Orphans of War

by Leah Fleming

  Greg was standing with his head up, piercing her with those blue eyes. Had she met her match with the one pup she couldn’t train or control? There had to be a reason for all this defiance. All her instincts sensed he was a good lad at heart. ‘Why? Gregory, give me one good reason why I should keep you here?’

  ‘Dunno, miss. I couldn’t take no more. She’s on at me night and day like a pain in the bum. She don’t care for no one, just rules, and I’m sick of rules. Do kids who have mums and dads have to live by rules? Do they have to line up like skittles? Do they get slapped down? We’re always strangers on someone else’s stairs, shoved from place to place, and always rules! If I had a mum and dad, it would be different, yes? Why didn’t I get one of my own? When I come here it was the best billet yet, but then she come up with stupid rules like all the rest and I can’t stand no more of it.’

  This was a side of Greg Plum had never seen before. It was as if for a second he’d lifted up that hard shell, showing the soft underbelly of the wounded boy. She wanted to take him in her arms, this motherless lad, confused and lost, who lashed out against the world that had never given him much of a chance. Here was somebody worth saving.

  ‘If you will write a proper apology and try to make yourself useful, I’m going to try to reconsider, but I need your word of honour.’

  ‘But I am not sorry, miss. She’s just as hard as me.’ Those ice-blue eyes stared ahead.

  ‘But Miss Blunt is in authority over you. You can never win that battle. Sometimes we all have to do things we don’t want to, make a truce with the enemy, find common ground, compromise. I know it’s hard, believe me, but do you think you are man enough to do that?’

  ‘Not in these ruddy pants, I’m not. She makes me wear them out of spite.’

  ‘Long trousers don’t make a man, Greg. It’s in here.’ Plum stabbed at her head and heart. ‘This is where it counts, rising above petty rules and irritations. You behave like a proper man and I’ll make sure you get your trousers back. That is my promise.’

  ‘Thanks, miss…I won’t let you down again.’

  ‘I know you won’t,’ Plum replied, more in hope than certainty.

  Two weeks later, Avis Blunt resigned, taking up a post in a private school.

  ‘I’ll not stay where my authority is undermined. I’ll not ask for references from people who have no idea how to curb bad behaviour. That boy will prove to be everything I predict and more. You’ll rue the day when you took his word over mine. He’s a wild one, not easily tamed, and the sooner he’s in the army, the better all round. We can afford to sacrifice riffraff like that! I wash my hands of this place. The trouble with the lower classes is they have no sense of their place in society. I blame the Great War for shaking up standards. Now we’re educating children above their station. It’ll be the death of this country, and you should be careful who Madeleine mixes with in future. Pack her off to boarding school before it’s too late, is my advice.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Blunt, for your opinion,’ said Plum, rising to her full height. ‘But if the staff of any female boarding establishment resemble you in any way, that would be the last place on earth I’d ever put a child. Good day!’

  9

  It was the talk of Sowerthwaite that a plane had gone down somewhere up on the tops, high up on the moors on a grim night in mid-March when there was still deep snow and mist. Everyone heard the roar of an engine in trouble, but how far it had limped before crashing into rocks, no one knew. The moors were raked over by the army and RAF, closing off all the lanes and tracks to the fells to all but essential workers.

  Greg held an emergency meeting at Victory Tree HQ. This was their chance to do their bit and Gloria was all ears.

  ‘There’ll be loads of metal souvenirs, shrapnel scattered for miles, so we’ve got to get it afore the other gangs in Sowerthwaite do.’

  ‘But we’re not allowed up there,’ said Mitch Brown.

  ‘So? They’ll have cleared up the mess by now,’ Greg boasted. ‘I’ll ask up at the battery field and then we can go off on our own search.’

  ‘But it’ll be dangerous,’ said Peggy.

  ‘So? You don’t have to come. It’ll be lads only then.’

  ‘No!’ yelled Gloria. ‘I’m coming too.’ She wanted to have an adventure to tell Maddy, who was now at the other school.

  ‘We’ll go Saturday afternoon while it’s light. Then we can say we’re all going collecting sticks. It’ll be fun, and Mrs Plum won’t mind if we’re doing something useful,’ came the order.

  Things had taken a turn for the better now that Mrs Plum was in charge and Mrs Grace Battersby, the new cook, kept an eye on things. She’d sort of made their rules fun. They got points and stars for good behaviour and were split into teams for chores. They had singsongs round the piano and concert nights. Mrs Battersby got them baking buns. They needed kindling for the stove, and sticking was something even the little ones could do.

  There’d been no more snow so Greg’s gang set out in the brightness of the blue sky on that Saturday afternoon, trudging uphill in a line, big boys racing ahead, scarves and balaclavas wrapping them from the cold.

  Gloria’s short legs couldn’t keep up with the line and then they left the track and took a short cut over the fields, dodging the snow fence. Snow got down her gumboots and the cold chapped her bare knees but she wasn’t going to complain.

  As they scaled the fell, the sky got greyer and darker but no one was bothered at first, too intent on finding the crash site up out on the moorside. There were a few smoking embers in the distance to urge them on. They looked near but were in fact much further away. They were three miles up and it was an overcoat colder up there.

  When they reached the ridge Mitch complained, ‘There’s nothing to see here.’

  ‘Alf, at the battery, told me it was near the trig point, that triangle of stones sticking out on top of the rock. It’s not far, but it may be still guarded,’ said Greg.

  ‘Will we see bodies?’ Gloria asked, not sure if she wanted to see anything mangled.

  ‘Nah! Poor sods roasted inside. Alf said they took them away first.’

  Gloria shivered. ‘It’ll get dark soon–do you really know the way or are you just showing off?’

  ‘Course I do,’ said Greg. ‘I’ve been up these rocks with the birdwatcher. There’s a steep cliff with a cave up there. It’ll be there.’

  It wasn’t, and now the mist was swirling round in wet murky ribbons, whipping Gloria’s cheeks and chilling her legs even more.

  ‘When’re we going to see owt?’ Everyone was complaining now.

  Then suddenly there it was: bits of strewn metal, dead sheep’s legs and the smell of burning rubber. There was no guard. It was eerie, only the wind moaning over the ghostly sight before them. Everyone fell silent as the mist wrapped itself round huge chunks of broken plane.

  ‘I don’t like this place,’ Gloria whined.

  ‘Shurrup!’ The others ignored her, too busy collecting bits of cold metal to stuff in their pockets. There was a piece that looked like a huge silver bird’s wing, all smashed up. What was left of the fuselage had been taken away in bits but on the floor she found a big leather glove, but she didn’t dare look inside, in case there was a finger in it. She shoved it in her pocket and said nothing to the others. This was a sad place and Gloria didn’t like it. She wanted to get back to the Old Vic, back to the kitchen Saturday night treats: crumpets and rhubarb jam, toasting bread on a fork in front of the fire.

  ‘Come on, it’ll be dark soon,’ Gloria shouted, trying to round them up. Boys’ adventures were boring, but she got no response.

  The slippery limestone scree was rough with blocks sticking out from the melting snow like little flat pavements, and she started to jump from one to another. ‘Come on, it’s late. I want to go back!’ she yelled, and then slipped and caught her ankle in the crack between the two blocks of stone. Boy, did she yell, but the sound was muffled at first by the mist. She screamed
until Greg came running with the boys. He saw how her foot was all twisted in the boot and she kept screaming like a fox stuck in a gin trap.

  ‘Lift yer foot!’ he shouted.

  ‘I can’t, it hurts. It’s stuck and I’m going to be stuck here and it’s getting dark. I’m going to die!’ she screamed.

  ‘No, you’re not going to die. You’ll do as I say and it’ll be all right. It went in, so it’ll come out.’ But even Greg could see that the boot was well and truly stuck down the crack. ‘We’ll just have to get your foot out of the boot. We could do with a shoehorn or something.’

  By now Gloria was shivering with fear and pain and still screaming blue murder so Greg slapped her.

  ‘You hit me!’ she sobbed, gazing up at him with horror.

  ‘Yelling doesn’t help me think. They do that to women on the pictures when they have funny turns…sorry,’ he replied.

  ‘That’s all right,’ she whispered, calmer now. ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘Well, someone’s got to go off and get help, for a start. You can’t walk on that foot.’

  ‘But we can’t see,’ said Mitch, and everyone was standing round. ‘It were a stupid idea. And we’ll all be for it when we gets home.’

  ‘They’ll send the army out for us when we’re missed. Just think how we can make a torch or something. There’s fuel oil spilled, we could make a pole and burn a signal.’ Greg was getting carried away with ideas from the book Maddy gave him when he was grounded.

  ‘First we can shove some down her boot and see if it’ll shift it,’ said Mitch. ‘Happen she could walk then.’

  ‘Good show,’ Greg smiled. ‘See, all’s not lost. We’re not far from the old caves; we can shelter in there and leave a marker here in the snow…a big arrow.’

  ‘Just get my leg out of here or I shall never be able to dance again,’ Gloria shouted. ‘I want Mrs Plum.’

  ‘Shut up, we’re doing what we can.’ They found some oil slicks and a cloth, and poked the oil down her boot. ‘It’s coming!’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ Gloria wailed, unconvinced.

  ‘It is, look…the other way,’ he ordered, and she obeyed as he tugged at her boot, releasing the whole foot.

  ‘You’ve torn my leg off!’ she shrieked

  ‘Don’t be such a madam. I’ve got your foot free,’ Greg snapped.

  ‘What do we do now? We can’t see a thing.’ Gloria whined. ‘It’s all your fault.’

  ‘Stop moaning, Gloria. You’re making my ears ache. I’m not standing any nonsense in the ranks. We have to make our way back,’ Greg ordered. ‘It’s too cold to be standing still. We can find a way.’

  ‘How?’ they all shouted.

  ‘I’ll think of something.’

  Greg knew they were in deep trouble and it was all his fault. It was a stupid idea, setting off in the afternoon, and now he’d got to get them back to safety. In Maddy’s book, the one about the boys camping out, living rough, there were some ideas, but that was in the middle of summer. It was hardly beyond winter, and they were about three miles out, and Gloria couldn’t walk. She’d have to have a piggyback and he was the biggest. Being leader was easy in Victory Tree headquarters. Now he wasn’t sure. There was real danger for everyone. It was cold, dark and misty, but he did roughly know where they were. If they made to the nearest stone wall and went down rather than up it might lead them to the main track, or it could lead them round and round in circles.

  He thought about poor Scott of the Antarctic. Better to stay and take the safer option and find shelter. They’d already passed the old cave entrance, and that wasn’t far from the drover’s track. If they found their way back there he could work out a route home in the morning, but it was going to be a long cold night. Shelter and warmth was what they must have. And then he heard the sheep bleating…a few sheep for company, tied up would be like woolly rugs, just the job.

  ‘I’m starving,’ moaned Gloria.

  ‘Shut up and get on my back, Gloria Conley One way or another I’ll find us a billet.’

  When Maddy got back from a hockey match there was a flap on. Plum was on the phone to summon help from friends for the six missing children. It was Peggy who’d told them that the gang had gone to the wreckage on the tops in search of souvenirs. The lads from the battery field offered to take their bikes to locate them but it was too dark to see much, and too misty and dangerous. Everyone sat glumly in the Old Vic, trying to comfort each other.

  ‘Poor little Gloria’ll be so scared,’ said Grace.

  ‘At least Greg knows the area–he’ll find them shelter,’ said Plum. ‘But those devils should have never been up there in the first place.’

  ‘Boys will be boys, Mrs Belfield. My lot are like magnets to trouble,’ Grace smiled with a sigh. She lived close to the church in a tiny cottage and had five sons and three daughters.

  Maddy felt a strange envy of them being free to roam the hills and get into trouble. Gloria was in the midst of it with Greg, while she was still in her weekday uniform and not one of the gang any more. Going to a girl’s private school was just like St Hilda’s all over again, set apart just because she was a Belfield orphan, not a hostel one.

  Poor Greg would be frightened. He’d be taking charge but this wasn’t games at Victory Tree HQ; this was the real thing. How would he cope on his own? He’d been on his best behaviour for months. Soon he was going to Brigg’s Garage on leaving school. What if they all perished on the moor before anyone reached them? There’d been some terrible accidents up there with people getting lost.

  ‘Can’t we do anything, Aunt Plum?’ she whispered.

  ‘We can all pray,’ said Grace Battersby, bowing her head.

  The treasure seekers huddled together in the entrance of the damp cave. They caught only two silly sheep and tied them with belts and ties and baler twine. The animals smelled, kicking out at them at first but soon they settled down and the gang took it in turns to warm themselves on their fleeces. Gloria’s foot had swollen into a purple balloon and they bathed it in cold water as best they could. They all stank of oil and damp wool and they were hungry, but there was plenty of running water from a spring rushing off the rocks. They pooled what tuck they had left of their Saturday pennies spent in the sweet shop, and found some furry mint balls and a liquorice root to chew on.

  Greg wrapped a snotty hanky around Gloria’s bruised ankle and sat with her all night to cheer her up. She fell asleep on his lap and woke with a stiff neck. It was the longest night of her life, but one of the best so far. It was not every day you found your hero, she thought.

  ‘I’m going to marry you,’ she sighed when morning came and the sky was as blue as it had been grey. ‘And you are going to marry me, one day.’

  ‘Over my dead body!’ Greg jumped up. ‘None of that sloppy stuff here, gerroff me! Time to do lookout!’

  They were halfway down the track when the army lads came up in a lorry and collected the bedraggled gang, stuffing them with chocolate and sandwiches. What a relief.

  Gloria was bandaged up and fussed over, showing off her bandage in the kitchen. ‘Greg saved our lives, took us to a cave and told us stories, so don’t be cross with him, Mrs Plum. He saved my life.’

  No one was cross.

  ‘You showed great initiative,’ said Plum. ‘But I’d just wish you’d thought of another escapade.’

  ‘We wanted to be first with souvenirs,’ said Mitch, as out of their pockets came their treasure.

  Plum looked at their booty. Was this what war did to children, risking life and limb for lumps of deadly metal?

  ‘It were a terrible crash, miss,’ Greg confessed later.

  ‘That’s me for the army when I join up, not the RAF after this. Better on land. They never stood a chance, poor blighters.’

  Plum thought of her own brother, Tim, fighting the Japs in the air, across the world. She’d not heard news of him for weeks now. The Far East was in turmoil.

  ‘You’re only just fou
rteen. The army is years away,’ she replied. This boy was too young for war.

  ‘I can go at sixteen…no one will stop me then.’

  ‘Don’t be in such a hurry to wish your life away, young man,’ Plum smiled. She’d miss him when he left: this strange boy, half angel one minute, half devil the next. Thank goodness she’d given him another chance. A boy like Greg needed steering in the right direction–but heaven only knew what he’d get up to next!

  10

  March 1944

  It was one of those mornings when Plum didn’t know what job to tackle first: the annual spring cleaning in the Old Vic–beating rugs, scouring the lino in the bathroom, taking the blackout linings off the curtains to be steeped in the outhouse washing sink; or tackle the weekly accounts for the Town Hall inspection of her purchase and housekeeping ledgers. Then she must check that the butcher would deliver their coupons worth of meat for Grace Battersby’s weekend stew and dumplings. She liked to check they got their fair dues with so many hungry mouths to feed. Then there was the heating playing up again, even though Grace’s husband, Wilf, was a whiz with their temperamental coke boiler–coaxing it back into action with goal kicks worthy of Wembley Stadium.

  Months had turned into years since those first evacuees arrived and Plum’s greenhorn attempts to keep order in the ranks. Many childen had come and gone, and she’d learned a few tricks herself how to keep boisterous kids occupied on wet afternoons. Now there was a contingent of small toddlers living in with their mothers, who were easier to manage. With a bit of luck she’d find them all spring cleaning jobs to tackle and save her aching back from some of the tougher jobs.

  The women formed their own little cliques, gossiping as they knitted and mended, leaving her to do the organising of supplies and deal with officials. She felt like an agony aunt, listening to their tales of woe, trying to console them if there was bad news, and stepping in if there were arguments with locals.