Tuppence To Spend (50 page)

‘Southampton!’ The stationmaster nodded. ‘So it’s
that
Bridge End. There’s another in Wales,’ he added to the porter, ‘and probably half a dozen more, if we only knew it. Well, that’s easy enough,’ he said, addressing Sammy again. ‘You’ve got on the wrong train, haven’t you? This is in the opposite direction from where you want to be. What you’ve got to do now is get a train going back to Southampton and that’ll take you back to Bridge End, see? It’s quite simple.’

Sammy looked at him. ‘But I don’t know if I’ve got enough money.’

‘It’s all right. You haven’t gone off the station, so the
ticket you’ve got will be all right. As long as you don’t try to go any further, mind,’ he added, sounding stern again. ‘You’ve got to get off at Bridge End, or you’ll be in trouble.’ He nodded at the porter. ‘Take him over to platform five and see he gets on the Southampton train, Jenkins. There’s one due in twenty minutes.’

The porter nodded and led Sammy out of the office again. Sammy looked up at him. He wasn’t all that old after all, he thought. Probably about the same age as Terry and not nearly as frightening as Sammy had first thought.

‘Here you are,’ the porter said, stopping by a bench. ‘You can wait here. The train’ll be along in twenty minutes, like Mr Hopkinson said. You can get on it by yourself all right, can’t you?’

Sammy nodded. He glanced past the porter at a stall which was selling cups of tea and penny buns. ‘Will I have time to get a bun?’

‘Don’t see why not. Got enough money?’

Sammy felt in his pocket and nodded. The porter went off along the platform, whistling, to start sorting out some sacks of mail that had been dumped off the last train, and Sammy left his bags on the seat and went along to buy himself a drink and a bun. They were good buns too, he thought, and bought two more to take with him.

That left two pennies to jingle together in his pocket. The fare and the food had cost him more than he’d expected. He wouldn’t be able to send the money back to Dad after all, but it had been left for his food so it didn’t matter that he’d nearly spent it all. He wouldn’t need any more, now that he was definitely going to be on the right train for Bridge End.

‘I’ve got sixpence,’ he sang to himself again. ‘Jolly little sixpence. I’ve got sixpence, to last me all my life. I’ve got
tuppence
to lend and
tuppence
to spend, and
tuppence
to take home to my wife.’

There was a shrill whistle from down the track and a
train came steaming along from the other direction. Sammy ran to collect his bags and waited until it stopped. Then he scrambled aboard and found himself a corner seat where he could see out of the window. He was determined not to miss the little halt at Bridge End when they arrived.

It wasn’t until the train had rushed through several stations and halts without stopping that he began to feel afraid that it wasn’t going to stop at Bridge End at all. The signs had all been taken down in case of invasion, so it was impossible to tell just where they were. They went over a river, with a lot of small sailing dinghies and yachts moored in it and muddy banks that told him it must be close to the sea, and then plunged once again into woods and fields. He couldn’t remember ever having seen the river before, nor could he remember the great wide expanse of sea that was visible now, with bigger ships moving along it. He stared out in panic. Where was he?

Where was Bridge End? Where was the church, with its square tower and the vicarage standing close beside it? Where were the fields and woods he expected to see, the places that had become so familiar to him over the past months, the places he had come to think of as home?

They were leaving the countryside behind now and running beside another river. In a few minutes they crossed it, and rows and rows of houses flashed past the window. They were in a town, a big one, perhaps even a city. Where could it be?

With a great fuss of steaming and whistling, the train came into a large station. It slowed down at last and drew up beside a long, busy platform. Sammy peered out and looked in both directions before climbing cautiously down, and above all the clatter and noise he heard the announcer’s voice.

‘Southampton. This is Southampton.’

Southampton
. He had gone too far. And he remembered the words of the stationmaster at Brighton. ‘Don’t try to go
any further. You’ve got to get off at Bridge End, or you’ll be in trouble.’

I
couldn’t
get off at Bridge End, Sammy thought miserably. The train didn’t stop. All the same, he dared not try to go through the barrier. This time he was sure he’d be taken to the police and from there almost certainly to the proved school. They wouldn’t give him a second chance.

Frightened, lonely and in desperate need of a lavatory, Sammy looked up and down the platform, then made his way along to the very far end, away from the sign that said Way Out.

There must be another way of getting out of the station and once he was out, he would have to think what to do next.

Dan was given a bed for the night at the vicarage. There was plenty of room, Mr Beckett said, and although Dan said he would sleep anywhere, he wasn’t bothered about a bed, the kitchen floor would do, Mrs Mudge took him up to the last remaining spare room, where there was a folding camp bed among the boxes and suitcases that had been stored there for years. She shook out the old mattress and checked it for damp, then spread some blankets over it and gave him a couple of pillows. ‘You’ll be all right here. It’s no worse than an air-raid shelter, after all.’

‘It’s a blooming sight better than most of ’em,’ Dan said. Mrs Mudge had been kind enough and obviously wanted him to be comfortable, but her manner was a bit short, as if she were angry with him. And no doubt she was, he thought ruefully, no doubt they all were, for treating Sammy the way he had. Taking him away from Ruth at Christmas and then leaving him all on his own … I don’t think much of meself, come to that, he thought. I dunno what I was thinking of to do it. I’m a pretty poor sort of a father.

‘Thanks for the supper,’ he said awkwardly. Once they’d
decided what to do, the housekeeper had got out the frying pan and cooked him up a real nice bite to eat, with bubble and squeak made from leftover potato and cabbage and stuff, and even a bit of bacon chopped up with it to make it tasty. Bacon! Dan hadn’t seen a rasher for months.

‘That’s all right. The bathroom’s along the corridor there.’ Mrs Mudge gave him a sharp nod and went away, leaving Dan on his own in the cluttered room. It wasn’t cluttered like number 2 April Grove was cluttered, though. This was
decent
clutter – stuff that could still be used. And it was looked after, too, you could tell that. There was hardly any dust and no cobwebs at all.

Dan had never stayed before in a house he didn’t actually live in. He’d never even been inside a house as big as this one, with five or six bedrooms and several rooms downstairs – and a proper bathroom, where he went to wash, with a huge bath on its own legs and a lavatory next door. He crept along the corridor, feeling intimidated by the size of the place, and was thankful to shut the door at last and lie down on the camp bed.

He didn’t sleep, though, or not for a long time. He drew the curtain back once the light was off and lay awake, staring through the window at the stars and wondering where Sammy was. His boy, Nora’s boy, somewhere out there on his own – lost for days, wandering by himself. Why? Why had he run off like that? Why couldn’t he have waited until Dan came home again?

He knew I wanted to keep him there, that’s why, Dan told himself. He knew and he didn’t want to stay. He wanted to be back here, with these people he’s got fond of, where he feels safe and where he’s properly looked after.

But if that was what he wanted, why had he never arrived? What had happened to him after he left April Grove and where was he now?

The questions circled endlessly in Dan’s brain, gradually turning into a procession of nightmare pictures – Sammy,
trying to walk to Bridge End, lost and helpless in strange fields or woods. Sammy, hurt and alone, starving in a ditch. Sammy, kidnapped and held captive. You did hear of such things, and Sammy was a nice-looking nipper with that fair hair and those big blue eyes. Dan didn’t want to think of what might happen to him … But as his mind slipped into uneasy slumber it forced him to think of it. He saw the pictures and he couldn’t get rid of them.

Bloody fine father I’ve turned out to be, he thought, jerking awake for the twentieth time.
Bloody
fine.

Sammy had found his way out of the station. If you went right down the platform to the far end, where the goods wagons were being unloaded, you could slip through to a yard that was crowded with lorries and out into the road. He scurried between the vehicles, keeping his eyes sharply open to avoid running into any of the men working there, and he was almost out of the yard when he heard a shout go up. By then it was too late for him to be caught. He was out through the open gates and away up the road, scampering like a rabbit. It was only when he turned a corner and stopped to catch his breath that he realised he’d lost his carrier bags.

I must have left them on the train, he thought, the tears coming to his eyes. My Sorry game. My jigsaw puzzle. The jumper Auntie Jane knitted me for Christmas. The car Dad gave me. And my pyjamas and new pants and vest, and my woolly gloves.

He was swept by an overwhelming grief for all he had lost. Everything he had ever loved, it seemed, was taken away from him. His granny and grandad at the pub. His home, when they’d moved to April Grove. His mother. Even his brother Gordon, who had teased and bullied him and stolen his chocolate, but was still his brother. And now his carrier bags, holding all he possessed.

He stopped for a moment and felt in his pocket. There were five coins left in it, and he drew them out and stared at them. A King George penny, with Britannia on the tail side. A halfpenny, with Queen Victoria’s head and a sailing
ship. Two farthings, both with perky little wrens on their tail sides.

Tuppence. That was all he had left. Tuppence.

Tuppence to spend …

Somehow, it didn’t sound so jolly any more.

I can’t even get back to Auntie Ruth and Silver, he thought desolately, walking unseeingly along the narrow streets, tears pouring down his face. I haven’t got enough for the fare and I don’t know which way it is to walk, or how far it is. I can’t ever get back.

The day was almost over. Darkness was creeping through the streets, bringing with it a deeper cold. Sammy began to wonder where he could spend the night. Soon, he wouldn’t be able to see where he was going, and although he knew he was somewhere near the docks he had no idea exactly where he was. He’d only been to Southampton once, with Lizzie, and they hadn’t come to this part, with these mean streets.

The streets came to an end and he found himself trudging beside a long, high wall. There were arches in the walls, making alcoves like those he had seen in the church at Bridge End, where the vicar kept statues of saints. There were no saints in these arches, however; only bundles of rags that, when he peered closer in the hope of finding something to wrap round his shivering body, turned into snarling human beings, their faces ravaged with disease and starvation. He jumped back, terrified, and ran away, pursued by shouts. It was worse than Old Portsmouth, he thought. But perhaps, after the bombing, Old Portsmouth was like this now, too. Perhaps there were people there living on the streets, bombed out of their houses with nowhere to go and no money for food.

Will I be like that soon? he wondered. Will I have to sleep against walls, under wet, smelly arches, with nothing to eat and nowhere to go?

He came to a bomb-site, where a whole row of houses
had been destroyed in one of the raids. Some of them were still half standing and he crept about until he found a door hanging open. There was even a bit of furniture in the room he went into – a broken chair, a couple of sagging, stained cushions. He moved carefully, afraid that this place too might be occupied, but to his relief there was no one there.

He pulled the cushions into a corner and curled himself up on top. He was suddenly desperately tired and, hungry, thirsty and unhappy though he was, he fell into a deep, heavy sleep.

They scarcely knew where to start next morning.

‘I think you should tell the local police too,’ Mr Beckett said to Dan as they ate breakfast in the big kitchen. ‘I know you’ve been to the ones in Portsmouth, but we don’t know how far Sammy might have got. We’ll go and see Constable Percy as soon as we’ve finished.’

Dan pushed his porridge into a heap in the middle of the bowl. ‘It’s not him that’ll have to look, surely. It’s the Pompey coppers. I’ll have to go back.’

‘Well, we don’t really know who should be looking, or where, do we?’ the vicar said. ‘It seems most likely that Sammy would have tried to come back here. The question is, why didn’t he arrive?’

Dan shoved his bowl aside and leant his elbows on the table. He put his face in his hands. ‘I been asking myself that all night. I don’t know. I don’t bleeding
know
.’ He heard Mrs Mudge’s sharp, disapproving gasp, but Mr Beckett didn’t seem at all concerned about his language. ‘I wish I’d never gone to work on Saturday. I wish I’d brought him back here. I wish I’d never taken him away.’

Mr Beckett looked at him compassionately. He had worked in other parishes before coming to Bridge End, some of them in city slums, and he knew that men like Dan Hodges had hard lives, working long hours at unpleasant
jobs for little pay. Their homes were poor because they had no money and no opportunity to improve them. They lived from hand to mouth and when they lost their jobs, as so many had done during the difficult years before the war, they came close to starving.

‘You did what you thought was best,’ he said gently to the bowed head. ‘You wanted to have your son with you for Christmas and why not? But it’s no use reproaching yourself now. What we have to do now is find Sammy. You’ve been to the Portsmouth police, and what we need to do now is see Constable Percy and get things moving from this end. It’s possible the Portsmouth men have already contacted him and it will save him the trouble of coming here.’