Tuppence To Spend (22 page)

She moved her hands over his body, washing every part with the flannel, aware that his tension was slowly dissolving under her firm, gentle touch. He was so thin, she could almost count his ribs. More milk for you, my boy, she thought, more milk and butter and eggs, that’s what you need.

‘You’re tickling me,’ he complained and she smiled.

‘Look at this water! You’ve turned it almost black. Now for your hair. Have you ever had your hair washed?’

‘Only when I had nits. They give us black stuff to wash it with. It stings,’ he said, stiffening again. ‘It hurts me eyes.’

‘Not if you keep them tightly closed.’ She fetched a bucket of fresh water and rubbed the soap into a lather. ‘Shut them tight now, and don’t open them till I say so. Here goes.’

Hair-washing was not easy. At the first touch of soap on his head, Sammy began to roar and squirm. The soapsuds poured down his face and into his open mouth, and he choked and yelled and wriggled all the more. Water slopped over the side of the bath and spattered into the fire, and Silver, shocked by the noise, joined in with his own increasingly panic-stricken squawks.

‘Bugger me! Bugger
me
! What shall we do with a drunken sailor? Pussy’s down the well. I’m a little teapot. Goodnight, precious bird. Sod the little buggers. Bugger me! Bugger
me
!’

‘Be quiet, Silver!’ Ruth panted, trying to keep a grip on the slippery body. ‘Sammy, keep still. It won’t go in your eyes if you just keep them closed.
And
your mouth. Just keep still, now, and let me rinse it off.’ She reached with one hand for the enamel mug and dipped it into the bucket. ‘Hold still. I’m going to pour some nice clean water over your head.
It won’t hurt you
. Keep
still
.’

It was done at last. Sammy sat in the bath, red-faced and sobbing. Ruth lifted him up to stand in the bath while she dipped the flannel into what was left of the clean water and gave his body a final rinse, washing away the dirty scum that clung to his skin. She set him on the rag rug.

‘You should have had two baths to get that lot off.’ She wrapped him in the big towel that had been warming in front of the fire, and folded it close around his body. ‘There, doesn’t that feel better?’

Sammy drew a deep, shuddering breath. ‘There’s water all over me.’

‘I know. But it’s clean water and the towel will dry you.’ She picked up a smaller towel and began to rub his head briskly. ‘Goodness me, your hair’s really fair. Now, you sit here on the rug, in front of the fire, and I’ll find something for you to wear.’

She went upstairs, wondering what she had that was suitable for a very small, thin boy to wear. An old blouse, perhaps. Or something of Jack’s.

Ruth had kept Jack’s civilian clothes in the spare-room cupboard. There weren’t many – he’d only needed them when he was home on leave – and she’d never been able to bring herself to throw or even give them away. But now, without hesitation, she went to the cupboard and looked among the clothes folded there. A few blue working shirts, soft from much washing – one of those would do for him in the morning, if she cut it down a bit. And a pair of pyjamas with blue stripes. She took out the jacket and held it against her cheek.

‘I know you wouldn’t mind, Jack,’ she whispered. ‘I know you’d want the poor little mite to have a bit of comfort.’

She stood for a moment with it in her hands, then took it downstairs to where Sammy was sitting, still wrapped in his towel, in front of the fire. Gently, she lifted the towel from his thin shoulders, gave him a few final dabs to make sure
he was properly dry and hung the pyjama jacket round his shoulders.

It fitted him like a nightshirt, reaching to below his knees. She looked at him, as thin as a reed, his hair almost white and as soft as a rabbit’s fur, his eyes even larger in a face that, cleansed of its grime, was as pale and smooth as ivory, and her heart seemed to move in her breast.

‘You poor little soul,’ she said, gathering him gently in her arms. ‘You poor, dear little soul …’

The bedroom took Sammy completely by surprise.

‘Is it for me?’ he asked, staring at the neat bed with its apple-green coverlet. ‘Me to sleep in, all by meself?’

‘Of course it is,’ Ruth said with a smile. ‘Who else did you think was going to sleep in it?’

‘I always had to sleep with our Gordon, till – till he went away. I thought there’d be another boy here.’

‘Well, there isn’t. There’s just you and you can have the bed all to yourself. It’s nice and warm,’ she added. ‘I put in a hot-water bottle while you were sitting by the fire.’ She drew back the sheet to show him the stone bottle, wrapped in a knitted cover. ‘That’ll keep you warm for hours. And you’ve got a nice soft pillow, look, with feathers in.’

‘That eagle’s feathers?’

‘No, not Silver’s feathers, and I’ve told you, he’s a parrot, not an eagle. The feathers in the pillow are from a chicken, or perhaps a duck. Come on, now, get in. You’re tired out, you’ll be asleep in no time.’

Sammy eyed her dubiously. ‘Where will you be?’

‘I’ve got my own bed in the next room,’ Ruth said. She wondered if he was frightened at the idea of being left alone. ‘Look, I’ll show you.’

In the front bedroom he stared at the double bed and the bow-fronted chest of drawers. ‘Is this where you sleep? In that big bed, all by yourself?’

‘Well, there’s no one else living here,’ Ruth said with a smile.

‘My mum had a bed like that,’ he said. ‘She slep’ in it with me dad.’ He closed his mouth firmly.

‘Well, I used to sleep in it with my hubby. He was called Jack. He was a sailor – it was him brought me Silver. Now, you know where I’ll be if you need me. If you want anything, or you feel a bit scared or lonely, you just come in and wake me up, all right? Let’s get you into your own bed, now. You’re half asleep on your feet.’

Sammy allowed her to lead him into the small bedroom. She pulled the covers back again and he lay down, his head a pale gold against the white cotton pillowcase. Ruth pushed the bottle close to his feet and drew the bedclothes up to his neck. She tucked them in gently and touched his pale cheek with her finger.

‘Goodnight, little boy,’ she whispered. ‘Sleep tight. Sleep safe. You’ll be all right with me. You’ll be all right with Auntie Ruth.’

Sammy slid his thumb into his mouth. For a minute or two he gazed up at her, before his eyelids drooped. They were so fine that it seemed she could still see the blue of his eyes, glowing through the translucent skin. Then he gave a small sigh and turned his head away, already asleep.

Ruth stood very still for a moment. She touched his cheek gently with one fingertip, feeling the softness of his skin. Why, he was little more than a baby; a lost and lonely little boy; the child she had longed for, sent to her at last.

She gazed down at him until the tears blurred her vision. Then, with a sigh, she turned away and slipped quietly out of the room, leaving the door ajar in case he woke and was frightened.

Downstairs in the scullery she washed his clothes and hung them round the fire to dry before starting work on the shirt she was going to alter to fit his thin body. His socks
needed darning too, there was more hole than sock, and she put them closest to the fire so that they would dry quickly.

Poor little boy, she thought. Poor little neglected, half-starved boy.

‘Poor old Joe,’ Silver said sorrowfully. ‘Hear the bugle calling, poor old Joe.’

Ruth looked at him, startled, and realised she must have spoken aloud. ‘You’re too quick, you are,’ she told the parrot. ‘Only got to say one word and you’re on to it like a cat on to a mouse. You’ve got to learn to be a bit more tactful, see?’

‘We joined the Navy,’ Silver said obligingly, ‘to see the world. But what did we see? We saw—’

‘Oh, shut up,’ Ruth said and threw one of Sammy’s socks at him.

Having an evacuee wasn’t, Ruth discovered, simply a matter of feeding, clothing and sending off to school.

That first night had been punctuated by nightmares. Three times Sammy had woken, screaming and sobbing, and Ruth had hurried in to hold him in her arms, wake him gently and reassure him that he was all right. In the end she’d had to stay until he was asleep again, his hand in hers, and when she’d crept away to her own room she’d barely nodded off when he was calling out again.

In the morning, after an uneasy sleep, she woke to a familiar pungent smell and the sound of muffled sobbing. Annoyance swept through her; not with Sammy, but with herself. I ought to have known he’d be a bedwetter, she thought, pushing back the blankets and feeling for her slippers. Her old camel dressing gown was hanging on the back of the bedroom door; she wrapped it round herself and hurried into the other room.

‘Oh,
Sammy
.’

He had pulled the wet sheets from the bed and heaped them on the floor. Jack’s pyjama jacket, soaking wet, was piled on top of them and Sammy, wrapped in the eiderdown that seemed to be the only dry thing in the room, was huddled on the floor by the window, weeping bitterly. When he looked up and saw her, Ruth was appalled to see the fear in his eyes and the way he tried to cower even further out of reach.

‘I’m a bad boy,’ he said miserably in his hoarse voice. ‘I’m a dirty, bad boy.’

‘Sammy, you’re
not
bad.’ Ruth crossed the room towards him and bent to take the thin, cringing body in her arms. ‘You’re not bad at all. You’re just little and frightened. And this happens to lots of boys.
Lots
of them.’

He shook his head. ‘Only bad ones like me.’

‘No. It’s nothing to do with being bad. It’s just something that happens. You can’t help it.’

‘Dad says I can. He says I do it out of devilment. He says I’m a wicked little bleeder.’

‘Well, your dad’s wrong,’ Ruth said firmly. She didn’t believe in taking a child’s side against its father, but in this case … ‘Your dad’s
wrong
.’

There was a moment’s silence. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said it, all the same, Ruth thought. A kiddy wants to think well of its father. It could upset him all the more. ‘If you don’t stop crying soon,’ she said lightly, ‘you’ll flood the whole house out. And Silver can’t swim! Don’t you think there’s enough water to be going on with?’

The joke fell on stony ground. Sammy sobbed harder than ever and Ruth sighed and lifted him in her arms. ‘Come on, let’s get you downstairs and light the fire. You’ll need another bath – it’s lucky we didn’t put it outside last night, isn’t it! And your clothes will be dry by now. Let’s try and get you nice and smart before Mrs Tupper comes round with your luggage.’

‘I ain’t got no luggage,’ Sammy said, sniffing and wiping his nose on the eiderdown. ‘I brung all me stuff in the bag. They give me some clothes from the mayor’s fund but I left ’em on the train.’

Ruth had looked in the carrier bag after he’d gone to bed last night. It had contained a grubby shirt, a pair of ragged short trousers and a tin of sardines. The sardines had gone into the cupboard and the shirt and trousers into the wash with the rest of his things. ‘Is that all you’ve got? There’s no more to come?’

‘No, miss. I left ’em on the train. I forgot them. They wasn’t mine anyway, they was from the mayor’s fund.’

‘No,
Auntie
,’ she corrected him. ‘Auntie Ruth, that’s what you call me, remember? Well, we’ll just have to see what we can find for you then. I don’t know what clothes they’ll have in the shops, they’re as empty as everywhere else. Talking about putting clothes on ration, they are, like food, and goodness knows how that will work out. I’ll see if I can borrow a few things from my friend Mrs Moore, she’s got four boys so there’s bound to be a few bits and pieces she can spare.’ They reached the bottom of the stairs and she set Sammy down in her armchair, still wrapped in the eiderdown. ‘Now, you just sit down here while I light the fire and get some hot water on the go. You’ll feel all the better for a wash.’

‘I had a wash last night,’ he objected. ‘I had a
bath
. It’s not good for you, too much washing, it can wash all your skin away.’

‘I don’t think there’s much risk of your skin being washed away,’ Ruth said dryly. ‘You’ve got a bit of catching up to do first.’ She raked out last night’s coals and ashes, and carried them out to the bin in the backyard. Returning with some kindling, she noticed that Silver’s cage was still covered up and hastily pulled off the red cover. ‘Goodness me, that’s the first time I’ve ever come down without uncovering His Majesty first thing! And how are you this morning, my bird?’

Silver shook out his feathers and eyed her balefully. ‘Poor old Joe.
Poor
old Joe.’

‘Poor old Silver, you mean. Not used to not getting all the attention, are you? Well, you’ll have to wait a few minutes while I see to young Sammy here. His need is greater than yours.’ She knelt to lay the fire and within a few minutes flames were licking round the kindling and catching at the small coals she had laid on top. Ruth regarded it ruefully. Coal was getting scarce already and
keeping a fire in all day was impossible. She generally took Silver over to the hospital during the winter, much to the delight of the patients. Now it looked as if she’d have to take Sammy as well.

‘Still, you’ll be at school in a week or so,’ she said, washing him down with warm water as he stood in the bath; since it was only for a wash, she’d poured in no more than a couple of inches. Gently, she dried the bony body. Then she wrapped him in Jack’s old blue shirt and sat him in the armchair.

‘Have to do some washing next,’ she told him cheerfully. ‘I’ll get the fire lit under the copper before we have our breakfast, otherwise it’ll take all day. And it doesn’t dry in this weather, no use at all in hanging it out. How does your mum manage?’

There was no reply. She glanced at him and saw the tears trickling down his cheeks. There’s something very wrong there, she thought as she went out to the little brick wash-house in the backyard, and what about that brother he talked about too? Maybe I should ask Mrs Tupper when she comes.

‘That fire’s just about right for making toast,’ she said when she came back. ‘We’ll have some for our breakfast, shall we? You like toast, don’t you?’