Tuppence To Spend (32 page)

*

Out at Bridge End they listened to the news in horror.

‘It sounds as if there’s nothing left of Portsmouth,’ Ruth said to Jane when she collected Sammy after her afternoon shift. Normally Sammy went home with Joyce Moore after school, but today she had taken her boys over to Romsey to see their grandparents. ‘I mean, there were planes over all night. Matron at the hospital’s got an auntie there, she was out at Denmead for the night but she rang Matron up on the telephone and she says the whole city’s on fire. The Guildhall’s still burning, you can see the flames for miles, and there’s almost nothing left of the shops out at Southsea and in Commercial Road. The poor evacuee kiddies must be frantic.’

‘So are their mothers,’ Jane said. Several of the mothers had gone back to Portsmouth, as Jess Budd had done, but a few whose husbands were in the Forces were still at Bridge End. ‘They don’t know if they’ve got homes to go to and most of them have still got family there, you know. Old people, and brothers and sisters and that. That young Mrs Burton with the twins, she’s nearly out of her mind, spent all day trying to find out what’s happened to her mum and dad.’

‘You’d think they’d get a message through somehow, wouldn’t you?’ Ruth said, but Jane shook her head.

‘There’s nothing working. There’s no electricity and hardly any telephones, and you can’t get into the post offices to send telegrams. It’s like the city’s been cut off.’

Ruth sighed. ‘It’s terrible.’ She lowered her voice, even though Sammy was out in the garden playing football with Ben. ‘I’ve been wondering about Sammy’s dad. He works down the docks, you know. Suppose something’s happened to him – what’ll become of little Sammy? And there’s that brother of his too,’ she added as an afterthought.

‘I don’t know,’ Jane said. ‘When you think of it, there must be a lot of kiddies that’s happening to. Losing their
mums and dads. I suppose they get put into children’s homes and orphanages.’

‘Orphanages!’ Ruth said, horrified. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t want my Sammy to be put in one of them places. I mean, I’m sure they look after the kiddies all right, make sure they’re washed and fed and that, but it’s not like a proper home, is it. And Sammy needs a home, he’s a quiet little boy, he needs to be
loved
. He’d never manage among all those children, specially the bigger boys, they get so rough.’

Jane looked at her. ‘You’ve got fond of that little chap, haven’t you?’

Ruth bit her lip. ‘I suppose I have. He’s such a loving little boy and he’s had such a sad time. I still don’t think I know the half of it, you know. I’ve never even seen his dad, he’s still never been out to visit him and he hardly ever writes … I suppose it’s never having had one of my own too. It’s as if Sammy was sort of sent to me, if you know what I mean. As if I was meant to have him.’

Jane looked at her doubtfully. ‘D’you think it’s a good idea, Ruthie? Letting him get into your heart like that. I mean, you’re not going to be able to keep him for ever, are you? He’s going to have to go back some day.’

Ruth looked obstinate. ‘I could adopt him.’

‘Well, maybe, but I don’t think it’s as easy as all that. The billeting people have got his name on their records, they’ll want to know what’s happening to him. Then there’s his dad. He might not be doing much at the moment, but we don’t really know why that is, do we, and he’s going to want him back eventually. There’s the brother too.’

‘Well, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. Sammy’s mine for the time being, anyway. We’ll see what happens when the war finishes, and by then he might be able to have a say too.’

Jane sighed and then said, ‘Our Terry’s gone overseas, you know. Africa. They say there’s going to be a lot of
fighting there. I can’t sleep for thinking about it.’ A tear trickled down her cheek.

‘Oh,
Jane
.’ Ruth stared at her sister in dismay. ‘Oh, I
am
sorry. Why ever didn’t you tell me straight away?’

‘Well, you were worried about Sammy.’ Jane wiped her eyes. ‘We’ve all got worries now, it seems. We just have to take our turn.’ She tried a little laugh but her mouth twisted it into a sob. ‘I know it’s unpatriotic of me,’ she said tremblingly, ‘but I can’t bear to think of our Terry fighting, and in all that heat as well. He’s never liked hot weather … And God knows how they’ll be living, it’ll be just tents, and that’s if they’re lucky. You see these things on the pictures – men having to sleep in holes in the sand, and there’s all sorts of horrible things, scorpions and spiders and God knows what else. I can’t
bear
to think of my Terry like that. I know he’s nearly twenty-three but it don’t seem five minutes ago that he was a baby in his pram, or a little boy coming home from school with his socks all falling down and a hole in his jersey.’

Ruth moved to sit beside her, patting her arm. She thought of the tall, generous young soldier who had played with Sammy at Christmas. Terry had always been a cheerful, willing boy, working hard on the farm yet still ready to do chores for his mother or help his father with jobs like wallpapering and painting. He’d been a good son, like many other young men of his age, and he’d had a good future to look forward to.

Now, it seemed as though that future might be taken away from him.

‘He wanted to do it,’ she said at last. ‘Even if the worst happens, Jane, you can always be proud of him.’

Jane nodded. She found a hanky and blew her nose.

‘I know,’ she said, ‘but I could have been proud of him without that. I didn’t need a war to make me proud of my boy.’

Gradually news filtered through. Jess Budd sent a telegram to the vicarage, where the boys were now billeted, to say that they were safe. Snow had fallen during the night and Tim and Keith, who had been disgruntled at first to find that they were going to come back to Bridge End after Christmas to live with the vicar, were out building a snowman with Mr Beckett. With his long, thin legs encased in woolly longjohns and black trousers, the vicar looked like a lanky spider as he loped about the garden scooping up fresh snow. He stopped to take the telegram and read it with relief.

‘Your mother and father and sisters are all safe,’ he told the boys, who had come to see what the telegram said. They’d been aggrieved at not being there during the raid, but although it hadn’t consciously occurred to them that their family might be in danger, they were pleased to know they were safe. Especially Mum and the baby, Maureen. Dad would be all right, of course, because he was a man and the biggest dad in the street, and they weren’t bothered about Rose one way or the other, but Maureen was just a baby and it wouldn’t be right if she got bombed.

‘Oh, that’s all right, then,’ Tim said carelessly and scampered off to finish the snowman, kicking up snow as he went. ‘Can we borrow your black hat, Mr Beckett? And one of your pipes?’

‘Certainly. A snowman must have a good hat and a pipe to smoke.’ The vicar stood for a moment looking at the
telegram in his hand. It said nothing except that the family was safe, yet he felt a twinge of discomfort, as if behind the straggling capitals there was another, darker message. Something bad had happened, he was sure of it.

He would find out soon enough. The last word of the brief message was ‘writing’. In the next day or two – as soon as they managed to get the postal service working again – a letter would come from Mrs Budd. And he felt horribly sure that it was going to bring bad news as well as good.

He wondered just who it would be about. One of the other children from the area around September Street, he thought, and wondered if it would be little Sammy Hodges.

When the news came it wasn’t about Sammy, but about Kathy Simmons and her two little girls, Stella and Muriel. The vicar met Ruth in the churchyard, where she was placing some fresh leaves on Joe’s grave, and told her about it.

‘It’s a terrible tragedy. The mother had only recently had another baby – Tim and Keith say he was born during one of the earlier raids, actually in an air-raid shelter – and both were killed. One of the young woman’s friends had come across to take them to her home, and she and the little girls were knocked over by the blast, but the shelter where poor Mrs Simmons and the baby were got a direct hit.’

‘Oh, that’s dreadful!’ Ruth exclaimed. She had cleared away a small patch of snow from the grave and filled the metal urn with holly. Its berries gleamed like little red lights. ‘What will happen to them now? Will the father be able to manage?’

‘He’s in the Merchant Navy, like young Alec – hardly ever gets home. They’ll be evacuated, I suppose.’ Mr Beckett rubbed his long thin hand across his face. ‘I don’t
think there are many billets left in the village. I’m thinking of offering them room with me.’

‘Well, that sounds a good idea. The Budd boys already know them, so they’d feel easier than if they were with strangers. But could you manage?’

‘Oh, I think so,’ the vicar said, his face breaking into a smile. ‘There are plenty of rooms spare, you know, and Mrs Mudge seems to like having the little ones about the place.’

She’s not the only one, Ruth thought, hiding a smile as she watched him lope away across the churchyard. Everyone had seen the enormous snowman standing guard in the vicarage garden and they’d heard the noise of the snowball fights Mr Beckett had organised too. It’s a shame he never got married and had a big family of his own, like vicars are supposed to, she thought. You could see that’s what he wanted.

Sammy too had had a letter that morning. It had come in a brown envelope, the address scrawled in uncertain capitals. Sammy had stared at it in astonishment.

‘A letter for
me
?’

‘Yes, see, it’s got your name on it. I expect it’s from your dad.’ Ruth looked at him, hoping it didn’t bring bad news and wondering if she should read it first. ‘Open it up, now, and see what it says.’

His lips caught in his teeth, Sammy pulled open the envelope. The piece of paper the letter was written on looked as if it had been torn from an old exercise book. He read it, following the words with his finger.

‘It is from Dad. He says he’s all right and I’ve got to be a good boy.’ Sammy looked up at her. ‘I am being, aren’t I?’

‘You’re being a very good boy,’ Ruth assured him. ‘Does it say anything else?’

‘He says there were a lot of bombs. And he’s coming to see me as soon as he can.’

Sammy folded the letter and put it back into the envelope. His voice had trembled a bit as he spoke the last words and Ruth wondered whether it was joy or something else at the thought of seeing his father again. She looked at him, but he had turned his face away.

‘Well, that’ll be good, won’t it,’ she said. ‘You’ll be able to show him all the places you know, your school and the church and the village green and everything. And you’ll be able to show him Silver.’

‘Yes,’ Sammy said. ‘I’ll go and put this in my bedroom.’

He went out and Ruth sighed. It was so hard to fathom what was going on in that little fair head. Sometimes, she felt she knew just what he was thinking, but at other times he was a mystery, a closed book. There’s still a lot I don’t know about him, she thought. Perhaps, if his dad does come, it’ll make things a bit clearer.

He might have talked to her in the evenings, during the quiet hour they spent together before he went to bed. Ruth set that hour aside for reading to him – they had finished
Treasure Island
now and were reading
The Coral Island
, one of Terry’s books that Jane had found and brought down for him. Sammy seemed to enjoy hearing sea stories and gradually Ruth found herself talking to him about Jack and recounting some of the tales he had brought back from his voyages. He listened, enraptured, and begged her to take him to Southampton one day, when the war was over, to see the big liners there. The berth where the
Queen Mary
and
Queen Elizabeth
docked was so close to the road, you could almost touch them as they loomed overhead, and you could watch them steam majestically down the Solent too, setting up a bow wave that roared up the beaches nearly half an hour after they had passed.

‘I’m going to be a sailor,’ Sammy said. ‘Like Uncle Jack and Alec. I’ll be a cabin boy like Jim in
Treasure Island
,
and see bananas growing and coconuts.’ He looked wistful. ‘Dad used to bring coconuts home, sometimes. And bananas, from the dock.’

Sammy was back at school now, but he still hadn’t really settled in. The two Budd boys played with him occasionally, but Tim was older and Keith followed his brother as much as he could. Joyce Moore’s boys went at a different time of day from the evacuees, so although Sammy played with them at home he didn’t see them at school. He found himself wandering alone at the edge of the playground.

Some of the bigger boys noticed him there and came over. They formed a ring around him.

‘I know you,’ Brian Collins said belligerently. ‘You live down April Grove. Your mum died and your brother’s a thief, got put in jail.’

‘He’s not in jail,’ Sammy said, his lips trembling. ‘He’s at a school, a proved school.’

‘Same thing. It’s a jail for kids. He’ll go to Borstal next and then it’ll be proper jail. I ’spect you’ll go there too.’

‘I won’t! I never stole nothing.’

‘Bet you did,’ Brian Collins said. ‘Bet you did and bet you will.’ He turned to the others. ‘Better watch your stuff. He’s a thief, all the Hodges are.’

‘I’m not!’ Sammy stamped his foot. ‘And nor was my mum and nor’s my dad, neither. And it wasn’t our Gordon, it was Micky Baxter what started it, it was all
his
fault.’

‘So why ain’t he in jail too?’ Brian Collins demanded. ‘Garn, it was your Gordon, a blooming thief he is and so are you. Thief, thief, thief!’ He turned to the other boys, urging them on, and they all took up the chant. ‘Thief, thief, thief!’

Sammy felt the tears sting his eyes. They brimmed over and slid down his cheeks, and the boys saw them and
increased their jeering. He stood in the middle of the circle, crying and rubbing his nose on his sleeve.

‘Cry-baby! Thief! That’s you, Sammy Hodges – thief and cry-baby! Yah, look at him, crying for his mummy. Only she’s dead, ain’t she! Your mummy’s
dead
.’