Pack Up Your Troubles (16 page)

There was a PS. ‘
You mustn’t go worrying about us
,’ Ga wrote. ‘
We’re all alright. Everyone is well. We have plenty of logs if the coal runs out and your mother has a good store cupboard so we won’t starve.’

Connie smiled. That was a relief anyway. She folded the letter only to find another postscript. ‘
I put my teeth in the glass by my bed and when I woke up in the morning, they were frozen solid.’

Connie chuckled. Perhaps Ga had forgiven her at last.

The second letter was in one of Ga’s special envelopes. Connie knew the old lady only used her best writing paper occasionally and only for important letters which was why she was so surprised to see it. Why not put the letter in with the one she’d just read? She tore open the envelope and gasped. It contained what looked like a newspaper cutting. Connie spread it out and the fury rose in her chest. The cutting had come from
Tit-Bits
and was about a female dancer whose body was covered in tattoos. At the top of the page, Ga had printed the words
Like Gertrude?
Damn Ga and her nasty insinuations. She hadn’t changed one bit.

The wartime spirit hadn’t died. People did their best to help each other so Clifford and the Frenchie were not unique. As the weather conditions grew worse, neighbours banded together, sharing their meagre supplies whenever they could. Most people could only afford to heat one room in their house anyway so the whole of family life was reduced to that. The blackout curtains came in useful again. If they weren’t at the doors or windows, they were sewn together and used as draught excluders. The power cuts compounded everything. The Frenchie and Clifford took what extra candles they could find to the old, the sick or the frail who couldn’t get out themselves. Of course, they couldn’t help everybody and Aggie’s nose was out of joint when the Frenchie refused her some logs even though he had pointed out that she had the best part of ½ cwt. of coal in her bunker while other people had nothing at all. She eventually accepted the decision with tight-lipped resignation and the Frenchie kissed her on both cheeks.

All this took time. No one was earning any money and as the weather conditions continued to deteriorate, everyone had a sense that the whole country was in the grip of a catastrophe.

‘Some Valentine’s present,’ said Ga turning off the radio.

‘What’s that?’ Gwen was trying to dry the washing. She hung a clothes horse by the fire and she was busy turning things around. Staying damp for too long and there was a danger it would start to smell.

‘It’s now illegal to use electrical appliances,’ said Ga.

Gwen gasped. ‘They can’t do that can they?’

‘They can and they have,’ said Ga grimly. ‘I just heard it on the radio. Failure to comply can result in a £100 fine or two years imprisonment.’

‘For switching on an electric fire?’ Gwen gasped. ‘This place is getting more like a police state every day.’

Mandy was under the table playing with her dollies. She liked it under there. Sometimes the adults forgot she was there and talked about things she wouldn’t normally be allowed to hear. Of course, she didn’t always understand what they were talking about … a police state, for instance, what was that?

Pip was with her. He was lying with his head on his front paws. She’d put a dolly’s hat on his head and he swallowed against the ribbons under his chin.

‘He’s nice, that Frenchie,’ her mother mused.

Ga harrumphed. ‘If you say so.’

‘Come on, Ga,’ said Gwen. ‘You must admit he’s certainly got us all helping each other and that can’t be bad. Poor old Charlie Walker would have been a goner if he and Clifford hadn’t checked up on him. The poor man didn’t have a stick of food in the house.’

Mandy peeped through the fringes on the tablecloth and saw Ga’s mouth tightened. ‘It’s that Mavis Hampton I can’t stand. The way she bosses everybody about. What he sees in her, I’ll never know.’

‘He rents that workshop of his from Councillor Hampton,’ said her mother, ‘and he’s a very talented artist. I think the Frenchie is going places and she knows it.’

‘Changing the subject,’ said Ga, ‘have we got any more spuds out of the ground?’

Her mother shook her head. ‘The ground’s too hard. Shame really. Everyone is complaining about the supplies. Apparently, they had some in the greengrocer’s but they were all diseased and there was half a ton of dirt in the sack as well.’ Mandy watched as her mother wiped the condensation on the window with a dry cloth. ‘And there’s us with a field full of them and we can’t get them out!’

‘Never mind,’ said Ga, ‘once the thaw comes we’ll have a gold mine out there.’

‘But when is it coming?’ said her mother. ‘That’s what I want to know. It’s been like this since January.’

The two women stopped talking. In the distance they could hear a speaker van coming. ‘We’d better listen to what that says,’ said Ga. ‘It wouldn’t be able to go much further than the bottom of the lane. The council only clears the main roads.’

They reached for their coats and opened the back door. The sudden draught of cold air made Mandy lift the heavy tablecloth which hid her beneath the table, but she didn’t come out. Pip did. He seized the opportunity of freedom and pushed between the two women and bounded outside. Luckily for him, Mandy’s mother had the presence of mind to snatch the doll’s hat from his head as he went.

‘You are reminded that it is your duty to clear the front of your premises of snow,’ said a disembodied voice in the distance. ‘Please do not use any electricity for domestic purposes between the hours of nine and twelve and two to four. Failure to comply …’

‘I really don’t want to hear any more of that,’ said Mandy’s mother shutting the door. ‘At least Connie’s all right. They’ll be nice and warm in the hospital.’

‘It would be nice to hear from her,’ Ga grunted. ‘Surely it wouldn’t take five minutes to drop us a line?’

There was a pause and her mother sighed. ‘I wonder where Kenneth is. Don’t you ever want to know what happened to my boy?’

‘Now, now,’ said Ga firmly. ‘Don’t go upsetting yourself over him. He’s not worth it.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t keep saying that,’ said her mother. ‘I know he was a bit of a tearaway but what young lad isn’t? I never understood why he went off like that without so much as a by-your-leave.’

Under the table, Mandy held her breath as she heard her mother choke back a small sob. She knew she had a brother called Kenneth but she’d never seen him. Connie told her about him sometimes, about the games they’d played when Connie was young and the things he’d got up to. Her favourite story was the one when Kenneth and his friend pulled up all the For Sale notices in the village and stuck them in the vicarage garden. Apparently the vicar was furious. Connie showed her a picture of him once but this was the first time she’d ever heard her mother and Ga talking about him.

‘It was for the best,’ said Ga.

‘What was for the best?’ said Gwen rounding on her. ‘Did you see him go then? You never told me. Do you know more than you’re telling me?’

‘No, no of course not,’ said Ga. ‘What I mean is that the boy gave you nothing but grief all the time. Without a father’s hand, he was running wild.’

Mandy could hear her mother blowing her nose. ‘I suppose so. All the same, I wonder where he went, what sort of war he had and where he is now.’

‘Perhaps it’s just as well we don’t know,’ said Ga.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ her mother snapped.

‘Well,’ said Ga uncertainly, ‘he could have been injured or killed.’

Mandy heard her mother take in her breath. ‘No, no,’ she said pressing her hand on her chest. ‘If he was dead, I would know it.’

‘He could have been injured,’ Ga insisted.

‘I don’t want to think of him that way,’ said her mother.

They could hear Pip barking, and then Clifford called from the lane. ‘Gwennie love, come and give us a hand will you?’

‘Well, if you’ll take my advice,’ said Ga, as Mandy’s mother reached for her coat again, ‘you’ll forget all about him.’

‘I can never do that, Ga,’ said Gwen. ‘However old he is, he’s my child.’ And opening the door, she called, ‘What is it?’

Mandy went back to her tea party until she heard a rather odd scrabbling sound. She peeked again and saw Ga searching through her cavernous handbag. A second later, she took out some papers and looked at them. Then using the portable handle, she lifted the lid on the range and dropped them onto the fire. One fell to the floor and floated under the table. Mandy picked it up and put it into the dolly’s cradle.

‘It’s for the best,’ Ga whispered as bright red and yellow flame leapt above the hole and she slipped the lid back over it.

Connie put Ga’s letter back in the envelope and looked at the third. She expected it to come from home as well but the headed envelope told her it was from another hospital. The Royal Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead. Her stomach tightened. Had her mother been taken ill? No, it couldn’t be that. The postmark was even older than the one from Ga and she’d finished up by saying everyone was well. So who was in hospital?

The girl who had pushed past her on the stairs was back. ‘All right, luv?’

Connie nodded. ‘Did you contact your mother?’

‘Nah, her telephone line is down,’ she called. ‘But I got through to a neighbour and they’re all right.’ In the distance a door banged and it went quiet again.

Connie stood up. This wasn’t the best place to read bad news, if it was bad news. Shoving the unopened letter into her pocket, she made her way upstairs to her room.

Connie was halfway up the stairs when Sister Hayes burst through the door. ‘I need three nurses immediately,’ she called out. ‘There’s been a serious accident and we’re expecting a great many casualties.’

Connie turned round and ran down the stairs after her. Two other girls were coming into the nurses’ home.

‘What happened?’ Connie called.

‘An unexploded bomb has gone off,’ said Sister. ‘Quickly now, girls. Go straight to the main entrance.’

And as she flew out of the door, Connie could only imagine what horrors lay before her.

Twelve

Stan sensed something was wrong as soon as he came in through the front door. He turned sharply as he went to close the door as if someone was watching him but there was only the inky darkness of night. A cat ran across the path behind him and he jumped. Pull yourself together, he thought, and he slid the bolt across.

He’d spent the evening in the pub. He’d sat in the corner by the bar and drank alone. They refused to talk to him but they were whispering behind his back. Part of him was annoyed and the other part thought to hell with the lot of them. He knew they were upset about the inquest but he had no regrets. He swirled his glass and thought back to the events in the week before Christmas, or to be more exact, the day his wife died.

‘She was walking in front of you?’ the coroner had asked.

He’d looked down at the floor. ‘Yes.’ He had thought it best to say as little as possible. The less people knew, the better.

‘What happened then?’

He shrugged. ‘She suddenly rushed out into the road.’

‘Have you any idea why?’

‘No.’ There had been a murmur in the court room but he’d kept his head down. Let them think what they bloody well wanted to. There was no proof.

‘You see, I can’t understand what made her run out like that,’ said the coroner. ‘Surely she must have seen the bus coming? The previous witness said that he thought her action was part of a joke. He thought that you and your wife could have been indulging in some kind of horseplay when she fell. You, on the other hand, say it was deliberate.’

Stan had raised his head and looked the silly old fool right in the eye. ‘That’s right, it was deliberate. She meant to do it.’

The whole place erupted as her relatives shouted down from the back of the room. ‘Liar!’ ‘Bastard.’

The coroner struggled to make himself heard over the din. ‘Any more disruptions like that and I shall have no other alternative than to have you all forcibly ejected from this room.’

Stan knew perfectly well why they were upset. They were Catholics. She couldn’t be buried in consecrated ground and there would be no Mass said in her memory if the verdict was suicide. He didn’t believe in all that mumbo-jumbo, but they did. She did too and she was planning to tell the whole world about him. That wasn’t right. A wife should never betray her husband. He did his best not to let them take the kid away from him but now that the grandparents had got hold of her, they were fighting tooth and nail to keep her. Never mind, he would have his revenge.

The coroner had been very thorough in his summing up and it had been music to his ears when he finally said, ‘It had been suggested that what happened could have been caused by laughing and joking, but her husband’s testimony flies in the face of that. There is no reason to believe that the deceased had intended to take her life, but I can only draw my conclusions on the circumstantial evidence.’ There had been a howl of protest from the seats at the back when the verdict was announced. ‘Suicide while mentally unbalanced.’

The police had advised Stan to stay within the court until the family had gone. They were baying for blood. Perhaps he should move again. They’d never let him forget. They’d already poisoned half the town against him.

*

Connie was sent to the medical ward so that the more trained staff could be in Accident and Emergency. In the event, there were few casualties because the weather had kept most people in their homes. Connie had finally come off duty at ten past midnight. She was dog tired and hardly able to put one foot in front of the other. Sister Curtis had given both her and the other two nurses extra off duty but it didn’t amount to much.

‘You can come back on duty at twelve noon tomorrow,’ she told them. ‘I’ll clear it with the day staff. You can have a bit of a lie-in.’