A Sixpenny Christmas (27 page)

Lana was beginning to reply that she was fond of children when Jackie, still splashing water, spoke. ‘You could chuck me overboard,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Mum wouldn’t mind. She likes horrible Paul best, ’cos he’s her little yellow-headed darling.’

Both girls hissed in horrified breaths, but Lana leapt into the breach. ‘Of course we shan’t throw you overboard, chuck,’ she said briskly. ‘We love you much too much.
And as for Mummy liking Paul best, that’s just rubbish, you know it is. She has to take great care of him because he’s only a baby really, whereas you’re almost a grown-up. Now if you’ll get your fingers out of the water, kind Nonny will let you have a go with one of the oars.’

As Jackie took his place beside Nonny with a crow of glee and began to plunge the blade somewhat raggedly into the water, Nonny pulled a face at her friend. A few moments later she was informing Jackie, crisply, that though he apparently hadn’t noticed, they were going round in circles, and would he kindly let Lana steer them whilst he tugged rather more gently on his oar.

Ashore once more, and only slightly wet, they headed for the café to buy the promised windmills, and as soon as the boys had chosen one each – Jackie’s daffodil yellow, Paul’s sky blue – they parted, since Paul was growing heavy-eyed and even Jackie was looking weary. Mrs Jamieson thanked both girls for their company and their help, though Lana insisted on accompanying them back to the bus stop. ‘See you again!’ Jackie screamed, as his mother hustled him aboard the vehicle. ‘Thanks for the windmills!’

Paul, on his mother’s hip, blew kisses, and nearly decapitated the conductor by waving farewell with his windmill. The girls waved as well, Nonny resignedly and Lana with enthusiasm. Then they turned and made their way back to the part of the park where they had planned to eat their picnic. As they settled themselves on the grass Lana looked curiously at her friend. ‘You’ve gorra face like a smacked bottom,’ she observed cheerfully. ‘What’s up wi’ you and kids? They’s grand little lads, Jackie and Paul, though like all kids they can be real little
hellraisers at times. They were pretty good today, but I still had the feeling, in the boat, that for two pins you really would have liked to chuck Jackie overboard.’

Nonny pulled a face and took another sandwich. ‘I don’t know how to treat kids, nor how to talk to them even,’ she said honestly. ‘None of our neighbours have small kids and now that I’m at high school there are none on the bus either, so I’m just not used to them. In a way, they scare me.’

Lana laughed. ‘Scare you? For goodness’ sake, Nonny, what do you think they can do to you? Eat you?’

Nonny giggled. ‘I told you, I don’t understand them at all,’ she said. ‘But I suppose, if she’s a friend of Auntie Ellen’s, then you had to join her and the kids and make the best of it. And now let’s change the subject. What do you want to do when we’ve had our picnic?’ Nonny would have liked to go round the shops and usually Lana would have felt the same, but today it appeared she had different ideas.

‘There’s a play area not far from here where lads have a cricket pitch. This afternoon several fellers I know will be playing in a match and I thought we’d go along and watch. I’m quite friendly with one of the blokes; Tim Everett. He said if we were there soon after four o’clock we could join them for tea in the pavilion. We’d have to pretend we were helpers – putting out the sandwiches, pouring the tea and orange squash, things like that – but I’d like you to meet him.’ She ducked her head and mumbled something which Nonny did not catch, then stared at her friend and repeated her words rather defiantly. ‘Tim and me is going out,’ she said. ‘I’ve not said nothing to Mum – she thinks I’m too young – but
we’re going dancing at the Grafton this evening, and Tim’s gorra mate, Rupert Harrison, what says he’ll come along to keep you company.’

Nonny had been munching her sandwich but stopped abruptly at her friend’s words, feeling as though her stomach had just filled up with ice water. ‘Keep
me
company?’ she said incredulously. ‘But I can’t dance, nor I don’t want to. You go by yourself, Lana. I’ll stay at home with Auntie Ellen.’

Lana stared at her friend, her eyes widening and her cheeks beginning to flush. ‘But I
told
you,’ she wailed. ‘Mum thinks I’m too young to have a boyfriend, too young to go to dances . . .’ she giggled, ‘and much too young to snog in the back row of the stalls at the cinema! If you don’t come with me she’ll guess that something’s up and start spying on me. Oh, Nonny, please say you’ll come!’

‘I can’t. I hate meeting new people and I agree with Auntie Ellen, honest to God I do. We’re much too young to do all those things and what’s more, I don’t want to. There’s boys at school who’ve asked me to go walking or to the flicks, but I always say I can’t. I’m just not interested.’ She became aware that Lana was staring at her as though she had suddenly grown two heads, and the thought made her giggle. ‘Look, I reckon I’m just young for my age; that’s what my mother says, anyway. I expect I’ll get round to liking boys one day, but it hasn’t happened yet.’ She finished her sandwich, pointed and clicked her fingers. ‘Chuck us one of those jammy baps, there’s a good girl. I say, you’ll have to roll me down the hill to this cricket pitch if I go on eating at my present rate.’

Flossy folded the pushchair and surrendered it to the care of the conductor, then followed the boys, who had rushed straight to the front of the vehicle and were beginning to squabble over who should sit where. Flossy sorted them out with a threat to take away their windmills if they did not sit quietly, then sank into a seat and leaned back, closing her eyes. What a bit of luck it had been, meeting young Lana and the Welsh girl, Rhiannon Roberts, the two girls who had been born at the same time during that terrible thunderstorm. Apart from the mother she had met in the ablutions block, she had never confided her fears to anyone but Alex, but she often wondered whether Rhiannon was anything like Lana to look at. They had been alike as babies, as like as two pins, but then you could say that most newborns resembled each other. She had been seeing Lana for years, of course, and hard though she had tried she had seen no resemblance between Lana and Ellen. As for the father – Sam, wasn’t it? – she hadn’t set eyes on him for at least ten years, and retained only the haziest impression of what he had looked like.

But now that her wish had been granted and she had seen Rhiannon, she found to her chagrin that she could not bring to mind the face of either Molly Roberts or her husband. She thought they were both dark, but that was about all she could remember, and she wasn’t even sure of that. Still, what did it matter? Those two red-faced babies had turned into two lovely girls. They were happy, and totally accepted by their parents. Flossy chuckled to herself. She and Alex had discussed what they had both seen that strange night and Alex, ever practical, had said that for all they knew babies might get swapped every
night of the week. After all, the maternity hospital was the biggest in the whole area and mistakes can be easily made.

Now that Flossy was a fully fledged district midwife, she had her own area and did not go into the hospital much. She had laughed at Alex’s suggestion that mistakes might be often made; she knew very well that normally this was impossible, babies being labelled almost as they emerged into the world. The only reason that those two little girls had not worn the regulation wristbands was because of the storm and the electrical failure. Anyway, what did it matter? Now that Flossy had children of her own she knew she would never dream of handing one of them over to another woman, even if it could be clinically proved that the child was not hers. You mother a baby and it becomes yours, she told herself. Neither Ellen nor Molly would dream of swapping daughters. She had listened to Alex when he had said she must put the whole matter right out of her mind, partly because he was so much older and more experienced than she, but also because she had not wanted to start what might amount to a witch hunt. And now, having met both girls together, she knew he had been right . . .

‘Ouch! Mammy, Jackie just poked my eye with his bleedin’ windmill. Tell him off, tell him off! Make him say he’s sorry.’

Paul’s indignant yelp brought Flossy’s mind back to the present with a vengeance. In sorting out her own two children she forgot the two girls, and presently, harmony restored, the bus reached their stop and Flossy began the tedious task of claiming her pushchair, preventing the boys from leaping on to the pavement
before the vehicle had stopped, thanking the conductor for his assistance, and persuading Jackie to carry her picnic bag whilst she erected the pushchair and strapped Paul into it. By the time all these tasks had been accomplished, and the boys were waving to the conductor as though he were their oldest friend, Flossy remembered only that Lana and Nonny were a kind and friendly young couple, and that it was far more important to shepherd her own little entourage towards home, baths and bed.

The two girls went, as Lana had planned, to the cricket match and Nonny was introduced to both Tim Everett and Rupert Harrison. After their conversation Lana was not surprised when her, friend blushed scarlet, and when Tim held out his hand to her, barely touched it with her own. He then introduced her to his friend Rupert, who got a similarly cool reception, and it was plain to Lana that Nonny, who had spent all her life in the wilds of Snowdonia, was terribly shy. There were three other girls, all older than Lana, helping with the cricket tea and with these girls Nonny seemed to have no problem, chatting and laughing as though she had known them all her life. As soon as the boys began to enter the pavilion, however, Nonny froze. She kept ducking into the kitchen, and when she had to carry plates of sandwiches and cakes into the main room she was in such a hurry to escape back to her haven that on one occasion she scattered sandwiches all over the paper tablecloth.

At home once more, Nonny had waited until Ellen was out of hearing before saying shyly that she did not really think her friend was in love with Tim Everett. ‘You
like my brother, you know you do,’ she had said, half laughing, half serious. ‘He’s about the same age as Tim – getting on for eighteen – so he’s a bit old for you, or I suppose you could say you were a bit young for him. But of course you only see Chris a couple of times a year, whereas Tim is always on hand.’

Lana had felt her cheeks grow warm at the mention of Chris, and had promptly punched her friend’s shoulder. ‘Of course I like Chris; I never had no brother of me own but I reckon that’s how I like him, like a brother,’ she had said. ‘Now you go off and make your phone call and I’ll make us cocoa and biscuits; only don’t be long, else the biscuits will go cold.’

Nonny had arranged to ring Chris at the box in the village to see how the gathering had gone without her, and now she sniggered, got her coat off its hook and set off. Dusk had not yet fallen but Ellen did not like either of the girls being out alone as evening drew on and called out to Nonny to hurry back.

As soon as the door had closed behind their visitor, she turned to Lana. ‘Well? Did you get to the cricket match? And are you going to the Grafton later?’ She chuckled. ‘I suppose you told her a tissue of lies, but it’s in a good cause. Your Auntie Molly’s really worried because she thinks Nonny is scared of men.’

Lana gave a derisive snort. ‘Of course she’s not scared of men; she’s just a bit young for her age, and livin’ out in the sticks like she does she don’t meet many fellers that she’s not known from birth, pretty well. She came to the cricket match all right and was pally as anything with all the girls, but she hung back a bit when I introduced her to Tim and Rupert. They’re older, see, so
perhaps I should have tried wi’ fellers nearer her own age.’

‘And will she go to the Grafton with you tonight?’ Ellen asked sceptically. ‘I bet she made an excuse; bet you five bob she won’t go.’

‘Bet she will,’ Lana said at once. ‘I’ve gorra plan . . .’

So when Nonny came back from her telephone call Lana jumped in at once. ‘Look, I’ve spoken to Mum, and she don’t mind us puttin’ on our glad rags and goin’ to the Grafton so long as we leave at the interval; that’s ten o’clock,’ she said triumphantly. ‘The only thing is, she wants Tim and Rupert to call for us and bring us home, and I’m tellin’ you, Rhiannon Roberts, that if you say no I’ll cry all night . . .’ she crossed her fingers behind her back, ‘because it’s the very first time my mum has let me go to the Grafton, and it’s only because she trusts you – and the boys of course – to be sensible.’ She reached over and gave her friend a warm hug. ‘Please say you’ll come,’ she begged. ‘You know I’d do the same for you. And you’re right, I do like your brother, only as you say I don’t see much of him.’

‘And when you do he talks of nothin’ but sheep, cattle, poultry and so on,’ Nonny said, grinning. ‘Oh well, I suppose it won’t hurt me to go with you this evening, but I don’t mean to dance, so put that in your pipe and smoke it.’

Lana had arranged for the two boys to come round to Bethel Street promptly at seven o’clock, so at half past six they went up to the room they shared and began to choose what they should wear. Lana had several dance dresses, bought with the proceeds of her Saturday job, but Nonny had no such finery, nor, she said defiantly,
had she any need of it. At Lana’s urging, however, she borrowed a blue taffeta dress, with a dark red rose pinned to the shoulder. She was several inches taller than her friend and was worried in case she was showing too much leg, but Lana, putting on her brand new black taffeta skirt with its many paper nylon underslips, told her briskly not to be such a fusspot. ‘You’ve got a super figure and really good legs,’ she told her. ‘You’ll be the belle of the ball, especially if I tie your curls up on top of your head and let them fall to one side in a Grecian knot.’

‘I don’t want to be the belle of the ball,’ Nonny muttered. ‘I’m warning you, no one’s ever taught me to dance and I don’t mean to start now.’ She gave her friend a shove, for Lana was checking her appearance in the only full length mirror the room possessed. ‘Let me have a look; if it’s too short you can jolly well find me something different to wear.’