by Lesley Parr
She keeps looking at her hand, which isn’t a fist any more.
‘I really am sorry for what I said about your house,’ I say.
She sighs. ‘But you still said it.’
‘Yeah.’ I feel about two inches high.
She steps in front of me and folds her arms. ‘But I’ve thought about it and I will accept your apology.’
‘Oh … good.’ And I mean it; I do feel glad. We’re at the Thomases’ open front door now. ‘Florence?’
She looks at me. Her eyes are bright blue, like Mrs Thomas’s.
‘Why didn’t you tell Ieuan what I said?’
She fiddles with her hair ribbon and a tiny bit of flour drops on to her shoulder. ‘Because I was ashamed.’
‘What did you have to be ashamed of? I was the idiot, picking a fight.’
‘I didn’t want Ieuan to know about my house. Being a Campbell’s a bad thing, everyone knows it. Everyone back in Islington. But here I can be –’ she shrugs – ‘I don’t know … different.’
I think of what Mr Thomas said about black sheep. There’s nothing I can say.
Ronnie runs down the passage towards us shouting about Welsh cakes. Florence grins and chases him back through the house.
She’s different all right.
Mr Thomas is already eating a Welsh cake when I go in the kitchen. ‘Try one of these, boy,’ he says to me, holding the opened parcel. ‘Almost as good as Gwen’s.’
Welsh cakes aren’t like any cake I’ve ever seen. They’re round, spotted things, a bit like flat scones with sugar on. I take one and poke at it. I think the spots are currants.
Mr Thomas looks at Florence. ‘You Phyllis’s girl then?’
‘Yes.’ She looks around in a really nosy way.
‘She’s Florence,’ says Ronnie.
‘Nice lady, Phyllis,’ Mr Thomas says.
Florence nods, biting into a Welsh cake.
Mrs Thomas comes in from the garden and puts the wash basket on the floor. ‘Oh, you’re back! Thank goodness! Where have you been? It’s long past dinner-time.’ She starts folding the washing, flapping the towels really fast.
‘Late, are you?’ Mr Thomas frowns, his eyes fixed on Ronnie and me. ‘Don’t worry your aunty. She’s got enough to do with all the extra washing.’
‘Well, they’re back now,’ she says. ‘That’s the main thing.’ I don’t know why she’s so worried. Nan let us roam all over the place, as long as we were home for tea. And Mum never seemed to care where we were, teatime or not. So I don’t see what Mrs Thomas thinks gives her the right to.
Mrs Thomas says that Ronnie and me have to eat our luncheon meat sandwiches before we have any more Welsh cakes. Mr Thomas puts the kettle on. We all sit at the table and Florence talks too much; about evacuation and living in a shop and how much she likes it in Llanbryn.
Mrs Thomas is clearing the plates when Ronnie says, ‘Florence is a boxer!’
‘Pardon?’ the Thomases say together.
Florence fiddles with her ribbon and says nothing.
‘It was Jack Evans,’ I start. ‘The vicar’s son.’
It’s like a dark cloud has drifted over Mr Thomas’s face; his eyebrows scrunch down over his coal-black eyes. ‘I know who he is.’
Mrs Thomas watches him like a nervous bird; I haven’t seen them like this before. I nudge Florence but she just looks at the table. Ronnie’s no better. Why does he always have to let the cat out of the bag and leave me to explain?
‘Ronnie and me were coming back down from the mountain and he fell in the stream.’ Mrs Thomas jumps up to feel his shirt. ‘He’s fine. It was only his shorts and … erm … underwear.’ My cheeks burn. I look anywhere but at Florence. ‘I tried to dry them on a bush. But we bumped into Jack and Duff, and Jack called us filthy vaccies and frightened Ronnie, but before I could do anything Florence was there.’
‘And she did what exactly?’ says Mrs Thomas.
‘Gave him a proper belter.’
‘Florence! Whatever would your mother say?’
Florence glances at me.
‘He deserved it,’ I say. Florence looks down at her plate and smiles. ‘Anyway, Ronnie’s fine now. We looked after him.’
‘They did, Aunty Gwen,’ Ronnie says.
Mr Thomas watches us all like he’s seeing a film, like he’s not really part of the conversation any more.
Mrs Thomas leans over and strokes Ronnie’s head. ‘I knew Jack Evans would be the one to cause problems with evacuees, didn’t I say that to you, Alun? Gets away with murder, he does.’
I think again of the skull and how there might be a real murderer in Llanbryn.
‘I’m going up to that vicarage and—’
‘Leave it, love,’ Mr Thomas says. ‘The children have sorted it out themselves. The less we have to do with that family the better.’
Mrs Thomas sighs. ‘I suppose you’re right.’ She turns to us. ‘But boys – you need to avoid him if you can. He’s nothing but a bully.’ She pats Ronnie’s legs. ‘Do you know what, I think these shorts are still a bit damp, bach. Let’s get you changed before you catch a chill.’
‘He’s fine,’ I say. ‘I took care of him.’
She bustles him off upstairs anyway.
Mr Thomas gets up too. ‘Nice to meet you, Flossie.’
He leaves too, taking the dark cloud with him through the house. The parlour door bangs shut.
‘Who’s Flossie?’ I ask.
‘Me, I suppose.’ She grins but it quickly turns to a frown. ‘Do you think he’s cross with me?’
‘Not if he’s giving you a nickname.’
It’s not her causing his bad mood. There’s something else, and it’s got to do with Jack Evans’s family. I’m sure of it.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE WELCOME PARTY
‘I told you there’d be red pop,’ I say. ‘Now you can stop going on about it.’
Ronnie had been fretting all the way to the institute that there might only be green pop, which he didn’t really like, but would have to drink because it was better than no pop at all. He shouldn’t have worried. Phyllis’s donation to the welcome party is about twenty bottles of the stuff.
I never thought I’d see Florence in a party dress. She keeps running her hands over the front of it and telling me it’s the same colour blue as her ribbon. I don’t know what to say so I just smile and nod.
The hall is laid out with tables made into a big U shape. Plates and plates of food sit on flowery tablecloths. Sandwiches, biscuits, Welsh cakes, jam tarts, lemon curd tarts, pop, cordial and – best of all – wobbling jellies and pink blancmange rabbits. Above the platform, a gigantic banner reads LLANBRYN WELCOMES ISLINGTON EVACUEES.
Mrs Evans and another woman – the rude old lady from the shop – buzz around like bossy wasps. Each table has the same food and drink on it, repeating and repeating all around the U shape like when a cartoon character runs and it’s just the same stuff going past in the background.
Ronnie points to some egg sandwiches and jam tarts. ‘Are those the ones we made, Aunty Gwen?’
Mrs Thomas nods but before she can say anything, Mrs Evans stops and spins around. ‘Gwen Thomas, did I hear correctly? You allowed this boy to make food for the party?’
‘Yes.’ Her mouth and eyes have gone small and tight, like she’s holding something in. ‘Ronnie helped me weigh out the flour—’
‘And I put the jam in, didn’t I, Aunty Gwen? I plopped –’ he makes a dropping action with his hand – ‘it all in. Forty times.’
‘Plopped, you say?’ Mrs Evans’s lips curl like he said a rude word. She starts to walk away. ‘I hope he washed his hands.’
Mrs Thomas glares after her. ‘One of these days I swear I’m going to …’
Phyllis puts a hand on her arm. ‘Ignore her. She’s just jealous because her pastry’s like concrete. At least we don’t have to put up with Hilda Ringrose too. She’s away visiting her John. He’s got a day off training, so she told m
e five times in the – Oh my goodness! What on earth happened to him?’
Jack, Duff and the twins are coming in. The left side of Jack’s face is a bluish-purple. He keeps trying to cover it with his hand but you can’t miss it.
‘Fell over playing British Bulldog,’ the old lady says from behind a tower of paper cups. ‘Poor lamb.’ She moves off, setting out the cups on the tables as she goes.
Mrs Thomas stares at Florence.
‘It looks worse than it is,’ I mutter, glad that Phyllis now seems more interested in rearranging the pop bottles.
I pull Florence away from the grown-ups and whisper, ‘He hasn’t told on you. What’s his game?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ she asks. I shake my head and she rolls her eyes. ‘He can’t admit to being hit by a girl, can he? So he makes up a story, but you can bet he won’t let this rest. This won’t be the end of it.’
The way Jack and the twins are looking at us now, I’m sure she’s right.
Florence goes to help Phyllis.
Ronnie skips up to me. ‘I like the hall like this. It’s much better than when we got off the train.’
Before I can answer, a tall man walks over.It’s the doctor who took all the Turners at the institute.
‘Well, hello. You must be Gwen and Alun’s evacuees.’ He holds out a hand to me, which I shake, and then to Ronnie. He pretends my brother’s grip is so strong that he has broken fingers. Ronnie thinks it’s hilarious.
‘We have so many I haven’t learned all their names yet,’ he laughs. ‘But they’re settling well. Been running around our garden like happy little savages.’
The Turner children live in a flat back home; staying with the doctor must be like having their own Highbury Fields.
Mr Bevan booms from the middle of the hall to say there’ll be party games before food. Mrs Bevan plays the piano for musical statues. When the music stops Ronnie’s hopping on one leg. Mr Bevan sees him but declares it a practice run.
Jack glares at Ronnie. ‘Hey. That’s not fair! They’re getting special treatment again.’
‘Now, now,’ Mr Bevan says, ‘we have to give the little ones a chance.’
‘I’ll give Jack Evans some special treatment if he doesn’t watch his mouth,’ Florence says under her breath.
Pin the tail on the donkey and blind man’s buff are next. Then, at last, they let us sit down to eat.
I tap Ronnie’s hand to stop him picking up the edges of the sandwiches to see what’s in them. Florence says she’ll take a little nibble of them for him to check if they’re the kind he wants. She says important people have food tasters to check their meals aren’t poisoned and you can never be too careful. I tuck into a meat paste sandwich, wondering where she gets these ideas.
Lillian Baker’s on the next table, saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ really loud in Welsh.
‘What’s she on about?’ Florence says, stuffing a pink wafer into her mouth.
‘Showing off, as usual,’ I say.
Florence does a mime of someone throwing up.
Jack’s across the hall, his plate piled so high I can just about see his ratty face over the top of it all. The bruise shines out good and proper though. He’s lifting one of Ronnie’s jam tarts to his mouth when his mother grabs his arm. She mutters something in his ear and he drops it like it really is poisoned.
Luckily, Ronnie’s too busy trying to look at his own top lip to notice. I know what he’s doing. ‘Yes, you have got a red pop moustache,’ I say.
‘I’m like Mr Bevan!’ he grins. ‘I’ll show him after tea.’
When we’re all full to bursting, Mr Bevan says we’re going to play musical chairs. Some grown-ups bring the chairs around to the centre of the hall, while others start clearing the tables. Two women chat as they take our plates.
‘Did you hear what was found on the mountain?’ one of them says.
My stomach flips over backwards. What if someone else has seen the skull?
‘A Red Cross collection tin,’ she says, and my head whooshes with the relief of it. ‘Empty. Went missing from the post office counter, it did. Dai was on his way down from work and there it was, stuffed under a hedge. Saw the red on it, he did.’
Florence nudges my arm. ‘You all right? Looks like you’ve seen a ghost.’
I nod.
‘Been a lot of thieving around here lately,’ the other woman says. ‘We all need to watch out.’ She moves to the next table. ‘I don’t mean all of them are bad. Or else I wouldn’t be here, would I? But Ruth Evans told me her husband saw one of them –’ she nods in my direction – ‘lurking outside St Michael’s, all shifty-like. And we all know that’s where this started, don’t we?’
‘The collection money.’ The other woman makes no secret of staring right at us. ‘Well, if the reverend says so, it must be true.’
‘Last call for musical chairs!’ Mr Bevan booms.
Florence and Ronnie find chairs and I sit as far from them as possible. The music starts and off we go. Round and round the outside. Straight away, I deliberately lose and go to sit on the edge of the stage. If this is a welcome party, I don’t feel very welcome at all.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SKULLS AND SKELINGTONS
Ronnie’s screams wake me.
I catch the odd word in the babble – skull, bones. I stretch my arms out and feel around to find him in the blackness. There he is. Shaking his shoulder with my free hand, I whisper that it’s me, that he’s having a bad dream. I slip down on to his mattress and hold him tight until he stops crying and his breaths are normal again.
‘Skulls and skelingtons were coming to get me,’ he splutters.
‘There aren’t any skulls or skeletons here,’ I whisper, flicking on the bedside lamp. We both blink at the brightness.
‘There are on the mountain,’ he says.
‘Yes, but not here. I’ve got you. And the skull is just a bone. It can’t hurt us. Now settle down before Mrs Thomas comes in like she did before.’
He fiddles with the end of my sleeve. ‘Calling her Mrs Thomas is like living with a teacher.’
‘It’s not that much different though, is it? With them getting paid and everything.’
‘What?’
‘Nan told us, don’t you remember?’ He shakes his head so I carry on. ‘People who take in evacuees get money off the government, to help feed us and get us new shoes and things like that.’
‘Oh,’ Ronnie says. His eyes look a bit watery again. I let him tug at my pyjama button. His voice is even more of a whisper now. ‘Do you think Aunty Gwen and Uncle Alun only have us because they get money?’
I think about it for a minute. ‘No, no I don’t.’
‘So they like us?’
‘I think they do.’
I realise I’m telling the truth. It isn’t just something to stop him worrying. When Mrs Thomas changed her mind and took us both that day at the institute, it wasn’t for more money.
Ronnie flops across my lap, elbows on the mattress, chin in his hands. He waggles his legs in the air. When he was born, Dad put him on me, except he was facing up then. He was squashy and dark pink and kept opening his mouth like a fish. Mum said he was trying to smile at me. Knowing Ronnie, he probably was.
‘I think you should tell Florence about the skull,’ he says, reaching for his Dinky van and driving it along the edge of the mattress. ‘She’s nice now. Much nicer than she was in London.’
She is, but I don’t say so.
‘And she’s clever,’ he goes on. ‘She could help us find out where it came from.’
‘Us? Ronnie, you wet your pants!’
He drives his van on to the carpet. ‘Well, you’re a pig-face.’
I push him off me and climb back into bed. He’s right about one thing though; Florence does get a lot of answers right at school. Perhaps she is clever. And I need to know what happened. It would be good to talk to someone else about it, investigate more, make plans. I think Florence might be go
od at that. But can I trust her?
‘Can I get in with you?’ Ronnie asks.
‘I suppose. But wet the bed and you’re for it.’
My mattress dips as he climbs in. He takes my arm and pulls it round him.
‘Try to think about nice things,’ I say.
‘All right,’ he says, surprisingly fast. ‘I’m going to think about Florence punching that skinny Welsh boy.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BACON AND OATS
We’ve hardly finished our breakfast porridge when there’s a hammering at the front door. Mrs Thomas jumps out of her chair, knocks over the milk jug and hops about like she doesn’t know what to do next. Mr Thomas is having a lie-in so we’re meant to be quiet.
‘I’ll clean it up, Aunty Gwen,’ Ronnie says. Little goody-goody.
‘Thanks, bach,’ she says, and rushes to the door.
Ronnie gets a cloth and makes such a botch of mopping up the milk I take it off him and do it myself. The person at the door is a girl – a loud girl with a London accent. Ronnie and me look at each other and say at the same time: ‘Florence!’
‘You can tell her what you found,’ he says. He tries to wink but only manages to blink like a simpleton.
‘Shh, Ronnie,’ I say. ‘Not now.’
Mrs Thomas brings Florence through the house and into the kitchen, presenting her as if she’s a wonderful surprise. ‘A visitor for you, boys,’ she says, taking the cloth. She winks, and mouths ‘Thank you’ to me. I look away.
‘Hello, Florence!’ If Ronnie smiled any wider he’d crack his daft face. Florence grins back at him.
‘Have you had breakfast?’ Mrs Thomas asks her. I’m a bit surprised. She said there were hardly any oats left.
‘Yes, thank you, Mrs Thomas,’ Florence says. ‘Me and Ieuan had toast and jam.’
‘Call me Gwen, cariad.’
Ronnie sneaks a sly smile at me. ‘There’s no need for mister and missus in this house. That’s what Uncle Alun says.’ He pulls Florence by the hand. ‘Come and see the chickens. Aunty Gwen got two new ones yesterday and one is all mine. I named her Dorothy.’