Tuppence To Spend (7 page)

‘But I want to get Mum a gold—’

‘You heard what I said. And they’re not open today anyway, Micky’s just said so. You stop here in case our dad comes out looking for you.’

‘But what shall I say if—’

‘Just tell him I’ve gone for a walk, all right? You stop here and play with your new ball.’ He winked at Micky. ‘You’re too little to come with us. You wouldn’t be able to keep up.’

They walked away rapidly, leaving Sammy staring after them. He felt lonely and disgruntled. Gordon hadn’t bothered with Micky Baxter since he’d started work down at the Camber. It was only because it was Christmas Day and there was no one else around, and Sammy had been hoping for attention from his brother for himself for once.

I
wanted to get Mum a gold necklace, he thought, kicking the ball uninterestedly along the gutter. Now Gordon’ll get her one
and
he ate her bar of chocolate so I couldn’t even give her that. It’s not fair.

Through every window he could see Christmas decorations and people enjoying themselves. The Budd brothers had come home for Christmas, but they wouldn’t be out in the street. They weren’t even allowed out to play on
Sundays and anyway, he knew they were all up at their auntie’s house, at the bottom of March Street. He’d seen them going up there before dinner, all laden down with parcels and dishes. He sighed and kicked his ball again, but there wasn’t much fun in kicking a ball with no one to kick it back. He’d have to go in soon anyway – it was beginning to get dark and people were drawing their blackout curtains.

The door of number 1 opened and Tommy Vickers came out. Tommy was a small, cheerful man who made it his business to know everything that went on in April Grove. He looked at Sammy. ‘All by yourself?’

It was just the sort of question grown-ups asked, when they could see the answer for themselves, but Sammy only shrugged.

‘Where’s your brother, then? Too big to play with a ball now?’

‘Gone for a walk with Micky Baxter,’ Sammy said and Tommy whistled.

‘Well, that’s ominous! I bet that lad’s not up to any good. You steer clear of him, young Sammy. He’ll lead you into bad ways.’

Sammy thought he’d better not mention the gold necklaces. He turned back towards his own doorway,

‘How’s your mum these days?’ Tommy asked, his voice a little softer. ‘Mrs Vickers was saying she didn’t look too well. She hasn’t been properly right since you moved in, has she?’

‘She’s tired, that’s all. She’s been tired a long time.’

‘I know.’ Tommy studied him. ‘Well, maybe my Freda’ll call in and see if there’s anything she can do, once we got Christmas out of the way.’ He glanced up at the sky. The first pale stars were peeping through the dusk. ‘You’d better go in. It’ll be dark soon and you ought to be in by the fire on Christmas Day having a good time. I’m just off on me rounds, see nobody’s showing a light.’ He chuckled.
‘Here, that’s a game, isn’t it! “Sammy, Sammy, shine a light, ain’t you playing out tonight?” Well, those days are over, more’s the pity. No playing out after dark and no shining lights, eh?’

He set off up the street on his nightly task of making sure that no lights were gleaming through chinks in the blackout curtains. Sammy watched him go and turned again to go indoors, wondering if his mother and father were still asleep.

Nora had woken, but his father was still snoring. The fire beside which Tommy Vickers had advised him to sit was almost out. Sammy went out to the back shed and started filling the old galvanised bucket with coal.

It could all have been different, he thought, if he’d only managed to get Mum a gold necklace.

Christmas for the Budds was everything a Christmas should be, with a big family party at Annie Chapman’s on Christmas Day and another in the Budds’ tiny house on Boxing Day. Annie had managed to get a turkey, and they’d played games like Family Coach and the Jelly Race, and sung songs late into the night. There hadn’t been a lot of money to spend on presents, but a lot of thought had gone into their choosing or their making. Everyone was delighted with what they received and Olive Chapman had capped it all by getting engaged to Derek Harker.

‘I s’pose that means we’ve got to go to a wedding,’ Tim Budd said glumly as the family went out for a walk on Boxing Day afternoon. He and Keith went on ahead, wearing the new mittens Jess had knitted them. ‘Have our hair cut and get all dressed up in our best clothes and go to church.’

‘Still,’ Keith said, looking on the bright side, ‘there’ll be cake. It’s just the same as Christmas cake, only there’s three of them in a pile and there’s a stork on top.’

‘A stork? Why’s there a stork?’

‘I dunno. But there was one on top when we went to that christening party once. And someone said the cake was the top off a wedding cake, so there must be.’

‘Anyway,’ Tim said, ‘it won’t be for ages yet. Derek’s a soldier now, so he’s got to go and fight the war first.’

They went back to Bridge End a day or two after that, just in time for the snow. It was a heavy fall and it lay over the
fields like a thick white quilt. Everyone turned out to shovel it from the roads to let the horses and carts through, and the children organised snowball fights, built snowmen and took huge delight in stamping their footprints over the smooth white billows. Tim and Keith built an igloo and begged the Corners to let them sleep in it. Reg was half inclined to let them, but Edna put her foot down and was justified when it collapsed during the night.

‘I don’t reckon this bombing’s going to happen after all,’ Ruth Purslow remarked to her sister Jane when she tramped up to the farm for some eggs. Jane’s husband George was foreman, in charge of up to a dozen workers, and they had a nice house a little way away from the main farmhouse. ‘I reckon they just got in a panic.’ She put down her basket and took off her hat, shaking out her coppery hair.

‘That’s not what my Alec says,’ Lizzie said. She worked in a shop in Southampton but hadn’t been able to get in that day because of the snow. She was knitting beside the fire, but now she produced a letter from her knitting bag. ‘I had this letter this morning. He says the German navy’s all over the place, chasing our merchant ships from pillar to post. He reckons there’ll be food shortages. Well, it stands to reason, don’t it? It’s as if the Germans have got us under siege.’

‘Well, yes, I know it’s going on at sea,’ Ruth said apologetically. ‘You must be worried about him – we all are. But it’s the bombing I’m talking about. I mean, we never had much during the last war, did we?’

‘They never had the aeroplanes then,’ Jane pointed out. She split some fresh scones and buttered them. ‘Have one of these, Ruth, they were in the oven five minutes ago. They didn’t have the bombs either, not many. But they’ve been making them ever since and you can mark my words, they’ll use ’em. I think Hitler’s just biding his time and you can’t blame him with the weather the way it is.’ She sighed.
‘I just hope it doesn’t last too long. Our Terry will get his papers before long, I dare say, and Ben’s coming up to seventeen, you know, and if they start calling up the youngsters … It’ll put paid to his college course.’ She stared at the scones for a moment without seeing them. ‘Still, there’s no use looking for trouble. How’s Dad today?’

Ruth put a scone on to one of Jane’s pretty plates. ‘Oh, you know, much the same. Still on about his chubbleducks. Goodness knows what they are today but he got himself proper worked up, trying to explain something to me this morning. Him and Silver, they make a good pair, neither one of ’em knows what they’re talking about. In fact, Silver makes more sense than he does at times. I swear that bird does know what some of his little sayings mean, he brings them out so apt.’

‘You ought to just leave them to chat away together.’

Ruth smiled but shook her head. ‘The squawking gives Dad a headache. He likes Silver, but he can’t stand being in the same room for too long. It’s a shame he can’t get out now. He used to be such an active man. Not that he complains, mind.’

‘I know.’ Jane poured another cup of tea. ‘He’s a wonder really, always keeping so cheery. But don’t think I don’t realise how hard it is for you, Ruth. You know you can always call on me for a hand, or to come and sit with him so you can get out a bit if you need to go into Southampton, that sort of thing.’

Ruth nodded. She could slip out for an hour or so, like this afternoon or to Women’s Institute meetings, but she didn’t like to leave her father to go out of the village.

‘Thanks, Jane, but I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere much till this snow clears away. It’s a good three foot deep across the pathfields, I had to come all the way round the lane. Mind you, the kiddies are enjoying it. I suppose the ones from Portsmouth haven’t ever seen it like that, it gets all dirty and slushy in towns. You should see them in the
field at the back of my cottage, having a fine old time, they are. I had to dodge the snowballs!’

‘You still wish you’d been able to take in an evacuee, don’t you?’ Lizzie remarked. She had read Alec’s letter through again for the tenth time that day, feeling the same lump of anxiety and sadness in her throat each time she did so. People didn’t realise what the Merchant Navy was going through … She put the letter back into her bag and attended to the conversation once more. ‘I know I’d have one, if I had a place of my own.’

Ruth nodded. ‘Yes, I do, though some of them are little terrors. And some of the people that have got them – well, you’ve only got to look at those two poor little mites with the Woddis sisters to know things aren’t right there. And that little Martin Baker, who was with Mrs Hutchins, he looked so white and frightened all the time, till he ran off. I don’t know why the billeting officer didn’t do something.’

‘She just didn’t know, I suppose,’ Jane said. ‘She’s got three or four villages to look after. But you wouldn’t think the Woddises would be unkind, would you? Not two old ladies in that big house. They must hardly know the kiddies are there.’

‘Well, I don’t know, they don’t look happy to me. I was talking to Mrs Budd, her that’s with Joan Greenberry, about them before Christmas. She lives near their mother so she knows the family quite well. They run a greengrocer’s shop. She was telling me there’s been a lot of illness. Their mother had a bad fall and broke some ribs, and then it turned to pleurisy and then, to top it all, the grandfather got killed by a car in the blackout. So the kiddies couldn’t go home. I don’t know what sort of Christmas those two old biddies could give them, I’m sure.’

‘Perhaps the billeting lady could move them, now a lot of the children have gone back,’ Lizzie said. ‘Those two little boys Reg and Edna have got are all right, though. Reg has taught them both to milk and they feed the calves regular.
And they’ve both got a couple of hens of their own to look after – they sell the eggs to their mother over at Mrs Greenberry’s.’

‘They
don’t
!’ Ruth laughed. ‘Well, I can’t deny I’d like a boy or two like that about the place. But it’s out of the question while I’ve got Dad the way he is.’ She glanced at the old grandfather clock standing in the corner. ‘And talking of Dad, I’d better be getting back. I promised I wouldn’t be too long.’

‘It’s a shame you’ll miss Ben,’ Jane said, glancing at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘But he’s bound to be late, with this weather. I wondered if he ought to go into Southampton this morning, with the snow so bad, but you know what he is, he won’t miss school.’

‘Bit different from when he was a kiddy,’ Ruth remarked with a smile. ‘I lost count of the times I caught him mooching about in the woods.’

‘Well, that was all he was interested in, nature,’ Jane said. ‘Once he got to the big school and started doing proper science there was no holding him. I must say, I never thought he’d want to stop on past fourteen, but look at him now, he’s done that School Certificate and he’s working for the higher one and planning to go on to college. It’ll be a crying shame if he gets called up and has to lose all that.’

‘It will.’ Ruth got up and began to put on her coat. ‘Tell him I’m sorry I didn’t see him, and to come in and see me and his grandad over the weekend. The old chap likes to see the youngsters and hear all their news.’

‘I’ll walk back with you now, Auntie Ruth,’ Lizzie said. ‘Then I can say hello to him as well.’

They put on their wellington boots for the trudge back through the darkening afternoon. Lizzie wound a striped knitted scarf round her neck and pulled on the old fur gloves that had once been her grandmother’s.

‘Started snowing again,’ she said, opening the door to a
flurry of cold white flakes. ‘There’s a nasty wind getting up too.’

‘Not another blizzard,’ Ruth groaned. ‘Just as if we haven’t got enough snow already! They haven’t got half the roads unblocked as it is. Are you sure you want to turn out in this, Lizzie?’

‘Course I am. You know I don’t mind the snow.’ Lizzie slammed the door behind them and stamped footprints in the fresh white layer. ‘Mind you, I might not be so pleased tomorrow when I can’t get to work! The railways are all to pot too. Did you see those pictures in the paper yesterday? Engines buried up to their funnels in snowdrifts! Over a week ago, that was, and it must be even worse now.’

‘There was that one stuck near Bridge End, too,’ Ruth agreed, walking slowly so as not to slip. ‘Twelve hours before they’d got it dug out. I went down myself, to open up the village hall and fetch in blankets, and give the poor souls cups of tea and biscuits.’

‘Well, there’s one thing,’ Lizzie observed. ‘Hitler won’t be sending his bombers over in this weather. It must be just as bad in Germany.’ She looked up at the heavy clouds and shivered. ‘I hope Grandad’s all right.’

‘He should be. Mrs Perkins said she’d come in and turn on the lamp and make up the fire, and draw the blackout curtains.’ Ruth sighed. ‘It’s not long ago when you could see your way by the lights from all the windows. Now everyone’s indoors by four o’clock and it’s as dark as the grave at night.’

She opened the front door and they saw a chink of light coming from the living room. The wireless was on, playing some music. Joe liked listening to the wireless, it was one of the few pleasures he had left. With Lizzie close behind her, Ruth closed the front door quickly in case any light escaped and took off her coat and hat before going into the room. She shucked off her wellingtons and pushed her feet into the old slippers she had left by the door, calling out to her
father as she did so. Lizzie unwound her scarf and pulled off her own boots before walking on the carpet.