Freedom's Land (20 page)

Reggie and Lil had left early, but there was no sound from the other half of the humpy.

What sort of neighbour, he wondered, didn’t come out to help in times of trouble?

He was quite sure in his own mind that Reggie had done this.

But how did you prove it?

12

N
orah and the children stayed outside the humpy. She went in and pulled a blanket off the bed, then put the three of them to lie on the hay in the store shed. She stayed near the humpy door, the axe beside her for protection, though she was quite sure she wouldn’t need it. Whoever had done this wouldn’t be coming back because they’d already got what they wanted. Like her husband, she felt sure Reggie had done it, because no one else in the group seemed other than honest and friendly.

There were no noises from their neighbours while she waited for her husband to return. That in itself was unusual. There were usually arguments before the Cheevers got to sleep, and they didn’t seem to care who heard them. Once they did get to sleep, Reggie snored. Lil would occasionally poke him awake and tell him to shut up, then they’d quarrel again. There was no snoring now.

Norah felt bitter acid roil in her stomach at the thought of those two lazy devils profiting from her and Andrew’s hard work and frugality.

Gil came back with him, surveyed the mess and cursed under his breath. Then he looked at the partition and raised his voice. ‘I’ll find out who it was, Andrew lad. I won’t give up till I get your money back.’

There was still no sound from the Cheevers.

Gil beckoned Norah and Andrew outside and moved away out of hearing. ‘What do you reckon?’

They all looked at the Cheevers’ half of the humpy.

‘I reckon it was them,’ Andrew said. ‘Who else could it have been? And he’s stupid enough to mess on his own doorstep. But how do we prove it?’

‘You stay here and keep an eye on things. I’m going to fetch Pete and a couple of the other men. We’ll search them and their half, and if we don’t find the money, we’ll search the whole bloody block if necessary. If they come out, stop them going anywhere.’ He raised his voice. ‘I’ll be back as soon as it’s daylight and we’ll see if we can find any footprints. The ground’s still soft. Don’t walk about outside and mess it up.’

He moved away, walking more noisily than he usually did, calling out farewells.

An hour later Norah saw the light of two lanterns bobbing about in the distance, coming gradually closer, and nudged her husband.

Gil led the others to the doorway and gestured to the mess. ‘That’s what Andrew found.’

The three men standing behind him let out low rumbles of angry sound.

‘Right. We’ll do it now,’ Gil said quietly.

‘Do what?’ Andrew asked.

‘Search him and his humpy.’

‘Isn’t it against the law?’ Andrew worried. ‘We have no real grounds for our suspicions, after all.’

‘It’d take too long to get the police here. We look after ourselves in the country, because you can’t rely on the police getting to you in time when something goes wrong.’ He moved to the next door and hammered on it so hard it rattled. Then he tried to open it. There was no lock on the door, but it didn’t budge. ‘They must have something jammed against it. Hoy! Open up, Cheever!’

There was the sound of someone moving around inside, then Reggie called out in a slurred voice, ‘Who’s that? What’s the matter?’

Gil held up his lantern. ‘You know damned well who I am.’

‘Oh. It’s you, Gil. What do you want? It’s the middle of the night.’

‘I want the money.’

Silence then, ‘What money?’

‘The money you stole from Andrew.’

‘I never.’

‘Prove it. Open that door and let us search your humpy.’

There was a mutter of voices, the words not clear but the tone argumentative, then Lil shouted, ‘Why are you picking on us?’

‘Because you’re the only ones who could have stolen it.’

‘We were at the sing-song with everyone else tonight.’

‘How do you know it was stolen tonight?’ Gil asked.

There was no answer to that.

Jack had left his temporary bed in the hay and spoke from behind his father. ‘You might have set off at the same time, but you got there a long time after us. We’d had something to eat and started singing by the time you got there.’

‘I can’t walk quickly in my condition,’ Lil said. ‘We set off at the same time as the Boyds.’

Gil banged on the door with one clenched fist and kept on banging: thump, thump, thump. ‘Open up.’

‘All right, all right. But you won’t find anything.’

As soon as the door opened, Gil dragged Reggie out by the front of his shirt and slammed him against the corrugated iron of the house, then searched him carefully. ‘I’ll go on looking till I do find it, believe me. Come outside, Lil, and bring the child with you.’

She came out with a blanket wrapped round her. ‘I don’t know why you’re picking on my Reggie. He didn’t do nothing.’

Gil looked at Norah. ‘Keep your eye on her and the kid. Don’t let her move away.’

She nodded.

The men went inside the humpy, hanging a hurricane lantern on a hook on one of the beams. They left one man outside to keep an eye on Reggie, who sat on a log and folded his arms, staring at them defiantly.

Lil smirked at Norah. ‘They won’t find anything.’

Norah didn’t reply. She was waiting to see what the men discovered.

There wasn’t much to search and it took them only a few minutes to check everything the Cheevers owned, throwing their possessions out of the door one by one.

Reggie jerked to his feet. ‘Hey! You’ll damage things.’

‘And get them dirty,’ Lil added shrilly.

‘They’re filthy already, like everything else you own,’ Norah snapped. She turned to Janie and the boys, who had crept forward to watch. ‘Stay back, you three.’

They nodded and took a couple of steps backwards. For once there was no trouble with Janie doing as she was told.

When the men had searched every inch of the bare earth floor to make sure nothing had been buried, they came outside again.

‘He’s hidden it somewhere else,’ Gil said. ‘So we’ll wait until it’s light and search everywhere nearby.’

Lil smirked and pulled her little daughter close, in an unusual show of affection.

Norah looked at her, surprised by this, because she’d never seen Lil cuddling the child, never seen her doing anything but complaining about the trouble children were. Suddenly she remembered how confidently Lil had said, ‘They won’t find anything.’

‘I think I should search Lil,’ she said suddenly, and caught a sudden look of fear on the other woman’s face.

‘Not on your own, you won’t,’ Gil said at once. ‘We’ll send for another woman to be a witness.’ He turned to one of the men. ‘Fetch the nearest woman.’

The man nodded. ‘That’d be Irene Dawson.’ He strode off into the darkness.

A few minutes later, Lil said suddenly, ‘I have to go to the lav.’

Gil laughed in her face. ‘Go here then, behind the hut. But Norah will be keeping an eye on you the whole time.’

Lil shot a pleading look at Reggie, who was sitting huddled up on a log. He didn’t respond in any way. She stayed where she was.

It was starting to get light by the time Irene arrived and the chill greyness of pre-dawn made the whole scene look like a scene from a film, black and white and every shade of grey, no real colours around. Little Dinny was asleep now, wrapped in a dirty blanket Gil had found among the Cheevers’ possessions. Gil had beckoned to Norah to search the child before he carried her across to the hay and told Janie to keep an eye on her.

Lil was sitting on a log now, her shoulders slumped dejectedly, all the defiance gone out of her.

Norah stood up and said to Irene, ‘Let’s get it over with. Come inside, Lil.’

‘No. I’m not going anywhere with you. You’re going to pretend you found the money on me.’

‘Search her here, then,’ Andrew said.

‘Reggie, do something!’ Lil yelled.

He stood up. ‘I protest. I’m going to complain to the police about this.’

Gil repeated Andrew’s words, ‘Search her here, where there are enough witnesses.’

As soon as Norah touched her, Lil began fighting, clawing at the other woman’s face and biting Irene’s hand when she intervened.

Furious, Norah held the woman’s hands and when Lil kicked out at her, Gil stepped forward and knocked Lil’s feet from under her.

Norah knelt to hold Lil and Irene felt her body through her layers of clothing, her nose wrinkled in disgust at the smell of the unwashed body. Her hands lingered at the waist. ‘There’s something here, I think.’

Lil screamed and redoubled her attempts to escape.

Reggie suddenly ran for it, but two men chased him and it didn’t take long to catch him.

As they dragged him back, Irene hesitated, then lifted Lil’s petticoats and there, fastened to her body by a strip of cloth, was a small bundle.

‘Don’t touch it, Norah,’ Gil said. ‘Let Irene unwrap it.’

Inside was a pouch containing a roll of banknotes and some coins.

‘That’s mine,’ Andrew said. ‘You’ll find my initials embossed in the leather of the pouch.’

Gil studied the pouch, keeping it in full view of the group. ‘Yes. Here they are.’ He showed it to the two men standing near him, and they both nodded. He passed it to Andrew. ‘Is this yours?’

‘Yes.’

Norah heard how husky Andrew’s voice was as he said this and knew how relieved he was, how shaken he’d been to think of losing all his savings. She felt like weeping in relief herself. To face life without anything behind you was hard indeed, especially in a strange country.

‘You rotten thief!’ Reggie shouted at his wife. ‘How could you shame me like that, Lil?’

She gaped at him. ‘
You
stole the money and gave it to me to hide.’

‘Never.’ He took a step away from her and folded his arms.

She jumped up so quickly the two women couldn’t stop her and threw herself at her husband, pummelling and scratching him, weeping as she did so, cursing like a fishwife.

And though her husband was bigger than she was, he had trouble defending himself.

No one tried to intervene until Reggie punched her on the jaw and knocked her to the ground. As she lay there, he kicked her and drew back his foot to do it again. Gil dragged him off her then and she rolled away, groaning.

No one went to help her.

‘You’re the worst sort of scum,’ the foreman told Reggie, his voice burred with loathing. ‘The very worst. I’m taking you into Pemberton. The police can deal with you.’ He looked down at the woman, moaning and weeping on the ground. ‘Get up, you. You’ll need to start packing.’

She fell silent and pushed herself slowly into a sitting position, wincing as she did so. ‘What shall I do if he’s locked away?’

‘You should have thought of that when you started stealing from your neighbours.’

‘I didn’t even know he’d done it till he made me hide the purse.
I didn’t!
’

‘But you did hide the money for him.’

‘He’d have thumped me if I’d refused.’

Norah stepped forward. ‘Can’t we leave her out of this? I believe her. I’ve seen and heard him thump her.’

Gil shrugged. ‘We’ll see what the police say.’ By that time it was light, so he added, ‘You lot can start work at midday today. I’ll count your helping me catch this scum as part of your day’s work. Take him into the camp and tie him up. I’ll catch up with you in a minute or two. Keep an eye on Cheever. If he escapes I’ll have your guts for garters.’

The men smiled at this phrase which everyone who’d served in the war had had thrown at them.

As the others walked off, Gil turned to Norah and Andrew. ‘I’m sorry about this. They should have vetted applicants for the scheme more carefully.’

‘Do you have the authority to chuck the Cheevers out of our group?’ she asked.

He grinned. ‘I don’t know. But by the time anyone asks, I’ll have done it and he’ll be in jail.’ He turned back to Lil. ‘Get your things packed. I’ll come back for you in an hour in the cart. Will you stay and keep an eye on her, Norah and Irene?’

‘Yes.’

When Gil had taken both the Cheevers away, Andrew looked at the children. ‘Go and get some sleep now, you lot.’ When they’d gone into the humpy, he pulled Norah into his arms, holding her tightly against him, shuddering. ‘I thought we’d lost everything.’

‘Not quite everything. I’ve got some money and I keep it on my person. I hope you don’t mind me keeping it back. It makes me feel – safer.’

He looked at her with a faint smile. ‘I didn’t marry you to take your money away from you, my lass.’

‘It’s only just over ten pounds that I’ve got, but it’s there if you ever need it.’

‘Thanks, love. And I’ll make a better place to hide the family money than the trunk, buy a better padlock, too.’

‘I doubt we’ll need to do that now, or lock our door. Most of the groupies seem really decent sorts.’

‘Yes, they do.’ His voice came out muffled by her hair as he pulled her close again. ‘Are you sorry you came?’

‘No. I like it here.’

‘You’re a wonderful woman. I just wish—’

‘What?’

‘That we weren’t living in such cramped conditions.’

No mistaking his meaning there. She smiled at him as warmly as he was smiling at her, then stood on tiptoe and kissed him, a gentle kiss, no more than a brief meeting of lips. But it seemed to link them more closely afterwards. She looked him directly in the eyes as she added, ‘I wish so too.’

Janie appeared suddenly in the doorway. ‘Mummy, Jack kicked me.’

A voice from inside the other room yelled, ‘I didn’t!’

‘You did so.’ She turned back to her mother. ‘I don’t want to sleep near him!’