Tuppence To Spend (19 page)

‘We keep a very careful eye on the evacuees.’

‘You can’t do,’ Dan stated. ‘There’s hundreds of ’em – thousands, when you looks at London. And now they’re talking about taking youngsters from Southampton and Bristol and Liverpool – all the places they said wouldn’t be bombed. How can you keep an eye on all of them?’

Captain Whiting sighed. ‘I agree, it’s a difficult situation. All I can say is we do our best. And as for Sammy – Mr Hodges, you
must
see that it would be better for him to be safe in the country. The bombing’s getting worse.
You
know how badly London’s been hit. We could get that sort of treatment here – even worse than the raids we’ve been getting. Saturation bombing that goes on and on for hours, destroying huge areas of the city. Buildings flattened – shelters buried.’ He curled one hand into a fist and thumped it on the table. ‘You
can’t
leave a child of eight by himself during that kind of attack. You
can’t
let him look after himself, sit all alone in an air-raid shelter with no one to look after him and comfort him. It’s inhuman. It’s neglect. It’s sheer, selfish, bloody-minded
cruelty
.’

There was a long silence. The captain bit his lip and looked down at the table, already regretting his outburst. He’d always tried in cases like this to use gentle persuasion rather than loss of temper and what amounted to nothing
short of abuse. And he was uncomfortably aware that a lot of what Dan said was true. They
couldn’t
look after all the evacuees properly.

At the same time he was desperately anxious to get little Sammy Hodges away from the squalor of this hovel, away from the lonely life he led and, above all, away from the dangers he faced every day, all on his own.

A child of eight, he thought. It’s not right. It’s like something out of Dickens.

‘All right,’ Dan said at last. He didn’t look at the captain. ‘All right, you win. He can go.’

Captain Whiting stared at him. ‘You mean it? You’ll agree to his being evacuated?’

‘I said so, didn’t I?’ Dan got up suddenly, almost knocking his chair backwards. ‘I said he can go. Make the arrangements. Take him off, wherever he’s got to go.’ He looked down at his son and back at the captain. ‘I don’t want nothing to happen to him,’ he said in a thick, husky voice. ‘I don’t want to be – what you said –
cruel
. I just been doing me best, that’s all. But if you reckon he’d be better off out in the country – well, you take him. And make it snappy, because we got a big job on down Vosper’s and I’ll be at sea for the rest of the week after Wednesday.’

The captain looked at him. He glanced at Sammy, who had not moved from his curled position in the chair. Then he took some sheets of paper from his briefcase.

‘There are a few forms to fill in. It won’t take long. If we do it now, I can make the arrangements tomorrow and Sammy can leave on Wednesday morning.’ He hesitated. ‘I’m sure you won’t regret this. You’re doing the right thing.’

Dan grunted. He came back to the table and went rapidly through the forms, barely glancing at them before adding his signature. Once it was done, he remained silent, waiting for the captain to go.

Whiting stood up and looked at Sammy. ‘I’ll come
myself on Wednesday morning,’ he said kindly, ‘and take you to the railway station. Pack all the things you want to take with you and don’t forget your gas mask. Have you got a warm coat for the journey?’

‘I ain’t got no coat,’ Sammy whispered, and Captain Wilding glanced at Dan.

‘I expect we’ll be able to find something. The Lady Mayoress has set up a clothing fund. We’ll be able to provide Sammy with anything he needs.’

Dan nodded and the captain hesitated another moment, then turned towards the door. He walked quickly down the passage and out of the front door. They heard his footsteps marching away along the street.

Dan moved towards his son and Sammy, still curled in the chair, stared up at him.

‘Well, that’s it, then,’ Dan said gruffly. ‘Your mum never wanted you to go away, but it looks like you’re going to. And maybe it’s for the best after all. Maybe you’ll be better off out in the country, with trees and fields and animals all round you.’ He put out his hand and laid it awkwardly on Sammy’s head. ‘I promised her I’d do me best to look after you and I ain’t made much of a job of it, have I? Better let someone else take you over.’

He looked down at his son, then around the room with its peeling wallpaper, its battered table and sagging chairs, the pile of dirty overalls in one corner and last night’s fish and chip paper still on the table.

It seemed cold and empty without Nora, but it came to him then that it was going to seem even emptier without Sammy.

Ruth prepared for the arrival of her evacuee as if she were a pregnant mother expecting her first child. She had to remind herself that this wasn’t her child, never would be, that its stay would be only temporary and she might not even like it. Of course I’ll like it, she argued back as she unfolded fresh white cotton sheets and made up the narrow bed in the small spare room. It’s a kiddy, isn’t it, and it’s been taken away from its own home and family. Poor little scrap. It’ll be lost and bewildered, and it’ll need some love and comfort. And that’s what I’m going to give it.

Only Jane knew how much Ruth had longed for children of her own. It wasn’t Ruth’s way to visit her griefs on other people. She’d learnt that through being a sailor’s wife. But she had thought there’d be children to fill the gap, and although she and Jack had certainly done their best when he was at home – she smiled at the memory of Jack and herself doing their best – it hadn’t happened. And those long absences had made it even less likely.

The chance had gone for ever when Jack died. It wasn’t that Ruth was too old, she was only thirty-five, but she’d just never fancied another chap after Jack. Will Prosser from Fair Oak, whom she’d known at secondary school, had been keen but Ruth hadn’t fancied moving out to Fair Oak. It was a nice enough village but too far away from all her friends and family, and you couldn’t get the train into Southampton like you could in Bridge End. And she hadn’t liked the way Will laughed, a loud, honking noise that Silver would have picked up in no time. She couldn’t face
the thought of living with that laugh, honking through the house even when Will wasn’t there.

Albert Newton, from Church Street, was a nice enough chap and they got on well. But he was fifteen years older than her and Ruth thought that was too big an age gap. And there was Blackie, his cat. How would Silver take to having a cat about the place? He wouldn’t, Ruth thought. He’d hate it and the cat wouldn’t be too thrilled either.

And that was another thing. Any man she married would have to live with Silver, which meant, more or less, living with Jack. What man would want to listen to his predecessor’s voice asking to call Ruth sweetheart and saying he loved her?

I’ve learnt to do without men, Ruth thought, arranging a few books on the shelf. But I’ve never really learnt to do without kiddies.

The room was ready now and she stood with her hands resting on her hips, looking around it with satisfaction. The white curtains were patterned with apples, and she’d spread an apple-green coverlet over the bed to match and put a cheerful rag rug on the brown linoleum floor. There was a small wooden chair by the bed and a washstand with a marble top and a mirror. The shelf that ran along one wall bore the children’s books that she’d had for years – a battered
Grimms’ Fairy Tales
that she’d had when she was girl, which had half frightened her to death, and some Enid Blyton
Sunny Stories
books that Jane had handed on to her when Lizzie had grown out of them. Ruth had taken them to the hospital to read to children who were having their tonsils out, but she’d always kept them at home.

She glanced out of the window. The autumn sky was clouding over and the light was fading rapidly. Time to light the fire, or Silver would be complaining. He hated the cold, even after all these years in England. She went downstairs and gave his neck an affectionate scratch as he squawked a greeting.

‘Goodnight, sweetheart. I love you, Ruthie.’

‘I love you too,’ she told him. ‘Time for tea now.’

‘Tea for two. I’m a little teapot –’

‘You’re a little flirt,’ she told him as she knelt to put a match to the fire already laid in the grate. ‘You think if you’re nice to me now I’ll give you a bit of cake. Well, you’ve got another think coming. There isn’t any. It’s Wednesday, see, and we only have cake at the weekends.’

‘Splice the mainbrace,’ he suggested and she laughed.

‘And there’s definitely no rum, you old scallywag.’ She watched for a moment as the flames licked around the kindling and then caught. ‘But I’ll make some tea and we’ll have it by the fire. I’ve got a couple of crumpets in the breadbin. It’ll be a good thing to have a kiddy around the place,’ she told the bird as she went out to the scullery. ‘You might learn to copy him as well as you copy my Jack.’

And then she’d have the child’s voice for company even after he – or she – had gone back home again, when all this was over, she thought. She could even get him to copy other youngsters, like he’d already copied things Lizzie had taught him. A whole family, all wrapped up in one grey bird.

‘Goodnight, you old scallywag,’ she heard coming from the other room in her own voice. ‘Go to sleep now. See you in the morning.’

Ruth laughed. It didn’t matter how much she pretended to grumble to other people about the bird, they’d only to listen to her voice coming tinnily from his big grey beak to know the truth. You couldn’t keep anything secret with a parrot about.

The room was ready, yet no evacuee came. It seemed as if the second wave, brought by the reality of bombing, had stopped and there must be no children left in the cities. Or if there were, they weren’t going to be evacuated.

Ruth went into the bedroom and looked sadly at the
apple-green coverlet and the curtains. It just didn’t seem as if she was ever meant to have a child, even for a little while. I ought to offer to have a woman, she thought, someone who’s on her own like me and hasn’t got anywhere else to go. But anyone like that was likely to be either old or unwell, and although Ruth told herself she was being selfish, she just didn’t want to have to do more nursing at home as well as at work. She wanted someone lively and young, someone who would fill the empty space in her heart.

Autumn was fading into winter. Nobody could call the war ‘phoney’ now. Every day brought news of more bombing, more people killed and injured, more people homeless. In London they called it the ‘Blitz’, after Hitler’s ‘blitzkrieg’, meaning ‘lightning war’. And it was like lightning that the bombers came, flashing across the skies to deliver their thunder on the cities below, and it was like lightning that the searchlights flung their bright spears upwards to spotlight them for the gunners.

London was bombed night after night. The people took to sheltering in the underground stations after dark and the authorities began to encourage them, providing bunks and making space for the Women’s Voluntary Service to set up tea urns and even small lending libraries. People said it was like a big party down there sometimes – a party that ended, all too often, in tears when the revellers came up in the morning light and saw the devastation of their streets and homes.

‘It’s not just London, either,’ Ruth said to Jane when they met in the village shop one day. ‘Portsmouth’s been getting a lot of raids too. Some of the evacuee kiddies must be worried stiff about their mums and dads.’

Jane nodded. ‘I think they are, though people try not to talk about it too much in front of them. I know Reg and Edna do their best to give Tim and Keith Budd a proper
childhood. Not everyone takes the same trouble, though, as we well know.’

The two women were silent for a moment, thinking of the little Atkinsons, Wendy and Alan, who had been billeted with the Woddis sisters. You wouldn’t have credited that two old spinsters could be so unkind and the village was still ashamed that it had taken Jess Budd, herself an evacuee, to see what was going on and put it right. And her such a meek and mild little woman too! And then there was old Widow Hutchins and Martin Baker. It was no wonder some of the city parents didn’t want to send their children away.

‘I’d have given them a home,’ Ruth said regretfully. ‘Any one of ’em. But I can’t blame them for not wanting to take the chance again.’

A few days later they heard the news of the raid on Coventry and were shocked to see in their newspapers the pictures of the cathedral, reduced to piles of rubble. Almost the whole of the city had been destroyed and there were heartbreaking reports of the survivors trekking hopelessly away from the ruins, carrying what few possessions they had salvaged. It seemed as if the Germans must be winning and the fears of invasion grew.

It was Liverpool’s turn next, then Bristol. And then, at the very end of November, Southampton.

The inhabitants of Bridge End could see and hear it all. They stood in their gardens and watched with horror as the skies turned the colour of blood and the thunder of aircraft, gunfire and exploding bombs shook the ground. Jane sent George down to fetch Ruth up to them, saying she mustn’t be there on her own; but Ruth had already gone to the Cottage Hospital in case casualties were brought in. Lizzie, white with fear, sat at her window staring at the surging glow of the fires, ignoring all her mother’s pleas to come away.

‘If there’s a blast you’ll be cut to pieces. Please, Lizzie. You don’t
know
that Alec’s ship was in dock tonight.’

‘It could have been. He’s due in some time this week. He might be down there now, burning—’

‘Lizzie, stop it! It doesn’t do any good to think like that. And suppose he comes home and finds you cut to bits by flying glass. You’re being stupid and obstinate!’

Ruth tended the patients who were already in the hospital, reassuring them with calm words, but her mind was in the stricken city with Jack’s parents who still lived in Southampton. They were both in their eighties and she’d begged them over and over again to come out to Bridge End, but they had steadfastly refused. ‘We’ve lived in Southampton all our lives,’ her father-in-law said, ‘and this is where we’ll die. Anyway, ’t ain’t right for folk our age to take up spaces what ought to be kept for younger folk.’