War Orphans (6 page)

He was not in the playground, though that was not unusual. He was always late for school.

Suddenly she heard his cheery voice.

‘You looking for me?'

The bell rang, summoning them to get into orderly lines before entering the school. The boys in the playground ran in all directions before finding their places. Joanna knew that the girls would be doing the same and if she didn't hurry she would be late and perhaps get detention.

She hurriedly told Paul about the leaflet she'd found. His cheery face turned solemn. ‘I know. I told you I'd make enquiries and I 'ave. They've been round the whole street.' He began counting on his fingers the dogs who'd been taken. ‘Clarence, Dandy, Poppy, Bonzo . . . and that's only the dogs. Cats have gone too. They didn't take my rabbits, but then my mum said they weren't pets. They were food.'

Joanna gulped and hung her head. She couldn't imagine eating Twinkle and Silver, Paul's pet rabbits. She imagined bits of their flesh in a stew and couldn't believe Paul would eat them either.

Despite the fact that the school bell was sounding for a second time, the last one before it meant a black mark in the register, Paul leaned back against the red-brick wall of the school and sighed. ‘People are doing really stupid things. Just cos the government says pets are going to be a nuisance, they're believin' every word. Nobody wants to starve and some people can't be bothered to get them collected or take them to the collection places. There's so many dogs and cats that some people are dumping them anywhere or killing them themselves. They can even buy a special gun to do it.' He shook his head, a deep frown furrowing his boyish brow. ‘I couldn't do that. Not to an animal. Could shoot a Nazi though – if they gave me the chance.'

Joanna fixed her eyes on Paul's knees. Today, Monday, they were clean but would get grubbier during the week. Sunday
night was bath night for his whole family but nobody seemed to bother much with washing during the week, except for face and hands.

Despite the piece of bread she'd dipped into the fat and the stolen bite of sandwich, her stomach rumbled and Paul heard it.

‘Here. Have a humbug.'

Paul's grandmother in Railway Terrace kept him stocked up with sweets.

She took the sweet gratefully, rolling the sweet over her tongue and doing her best to keep sucking and not crunching it. It would last longer that way.

The bell jangled for the third time.

Paul dashed off into the boys' playground while Joanna ran swiftly along the road to the girls' gate, unable to resist crunching the sweet before she got there. Her stomach rumbled again. The evening meal seemed a long way away.

Susan was already standing in line. They'd missed each other this morning because Joanna had left a bit later thanks to having to wash up. Susan's mother did everything like that and Susan hated being late for school.

‘In here,' Susan hissed having saved a place for her friend. As usual Susan started chatting about anything and everything. ‘Last night I dreamed of custard and jam sponges piled high with cream. It was just like the Mad Hatter's tea party in
Alice in Wonderland
though I was the only one sitting at the table and all the food was for me . . .'

Susan prattled on and Joanna listened. Food figured in her own dreams, but so did Lottie. She would never forget her. War had turned both her world and that of animals into a nightmare and she was helpless to do anything about it.

That morning something astounding happened. The smell of boiled potatoes and other food began circulating at around ten o'clock. The whole school was summoned to assembly to be addressed by their headmistress. Judging by the trampling of
feet in the playground next door, Junior School boys were being assembled too.

The light from the school windows reflected on Miss Burton's glasses as she gazed out over her pupils, her hands clasped in front of her, the light making her fluffy hair shine like a halo around her head.

‘Girls. As of today all of you will be entitled to a midday meal. This action has been instigated by the Ministry of Food in the event of your mothers being called up to do war work. I'm sure you'll agree it will be too hard for them to run a home as well as working a factory or keeping the railways and buses running.' She glanced swiftly at the piece of paper she held in her hand. ‘Today's menu consists of liver and onions with cabbage and potatoes followed by semolina pudding.'

A huge gasp of approval ran throughout the assembly. One or two girls muttered how much they hated liver and onions and semolina was not favoured by everyone.

Joanna, so hungry she would have eaten the whole lot on one plate, promptly fainted.

When she came to she was sitting on a chair outside in the playground. Miss Hadley was holding her hand. Joanna blinked at the cool touch of Miss Hadley's palm.

Her teacher smiled. ‘How are you feeling now, Joanna?'

Her smile was so sweet she looked just like the angel on the Sunday school wall. Her hair was a lovely soft reddish colour. Her eyes were blue and beautiful, and she smelled fresh and wholesome. Yes, she was wearing makeup and perhaps a smidgeon of scent, but anyone could tell it had been put on fresh that morning. Elspeth could never be bothered to wash the night before so ended up with patchy skin and a stale smell in the morning.

‘I think I dreamed we were going to have dinner here in school. Was it a dream, miss?'

Sally Hadley smiled. ‘No, Joanna, it was not. School dinners will be provided for all, although it's really supposed to be
restricted to those whose mothers are already out at work. However, Miss Burton has decided, and I agree with her, that many more women will be called to work shortly so all children who want it can have school dinners. Miss Burton believes in being prepared.'

Sally glanced down at her wristwatch aware that Miss Burton was overseeing her class while she dealt with Joanna. Much as she wanted to help the little girl, she had to get back.

‘You fainted. Are you feeling better now?'

Joanna nodded.

Sally paused before asking the next question, already guessing what the answer would be. ‘Did you have any breakfast this morning?'

Again Joanna nodded.

‘What did you have?'

‘A piece of bread. And some bacon fat.' She was too embarrassed to tell her about the bite of bacon sandwich, and she supposed the humbug Paul had given her didn't count.

Sally tried to picture the meagre repast but couldn't. ‘So you will have room for lunch?'

A soft smile lit Joanna's pale face. ‘I don't mind liver and onions, miss. Or semolina.'

‘Does your mother make you them too?'

Later, Sally would describe Joanna's look to her father as old beyond her years.

‘She's my stepmother. She mostly makes bread and dripping.'

Sally recalled the blowsy blonde, her perfume fighting a losing battle with her body odour.

‘Never mind.' Sally smiled in an effort to gloss over her anger and her pity. ‘At least you can look forward to a decent meal every day you're at school. Now. Shall we go back to the classroom? It's only an hour until dinnertime.'

Joanna slid off her chair. Fearing the little girl might still be a bit wobbly Sally took her hand. The child would have at least one decent meal each weekday. Weekends and school holidays
were a different matter, but hopefully Joanna's circumstances might have improved by the time the long summer holiday came around next year. Perhaps her father might come home on leave and see what was going on, or a relative perhaps.

‘Do you have any aunts and uncles?'

‘No, miss.'

The answer was as she had feared. In her heart of hearts Sally couldn't see much changing in Joanna's circumstances, just as she couldn't see anything changing in her own father's disposition. All she could do was hope that both of them would fare better in future.

The six puppies were ripped away from their mother's teats and went into the sack first. The seventh had been exploring the outer reaches of the litter box and, being the strongest of the litter, had climbed over the edge.

On hearing his mother's yelps of alarm his little heart was filled with fear. He'd never been afraid before and his mother had never sounded so distraught.

The other sounds he heard were equally as frightening: loud human voices and the tread of heavy feet, so heavy the floorboards beneath him shook and made his legs wobble. Not liking all this noise, he scooted behind a pile of sacks in the corner of the shed.

The vibration from heavy footsteps advanced towards him. A voice growled with impatience.

‘Come 'ere you little whippersnapper! You ain't gettin' away from me.'

A hand as rough as the voice snatched him up by the scruff of the neck. He struggled and yapped as he was shoved into the sack with his siblings. He heard his mother whining plaintively, then a yelp, the crack of something very loud, and then nothing.

The inside of the sack was dark and smelled of something rotten and the puppies squealed with fear.

Puppy number seven had landed on top of his brothers and sisters and felt the bodies of his siblings wriggling around beneath him. His heart raced but rather than expending energy as his brothers and sisters were doing, some ancient instinct inherited from wild ancestors came into play. Instead of wasting
energy on struggling, that instinct told him to listen, to sniff, and to wait and see what would happen next.

His nose, so much more sensitive than a human's, twitched as above him a draught of fresh air came through a hole in the sack.

Bracing his back legs against his siblings brought whines of protest, but his instinct to escape and survive was strong.

The puppies tumbled about as the man carrying the sack gave it a violent shake. An angry human voice warned them to shut their racket.

The sack bounced roughly against the man's back and the puppies continued to tumble about as they were carried to their fate.

The poor little creatures knew nothing about who this man was or where they were going. They only knew they had been dragged away from their mother.

If they had been able to understand, they would know that the man was not their mother's owner but a man employed to get rid of them all. The real owners did not have the heart for it, but this man had told them he would dispose of them painlessly. He had lied.

The puppies kept up their whining and howling, squirming against each other as they fought for air.

The man muttered. ‘Shut yer bleedin' noise.'

The puppies neither heard nor understood. Terrified for their young lives, they cried and whined their hearts out.

There was a shifting of breeze as the sack was swung through the air. The puppies at the bottom of the sack screamed as they impacted with something hard. The man, nervous their yelping would be heard before he finished what he had to do, swung them against a brick wall.

The yelping became less as some of them were already dead or too injured to survive. The puppy at the top of the heap and closest to the man's hand had escaped the worst of the impact. The breath was knocked out of his little body, though only for
a moment. The same instinct as before kicked in. Keep small. Keep quiet. Keep immobile. But he was scared. Very scared.

Preferring not to be seen, the man waited until it was dark before picking the spot where he would throw the sack into the swirling water. It wasn't a wide stream but deep enough to drown the puppies in the sack. Hopefully the flow would suck the puppies down before the sack got caught in eddies and floated downstream.

Once he was sure, he swung the sack around his head and let it go. The splash of it hitting the water was enough confirmation that he'd done his job.

‘And now for a pint,' he said cheerfully, fingering the ten-bob note in his pocket as he walked off whistling a merry little tune.

He failed to see that the sack had jammed in deep water, between stepping stones the kids had placed in order to ford the stream more easily. The top third of the sack had flopped onto one of the stones. He was long gone by the time those puppies still clinging on to life at the bottom of the sack had drowned. Only one remained alive.

That lone survivor whimpered. He was wet, frightened and alone. He knew from the silence that his siblings were dead.

The hole in the sack became wider, ripped open by a sharp edge on the rock. He poked his nose out, sniffing the fresh air, smelling water, plants and the tangy whiff of creatures he did not recognise.

A sly and curious rat slid into the water close by. A duck quacked just once before resettling for the night.

The hole was big enough for the puppy to poke his nose through. His brothers and sisters were dead, but his survival instinct was strong and he was an intelligent little chap. He would not join them.

Outside the rat circled, waiting for the opportunity to investigate further, but he held back. His keen sense detected movement plus the unmistakeable scent of man, always a threat to the likes of him.

The puppy barked sharply. The rat retreated. Now was not the time. When the scent of man diminished, along with what little life was left in the sack, he would come back, keen to feed on whatever was left.

Bracing his little legs against the dead bodies of his brothers and sisters, the puppy shoved his nose further into the hole.

The ripped sacking cut into his muzzle. Much as he tried to push his way through it just wasn't wide enough.

Tired and wet, he pulled his muzzle back and then began chewing, his sharp little teeth ripping at the sacking, turning it from a small hole into a bigger one.

His teeth were sharp and he went on chewing for as long as he could until he became too fatigued to continue, then he rested and would begin again.

The hessian sack was strong, but although he only had milk teeth, he chewed his way through driven by fear and the will to live. Scrabbling with his front paws and pushing with his rear legs, he steadily hauled half of his body out of the sack.