by Ellie Dean
Peggy discovered that Loretta had kept very detailed files on both of them, with medical records, school and work records and any other information she’d managed to dig up over the years – and it all made for very uncomfortable reading.
Half an hour later, Peggy knew why both women had kept quiet. She closed the files, feeling quite grubby at having pried into such personal and painful secrets. She couldn’t begin to understand why Loretta had delved so deeply into their lives, but if all the files were like this, then they should be locked away more securely, for they were a treasure trove for someone like Mavis. She stared unseeing out of the window, her heart aching at the thought of the burdens those two women were carrying, and yet sickened by how callously Mavis was exploiting them.
Gladys had never been one of nature’s happiest souls, but now Peggy understood why that was. At the age of fifteen Gladys had been locked away and treated with electric shock for severe depression after a traumatic back-street abortion. Her parents had disowned her when she’d been discharged, so, homeless and alone, she’d rushed into an abusive marriage to a much older man who, over the years, had broken nearly every bone in her body. He was currently serving a long prison sentence for armed robbery in which a policeman had been injured, and Peggy hoped fervently that he’d stay in there until he rotted.
As for Fanny Rawson, she’d had an affair with a black GI whilst her husband was away with the fleet and had been forced by her mother to have the child put in an orphanage. The husband had come home on leave, somehow got wind of what had happened and thrown her out. He’d sold the house and gone back to sea, and she’d been forced to share a room at the overcrowded hostel because her deeply religious parents had refused to take her in. Leading up to her getting the job at Solly’s it was suspected she’d survived abject poverty by going on the game.
Peggy knew she could never look at either woman again without a twist in her heart for what they’d gone through, and knew also that she had to do something about those files. God only knew what else Mavis had uncovered, and she needed to put a stop to it before things went any further.
She was startled from her dark thoughts by someone tapping on the glass partition. It was Winnie, and she looked troubled. Peggy beckoned her in and stood to greet her. ‘How can I help, Winnie?’
Winnie looked at the files on the desk and gave a trembling sigh. ‘So you knows it all, then,’ she said flatly. ‘I warned Loretta they’d only bring trouble. But she said she needed ’em for some university degree she were doing and promised to keep it secret.’
This was news to Peggy – but it did explain a lot. ‘I haven’t read all of them, Winnie,’ she replied to reassure her. ‘But I will certainly see to it that they’re secure from now on.’
‘You should burn the lot of ’em,’ said Winnie, her many chins quivering in her distress.
Peggy put her hand lightly on the other woman’s plump shoulder. ‘Gladys will be back tomorrow, I promise, and I’ll see to it personally that none of this gets out. You have my word on it.’
‘Thanks, Peggy. I know you’ll do yer best, but there’s no telling what that bitch has found out, so Gawd knows who she’ll turn on next.’ She dabbed her eyes with a grubby handkerchief. ‘I knows Gladys ain’t always easy to get along with, but she’s my friend, and I hate to think what this is doin’ to her. She don’t deserve it after all she’s been put through.’
‘I know, Winnie,’ Peggy agreed softly.
Winnie sniffed back her tears and folded her meaty arms tightly beneath her large bosom as if trying to hold back the raw emotions she was battling with. ‘We all done things we ain’t proud of,’ she said gruffly. ‘And a woman like that will use ’em to get ’er way. You mark my words.’
‘You leave Mrs Whitlock to me,’ said Peggy. ‘Now, dry your eyes and take a break. I expect you could do with a cup of tea and a fag. But don’t take too long,’ she added. ‘Angela Smith could be struggling without Gladys to help her, and I need you to keep an eye on Phyllis before she wrecks the machine or sews herself to it.’
‘I’ll sort ’em both out, never you mind.’ Winnie shot her a watery smile, then waddled off to the canteen.
Peggy noticed that many pairs of curious eyes were watching them both and tapped on the window to remind them they had work to do. Satisfied they were once more gainfully occupied she went to the cabinet and looked again at the many files squashed in there.
Coming to the conclusion that she had only one course of action open to her, she lifted out a handful at a time and placed them on the desk. She decided not to telephone down to maintenance to arrange a new set of keys, for by the time she’d gone through this lot there’d be no need for them. Sitting down, she lit a cigarette and began the long task of trawling through every file to weed out anything she considered to be unnecessary or inappropriate.
Peggy kept the work histories, contact addresses, references and the most basic medical records which she put back in the folders. Skimming the pages of notes Loretta had made on the deeply personal histories of the women, she set them aside.
Once all the files in the top drawer had been dealt with, Peggy carried this armful of dark and dangerous secrets down to the furnace in the basement and watched the janitor throw it all in. She waited until they’d been consumed by the flames and then returned to her office to deal with the files for the night-shift workers and casual labourers, which would also be carefully whittled down and burned.
The hours had flown by the time she’d finished, and she closed the cabinet with a sigh of satisfaction. She might have missed lunch, but she’d achieved something far more important, and would now celebrate with a fag, a sandwich and a cuppa.
However, as she made her way to the canteen she knew she still had to deal with Mavis, and as much as she hated telling tales, Solly had a right to know what had been going on.
14
Ron opened his eyes to utter darkness and the snuffling of a cold wet nose. He tried to lift his head but a sharp pain shot up his back and into his neck. Spitting and snorting dirt from his nose and mouth, he felt Harvey’s tongue rasp across his face.
‘Gerroff,’ he spluttered. ‘Will yer not be slobbering over me?’
Harvey whined and dug around Ron, nudging his nose through the dirt and debris that threatened to smother him before returning to wash his face.
‘Good boy,’ Ron managed. ‘Thanks be you’re in one piece, but that’s enough washing for now.’ He tried to push him off but found he could move no more than his hands – anything else sent terrible pains right through him. His head was throbbing, and his searching fingers found an egg-sized lump above his forehead, which had been neatly sliced into two and was probably bleeding.
He decided he couldn’t just lie here in the hope that someone might come and find them. It was a miracle they were still alive, and now it was up to him to get them both out of here. He steeled himself to bear the pain and attempted to sit up – only to slump back down as a knife of searing agony ripped through him. Something large and extremely heavy was pinning him firmly to the floor.
Determined not to let the growing fear overwhelm him, he counted the seconds until the pain ebbed, and then tried to wriggle his toes and move his legs. They didn’t respond, and that’s when he knew he was in very serious trouble.
He lay in the dirt and darkness fighting against the claustrophobia and the rapidly growing terror that he and Harvey would die down here.
Every sound was magnified in that all-pervading black void and although he couldn’t see, his other senses were heightened. He could hear the drip, drip, drip of water, the sigh of shifting earth and the groan of the supporting props; could smell the skittering, scampering creatures that lived down here, and the sour stench of his own sweat – and could feel the depths of the earth that almost entombed him, and the heavy weight on his spine that pinned him down on the unyielding floor. His imagination began to feed on those sounds. He needed light, had to have light.
But where was the torch? He hadn’t had time to switch it off when he’d been blown through the tunnel, but there wasn’t a glimmer to be seen.
‘Don’t let the battery be dead,’ he whispered, his fingers frantically scrabbling through the debris around him. ‘Please God if you’re really there, don’t let the battery be dead.’
He felt the edge of it, but it slid from beneath his fingers and skittered away out of reach.
‘Fetch it, boy,’ he gasped. ‘Fetch the torch.’
Harvey snuffled and scrabbled around him, his breath hot on Ron’s face, his heavy paws trampling painfully over Ron’s shoulders as he desperately tried to do his bidding.
Ron bore the pain, for surely it was better to feel something that kept you alert, instead of that awful numbness in his legs and the silent creeping darkness that was beginning to sap the life from him.
He winced as Harvey dropped the heavy torch on his nose. ‘Good boy,’ he rasped, making a painful grab for it and fumbling for the switch more in hope than expectation that it had somehow switched itself off when he’d dropped it.
And it had, it had. Ron gloried in the light after all that darkness, but the beam was frail and wavering as he swept it over Harvey. The dog was filthy but seemed unharmed, which was a huge relief, so he aimed the beam in front of him and discovered he’d come to rest against something hard. He dug away the dirt that covered it and discovered it was the generator.
That small effort proved too much and he paused to catch his breath and deal with the deep, throbbing ache in the small of his back. He had his bearings now: he was lying in the left-hand corner of the main bunker, with his back to the tunnel which led to the steps and the hatch.
Harvey licked his face and nuzzled his ear as he whined and pawed at his shoulder to encourage him to get up.
There was nothing Ron would have liked more than to do just that, but he could barely move. Harvey had made a fair stab at clearing enough dirt away from his face so he could breathe, and Ron shoved away more until his head was resting on the cracked concrete. Then he switched off the torch to try and save the battery whilst he rested.
Plunged back into absolute darkness, Ron could feel it wrap itself around him and begin to sink its way right to his core.
Unable to bear it any longer, he turned the torch back on and quickly inspected the ceiling and walls. The concrete had come down, leaving exposed tree roots and great clods of earth that were precariously hanging from them, but he couldn’t see even a hint of sky, or feel a breath of air coming from the air vents that were beyond the torchlight. He could only pray those vents were still open.
He switched off the torch, closed his eyes against that all-pervasive darkness and nestled his cheek against Harvey’s muzzle, his mind working furiously.
How the hell was he going to get them out of here when he was unable to move more than his arms and hands? Even if Harvey barked himself hoarse no one would hear him, for they were a long way from any of the buildings on the Cliffe estate, deep within a remote valley and at least two miles from the nearest gun emplacement. The escape tunnels had probably caved in, so the only way out was through the trapdoor, and he’d closed that on their way in.
But perhaps those explosions had loosened and shifted the earth away from it enough for Harvey to be able to dig his way out? The thought lightened his spirits a little. ‘Harvey,’ he murmured, ‘I want you to go home.’
He switched on the torch and, with a groan of agony, twisted towards the sharp bend that led to the tunnel and the steps which seemed to be clogged with dirt. ‘Go home that way, Harvey. Try to get home,’ he gasped before passing out from the unbearable pain.
When he came to again, it took a moment to get his thoughts back into order. Whether Harvey had tried and failed to get out, or not tried at all, Ron would never know, for he could feel Harvey’s muzzle against his cheek and hear the soft, fretful whines in his throat.
‘It’s all right,’ he muttered as the stark reality of their situation pierced his confusion and pain. ‘We’ll get out somehow.’
Harvey snuggled closer, and Ron could feel him trembling. He tried to switch on the torch, but the battery had died along with Ron’s last vestiges of hope.
Fumbling back his sleeve, he saw the illuminated hands on his watch. Twelve hours had passed since he’d left Beach View, and now it was almost three in the afternoon. Surely, by now, someone must have noticed that he and Harvey had disappeared?
He held Harvey’s paws and pressed his face into his filthy fur to comfort them both, for he already knew the answer. As he’d brought Harvey with him, neither of them would be missed until tonight. Peggy would think they were with Rosie, and Rosie would assume they were at Beach View. And even when they did realise both man and dog were missing, no one would know where to start looking for them.
The claustrophobia was closing in again and he fought to overcome it, determined to keep his mind clear despite the terrible throbbing in his head and the deep pain in his back. If only he could shift whatever was pinning him down, he might stand a chance of getting out of here. He reached back as far as he could, and his fingers scrabbled over what felt like a huge lump of rough concrete, and by the width and weight of it, he had absolutely no chance of shifting it.
He rested again, counting the seconds until the pain eased a little, his mind working furiously. There was a glimmer of hope – a tiny one – and he clung to it desperately, knowing it was their only chance of rescue.
Stan and Frank and the others would be waiting for him at the Officers’ Club at seven, and when he didn’t show up, there was one man amongst them who might, just might, have the wits about him to put two and two together and realise where he was. But it was a long shot, and even if he did suspect what had happened, would he remember the way after all this time?
Ron patted Harvey’s paws and felt the reassuring softness of his nuzzling cheek against his face. ‘We just have to be patient, boy. To be sure, he’ll find us,’ he whispered as the foul air seemed to thicken and a heavy drowsiness crept over him.
Peggy hadn’t had the chance to speak to Solly. According to Madge, he’d been called to an emergency meeting at the main synagogue in the next town and couldn’t say when he’d be back.
‘If it’s important, then I’m sure Rachel wouldn’t mind coming in,’ Madge said. ‘Or perhaps I can help?’
Peggy had known Madge for years and could trust her implicitly, but the things troubling her were not for her ears, and she didn’t want to disturb Rachel who she knew was hosting a fund-raising tea party this afternoon in aid of homeless refugees.
The files had been rendered harmless, and Mavis was welcome to pry if she dared. ‘It’ll keep until tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I hope you haven’t forgotten it’s Rosie’s send-off do tonight.’
‘I’m looking forward to it,’ said Madge, patting the fresh shampoo and set she’d treated herself to in her lunch break. ‘I haven’t had a decent night out in ages.’
‘See you at seven in the Anchor then, and don’t forget to bring something to help with the food and drink. Rosie might have a pub, but it wouldn’t be fair to expect her to give us all free drinks.’
Peggy shot off to collect Daisy, who was now in her usual dungarees, sweater and wellington boots, and quite happy after having had jelly and ice cream as a birthday treat. She noted that the doll had been carefully wrapped in the knitted cardigan and was buried in the string bag beneath the good dress and shoes. As Daisy seemed to have forgotten about the doll, Peggy thought she might hide it away until she was older and less likely to tear it to pieces.
They arrived back at Beach View to find that everyone but Danuta was home and dressed up to the nines for the party. Daisy demanded she put on her birthday finery again and Cordelia obliged whilst Peggy dished up a plate of supper for herself and Daisy and the girls finished making the pile of sandwiches they would be taking to the Anchor.
‘I suppose Ron’s already gone to the Office
rs’ Club,’ said Peggy, noting his and Harvey’s absence. ‘I hope they let dogs in, or there’ll be ructions like there were before that parade.’
‘None of us have seen him,’ said Sarah, ‘but then we haven’t been home for long.’
‘He’s probably getting ready at Rosie’s,’ said Ivy with a wink. ‘You know what them two are like with their billing and cooing.’
Peggy rolled her eyes and made no comment as she tweaked the tea towel more firmly around Daisy’s neck and over her new dress to save it from food droppings.
Robert came into the kitchen a while later looking very smart in a suit and tie beneath his tweed overcoat, his shoes highly polished. ‘Well, I’d better be off,’ he said, giving Fran a hug and kiss before handing her the violin case which she’d left upstairs. ‘Have fun, girls, and I’ll try not to wake you up when I bring Ron home.’
‘Chance’d be a fine thing,’ said Rita. ‘Anyway,’ she added with a cheeky grin, ‘we might still be out having a fine old time ourselves.’
Peggy remembered Brendon’s send-off on his last leave home, and had a sudden fleeting image of Frank face down in Ron’s compost heap while Ron lay snoring on the cellar floor, and poor Brendon trying to wheelbarrow Frank indoors. It had been very funny, but not something to be repeated when they all had to be at work the next day.
‘You’d better bring Frank with you as well,’ she said to Robert. ‘He’ll never make it to Tamarisk Bay in the dark, and I don’t want him falling off a cliff.’
Peggy finished her supper, and left Daisy under the watchful eye of Sarah to go and pack an overnight bag and get changed. She and Daisy would be sleeping in Rosie’s spare room tonight, so they’d both need nightclothes and something clean for the morning.