a chocolate blancmange.

‘Johnny, would you bring the rest in please?’ she said, ‘while I fetch the fruit bowls.’

He jumped up so smartly he almost tipped the chair over and Annie laughed delightedly. It was good to see her so relaxed and happy. He hoped she was going to like the cake, oh he did hope so.

He carried it in slowly, carefully, and with Mrs Dover’s help placed it in the centre of the table. Once it was safely down he looked across to Annie and was appalled to see tears streaming down her face.

‘Annie,’ he said, and his voice came out as a little croak. She brushed the tears with the back of her hand.

‘Isn’t that wonderful,’ she said, ‘a birthday-cake with candles and my name on.’

Amid the laughter Mrs Dover said, ‘That is Johnny’s present. I was simply the cook. It was his idea.’

‘I hope it tastes as good as it looks,’ was Mr Dover’s contribution.

‘Oh it will, I’m sure it will. Can we – can we light the candles?’

‘Of course.’ Mrs Dover did so, and Johnny thought a table had never looked so beautiful before, the redpatterned jelly and the brown bobbly blancmange either side of THE CAKE with its eleven shimmering candles.

When they were ready to cut the cake Annie suddenly said, ‘Oh it does seem a shame to touch it,’ and they all laughed.

‘First, Anita has to blow out her candles,’ Mrs Dover said.

‘And we sing Happy Birthday,’ Johnny added. He
thought she was going to cry again while they were singing, but she didn’t, although he could see the tears glinting in her eyes as she took a deep breath and blew hard.

Johnny stepped from the train at Winchurch station and dived down the slope at the side.

‘Hey, where d’you think you’re going? Oh it’s you, Johnny me lad. Well the exit is over here.’ Old Mr West caught up with him and ruffled Johnny’s hair.

‘I know, Mr West, but it’s quicker this way. Anyhow, I got me ticket. I’m not getting a free ride.’

‘Where you been?’

‘London. Back home to me brother’s wedding.’

‘Oh yes. You were best man, I suppose?’

‘No I wasn’t. Me other brother was though. He got special leave. It was a smashing do.’

‘Go on, off you go, and mind you go straight there.’

Johnny hurried down the slope and set off for Kerry Avenue. It had been wonderful to be home again, and he’d got some even more marvellous news to tell Annie. But
he’d pick his time, and it wouldn’t be when the Dovers were listening.

They all seemed pleased to see him. Strange, that, he thought. Even Mr Dover talked a bit over the meal. Johnny winked at Annie, and she grinned back at him. They both knew they would catch up with each other’s news when they went upstairs to bed that night, but Johnny’s excitement was such that he couldn’t wait that long. He passed a note to Annie saying, ‘Something to tell you, can you escape?’

After a while she left the room saying, ‘Will you excuse me for ten minutes, please? I have some work in my satchel to sort out.’

When Johnny rose a few minutes afterwards, Mrs Dover asked where he was going.

‘To unpack my case.’ He was careful to say ‘my’ and not ‘me’ and he kept his face sober and his voice quietly pitched.

‘Gosh’, he said, when he and Annie were alone, ‘it seems as if I’ve been away for longer than a weekend.’

‘It went off all right then?’ she said.

‘Oh yeah, smashing. And I’ve got a sister-in-law now. She’s a bit of all right too. Jim can certainly pick ’em.’

Annie turned away.

‘What’s up?’ he said.

‘Oh nothing.’

‘Yes there is. I can tell.’

‘All right then. It’s the way you said that. As though your brother picked a wife like – like buying a pound of potatoes. I expect they got married because he loves her.’

‘Well ’course ’e does, silly. But she’s a looker too. You should have heard what me other brother was saying about her. He got a thirty-six-hour pass to be best man, but Jim got a week ’cos he was the groom.’

‘You enjoyed it all then? The wedding and being home?’

‘Yep. Mind, I nearly didn’t bother to come back to this dump.’

‘Why did you, then?’

Johnny shrugged. ‘You really want to know?’

Annie nodded, watching him.

‘Well it was you. I didn’t want to never see you again.’

He swung his case on to the bed and started whistling ‘Run, Rabbit Run’, as he undid it and scattered the contents about. Annie sat on the edge of the bed and watched him.

‘I’m glad you did come back, Johnny,’ she said after a few minutes.

‘Here.’ He took a bulky-looking shape wrapped in a teacloth from his case. ‘I got you something.’

She undid it carefully. Inside was a piece of wedding-cake, a silver shoe and some rose-petals.

‘That’s what they used for confetti,’ Johnny said offhandedly, ‘real rose-petals. Thought you’d like a bit of the wedding seeing as how you missed all the excitement. And it was a proper wedding-cake. My mum and Doris’s mum got together and saved all their coupons for months to get the stuff.’

‘Gosh, thanks Johnny. I kept wishing I could come with you. It seemed a long weekend with only the Dovers for company. They’re ever so dull.’

‘That’s the other exciting news, Annie. Me mum says
you can come for the weekend when I have me birthday treat next month. We’re going to a show and we’ll probably eat out too, seeing as how it’s a special occasion.’

‘Come up and stay with you?’

Johnny sauntered as nonchalantly as he could over to the door.

‘Of course. It’d be too late to come back here after the theatre. Mind, there’s danger in London, the bombs falling, you’ll probably want to think about it first.’

‘Oh no, Johnny, I don’t need to think about it. I’d love to come.’

He turned to face her so suddenly he almost fell over himself. ‘Smashing.’ he said. ‘We’ll have a whale of a weekend. You can help me choose what we go to see, and we’ll have a slap-up meal.’

‘Sshh Johnny, keep your voice down or you’ll have sir and madam up to “see what is going on”.’ Annie gave a fair imitation of Mrs Dover’s voice. They went downstairs again, and for the rest of the evening they gave each other excited glances.

Later, at their nightly chat session Johnny told her how excited his mum had been to have all the family home together, even though it was only for the weekend.

‘And the siren didn’t go once during the wedding, but it did in the night, though there were no bombs dropped near us. Just heard the planes going over, that’s all. Didn’t see any action.’

Johnny’s twelfth birthday was actually on the Wednesday, but the jollifications were arranged for the weekend when Mrs Bookman would be home from the
factory where she worked.

Annie’s parents were hesitant when she asked permission to spend the weekend in London with the Bookmans. Mrs Evesham had a long telephone conversation with Mrs Dover one evening and at the end of it Mrs Dover said, ‘Anita, your mother would like to speak to you.’

Johnny went upstairs, ostensibly to go to the bathroom, but in reality to squat on the landing and peer through the banisters. Looking down on to the mass of Annie’s shining dark hair he thought, I bet they’ll stop her coming with me, yet her mum never comes to see her and only writes once a month. She doesn’t really care about her, not like I do.

This discovery made him feel strange from head to toe. He even shivered a little. Yes, he did care about her, in fact he couldn’t imagine life without Annie now. She was better than his own mates because not only did she join in with any adventure that was on the go, but he could talk to her as well. And looking at her, as he was now from his vantage point, a heady, vibrant sensation shot through him and he felt the blood suffusing his cheeks at the temerity of his thoughts.
Annie Evesham, I believe I’m in love with you
.

He waited until he heard her say, ‘Goodbye, Mummy,’ and disappear into the front room before he came downstairs. She looked across to him as he entered and, smiling happily, she said, ‘I can come, Johnny.’

It was hard not to rush over and swing her round and round as he had in that dancing sequence at school last week, but instead he simply said, ‘That’s good.’

She took him to task about this when they were upstairs again later.

‘You didn’t show much enthusiasm when I said I was allowed to come and spend the weekend at your house, Johnny. I thought you wanted me to.’

He laughed delightedly, feeling power too now for the first time in his life. ‘I do, Annie,’ he said, ‘you know darn well I do, but it’s best not to let the others see that. If grown-ups think you want something very badly they’ll try to stop it, pretending it’s for your own good.’

Mrs Dover made a great deal of the proposed weekend in London. ‘I’m sure I think you’re very brave, the both of you,’ she said several times. ‘You wouldn’t catch me going up there unless it was necessary. Certainly not to go to the theatre.’

‘And have dinner in a restaurant,’ Johnny said proudly. ‘No messing about with rations and things. I shall eat enough to last me for days.’

Annie laughed delightedly. ‘If you’re too greedy you’ll be sick and then it won’t have been any pleasure at all.’

‘My stomach’s strong. You’d be surprised at what I can put away,’ he boasted.

‘You are both forgetting that it costs money to eat out,’ Mrs Dover said.

‘It’s me birthday treat. I’m having a theatre visit and a meal out instead of a present.’ Johnny looked smugly at her. ‘Me mum’s earning a lot of money in the factory now and we’ve never been terribly poor like some kids are. We’ve always had enough to eat and decent clothes.’

In the two years Johnny had lived with the Dovers he had grown much taller and lost some of what Annie called his ‘sloppy speech habits’. His natural accent was still
there, and he spoke as quickly, but he didn’t swear as much and Annie had shown him the beauty of words.

Although she was used to bucking authority, she had never done it with such joy until she met Johnny. Until then it had been a grim ‘I won’t let you beat me’ attitude. Now it was happy, shared excitement.

Together they had taken several afternoons off school and gone to the pictures. Annie always had money sent to her by her parents. They spaced these visits out and had only been caught once. ‘And then we didn’t let on where we’d been,’ they enthused to each other later, for Annie had quickly said that she had hurt her foot and Johnny had stayed with her until she could walk on it again.

‘Mind, I don’t think they believed us,’ she said later, ‘but who cares. They couldn’t prove I wasn’t speaking the truth.’

‘You’re better at that than I am,’ he had answered then. ‘Me mum always says she knows when I’m telling a lie.’

‘So do I,’ she answered solemnly.

‘How? Come on – give.’

‘Ouch, let go, you’re hurting my arm.’

Johnny stopped immediately. He couldn’t bear to hurt her. He had never felt like this about a girl before. Not about anyone really. ‘Tell me how you know, Annie. An’ – and I’ll tell you if you’re right,’ he finished triumphantly. ‘That’s fair.’

‘I suppose so.’ She put her head slightly to one side, a habit he had noticed before when she needed time to think. ‘Well, you lapse into cockney, but … it’s hard to say really – more than usual. Sort of emphasized.’

‘’Course I don’t,’ he answered loudly. ‘You just think I do. Why, I even sound my h’s properly now. It’s your imagination. You ought ter write stories, cor struth you did, Annie. You wouldn’t ’alf be good at it.’

They were to leave for London early on Saturday morning and return to Winchurch on Sunday afternoon. Annie had by now met Mrs Bookman several times, when she had come down to Winchurch on her day off to see Johnny. She liked her.

‘She startled me at first she was so quick,’ she confided to Johnny, ‘but she’s definite, goes straight to the point and when she laughs I could laugh too without even knowing the joke.’

Mrs Dover tried to persuade Johnny to borrow one of their suitcases, but he refused to be parted from his well-worn one.

‘I don’t know why. This is smarter and will hold more,’ she said.

‘Mine holds enough, thank you, Mrs Dover, and I like it.’

‘Hey, are you going to take your tin hat, Johnny? You might need it in London,’ Annie said when they were packing. He grabbed the nearest pillow and threw it at her.

They left the house on Saturday morning with Mrs Dover’s voice following them down the garden path. ‘Be careful on the roads up there.’

‘That’s rich, that is,’ Johnny said when they had turned the corner, ‘worrying about the London traffic when there’s bombs blowing up all around you.’

‘Johnny, you do exaggerate. Come on, let’s run, I can’t wait to get there.’

On the station waiting for the London train she said suddenly, ‘Does this sound absolutely awful to you? I’m hoping there will be a raid while we’re there. Just a little one, not people getting killed or injured, but German planes coming over and our guns shooting at them. Think how exciting it would be, Johnny?’

Johnny, whose thoughts about the weekend at home had not been along those lines felt amazed for a few moments. Fancy wanting to go into danger like that just for the hell of it. Annie was quite a girl.

Mrs Bookman was at Paddington station to meet them. She threw an arm round each very quickly, then releasing them, she clenched her fist and shadow-boxed her son’s chin. That nearly made him cry, and he wanted very badly to tell her he missed her too. Instead he said loudly, ‘Hey Mum. Annie’s hoping there’ll be an air-raid while we’re here.’

Annie looked embarrassed. ‘You make it sound wicked, Johnny, and I didn’t mean it like that.’

Mrs Bookman turned to here. ‘There probably will be,’ she said, ‘but I think I know what you mean, duck – not much excitement stuck down there in the country. I’d hate it meself.’

They travelled by tube and bus back to Johnny’s home in Hackney.

‘D’you want to see your mum while you’re up here, Annie?’ Mrs Bookman said as the tube raced through the blackness.

‘No, thank you. They’re away at present. I spoke to her on the telephone last week, though.’

Once indoors Johnny thought how small everything looked. The two-up, two-down terraced house had always seemed roomy to him before. Bigger than the homes of some of his mates, who lived in the flats anyway.

Now it felt very poky. Still, it was good to be back. To hear his mum singing away to the wireless and to see again his home-made ships and racing-cars. Before the war he had shared a bedroom with his two brothers. Now they were both in the army he’d have it to himself.

‘I’ve put Annie in the bedroom, Johnny,’ Mrs Bookman said now, ‘and you’ll be in the bedchair down here tonight.’

Oh well, you couldn’t win ’em all and he hadn’t really thought about where Annie would sleep. Just to be home was good enough, and he’d slept on the bedchair often before; it wasn’t too hard, unless you turned over suddenly and caught your face on the arm.

‘When we going up West then Mum?’

‘When we’ve had something to eat. I’ve got some dried egg so I thought I’d do you scrambled egg and chips now and we’ll have tea out before we go to the show.’

‘I am looking forward to it, Mrs Bookman,’ Annie said quietly, ‘and it is good of you to invite me too.’

‘It’s a pleasure, Annie. I just hope those blighters stay away tonight, that’s all. It’s been much better lately. It’s such a relief to know you kids are safe down there in the country. I expect your mum feels the same.’ Annie didn’t answer.