by Megan Rix
‘They look so hungry,’ he said to Lucy.
Lucy pointed out that this wasn’t true, as all the animals on Mr Foster’s farm were very well fed.
And then she explained to Charlie for the tenth time that cows only ate grass. Charlie still looked doubtful. What if they got bored of eating grass and decided they would rather have something more … boyish?
The cows looked to Charlie as though they could easily eat a small boy or two for breakfast. And as for the milk that came out of the cows’ udders – what a shock it had been the first time he’d seen where milk actually came from: from inside cows! He’d gone right off the taste of it after seeing this, and had asked Mrs Foster for water with his breakfast instead.
Charlie wasn’t as easy to look after as either Robert or Lucy, and more than once Mr and Mrs Foster quietly wondered if they’d done the wise thing by agreeing to take him home with them. But Lucy had asked so nicely and Charlie had looked like such a desperate little thing.
When Charlie had had an accident in his bed for the tenth time, Mrs Foster was about to have some firm words with him when she found him sobbing his little heart out, and her own heart melted.
‘What is it, Charlie, what’s wrong?’ she asked him.
Charlie had snot and tears running down his face that he wiped away with his slightly dirty hand, leaving a grey smear across his features. Only Charlie could make such a mess of himself.
‘Are you hurt?’ she said.
Charlie shook his head. He couldn’t speak because he’d got himself into too much of a state. He made hiccupping sounds when he tried to talk.
‘So what is it?’ Mrs Foster asked him, when he seemed to have calmed down a little.
‘I–I–hic …’
‘Yes?’
‘Want my mum.’ Charlie managed before dissolving into floods of tears once again.
Mrs Foster hugged him to her, his little wet face pressing into her. She patted his back and let him cry himself out. Amidst the sobs she managed to decipher that it wasn’t just that he was missing his mother terribly that was the problem, but that she didn’t know where he was, and he didn’t know how she was supposed to find him, or how he was going to find his way home ‘when Mr Hitter stops vading’.
Charlie’s sobs gradually decreased enough for Mrs Foster to start to sort out the muddle he’d got himself into.
‘Now,’ she said. ‘I think it’s time you wrote to your mother and told her where you are, don’t you?’
‘Can’t write,’ Charlie admitted.
‘Then why don’t you tell me what you want to say and I’ll write it for you, and you can draw her a nice picture, and later on we’ll take it to the post office and send it off to London. All right?’
Charlie nodded and managed to smile through his tears. Mrs Foster’s suggestion was perfect. But then Charlie’s face started to crumple back into misery.
‘I don’t know my address,’ he cried.
‘Yes you do,’ Mrs Foster said.
‘Do I?’ Charlie looked surprised.
‘Yes,’ Mrs Foster told him, and she pointed to his name and address, which were written on the inside of his suitcase.
Charlie frowned when he looked at where she pointed.
‘Charlie, can you read your name?’ Mrs Foster asked him.
Charlie shook his head.
Mrs Foster pressed her lips together. Charlie’s education so far had been sadly lacking. What was the school thinking? She decided there and then that she and Charlie would spend some time together each day learning to read, and by the time ‘Mr Hitter stopped vading’ and Charlie went home he’d be able to at least read and write his own name.
When Robert and Lucy visited their gran the next day, Charlie went with them.
‘I’m Charlie Wilkes,’ he said, wiping his fingers on his short trousers and then holding out his hand politely.
‘Indeed,’ Beatrice said, but she didn’t shake his hand. ‘And what have I done today to earn the honour of my grandchildren’s presence?’
She picked up a shovel and started digging a hole a few feet away from one she’d already dug.
‘We thought it’d be better if we stayed with the Fosters. Much less work for you,’ Robert said, trying to ease the awkwardness.
Beatrice pulled a face. ‘If you don’t like my company …’
‘It wasn’t that, truly, Gran,’ Lucy said quickly, trying to make peace. ‘We’ll still come and see you – every day if you like.’
But Beatrice didn’t look pleased with that idea either. Charlie thought of his mum saying, ‘There’s no pleasing some people,’ and couldn’t help smiling.
‘I’m much too busy to have you children under my feet all the time,’ the old lady said.
‘Digging holes?’ Charlie asked.
‘We could help,’ Robert said, nudging Charlie to be quiet.
‘You can come once a week, on Sunday, after I’ve been to church. That will be more than enough. Make it in the afternoon because you can’t expect me to make you luncheon.’
‘Do I have to come too?’ Charlie asked her. He really hoped that he didn’t, although he would if he had to.
Beatrice gave him a look that told him his presence would definitely not be required. Charlie only just managed to hold in a cheer at this news. He didn’t like the way Beatrice stared at him with her beady, birdlike eyes.
‘She’s not even like our gran any more,’ Lucy said to Robert when they were alone later. ‘I used to love coming here, but now she’s so … so …’
‘Unwelcoming?’
‘Yes – and what’s with all the digging?’
Chapter 12
Autumn crept in as the animals crossed the rolling hills and wooded valleys of the Kent countryside. Late one afternoon they were passing through an apple orchard when three saddleback pigs came running at them.
Tiger raced up into the branches of the nearest apple tree – where he batted his paw and hissed at the pigs. Rose growled deep in her throat as the pigs surrounded them. Buster lay down, in a submissive pose.
Then one of the pigs rolled over beside Buster just like another dog might have done. Buster joined in the pig game and rolled on his back with his four legs waving in the air. Rose wagged her tail. Tiger remained in the tree, where he washed himself from tail to paws.
With a squeal the pigs started to play chase. The dogs joined in and were much faster, but it didn’t matter as they raced round the orchard.
Finally, tired and hot, they all waded into the muddy pond to cool off. Buster and Rose emerged with their coats dripping in mud.
Buster sat and watched as the pigs started to chomp on the windfall apples. He whined with hunger. There were apples everywhere.
Buster crunched on one and found he liked it. He tried a second one.
One apple was easy, two was no problem, but number three didn’t taste as good as the first two, so he only had a bite before dropping it for one of the pigs to snuffle up.
By the sixth apple – and really he hadn’t eaten much of the last three and the pigs had had much more than him – Buster was heartily sick of apples and had a stomach ache.
As the sun set, Rose whined and urged them onwards. But Buster had eaten far too many apples for a little dog and started to be sick.
Rose found a pigsty for them to sleep in; Tiger sat on top of the corrugated iron shed. But during the night it started to rain and the cat crept inside the sty to curl up with the dogs.
Every morning Lucy woke up missing her mum and her dad and the pets. Her mother and father wrote to her whenever they could, but Buster, Rose and Tiger couldn’t do that. All she could do was wait and hope that today would be the day that a letter from Mrs Harris arrived to tell her how they were.
And every morning, so far, she’d been disappointed.
There was no electricity or gas in the longhouse
and all the cooking had to be done in a coal-fired oven with two hot plates at the top. After breakfast Lucy helped Mrs Foster make the pasties the children took to school for their lunch.
‘My mum taught me how to make these,’ Mrs Foster told Lucy as she prepared the ingredients. ‘And I expect her mother taught her and her mother before her taught her.’
‘And now you’re teaching me,’ Lucy smiled.
‘There’s always been bad blood between Devon and Cornwall over who invented the pasty,’ Mrs Foster said, as she started to work the butter, flour and water together in a bowl.
Just like the bad blood between the locals and evacuees, thought Lucy – with me and Robert in the middle. School hadn’t been getting any better for her and it seemed to be just as bad for Robert.
She’d tried to get him to talk about it, but he wouldn’t. All he’d say was that it wouldn’t be for long and it wasn’t too bad, but she was sure he was lying. He looked totally miserable as they trudged down the country lanes on their way to school that morning.
‘Don’t eat that yet, Charlie.’
Charlie put the pasty he was finding hard to resist back in his bag.
‘What lessons have you got today?’ Lucy asked Robert, as they approached the school gates.
Robert looked vague and said he didn’t know, which just made Lucy even more sure that there was something wrong at school. In London Robert was top of his class in most subjects and he always knew what lessons he’d be having each day.
When they got to school Lucy and Robert and Charlie stayed together in the playground. At least they had each other.
‘See you later,’ Robert said, as the handbell was rung for lessons to begin.
At breaktime the girl Lucy privately called ‘Pincher Jane’ pushed her.
‘Teacher’s pet!’
And something in Lucy snapped.
‘Am not!’
She pushed the girl back.
Pincher Jane pulled Lucy’s hair. She kicked out, then tried to scratch Lucy’s face but missed. Shielding her face with her arms, Lucy scored a direct hit with her scratch, leaving marks all down Pincher Jane’s face.
Pincher Jane screamed and the London school’s headmaster, Mr Faber, came over, swishing his cane. The two girls quickly backed away from each other.
‘What’s going on?’ he demanded to know.
‘Nothing,’ they both mumbled.
‘What happened to your face?’
‘Fell,’ Pincher Jane told him, looking daggers at Lucy.
The bell rang, but Lucy was sure it wasn’t over yet. She was glad she had Robert to walk home with that day, especially when she saw Pincher Jane and some of her cronies loitering at the school gates.
‘Hurry up, Charlie,’ Lucy told him.
Charlie wasn’t sure why they had to walk so fast and he didn’t like it much.
Lucy ran over to the cow field as soon as they got back from school. Of all the animals on the farm the cows were Lucy’s favourites. And of all the cows her favourite was Daisy.
Some people thought cows were stupid, but Lucy knew they were wrong. Cows were just as intelligent as horses, or at least the Red Ruby Devon cows, which were the only ones she’d spent any time with, were.
When Lucy looked into Daisy’s eyes she could see that Daisy was studying her just as much as she was studying Daisy.
It seemed only natural to confide in her and she told Daisy all about how much she was missing Tiger, Rose and Buster and how much she hated Pincher Jane.
‘I tried not to fight her, I really did, but what choice did I have?’
‘None,’ a voice said, and Lucy almost jumped out of her skin because she hadn’t realized he was there.
Robert stroked Daisy. ‘I hate it too. I try to keep out of Mr Faber’s way because he’s mean, Lucy, really mean.’
In London Mr Faber had been the headmaster of the evacuee school, but in Devon he had to teach a class.
‘He’ll get a bee in his bonnet about a kid – usually Benson, he’s not too bright – and he’ll make an example of him all day, making him sit in the corner when he gets his work wrong.
‘And then there’s this other boy, Harley; he’s no good at sports, but Faber will have him hanging from a rope in the hall for hours, too terrified to go up or down. And if you try to say something … well! I did once and he made me climb that rope too; luckily the caretaker came in to arrange the chairs for lunchtime, otherwise I don’t know how long he’d have made me stay up there.’
‘What about the girls?’ Lucy asked him. ‘What’s he like to them?’
‘Not as bad as to the boys. But there’s a few of them he’s got it in for.
‘You only see him in the playground. I know he’s bad there too, but he’s nowhere near as nasty as when he closes that classroom door. It’s like he really enjoys hurting the kids. He makes Sloggings seem like an angel.’
‘So what are we going to do?’ Lucy said.
‘Keep our heads down.’
Lucy nodded.
‘And stay out of trouble like we promised Dad,’ he added pointedly.
Lucy grinned.
‘Don’t worry, it’ll all be over soon and we can go back to London.’
‘But will it – will it really all be over soon?’ Lucy wasn’t so sure. ‘I haven’t heard anything from Mrs Harris about the pets, even though I’ve written to her twice now.’
‘I’m sure they’re fine,’ Robert said, although his voice didn’t sound quite convinced. He hadn’t heard anything from Michael about the pets either.
Michael was too young to be officially part of NARPAC, so he manned the tea urn at the back of the meeting hall, listening as a vet instructed their North London NARPAC group on how to give first aid to an injured animal.
‘The first thing to remember is that an injured pet is a frightened beast,’ the vet told them. ‘A dog that may usually not say boo to a goose can do a lot more than that when it’s in pain. That’s why you should always use a grasper.’ He held up a long pole with a noose on the end of it. ‘Or put a muzzle on the animal before treating it. Otherwise it could end up being you that gets injured when the creature bites you.’
There was polite laughter at this, but many people knew from experience that what the vet said was true; it was a serious point.
‘If it’s safe to approach and the dog is bleeding, the best thing to do is hold a towel, or something similar, to the wound and press on it to stop the blood flow.’
‘What if it’s got rabies?’ asked one of their group. ‘How could we tell?’
Some bright spark let out a werewolf howl.
‘Rabies has three stages recognized in dogs,’ the vet told them. The room went completely silent as everyone listened. ‘The period between infection and symptoms can vary, but once symptoms show there is a one- to three-day period of behaviour change; this is followed by what we call the excitative stage …’
Everyone knew what that meant – a crazed animal given to biting anything that was near.
‘And then the third stage is marked by rear limb paralysis, drooling, difficulty swallowing and, ultimately, death.’
‘What about in people, what would happen to us if we got it? Would we start biting others?’ a lady asked the vet.
‘The first symptom is feeling like you have the flu, but this can be a long while after you’ve been bitten …’
‘So we’d need to be bitten?’
‘Yes. And although you probably wouldn’t start biting people, it does affect the brain, resulting in delirium.’
‘How long from symptoms showing till death?’ someone else asked.
‘Two to ten days.’
‘Would it be possible to mistake a dog having a seizure for one with rabies?’
‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ the vet said. But everyone was still worried and talked during the tea
break about the risk of meeting a dog with rabies. Maybe people hadn’t been so foolish in having their pets put down. If Hitler infected their animals with rabies … it hardly bore thinking about. But it wasn’t just pets that were at risk. It was farm animals too. Any mammal could get it and pass it on to any other animal.
When they got home from the meeting, Michael’s dad got out a pair of thick leather gloves and gave them to Michael. ‘Make sure you put these on before treating any stray animal you don’t know,’ he said.
‘But, Dad …’
‘Promise me.’
Michael promised and then went to check that all the animals’ water bowls were full. They’d already taken in more animals than their small house could really contain, but there were still hundreds of once-loved pets now wandering the city, lost and unwanted. And there were recently-born puppies and kittens too – what chance did they have? Michael was so angry at it all.
The animal shelters were bursting with strays. Those that had identity tags were safe while their owners were sought. But far more were without tags and couldn’t be identified and so were virtually condemned to death. No one was looking to take on a new pet during the war.
Michael wished that there was more he could do. If he could have, he would have saved every one of them. They’d done nothing to deserve their fate.
Chapter 13
As the days went by, and the leaves on the trees in the Sussex countryside turned from green to orange and red, Rose, Buster and Tiger became a highly successful hunting team. Rose and Buster chased the rabbits, Buster flushing them out of their burrows, or Rose coming from one side and Buster from the other to herd them towards Tiger, who was ready, waiting to pounce.
Squirrels, however, were not so easy to catch.
Sometimes it seemed to Buster that the squirrels were taunting them, waiting till the animals were almost upon them and then racing up a tree to safety.
But one day the squirrels had a shock when Buster, determined to finally catch one and unexpectedly finding a tree with a branch that was wide enough and low enough for a small dog to race up, ran after the squirrel. He soon found himself further up a tree than he’d ever been before, and looking down at Rose on the ground below him.