Jenny's War

by Dickinson, Margaret

  But Georgie was unable to keep his promise to her. The weeks turned into months and still he didn’t come home. Miles and Charlotte did not discuss war news in front of Jenny. In fact, they deliberately protected her from it. But she wanted to know what was happening to Georgie and, just as she had at home, Jenny began to eavesdrop. It hadn’t been difficult at home; the walls were thin and Dot and Arthur made no attempt to keep their voices low. At the manor it was more difficult for if she listened outside Miles’s study or the door of the morning room, Wilkins was likely to creep up and catch her.

  But just before Easter, Georgie arrived unexpectedly late one afternoon just as the children were leaving the manor.

  ‘Hey,’ he grinned as he came into the hall and dropped his kitbag, ‘am I just in time for a game of footie?’

  ‘Georgie!’ Jenny squealed and flung herself into his arms. He swung her round and then set her down again. ‘My, you’re growing.’ He looked round at all the other children. ‘All of you are. Now, let me get changed out of my uniform and I’ll be with you. My father is already waiting on the lawn, kicking the football up and down . . .’

  Gales of laughter rang through the grounds of the manor for the next half an hour and when it was time for the other children to go home, Miles, Georgie and Jenny came into the house.

  ‘Oh my – I must be getting old,’ Georgie declared, flopping into an armchair in Charlotte’s morning room.

  ‘How long have you got?’ Charlotte asked as she poured tea.

  Georgie pulled a face. ‘Only two days, I’m afraid. The powers that be think things are hotting up across the Channel and all leave might be cancelled, so I thought I’d better get a quick visit in before it does.’

  Jenny scrambled on to the broad arm of his chair and put her arm round his neck. ‘You promised to take me to the beach when you came home again. Can we go tomorrow?’

  ‘What about school?’

  ‘We could go after.’

  ‘What about the football?’

  ‘After that.’

  Georgie chuckled. ‘I’m not going to get out of it, am I?’

  Jenny grinned and shook her blond curls.

  ‘What about the other children? Do you want them to come with us?’

  ‘No. Just you an’ me,’ the girl said firmly. Charlotte and Miles hid their smiles.

  ‘Now,’ Georgie said in a serious voice as they tramped down the long straight lane leading from the manor to the seashore. ‘There are one or two things you must remember if you ever come to the beach on your own. One, you must always watch out for the tide coming in. On this part of the coast, the waves swirl round and form big pools called creeks. You can easily get cut off.’

  As they crested the top of the dunes, Jenny said, ‘I’d never seen the sea before I came here. Now I love it, but it is big, isn’t it?’

  Georgie nodded as his glance scanned the shore. ‘We can’t get right to the water’s edge, by the look of it. They’ve put rolls of barbed wire everywhere. Charlotte said they had but I hadn’t seen it for myself.’ He gave a heavy sigh. ‘You’re not seeing it at its best, Jen. I am sorry.’

  With her hand tucked into his warm grasp, Jenny didn’t care.

  ‘Tell you what, we’ll walk across this bit of marshy ground and I’ll show you where the samphire grows. It’s not ready for picking until June but I’ll show you what we do. Now, there’s a box somewhere here where we leave pegs and rags to mark the path.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because if a sea mist comes in – and they do sometimes very quickly – you have to be able to find your way back. It’s very easy to lose your sense of direction in a fog and you might walk out towards the sea instead of away from it. Ah yes, here it is.’

  For the next hour, Georgie painstakingly marked a path through the marsh towards where the samphire grew.

  ‘What’s samphire?’ the city child wanted to know.

  ‘It’s a dark green marsh plant that you can boil and eat as a vegetable. You must come with Charlotte or Miles when it’s in season and take it home for Mrs Beddows to cook for you. She used to do that for me when I first came here and Charlotte brought me to gather it. And she showed me how to mark the path sticks and tie the white rags on, just like I’m showing you.’ Suddenly, his voice sounded wistful.

  ‘Charlotte’s not your mum, is she, but you love her, don’t you?’

  Softly, Georgie said, ‘Yes, I do.’

  Jenny dropped her head and whispered, ‘I wish she was my mum. I wish I could stay here for ever and ever.’

  Georgie couldn’t answer her for the lump in his throat for he knew that both Charlotte and Miles wished exactly the same thing. But sadly, he couldn’t tell Jenny so.

  Whatever her own mother was like, however she treated this lovely girl whom she didn’t deserve, she was still her mother and, one day, she’d want her daughter back.

  It was a couple of weeks or so after Georgie had gone back that Jenny watched Miles reading his morning paper with a solemn face. Although he folded it up and tucked it under his arm to carry it to his study, she overheard him telling Charlotte later that Hitler had invaded Denmark and Norway. Jenny wasn’t sure exactly what this meant, but from the seriousness of his tone she knew it was bad news.

  What about Georgie? she wanted to shout, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t let them know she’d heard or they’d be more careful in future and she’d learn nothing.

  But by the beginning of June, even Miles and Charlotte could not keep the news of the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk from Jenny. Everyone was talking about it, even the children who still came to the manor. They plied their teacher with so many questions that, in the end, Miss Parker was obliged to tell them a little about what was happening.

  ‘But it’s the army, isn’t it, Miss?’ Jenny said. ‘Not the RAF. It’s not Georgie, is it?’

  Miss Parker forced a smile. ‘No, dear,’ she was able to say quite truthfully. But what she didn’t explain to the children was that now Britain stood alone and only the RAF could protect its shores and its people.

  Sixteen

  After school that same day, Miles had to go into town and Charlotte was visiting her father at Buckthorn Farm. The other children and Miss Parker had left and Jenny was on her own. She wandered through the house, upstairs to the nursery, but today the toys didn’t interest her. She picked up the battered copy of The Wind in the Willows, but she had no heart to try to read it herself when Georgie wasn’t there. She went into his bedroom, but everything was so neat and tidy. Nothing was set out on the dressing table; no clothes lying on the bed ready for him to put on. She ran her fingers along the dressing table and touched the pillow where his head had lain, even though she knew the bedding had all been changed since he’d left. Clean sheets and pillowcases awaited his return. She glanced round the walls at the pictures. Opposite the end of the bed was a painting of the village school where she’d been so unhappy. Perhaps Georgie had gone there as a little boy. He must have liked it there or he wouldn’t have wanted a reminder on his wall staring down at him. She smiled as she realized who’d painted the picture for him. She’d seen the paintings on the landing, and downstairs in Miles’s study hung several more portraits. Miles had told her all about them. One was of his first wife, Louisa, painted a long time ago, but more recent pictures were there too. One of each of Miles’s sons: Philip, dressed in his robes at his graduation at university, Ben standing against a tree with the land stretching away towards a vibrant sunset and then Georgie, resplendent in his RAF uniform.

  ‘Charlotte painted all these later ones,’ Miles had told her proudly. ‘She’s a very clever artist.’

  ‘There isn’t one of her.’

  Miles had chuckled. ‘She could have done one, but Charlotte is too modest to paint a self-portrait.’

  Now Jenny turned away from the picture on Georgie’s wall. She missed his merry laughter, the way he swung her round until she shrieked for him to st
op, the way he devoted his time to playing games. Listlessly, she climbed the next flight of stairs to the upper landing. She hadn’t been up here before; it was where Mrs Beddows, Kitty and Wilkins all slept. She peeped into each of their bedrooms but did not go in. They might be cross if anyone caught her and she didn’t want to make them angry; they’d all been so nice to her.

  She walked the length of the corridor and opened the door of the room at the end. Then she gazed around the room in wonderment. It was an artist’s studio. This must be where Charlotte did all her paintings. Jenny stepped inside, closing the door behind her. Canvases were stacked on the floor leaning against the wall. An easel stood near the window with a half-finished painting of a church on it. It was the one in Ravensfleet – the one they took her to every Sunday.

  On a table nearby were tubes of oil paint, tiny square pans of watercolour paints and a pad of thick paper with brushes in a jar close by. Jenny wandered round the room. There was even a little sink with taps in the corner for clean water. She picked up a bottle that read ‘linseed oil’ and another that just had ‘turps’ scribbled on a label. There were pencils and pens with different-sized nibs, a bottle of black ink, pastels and charcoal. Intrigued, Jenny fingered everything. Miss Chisholm had once asked a friend of hers who was an artist to visit the school and talk to the class about all the materials an artist could use, although the children had not been allowed to touch them. But here, in the quietness of Charlotte’s room, Jenny revelled in the feel of the brushes. Some were soft, others spiky and stiff.

  Then she inspected Charlotte’s paintings. There were portraits, painted in oils like the ones on the landing, of people she recognized. There was one of Charlotte’s father. Jenny giggled aloud. Charlotte had caught the grumpy old man’s expression perfectly. She’d been to the farm several times with Charlotte now. Sometimes Alfie was there and they played hide and seek, hiding in the barn and even climbing up to the hayloft. As they’d walked home after one such visit, Charlotte had confided, ‘I used to hide in the hayloft when I was a little girl when I didn’t want to be found.’

  Jenny continued to wander around the room, looking at all the pictures. There were lots of portraits of people who lived nearby. She didn’t know all their names but she recognized them as people who greeted Charlotte and Miles every week at church. And there were landscape pictures painted in softer colours.

  A copious apron, covered with paint splashes, lay across a chair. Jenny picked it up and wrapped it around herself. She squeezed some thick yellow paint from a tube on to a palette. Then she tipped the brushes out of the jar and filled it with water from the tap. Carrying it back to the table, she picked up a brush, dipped it in the water and then into the yellow paint and daubed it across the bottom across a clean sheet of paper. But the thick paint didn’t seem to spread very well on the paper. So she picked up one of the soft brushes and dipped that in the water. Then she scrubbed at one of the little pans of yellow paint and swept it across another sheet of paper. This worked much better.

  ‘That’s the beach,’ she murmured. ‘Georgie’ll take me again when he comes home. He promised. Maybe next time the samphire will be ready to pick. I’ll put it in my picture for Georgie. Dark green, he said it was . . .’

  Jenny had found something that fascinated her. She loved the feel of the paints on the brush, of sweeping vibrant colours across a page, of trying to get the shape of a tree just right. But she couldn’t find the exact green she wanted for the leaves on the trees or the grass or for the samphire on the beach. She tried mixing colours, wrinkling her brow in concentration as she tried to remember what Miss Chisholm’s friend had told them, but nothing came out right. She used several pieces of paper trying to work it out for herself and threw them on the floor in disgust when the picture didn’t come out like she imagined in her head.

  After a while, she heard voices below. She removed the apron and washed her hands in the sink, then she skipped back to the nursery just in time before Charlotte came looking for her. But whenever the house was quiet and she thought she wouldn’t be missed, Jenny went back to the studio. Charlotte didn’t seem to go up there very often at the moment, and the girl had the room to herself.

  One Saturday morning when Miles was outside with Ben discussing farming matters and Charlotte was in the kitchen with Mrs Beddows, Jenny crept upstairs and shut herself in the room.

  She wrapped herself in the apron that was now liberally stained with paint, fetched water from the tap and picked up the brush she’d been using. It had dried to a stiff point and the paint in the little pans had dried too. But she’d learned that if she stabbed the brush into the jar of water and wet the paint again, all was well. She wrinkled her nose as she looked around for a fresh piece of paper, but she’d used them all. She pulled out one of the canvases and squeezed the thicker paint from a tube labelled ‘oil paint’. She didn’t understand the difference, only that it was thicker than the watercolour paints and daubed very satisfyingly on to the canvas. Paint had splashed on to the linoleum and even on to the wall, but she knew it didn’t matter. This was an artist’s studio and she was now an artist, painting picture after picture for Georgie.

  She heard voices downstairs calling, but she was so engrossed on trying yet another picture of the beach that she took no notice and carried on splashing the paint on to the canvas with sweeping, unrestricted strokes.

  The door opened and Kitty peered round the door. ‘Oh my, what have you done?’

  Jenny glanced up but the maid had disappeared and she heard her shouting, ‘Sir – madam, she’s up here.’

  She heard the murmur of conversation on the landing and then Miles and Charlotte were standing in the doorway, gazing round the room. Jenny glanced around her too, seeing for the first time the state of the room through their eyes. Now she’d be in trouble. Perhaps they’d send her away for making such a mess, for using Charlotte’s paper and paints without permission. She took a deep breath and said the only words she thought would save her.

  ‘Hello, I’m painting a picture for Georgie.’ She held her breath, waiting for Miles to stride across the room and raise his hand to smack her, but he was standing in the doorway still looking about him. The look on his face was more anxious than angry and it was Charlotte who made the first move.

  For a brief moment Jenny cringed, but Charlotte was smiling and coming towards her saying, ‘How nice, darling. May I see?’

  She stood beside Jenny and studied the picture carefully. ‘Why, it’s the beach.’

  Jenny smiled her most winning smile. ‘I want some green for that spiky grass, but I can’t remember what to mix.’

  ‘Blue and yellow. Here, let me show you.’

  Jenny spent the next hour happily, with Charlotte showing her how to mix the different colours and by the end of that time, with Charlotte’s guidance, Jenny had produced a picture that was almost like the one in her head. The beach now had little white shells and brown pebbles. The sea was blue with white tips to the waves and the grass at the bottom of the picture was just the right colour. There was even a patch of dark green samphire.

  ‘Now, I think we’d better tidy up a bit, don’t you?’ Charlotte said gently when the picture was finished. ‘But I tell you what we’ll do. We’ll find a table for you and put it in the corner over there. Then you can have your own paints and brushes.’

  ‘And paper?’

  ‘And paper,’ Charlotte promised. ‘You can have your very own space in the studio. And you can come up here any time you like. How would that be?’

  The child didn’t answer. Instead, she flung her arms around Charlotte’s waist and buried her face against her. Charlotte stroked her hair, feeling a lump in her throat as she remembered her own happiness when Miles had fitted out the studio as his wedding gift to her.

  Seventeen

  Georgie came home the following week. He arrived whilst the children were still having lessons, but he was waiting for her in the hallway when they skipped out of th
e dining room. Jenny’s eyes shone and her mouth formed an ‘Oh!’ of delight. ‘I’ve got a present for you,’ she said, when at last she found her voice. ‘Wait there.’

  She skidded across the hall and tore up the stairs, returning only minutes later with her precious painting. Miles had had it framed for her in readiness for Georgie’s return.

  ‘That’s wonderful, Jen. My favourite place – the beach. We’ll go there whilst I’m home, if it’s fine.’

  Later, he insisted that the picture should hang on the wall in his bedroom next to the one of the school in Ravensfleet, which Charlotte had painted, but the moment was spoilt by the arrival home of Philip.

  Now Jenny would not have Georgie all to herself.

  Over dinner, there was a strange tension between the family members that the child could not understand. All three brothers were at home and she’d heard both Ben and Philip admit that they’d joined up. This news had upset both Charlotte and Miles; only Georgie seemed pleased, slapping his brothers on the back and declaring that the war would soon be over now.

  Jenny glanced from one to the other, aware of the atmosphere, yet too young to understand. But to her delight, Georgie was true to his promise. He had three days’ leave and he spent most of his time with her. He taught her to ride the second-hand bicycle that Miles had bought for her and even managed to persuade her to ride a little pony.

  ‘Don’t let go,’ she cried, clinging to him. ‘He might gallop off with me.’

  ‘No, he won’t.’ Georgie laughed. ‘He’s getting old now. His galloping days are over. But he likes to feel useful. He loves giving you a ride.’

  When they arrived back home, Jenny asked, ‘Can we go to the beach tomorrow? Just the two of us.’

  Playfully, Georgie tweaked her nose. ‘As long as it’s not raining.’