Long Lankin (20 page)

I almost had to drag Harry by the scruff of his collar and make him go into their room to kiss them good-bye. Even then he only went in because he knew they would be asleep. He hardly touched them he was so frightened of waking them up and making a scene.

I heard Dad come into our bedroom before he went away. He leaned over and kissed my forehead, so light it was like a breath, but I kept my eyes tight shut.

I watched him go down the Chase, his kit bag swinging from side to side. He didn’t look back. The sun was up, and the air was already warm for his walk to Daneflete to get the first train to London. If he had waited until the buses started, he would still have been in the house when the girls got up, so he walked.

Everyone turns their back on this place in the end.

Agnes, stupid Agnes, going off with that rogue, Jack Swift, coming down here looking for labouring work, saying he’s lost his eye on the Somme, milking it for all it’s worth. It turns out it got gouged out in some brawl on the Mile End Road. Of course, he used it to his advantage. All the girls thought he was winking at them.

I lost count of the stillbirths, the miscarriages she had. Susan and Anne. Just Susan and Anne. Just Susan.

Susan screaming — hysterical, running down there in the dark and ripping that little knitted soldier off the gypsy tree in the churchyard where I’d hung him.

I didn’t think. It’s just what we’ve always done.

I was making a pot of tea in the kitchen when Cora came down the stairs. I could hear by the sound of her footsteps that she knew he’d gone back without them.

I became so weary that morning — of Mimi’s crying and Cora’s silence.

I don’t know — they’d only been here for a little while, but it was funny to think of them back in London. I suppose it would feel like a dream soon, almost as if they’d never come at all. People come and go . . . it happens, Mum said. A few more days and you’ll even start to forget what they looked like.

We hung around the house a bit, Pete and me, even though the day was really hot and sunny. We didn’t feel like the woods after Malcolm and the flick knife, we didn’t think we’d better go down the church, and we didn’t fancy the Patches, either. Mum got out the chemistry set Grandma Bardock gave me for my birthday, but I couldn’t be bothered with all the instructions, so I shoved it back in the cupboard.

Then she sent Pete and me down to Mrs. Aylott’s with a list, but Mrs. Pratt, from Dry Street over near Hobb’s Lane, and Mrs. Cleaver, Tooboy and Figsy’s mum, were already in there, so we had to wait.

“Yes, Anthony said he saw them in the woods. . . .” Mrs Cleaver was saying in a low voice. I sometimes forgot Tooboy’s name was really Anthony. He looked nothing like one.

“A disgrace, if you ask me,” said Mrs. Pratt. The three ladies had gathered their heads close together as if they were cooking up something stinky in a cauldron. The bell tinkled when we came in, but they were so busy huddled up talking they didn’t even turn round to look at us.

“She shouldn’t have been allowed to have children down there,” Mrs. Pratt carried on, “after what happened, you know — and two little girls as well, I ask you . . .”

Suddenly Mrs. Aylott caught sight of us and stood up straight.

“Two tins of garden peas was it, Beryl?” she said loudly, rolling her eyes in our direction. Mrs. Pratt and Mrs. Cleaver turned and looked at us and beamed.

“Hello, Roger, Peter,” said Mrs. Cleaver. “No, processed if you don’t mind, Dulcie. Girls not with you today, boys?”

“Erm, no. They’ve gone back to London,” I said. “Their dad came for them yesterday.”

“And not before time,” said Mrs. Pratt half under her breath as she turned back to the counter.

Auntie Ida sent me to get the milk from down the end of the Chase where the milkman left it every day in a big tin box. Two pints — one pint extra now that Mimi and me were here, and I had to put the money in the box for him to take when he came next. Auntie said she used to have a cow in the barn for the milk, but she never got another one after it died.

It was smashing weather, lovely and sunny. The mud in the Chase was going hard again. I’d been in an irritable mood since Dad left, but walking back up to Guerdon Hall, picking buttercups with my spare hand, and feeling the warm sun on my face, I felt a bit better.

I arranged the buttercups in a jar of water and asked Auntie if we could go up to Roger and Pete’s. I think she was glad to see the back of us.

Mimi started skipping as we went down Ottery Lane, in and out of the shadows of the big trees. She seemed to have forgotten all about Dad, even though she’d screamed herself purple the whole day after he left without us.

Roger and his brothers were in the garden, fishing stuff out of the pond. There was a stinking muddy mess all along the edge, and as we came round the side of the house, they were poking about in it with sticks. Roger was so surprised when he saw us that he nearly stepped back into the water.

“Blimey!” he shouted, a big grin coming over his face. “What the heck are you doing here?”

“Roger! Watch it!” cried Terry. “You’ve stood right on my best fish!”

“Why aren’t you in London?” said Pete, running up. “We thought you’d gone with your dad.”

“No,” I said, “he’s got so much work on right now, but he’s coming back to get us really soon. He wanted to make sure we were all right. Came to see us, that’s all.”

Mrs. Jotman appeared with some orange squash and biscuits and almost dropped the tray.

“Good heavens!” she said. “What a surprise. I’ll go and get some more.”

“You coming to the cricket tomorrow?” Pete asked as we sat on the grass.

“I dunno,” I said. “I ain’t never been to cricket.”

“Our dad’s absolutely the best bowler in the whole team,” said Roger.

“Well, Graham Crawford’s nearly as good,” said Pete. “They’re playing Clevedon Mortimer, over on the field. You must come. Roger and me put the scores up. You can help as well, if you like. Then there’s a smashing tea. Mum’s already made loads of cakes. Everybody goes, and the weather’s going to be brilliant, Dad says.”

The distant tinkling sound of “Knick-Knack Paddy-Whack” drifted into the garden. It stopped for a while, then started up again, closer this time.

“Mum! MUM!”
shrieked Dennis. “
DAD!
It’s the ice-cream man!”

He went running into the house, then shot out again. “Roger! Mum’s given me half a crown! Come on!”

We all got up and rushed down Fieldpath Road to where the ice-cream van had stopped outside Mrs. Wickerby’s.

“Mum and Dad want wafers,” Dennis said, jumping up and down as we waited behind some other children. At last we got our cornets and raced back to the house. Dennis was running so fast that, as he whizzed up the veranda steps with the wafer for his mum in one hand and the change and his cornet in the other, he tripped. His ice cream shot out of its cone and landed with the money in a heap on the wooden floor. A penny rolled round and round, then slipped through a crack between the planks. There was silence, then suddenly Dennis started screaming.

Mrs. Jotman came rushing out, thinking his leg must have come off at the very least.

“Oh, dear,” she said, picking him up from where he was thrashing about on the veranda floor. “Here, have my wafer instead.”

“Don’t — don’t like wafers!” he yelled. “Want my cornet!”

We could hear the ice-cream van going off down the lane towards North Fairing. Everyone was eating their cornet really fast so they wouldn’t have to share it with Dennis. Mrs. Jotman disappeared into the house and came back with a spoon. She picked up his empty cone and spooned the ice cream from her wafer into it for him.

“’S not the same,” he said, sniffing.

“I’ll have it, then,” she said, and pretended to go for a lick. He snatched it off her and started to eat it, and she went back in the house for a cloth, biting bits off the empty wafers.

It was going to be a real scorcher. The sun streamed in around our curtains where they didn’t quite fit the window.

I leaned over the side of the bunk. Pete was still asleep. I picked up a sock roll off the top of the cupboard at the end of the bed and chucked it at him.

“Oi! Stop it, will you!”

“It’s cricket, Pete!”

He was so excited he shot out of bed like a mad thing, yelling, “Cricket! Wheeeee!” and jumping high in the air, thrusting up his arms in two fists.

After breakfast, Mum made Pete and me help her make ten tons of sandwiches — cucumber, ham, Spam, cheese and pickle, and some really posh ones with tinned salmon. When she had to go off to feed Baby Pamela, we helped ourselves to some fairy cakes and stuffed the paper cases deep down in the bin.

After dinner, Cora and Mimi turned up with a large fruit cake in a tin.

“Auntie Ida made it for the cricket,” said Cora, and Mimi gave Mum a box of Roses chocolates in a paper bag.

“Auntie said for the raffle,” said Mimi. “I didn’t eat none.”

“Oh, that’s really nice of her,” said Mum, putting the bag with the other things.

Dad came in looking very smart in his blazer and whites but irritated because his cap had disappeared.

I remembered Dennis had been in the garden with the cap on his head, practising batting with a big stick. When I went outside to fetch it, he had thrown the stick and the cap away and was chasing a cat through the long grass. Earlier in the morning, Mum had wet Dennis’s hair to smooth it down, so when he took the cap off, his hair had dried into a really weird shape like a fried egg.