Summer House

by Nichols, Mary

  ‘Perhaps she’ll write and let us know. Or she might telephone.’

  ‘She might.’

  Kathy washed the flour off her hands and went to answer the front doorbell. Mrs Woodrow, the welfare officer for the evacuees, stood on the step and Kathy’s heart sank. Had she heard about the trouble she’d been having with the twins? ‘Mrs Woodrow, come in. If you’ve come to see the twins, I’m afraid they are at Sunday school.’ Sunday school was where she had sent them, but she was not at all sure that was where they had gone. They had been more than usually secretive lately.

  ‘Oh.’ She was a very big woman, always dressed in country tweeds with her hair rolled up tightly under a man’s pork pie hat. She had a booming voice, but that little word had been said unusually softly. ‘Perhaps it’s just as well.’ She followed Kathy into the little-used drawing room, where Kathy turned to face her. ‘It’ll give you time to decide how you’re going to tell them.’

  ‘Tell them what? Do sit down.’ Kathy waved her to an easy chair on one side of the hearth.

  ‘I’m afraid, there’s very bad news. Their mother was killed in an air raid last Sunday night. Her house received a direct hit. It was completely demolished, so I am informed, and there were no survivors.’

  Kathy sank into the chair opposite her visitor. ‘Oh, the poor, poor boys.’

  ‘I’ll tell them if you don’t feel up to it, but it would be better coming from you.’

  ‘What else do you know? They’re bound to ask. Why has it taken a week to tell us?’

  ‘I’m told the ARP and rescue squad had to dig in the ruins for days before they got the bodies out and then there was a question of identifying them.’

  ‘Them?’

  ‘Mrs Carter and a man.’

  ‘Her husband was on leave?’

  ‘No, I was told he’s at sea. He will be notified and no doubt will get compassionate leave as soon as his ship docks. Of course, no one could say when that would be.’

  ‘Oh, I see. I don’t think I’ll tell them about their mother’s visitor.’

  ‘No. Very wise.’

  ‘They will be heartbroken. They had a letter from her a few weeks ago, saying she hoped to come for Christmas.’

  ‘It will be a very sad Christmas for them. Let’s hope Petty Officer Carter can get leave.’

  ‘How does it affect their evacuee status? I mean, they will stay with me, won’t they?’

  ‘For the time being. We shall, of course, consult Petty Officer Carter, when he comes home.’

  ‘I understand, but it would be a pity to uproot them when they have settled down so well.’ Even as she spoke, Kathy wondered about that. She had done her very best to give them a stable and comfortable home, by all accounts more comfortable than the one they had come from, but was that enough?

  ‘Yes, I agree, and my recommendation will be that they remain here. We have funds to tide you over until arrangements can be made about their keep.’

  Kathy had not even been thinking of that. Mrs Carter was obliged to send seventeen shillings a week for their board, lodging and clothes, but she often missed. Kathy had never reported this. ‘That’s not important, Mrs Woodrow. What is important is their happiness, and I fear this will be a terrible blow to them. They talk about their mother constantly, more than their father.’

  ‘He was a peacetime sailor, Mrs Wainright, and would often be away from home. They are no doubt used to not having him around.’ She stood up. ‘I’ll be off, but if you need me, you know how to contact me.’

  ‘Yes.’ She saw the woman to the door and then turned back indoors and wandered in a daze into the kitchen. How was she going to break the news to the boys? What words should she use? Did they understand about death? At nearly eleven they surely must.

  ‘Who was that?’ William looked up from his newspaper. For once he was not busy on the farm; the threshing was done and the grain sent off to market, the straw stacks had been built and the potatoes harvested with the help of Meg and Daphne and the schoolchildren, given time out of school to do it. If you could call it help. The crop had been turned up by a digger on the tractor and the children had been stationed along the rows with baskets and paid a copper or two to pick up the potatoes and fill the baskets. All his forms had been filled in and sent off to the Ministry, and all he had to do later that afternoon was the milking. For a precious couple of hours he had done nothing but toast his toes on the fender and read the paper.

  ‘Mrs Woodrow.’ Kathy sat down heavily at the table. ‘The twins’ mother has been killed in an air raid.’

  The paper dropped in his lap. ‘Good God! Poor kids. And you have to tell them.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Kathy followed the boys up to their bedroom when they came home. They did that a lot lately: going straight up without even taking off their coats or coming into the kitchen. Donny was stowing something in the back of their wardrobe when she went in and scrambled out with a guilty look on his face when he saw her; she had given them a little money to buy Christmas presents for the family and she supposed that was where they were hiding them. She pretended not to notice and sat on one of the beds. ‘Boys, come and sit here with me. I have something important to tell you.’

  They moved over and sat one on each side of her and she put her arms about them. Donny shrugged her off, but Lenny allowed it. ‘You must be very brave because the news I have is very bad.’

  ‘Dad’s boat’s been torpedoed,’ Donny interrupted her.

  ‘Why, no,’ she said in surprise, though on reflection she supposed that would be their conclusion. Their father was away at war and therefore the one at risk. ‘I’m afraid it is your mother. Your house was bombed. I’m so dreadfully sorry, my darlings, but she died.’

  She felt Lenny stiffen beside her but it was Donny that yelled out his disbelief. ‘No! No! I don’ believe yer. Yer makin’ it up.’

  ‘Why would I do that, Donny?’

  ‘I dunno, do I? She’s coming down for Christmas, she said so, and then she’ll take us home. I hate this place! I hate you! I hate this war!’ And then he burst into tears.

  That set Lenny off and the pair of them sat and sobbed. She could do nothing but sit there with them, fighting back her own tears, not at the loss of Mrs Carter but in sympathy with two little boys who had so cruelly been deprived of their mother. She couldn’t tell them not to cry, so she dabbed their wet faces with her handkerchief until the sobs subsided into an occasional hiccup.

  ‘Who told you?’ Donny demanded when it seemed he had no more tears to shed.

  ‘Mrs Woodrow. You remember her? She was the one who met you at Attlesham Station when you first came and brought you to Beckbridge. She looks after all the evacuees and keeps in touch with their parents. She told me that your father would be notified and he would probably come home.’

  ‘When?’ Lenny asked, seizing at a straw.

  ‘I don’t know. It depends when his ship docks.’

  Lenny sighed and sniffed. ‘Mum always said that when we asked her. “When his ship comes in,” she always said.’ The memory was too much for him and he began to cry again.

  Kathy hugged him. ‘Perhaps it will come in soon.’

  ‘I want me mum,’ Lenny’s voice was muffled against Kathy’s bosom. ‘She can’t be dead.’

  ‘I wish that were true, Lenny, I really do. But we can’t wave a magic wand and make it all right again.’

  ‘What’s going to happen to us?’ Donny asked. ‘Will we have to go to one of those places where they put kids with no mums?’

  ‘No, you’ll stay here with me, at least until your dad comes home. You’ve still got him, haven’t you? You’re not orphans.’

  ‘Might just as well be. He’s always at sea.’

  ‘He’ll be back soon.’

  ‘In time for Christmas?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps not.’ She could not let them build their hopes on that, as they had on their mother coming; it was best to be honest, even if she sounded u
nsympathetic.

  Lenny was no longer sobbing, but silent tears still coursed down his face and dripped off his chin. Donny had stopped crying altogether and was looking mulish. ‘Do you want to come down for your tea?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ Donny snapped. ‘Go away. Leave us alone.’

  Silently she stood up and watched them for a minute, before going downstairs. Meg and Daphne had come in and were laying the kitchen table.

  ‘How did they take it?’ William asked.

  ‘I’m not sure they’ve taken it in yet.’

  The sound of banging and crashing and yells came to them from the direction of the boys’ bedroom, which was directly above the kitchen. Kathy looked up at the ceiling. ‘What on earth are they up to? They sound as if they’re wrecking the place.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ Daphne said, and disappeared in the direction of the stairs.

  She opened the bedroom door to a scene of devastation. The covers had been stripped from the bed, the stuffing pulled out of the pillows and feathers were flying everywhere; the curtains hung in ribbons. The wardrobe door stood open and the little stash of Christmas presents, not only those intended for their mother and father, but for everyone else in the house, had been pulled out and systematically destroyed. There were streaks of lipstick on the mirrors and paintwork, a jar of jam had been flung at the wall and broken against it. The room was filled with the scent of lily of the valley and raspberries. Daphne stood and stared.

  Donny, seeing her, stopped with his arm raised to throw a half bottle of whisky at the window. She ran forward and grabbed it from him. ‘Donny, stop it, stop it at once. It won’t help.’ She looked round for Lenny and found him cowering in a corner, his knees up to his chest and his head in his arms. She didn’t know which to go to first.

  ‘It ain’t fair!’ Donny shouted. ‘It ain’t fair. Ma said if we was good, she’d come for Christmas.’

  ‘It’s not her fault she can’t.’

  ‘No, it’s ours.’ This was a mumble from Lenny.

  Daphne went and knelt beside him. ‘How can it be yours, sweetheart?’

  ‘We wasn’t good.’

  ‘Oh, Lenny, of course you were.’ She folded him into her arms and rocked him. ‘It was no one’s fault. If you want to blame anyone, blame Hitler and the Germans, they started this war.’

  He sobbed against her jumper and in a little while Donny crouched down beside them and pushed his way up into her arms as well and the three of them cried together.

  At last they became quiet and Daphne eased herself away from them. ‘Just look at this mess, boys. Are you going to help me clear it up?’

  They nodded.

  She went down and fetched a brush and dustpan and some warm soapy water in a bucket and set about picking up the feathers and broken glass, scraping the jam off the wallpaper and washing the mirror. The boys half-heartedly set about remaking their beds, though they weren’t sure what to do about the ruined pillows. Kathy came up while they were doing it. She was shocked by the mess, even more by the things the boys had used for missiles. Where had they come from? They could not possibly have afforded to buy them. Surely they hadn’t taken to stealing? Half of her wanted to give them a good scolding and demand to know, the other half wanted to cry out in pity. She found new pillows and put them on the bed without a word.

  ‘Sorry, Aunty Kathy,’ Donny mumbled.

  Kathy picked a feather out of his hair. ‘I’ll forgive you, this time. Do you want some tea?’

  ‘No. I’m going to bed.’

  ‘What about you, Lenny?’

  ‘I’m going to bed too.’

  She and Daphne helped them into their pyjamas, which at any other time they would never have allowed, tucked them in and returned downstairs, taking all that was left of the loot with them.

  ‘They’ll wake up in the morning, hoping it was a bad dream,’ Daphne said as they returned to the kitchen, ‘Poor mites. And just before Christmas, too. They had been so looking forward to it. And what about all that stuff? Lipstick and jars of jam, and whisky, for goodness sake. How did they come by it? Surely they didn’t steal it? Was that why Lenny said they hadn’t been good?’

  ‘I don’t know. We can’t ask them, can we? Not now.’ The laddered stockings had given Kathy an idea where the stuff might have come from and something had to be done about it, but she wouldn’t say anything to the boys until she had spoken to Joyce Moreton. Joyce had worked at the local post office and general store since the postman had joined up the previous year. She sorted and delivered the mail on a bicycle and afterwards served in the shop. She must have been privy to a lot of other people’s personal business, but she was never heard to speak of it. She was as universally liked as her dissolute husband was disliked.

  The shop was busy. Kathy had to wait several minutes until there was a lull between customers and Mrs Galloway, the sub-postmistress, had gone out to the back room to make a pot of tea before she could get Joyce to herself. And now she wasn’t quite sure how to begin. She picked up a tin of peas and put it down again. What did she want tinned vegetables for when they grew all they needed?

  ‘Is anything the matter, Mrs Wainright?’

  ‘I don’t know. I want to ask your advice.’ She dug in her shopping bag and produced a lipstick. ‘Do you recognise this?’

  Joyce picked it up and examined it. ‘Not one we sell.’

  ‘I was afraid of that. There was more, all sorts of things: jam, chocolate, whisky, scent, silk stockings – though they were already laddered.’

  ‘Oh, I think I see what you’re driving at.’ Ian had come home the previous week with a whole bag full of silk stockings which he swore he’d bought cheap off a market trader. ‘You can have a pair if you like. Here, take two pairs.’ He had thrust a couple of envelopes into her hands. Both pairs had been laddered and she suspected every other pair was too, and that inclined her to believe he hadn’t nicked them. He hadn’t shown her anything else, though. ‘Where did you find them?’

  ‘In the twins’ room.’

  Joyce was shocked. ‘How did they get there? Have you tackled them about it?’

  ‘No, they’ve just learnt their mother’s been killed in an air raid and they’re both very upset. I couldn’t, could I?’

  ‘No, of course you couldn’t.’ She’d give that no-good husband of hers what for when she saw him, selling dodgy stuff to children. ‘Will you leave it with me?’

  ‘Yes and thank you.’ Kathy gladly handed over the bottle of whisky and the stockings. Joyce put them with the lipstick in her own handbag, just as Mrs Galloway came back into the shop. Kathy asked for a tin of condensed milk, which was still free of rationing but was in short supply and reserved for ‘registered customers only’, a phrase everyone heard more and more as the war progressed. ‘I’m going to make the boys some fudge’, she said to explain why someone who had a herd of cows should be buying milk in tins.

  When Ian went home that night, Joyce was at the range, prodding at some boiling potatoes with a fork. Ken was sprawled on a grey horsehair sofa studying a book on aircraft recognition. He did not look up as his father came in. He hated him. Now he was as tall as his father, the beatings had stopped and been replaced by taunting jibes. If he wasn’t goading him about his reading matter, it was over his lack of girlfriends – as if he would bring a girl back to this dump! He couldn’t wait to get away and join up. He had asked Steve Wainright about joining the RAF, but Steve had advised him to wait until he was called up. It was all very well for Steve; he didn’t have to live in this place with a pig of a man who didn’t know the meaning of words like honesty or decency. One day the old man would over-reach himself and they’d all be free of him.

  Stella was standing at the mirror over the mantel brushing her hair. She had a round, rosy face and pale hair, which she supposed was better than the ginger of her mother and brothers, but she wished it was dark and wavy like Vivien Leigh’s. She did not turn round but her brushing slowed as she watched in the mirr
or, waiting for the explosion and hoping Ma would get the better of Pa this time. She’d like to see him get his comeuppance. He’d stopped her going to Attlesham Grammar School when she won a scholarship, telling her she was getting too big for her boots and the village school had been good enough for him and it was good enough for her. She had turned fourteen in the summer and left school for a job at a butcher’s in Attlesham, where she doled out the meat ration and kept hard-to-come-by unrationed sausages and offal under the counter for favoured customers. If only she was a bit older, she could leave home. As soon as the opportunity arose, she would.

  ‘What’s this?’ Ian asked, pointing at the little heap on the table which should have been laid ready for his tea. Instead, the brown chenille cloth sported, not a plate of meat and two veg, but a lipstick, a bottle of whisky and an opened envelope from which the pale silk of a stocking protruded. Had the old witch found them in her summer house and brought them to Joyce?

  ‘You tell me.’ She waved the fork at him and a lump of hot potato landed on the back of his hand. He lifted the hand and everyone in the room waited, expecting it to land on Joyce’s face, but he simply put it to his mouth and sucked the potato off.

  ‘Me? They hin’t got anythin’ to do with me.’ He laughed. ‘What would I want things like that for? Tek me for a pansy boy, do you?’

  ‘Nothing so refined. I know you for a wide boy, on the mek at the expense of everyone else and tradin’ with innocent children. Teachin’ them your wicked ways is the last straw. Do your dirty deals if you must, but not with my friends or my friends’ families. If I hear you have, I’ll be down that police station quicker than you can say Jack Robinson.’

  Stella put down her brush and crept quietly from the room. Ken looked up from his book, ready to defend his mother, but to his surprise, his parents simply glared at each other in hostility. He wanted to say, ‘Go on, Ma, don’t back down, you’ve got him on the back foot,’ but he said nothing. Time for that when it became necessary to divert his father’s wrath.