Authors: Lilian Harry
‘Well, it’s all innocence,’ Mrs Mudge said comfortably. She was sewing up the frock now, among a pile of other mending. With kiddies in the house there was always a bit of sewing to be done. ‘I mean, they never do anything malicious or deliberately naughty. They just don’t understand the country yet, that’s all.’
‘I suppose so. Mind you, my Sammy’s turning into a real little country boy all the same. I didn’t realise how his voice had changed till I heard Silver trying to sing that song he’s
taught him – you know, “I’ve Got Sixpence” – and I realised he talks just like all the other kiddies now. He’s almost lost that Portsmouth accent.’
‘Has his dad been out to see him again?’
‘Two or three times,’ Ruth said. ‘He’s a funny sort of man, Mrs Mudge. I mean, he can be quite nice for a while and then suddenly it’s as if a shutter comes down and he looks like thunder. I can’t make him out at all. I start off feeling sorry for him, then I think I rather like him and I end up almost frightened!’ She hesitated. ‘He’s talked to me a bit, though. When Sammy’s gone to bed. With these long light evenings he’s been able to stop quite late before setting off home, and he sits in my front room and has a cup of tea or cocoa. Then he just starts to talk.’
‘What about?’
‘Oh, everything, really. His wife – seems she died of some blood disease, or so Sammy says. They used to live in a pub that her parents ran, in a really poor part of Portsmouth. Then the father and mother died and the brewery put someone else in, wouldn’t let Dan and Nora stay. They were more or less thrown out on to the streets, and them with two little boys too. They found this place to rent in April Grove and D—Mr Hodges has to go five miles to work now, where he used to be able to just walk down the street. Then Mrs Hodges started to get ill and the older boy got into trouble and was sent off to approved school, and eventually the authorities decided Sammy should be evacuated. And a good thing too! Heaven knows what sort of a state he’d be in by now if they’d left him at home with his dad.’
‘He sounds a rough sort of man,’ Mrs Mudge said, biting off a new length of cotton.
‘Well, he is and he isn’t. I mean, you can tell he’s never known any decent sort of life – I mean, men like him, working in the shipyards don’t get paid much – and he
came from a bad area, but there’s still something about him … He’s quite good-looking, really.’
‘Well, Sammy’s a nice-looking little boy.’
‘Oh, he’s not a bit like Sammy. He’s as dark as Sammy’s fair. But sometimes – when he sits there and talks about his Nora – well, he doesn’t seem a lot older than Sammy. He seems just like a little boy, missing his mother.’
Mrs Mudge glanced at her but said nothing. She sewed for a while in silence, then pushed the basket away. ‘There, that’s that lot done – till those boys come in with holes in their socks and rips in their shirts all over again. Now, how about a cup of tea?’
‘Well, if you’re making one,’ Ruth said. ‘I don’t want to use up your rations. I don’t take sugar, anyway.’
Mrs Mudge laughed. ‘It wouldn’t matter if you did! Do you know what the vicar’s done? He’s persuaded those children to sell him theirs! Halfpenny a spoonful, he gives them. That man’s never properly grown up himself, if you ask me.’
The two women laughed together. Perhaps men never did properly grow up. And Dan Hodges, too, Ruth thought as she walked slowly home a little later – somewhere, hidden deep behind the dark, unhappy eyes and the wary, suspicious face, and far below the dark anger that quivered so unnervingly on the surface, there was a little boy who had never properly grown up. A little boy who had endured a poverty-stricken and even, perhaps, a brutal childhood; a boy who had been sent too early to war and seen sights no grown man, let alone a youth, should ever see. A boy still missing his mother, buried in the heart of a man still missing his wife. A boy, a man, who needed love.
But that’s what we all need, isn’t it, she thought. We all need to feel special to someone else. We need to know we’re the most important person in someone else’s life.
Dan Hodges is missing his Nora. Sammy’s missing his
mum. Lizzie’s missing her Alec. And I’m still missing my Jack, in just the same way.
A squirrel ran over the road ahead of her and scampered up a tree. Ruth stopped and put her hand on the rough, sun-warmed trunk and looked up into the thick canopy of leaves. They rustled softly above her and she caught a glimpse of the squirrel, russet-red, as it fled along a branch.
At least we’re out in the country, she thought. Sammy and me and all the other little evacuees. At least we can give them a taste of what life can be, some good fresh food and good fresh air, and the trees and fields and the animals to comfort us.
She thought again of Dan Hodges, alone among the dereliction of the blitzed city, and felt tears come to her eyes.
Dan did start to dig his garden over a bit, but the hard, baked earth and the tangle of weeds defeated him. He stood with his old spade in his hand, looking down at the few clods he’d managed to turn over, and felt despondency wash over him.
Tommy Vickers came out into the garden next door and saw him. ‘You want to wait till we’ve had a drop of rain,’ he advised, leaning on the wooden fence. ‘The ground’s like iron now. Going to grow a few veg?’
‘Well, I thought about it,’ Dan said, ‘but I dunno as it’s worth it, just for me. I mean, when am I going to cook them? Don’t seem much point, really.’
‘Still, we all got to do our bit,’ Tommy said. ‘There’s plenty of people haven’t got gardens, that would like the chance to grow a few nice fresh spuds and carrots.’
‘Well, they’d better come and grow them here, then.’ Dan thrust the spade hard against the solid earth and it broke. He swore bitterly and threw the handle away from him. ‘Well, that’s bloody it! I ain’t spending money on a new spade.’
‘Come up the pub for a half,’ Tommy suggested.
Dan shook his head. ‘I’m fed up with the pub. It don’t do no good, just sitting there drinking, and I only has a thick head next morning. Tell you the truth, Tom, I’m fed up with everything. When I’m outside I just want to be indoors and when I’m indoors I can’t seem to stick that either. I can’t stop still. The place is like the municipal dump and I can’t seem to make it any better. There’s stuff needs washing but the water’s never hot. The milk goes sour overnight so I can’t have a decent cup of tea in the morning, and if I buys a bit of meat it’s always the scrag end because I can’t get to the shop at the right time, and it goes bad anyway. It’s just not
worth
it.
Nothing’s
worth it.’
Dan’s voice was close to breaking. Tommy stared at him.
‘I could ask Freda to get your meat along with hers,’ he suggested. ‘I don’t suppose she’d mind that. She couldn’t take on all the rest of your shopping, mind,’ he added quickly.
Dan shook his head. ‘I told you, it’ll only go off before I has a chance to cook it. Nothing keeps in this heat.’ He rubbed a dirty hand across his face and sighed. ‘Don’t take no notice of me, Tom. I’m just feeling a bit down. I went up to see our Gordon last weekend.’
‘Did you? How is he?’ Tommy tried to remember how long Gordon had been sent away for. ‘When’s he coming home?’
‘Not for another year at least. He’s not so bad. They got a bit of a garden there; the boys look after it themselves. Growing their own veg, that sort of thing. He’s been digging spuds. They sell any extra ones round the houses. It’s all right, I suppose, but it ain’t going to help him get his old job back down the boatyard, is it.’
‘Maybe he’ll get a different sort of job,’ Tommy said. ‘The main thing is, will it stop him getting into trouble again?’
Dan snorted. ‘Who knows? Our Gordon’ll go his own
way. If he can’t get a job, he’ll make a living some other way. He was talking about it last weekend. Says there’s a mint to be made out of the black market, getting stuff cheap and selling it on. I don’t reckon this approved school business does the boys any good at all, it just gets them together with bad lots and gives them all ideas.’
Tommy thought Gordon would always find a bad lot to get together with, but he didn’t say so. He’d never trusted the older Hodges boy, with his sly eyes and sullen mouth. Had all his father’s worst points and none of the good ones, that’s what Tommy thought.
‘Anyway,’ Dan went on, ‘if this war goes on much longer he’ll be called up. He’s nearly sixteen now. He’ll come out of that place and go straight into the Army, that’s what’ll happen to him.’
To Tommy’s mind that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Gordon would get proper discipline in the Army and do his bit for his country as well. He didn’t wish any harm on the boy, wouldn’t like to hear he’d got killed or anything, but being a soldier could be the making of him.
Dan was turning away. ‘I’m going in now. Got an early start tomorrow.’ He left the broken spade lying where it was. ‘I dare say there’ll be a warning the minute we gets our heads on the pillow, anyway.’
Tommy watched him go and turned to look at his own garden. The neat rows of vegetables and salads were a sharp contrast to the tangled mess in Dan’s. You can understand the poor bloke feeling low, he thought. You’ve got to keep a garden under control right from the start. Same as the house. Same as kids. Same as everything, really.
Dan Hodges had left it too late. He’d left everything too late.
It seemed scarcely possible that the raids could be over but, as the months wore on through summer, autumn and into winter without the sirens sounding their banshee wail, it began to seem that Hitler really had given up his plan to invade Britain. It didn’t mean that you could relax – the war was still being fought as hard as ever overseas – but people did begin to feel a bit better in themselves. The broken nights, the lack of sleep, the hours spent listening to the thunder of bombs or fighting the terrible fires seemed to be over and just being able to stay in bed all night was luxury.
Once again, people began to talk about bringing their children back from the country. This time, however, the authorities were cautious and refused to bring back some of the schools, so that if you wanted your children to get a proper education you had to leave them where they were. A few schools did reopen and Rose Budd, who had been going to classes in people’s homes, found herself back in the classroom. She grumbled a bit and talked about leaving now that she was fourteen, but Frank insisted and said that since the school had a room full of typewriters she could learn both typing and shorthand, ready for work. She might even be able to get something in the civil service. That was a good job for a young girl.
Her brothers stayed at Bridge End. Frank wasn’t convinced the danger was over – there was talk of Hitler producing a new secret weapon, worse than anything he’d sent over so far. They were both in the primary school,
anyway, although Tim should have been going up to the ‘big school’ now. Unfortunately, some sort of mistake had been made over his age back in January and he’d been left out of the scholarship exams and had to wait another year.
‘It’s not like it used to be in Portsmouth anyway,’ Rose told him when the boys came home for Christmas. ‘There’s barbed wire all round the beach and they say there’s mines under the shingle, to stop an invasion. And they must think Hitler’s going to start bombing again, because they’re building lots of tunnels under Portsdown Hill for people to go in. You can get a ticket, and have your own bunk and everything. It’s like caves and there’s room for thousands of people.’
‘Coo,’ Tim said. ‘I wouldn’t mind sleeping in a cave.’ He kicked disconsolately at the pavement. ‘I was hoping there’d be a raid when we were home. I want to get some shrapnel.’
The raids might have lessened, but in all other ways the war had escalated. After the attack on Pearl Harbour early in December the Americans had at last come into active fighting – and with all guns blazing. It truly was a world war now, with no segment of the globe untouched. Almost every day brought news of new countries joining in. Apart from Japan, Britain declared war on three more in one week – Finland (which only two years before she had vowed to protect), Romania and Hungary. China, too, entered the fray, declaring war on Japan, Germany and Italy. The Far East, with its British colonies, was thrust into immediate danger and Hong Kong evacuated after only a few days of fighting. Australia itself was now at risk. In the Mediterranean the British naval fleet was so badly hit that the Admiralty was reported to be considering a complete withdrawal.
The news from Russia was heart-rending. As the Germans laid siege to both Moscow and Leningrad, there were reports of whole cities starving to death and thousands
of civilians being butchered by the Nazi forces. That’s what it would be like here, Jess Budd thought, and wondered if a few rolls of barbed wire along the beach would really be enough to keep out such a vicious invading force.
The young women of April Grove were joining up as well. Jess’ niece Olive Harker, whose husband Derek was in the Army, had gone into the ATS. Her sister Betty was in the Land Army and friendly with a chap who was rumoured to be a pacifist – a ‘conchie’. Gladys Shaw, next door to the Budds, had volunteered for the Wrens and young Diane was talking about the WAAFS.
Micky Baxter had been in trouble again. This time he’d broken into Ethel Glaister’s house on the other side of the Budds and made a mess of the front room – turned the furniture upside down and all sorts of daft things. He’d been caught pinching things in the cinema too and once again he finished up in court, where he was sentenced to six strokes of the birch and put on probation. Worst of all, he had to go to Sunday School. Micky Baxter hadn’t been to Sunday School since he was four and he’d caused so much trouble they’d had to ask Nancy not to send him any more. Having to go now was as much a punishment for the teachers, in their neat Sunday clothes, as it was for him.
Micky was furious. He decided to set up a secret army and found a new den where he and Jimmy Cross, together with some of the other children who were now at home met to collect war souvenirs and discuss how to beat the Germans.