Jamie looked up at Joyce’s smiley face and burst into tears.
“Oh, Jamie, I thought you’d be pleased.” Now he’d made her sad.
“I’m ever so happy for Biffy, but ever so sad for Gran.”
“Oh, Jamie, give me a big hug now, you’ll feel better when you’re down in the country.”
Joyce felt nice. She was soft and smelled sweet. Gran hadn’t hugged him much since he got big. He buried his face in the big roses on her dress. All ladies should dress in pink roses and smell sweet. He must take a bath at least two times a week in case one of them wanted to hug him again one day. He ought to be ready, just in case. And a very special lady might like Biffy’s sparkling heart. He’d leave the heart where it was for now. Maybe for years and years. The hug was beginning to make him feel funny, so he sat up. He had to go to the toilet.
* * *
The train was noisy, but in a nice way, as if it was talking. He felt very excited because he hardly ever went outside, never mind to an adventure. You learn things at an adventure. Lots of children were on the train, but he sat next to Mrs. Meyer, one of the ladies who was taking them all to the country, and she wouldn’t let the others tease him. Children always teased him, that’s why Gran never let him know any. Mrs. Meyer acted nice and said he was a polite boy. He told her Gran was fussy about polite, he always had to mind his manners. She told him they were going to a town near the New Forest.
“Has a new forest got littler trees than an old one?”
She laughed and said, “The new one has very big trees and it’s actually very old, but they called it that a long, long time ago, and the name stuck.”
“I saw St. Paul’s up in heaven, you know. It was sitting on top of the clouds.”
“It wasn’t really, Jamie, I saw the picture in the paper. You saw it sitting inside smoke that looked like clouds because lots of the buildings around it were on fire. St. Paul’s was spared. It was a miracle.”
“Oh. You mean like a Jesus miracle?”
“Something like that. Lots of the first bombs weren’t big bang ones. They were incendiaries, meant to set things on fire so the next lot of pilots could see where to drop the big bang bombs.”
Would he ever understand all the things grownups knew about? “That’s a big word, insendies. I want to learn it.”
He practiced “incendiaries” with her until he got it right. And he simply must remember to get blitz right. The lady said why not look out of the window, there was lots to see, but things kept going past before he could see what they were. There were so many green things. Little hills, lots of grass. Fields, he declared, and Mrs. Meyer said he was quite right, they were. Jamie decided he liked green grass and trees. And animals. Like little dots until the train slowed a bit and the lady could point and tell him sheep or cow. Pretty things, they were. The train stopped at stations sometimes, but not very often. The train sometimes went through without stopping. The people on the platform must be quite cross about that.
There were some places that had houses, and you could see right into the back gardens because they were close to the special road the train ran along. There were lines with wet clothes hanging on them, and some of the children giggled once because the train slowed down right opposite a line with some very big pairs of knickers on it. Jamie had been to a house with Gran that had a back garden once when he was quite little. She was doing cleaning for the people who lived there. They had some children, he could hear them laughing inside. He’d walked round and round in the garden for a very long time. No one came out to play with him. Probably weren’t allowed.
The train came to a stop with a big screaming sound. “Here we are!” the lady said.
They climbed off and walked down a long, long street to what they called the church hall. They all had to sit in chairs and be quiet as church mice. Did God make church mice behave better than other mice? The little girl sitting next to him stared at him all the time. He could feel it even when he wasn’t looking her way. She had no manners at all, so when no one was looking he pulled the corners of his mouth into his best monster face and when her face started to crumple sat on his hands and stared at the wall opposite. When she was taken away, still crying, he noticed something drop from her neck and roll under the chair. He could have called out, but rude girls shouldn’t have pretty things. He dropped one of his gloves and crouched down to pick it up. A little sparkly thing on a chain. He slipped it into his glove, a good safe place.
Most of the children were taken away by different grownups, and some of them cried. They were probably scared and missed their grans, and Jamie knew how they felt. Wasn’t anybody coming for him? At last, one of the ladies brought over a man and woman. The woman looked nice and smiley, but the big man with black hair was frowning. Something about the lady’s mouth, she tried too hard to smile, blinked too much while she did it. People often tried to hide under their smiles, and it never worked, not really. She was a nice lady, even so. She was scared of the frowning man, kept blinking and looking at him, hands held tight together just under her belt. His hands were tight but separate, as if he wanted to hit someone.
“Don’t waste time, Elsie, there’s the cows to be milked.” Loud, hard voice.
The lady looked tired, like Gran often did by suppertime.
“Well, you’re a nice looking young lad. You must be Jamie.”
“Yes, miss.”
“You can call us Mr. and Mrs. Lake. We live on a farm, and you’re going to stay with us for a bit and help us with some of the jobs we have to do.”
“Yes, Mrs., um … ”
“Lake.”
“Sorry, miss. Mrs. Lake.” Got to keep my wits about me … Roy said he didn’t have any wits. More unkind stuff, and not so very true. Not very.
“Well, he’s simple all right, but at least he doesn’t look a fright like the last one,” the man said. He sounded very grumpy. “Small for his age.”
“Shh, Tom, be nice.” He didn’t look the sort who would find nice easy.
“Oh, come on, Elsie, let’s get back.”
Jamie picked up his case and followed them out of the hall, waving goodbye to Mrs. Meyer. He ran back to her suddenly. Mr. Lake shouted after him to stop his nonsense, but he kept on going.
“Sorry, I forgot to say thank you. Thank you.”
“I loved having you sit next to me, Jamie,” she said. “But now you’d better get back to the Lakes, they seem to be in a hurry. Good luck.” Mrs. Meyer looked as if she might cry.
The car was very bumpy and made Jamie feel a bit sick because he was sitting in the back and kept falling around. He tried looking out of the window and just thinking about what he could see. Fields, mostly, so it was a good thing he knew what they were.
He gasped when they stopped in front of a huge house. The bricks looked different from the house where Gran’s flat was.
“Is this all yours?” he asked. “Do other people live here, too?”
“Yes, it’s all ours,” said Mr. Lake. “We’ve got a son away in the army and our daughter, Pamela, helps her mother around the house when she’s not at school. They take care of the chickens and ducks, too. You’ll be helping me with all the other jobs. There’s a lot of work, so you’d better get used to it.” He sounded angry. He looked strong and had big red hands that still held the wheel tight as could be, even though the car had stopped moving. “I don’t want to hear any whining, and no complaining to those women who come round checking up, either. Far as I’m concerned, you’re here to work.”
“Yes, Mr. Lake. I always wanted to get a job so I could earn money and buy food for Gran so she won’t have to work so hard.”
“Well, you won’t be earning any money here, and your gran’s dead, remember? You just be grateful for a bed and your meals.” Mr. Lake turned and glared at Jamie, who tried to keep the tears down. Another person saying Gran was dead. Horrid word, dead. Mrs. Lake stared out of the window, thinking of something far away. She was much smaller than Mr. Lake,
and she’d closed up her face so it didn’t tell anything. Her hair would be quite pretty if she looked after it. It looked like string, what with the color and needing a brush through it.
Jamie felt better when he got out in the fresh air, even though it was cold. Their feet crunched on the icy path up to the big wood door. Mrs. Lake took him up a lot of stairs to a white room with a funny ceiling that went this way and that way. It had a bed, a chest-of-drawers, and a chair. Roy and Gran had a chest-of-drawers, but not Jamie, he only had a shelf. This was nice. He could put things away and close up the drawer. His things would be private.
“It’s not much,” she said, “but it’ll have to do, I’m afraid.”
“It’s very nice, thank you, Mrs. Lake,” Jamie said. He smiled at her and she smiled back. She was kind, but he didn’t know about Mr. Lake yet. She left him to unpack. He took off his wooly gloves and looked at the necklace. Tiny diamonds, but they’d light him up in the sun. The only other things he had were a patchy Biffy with his hidden sparkly heart, some socks and underpants, a shirt, and a pair of trousers. He put his new treasure inside a sock. There was a little parcel he hadn’t seen before. Maybe from Miss Joyce. He opened it carefully. Chocolate, his favorite. He wished he could eat chocolate every day. He loved saying that word with all its bits. He put it in the back of the drawer for later. Was that Mr. Lake’s voice? He went to the top of the stairs and listened hard. His ears didn’t seem the same since the big bang.
“Jamie, get down here for supper. We go to bed early in this house. Wash your hands in the bathroom first.”
Mr. Lake said something called grace before they ate. There was a lot of stuff on the table, and Pamela was there, too. She had nearly white curly hair, different white from Gran, and there was more of it. Her big round eyes stared at him all the time. She’d be pretty if she didn’t wear such a mean face. She never said hello. He didn’t know what to do when she kept looking at him like that. Made him feel fidgety. Gran said staring was rude. He kept quiet and ate the bread and dripping Mr. Lake put on his plate and drank his water. He wanted tea like them, but he didn’t say so. There was jam, but they didn’t give him any of that either. There was cake, too. Mrs. Lake put a small slice on his plate and he remembered to say thank you before eating it. Her face was sweet when she smiled at him, but it looked sad most of the time.
“Don’t you go spoiling the boy, Elsie, he’ll eat us out of house and home.” It wasn’t very nice, not wanting Jamie to have cake.
“It was just a little, Tom. He’s a growing boy, and he’ll need to build up his strength.” At least Mrs. Lake has good manners.
“That’s all very well. Food costs good money, and sugar’s too scarce to waste on the likes of him.”
When Jamie finished he was sent up to bed. It took him a long time to get to sleep. Gran was probably in heaven and he hoped she was happy there. He wished he had a picture of her. He must think about her every night so he wouldn’t forget. He pretended she was kissing him goodnight, smiling so her eyes squeezed up and got buried in wrinkles round the sides.
He dreamed of crackly fire, big bangs, and lines of doors that locked themselves loudly, one after the other. Then he was walking and walking and walking, all alone in the world, and no one came. He felt he’d only been asleep a minute or two before Mr. Lake shook him awake.
“Rise and shine. Get your clothes on and come down to the kitchen. You can have a glass of milk and some bread and butter before we get started. I’ve got some gumboots about your size, so come down in your socks. No need to wash now, you can do that before dinner. Get a move on!”
5
Elsie watched him trail Tom out to the farmyard. Jamie was a nice-looking lad, rather short, but quite normal-looking. She liked the brown wavy hair that needed a trim, and his girlish sensitive face. Still slight, maybe he’d fill out in a few years. With his big brown eyes and long eyelashes he might have grown up to be a heartbreaker—if he weren’t retarded. What a shame, such a waste.
That poor boy was shivering already; he needed a jacket. Elsie would have to find an old raggedy one so Tom wouldn’t get angry. While they were having breakfast, Tom said he’d show him how to feed the pigs first while his man started on the milking, and after that Jamie was to clean out the sty. Jamie said his cousin Roy had one of those in his eye once. “So did pigs get them too?” Tom rolled his eyes and poor Jamie looked confused. Watching him eat bread with a smear of butter while they ate bacon and eggs was painful, but the boy didn’t complain, had seemed to fold into himself. Used to being second best.
Elsie worried about Jamie. Tom did cruel things to those boys. They seemed to arouse in him a primitive need to lash out, to brutalize when they came near. He kept asking for slow boys because they were free and no adult listened to them. Tom had a wild animal’s instinct to destroy the weak. Only the land girls ever met with his approval. When the government came up with the idea of recruiting young women they referred to as “land girls” to work on the farms in place of the laborers who’d gone off to war, Elsie thought it was the answer to their prayers. Another was coming next week. The last one had left after a month without explanation; they never stayed long. In a better mood than usual when they arrived, Tom was in a worse one then ever when they left, using Elsie like a rutting stag at night and alternately ignoring and berating her during the day.
Elsie was surprised they’d sent Jamie after the fuss they’d made about the last boy, although she knew they were running short of families to take the evacuees. Tom said normal boys were lazy and told too many tales to get out of work, and who would believe cretins, after all? The last boy, Jack, ran away. The local constable called out a search party right away and the poor Jack’s body had been found frozen stiff in Old Ring Copse. He was too thin, they’d said, and later that evening a detective inspector arrived at their farmhouse.
“Mrs. Lake,” said Inspector Morris, fixing her with eyes that blamed and judged. “We’re trying to put together Jack’s last day here before he left. What time did he go to work?”
“Well, we got up at about five, like always. We had breakfast, and then he and Tom went out to milk the cows.”
“What did Jack eat?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Same as usual, I expect, bread and butter and a glass of milk.”
“How about later?”
“Well, we had our midday meal, and he would have had some meat and potatoes, cabbage, too, I think. I don’t remember if we had a pudding that day. Then they went out again. There’s always work to do on a farm.”
“I know, I was born and brought up on one. What was he wearing?”
“You can’t expect me to remember that! A pullover, I suppose, a jacket probably.”
“When we found him he only had a shirt on. Will we find more clothes in his room, warm clothes?”
“I suppose so. I can’t be expected to know what he did with them. He wasn’t quite right, you know. He could have left them anywhere.”
“We know he was mentally retarded, Mrs. Lake, and we also know he wasn’t as bad off as all that. He stayed with one of our constables for a few days before being sent over to you. I don’t suppose you knew that. What else did he have to eat that day?”
“There would have been supper and then bed. Bread and dripping most likely, perhaps an apple.”
“The pathologist said there was no food in his stomach, Mrs. Lake. How do you account for that?”
“How should I know? Perhaps he had a stomach upset, that would account for it.” She hadn’t meant to starve the boy, but Tom said he had to be punished. Nearly every day Tom said that.
“He had lost a lot of weight. He was weighed before he left London. I don’t suppose you knew that, either. He was nine stone then. He was quite a bit lighter when we found him. About seven-and-a-half stone. Twenty-one pounds in six weeks?”
“I don’t think they get a lot of exercise, usually. They don’t go out much because their families are ashamed of them. Hard work ta
kes off the puppy fat very quickly, you know.”
“Why didn’t you report him missing? He was only a child, or don’t you think they’re worth the trouble?” He had almost snarled.
“He was seventeen, Inspector. I leave these things to my husband.” Her words sounded feeble, her voice shaky.
“You can’t have it both ways. Too retarded to keep his jacket on in a freeze, but too mature to bother reporting missing. Come, come, Mrs. Lake.”
“I don’t know what to say. I’m sure my husband had his reasons.”
“Yes, well, we’re not completely satisfied, Mrs. Lake. I’m going to look through his things now.”
He thinks we killed him. We did. Tom did.
He looked through the chest of drawers and found some of their son Gerald’s old warm underwear. Socks and a pullover, too. Tom must have put them there earlier. The police didn’t take any action, except to caution them that they must report runaways immediately. Other fish to fry. She’d heard they’d broken up a big black market ring a couple of weeks later.
Elsie felt ill thinking about Jack again. She’d had to lie, but Tom was a brute. He made the boys get close to animals they’d never seen before; their bulk and wild eyes would terrify any city-bred child. He shouted, hit them, he didn’t let them have enough to eat, and he wouldn’t let her make sure they were warmly dressed. They disgusted Tom, and so did Elsie these days. Well, he disgusted her for that matter. He’d made her compliant in his gross inhumanity. But she was powerless in the face of hard facts; she had her own children to protect, Pamela and Gerald, and he held the purse strings. And she was afraid of Tom.
Even if Tom hit her for it, she’d have to warn him to be careful this time. They’d better not lose a second one. When Pamela was grown and gone, Elsie would leave, too. Tom was no better than a murderer, but Pamela couldn’t see it. She was hard, like her father, and their only warm feelings were reserved for each other. Gerald was more like his mother, much to Tom’s disappointment. “Namby-pamby,” he called him. Nothing namby-pamby about the army though, and he’d volunteered, not waited to be called up, like some.
The Blitz Business Page 5