Now they were in the country amongst these kind, friendly people and Arthur had left his shady dealings far behind, everything would be all right.
Thirty
Not long after they’d settled into their cottage – if settled was the right word for what Dot felt and frequently said about the accommodation – Arthur brought a newspaper home that told of the dreadful night of bombing in London on 11 May. It was as if the enemy was having one final fling; from then onwards the bombing became less frequent and the papers were reporting that Hitler had turned his attention away from London. By the end of June the startling news came through that he had invaded Russia.
‘He’ll not bother with us any more. Can’t we go home, Arfer?’ Dot pleaded.
‘’Itler weren’t the reason we left,’ Arthur reminded her.
‘But we could go to another part of the city, couldn’t we? I don’t like it here.’ But Dot’s whining had no effect on Arthur. He did like it here.
Jenny was happy at school and her weekends were spent on the Fentons’ farm with Beryl. During the hay harvest, they were enlisted to help rake the cut grass. Most of the time, Susan was with them too, but occasionally it was just Beryl and Jenny. Jenny liked these times the best when there was just the two of them. She liked Susan, but she was sure that the girl felt that the newcomer was encroaching on her longstanding friendship with Beryl. And one day it became obvious that this was indeed the problem.
‘My mam says the papers reckon the bombing’s finished in London, so you’ll be going home soon, then?’ Susan couldn’t disguise the hope in her tone when Beryl was out of earshot.
‘Maybe.’ Jenny stared at Susan. ‘Don’t you like me, Susan?’ she asked bluntly.
Susan shrugged. ‘You’re all right. It’s just . . .’
‘It’s just you don’t like me being friends with Beryl, do you? She’s your best friend. And you think I might be trying to take her away from you.’
Susan turned a little pink and said hastily, ‘No, no, I—’
‘Oh yes, yes,’ Jenny countered, but she was smiling. ‘Look, I know you and Beryl are best friends and I’m not trying to break you up, but I want to be friends with both of you. And, like you say, I won’t be here for ever, but whilst I am, I promise I’m not trying to come between you. Okay?’
Susan nodded and smiled. ‘Okay.’
After that, things were better and when Jenny spent time with Beryl on her own, Susan no longer seemed to mind. But she hardy ever asked Jenny to go to her home. But then, Jenny thought, I don’t ask them back to the cottage. Arthur had made it very clear: No Visitors. But he, too, seemed to have taken to country life. He chatted to all the locals, even visited one or two farms asking if they had any light jobs he could do.
‘I’ve got a heart condition, mate,’ Jenny heard him say to Jack Fenton one Saturday morning when she was playing with Beryl and Arthur arrived. He fished out the piece of paper from his inside pocket. ‘That’s why I can’t go and join up. I’d go like a flash if I could, but I failed the medical. But if you’ve any little jobs I could help out with, then I’d feel I was doing my bit.’
Jack Fenton had pulled off his cap and scratched his head. ‘Farming’s heavy work, Mester. I don’t rightly know what I could find you to do, but I’ll keep you in mind.’
‘Thank you,’ Arthur held out his hand, ‘I appreciate it, mate.’
From the other side of the yard, Jenny watched as Arthur strolled away, but it was the look on Jack Fenton’s face as he too watched the other man that disturbed her. It was a puzzled look, but mingled with suspicion. Had the farmer seen right through Arthur Osborne – or Mercer, as she must remember to call him now?
Dot had no intention of even trying to settle in. ‘These women have no interest in fashion or make-up or anything,’ she grumbled. ‘They dress like scarecrows and hardly ever go out. The highlight of their week is the Women’s Institute meeting. They don’t even go to the pub with their husbands. They just sit at home knitting and listening to the wireless. And have you seen the size of that woman – the farmer’s wife? She’s like a little barrel on legs.’
‘I’ll get you a wireless, Dot, if that’s what you want.’
She glared at him. ‘Yeah, all right. That’d be nice, but don’t you dare buy me any knitting needles.’
‘It’d help with the war effort.’ Arthur chuckled and was rewarded by a wet dishcloth being thrown in his face.
If things had continued in this way, their stay in the country might have been all right, but when the days grew shorter and the dark nights longer, Arthur began to go out late, not returning until the afternoon of the following day.
‘Where’s he going, Mum?’ Jenny asked.
‘Never you mind,’ Dot answered, her mouth tight and her eyes unusually anxious. Dot rarely worried about anything. Even the bombing hadn’t really frightened her – just annoyed her that the war had interrupted her life and deprived her of the things she wanted. She couldn’t always buy the make-up she wanted and only Arthur could come by silk stockings for her.
‘But . . .’
‘Stop asking questions, yer nosy little bleeder.’
Jenny gasped and stared at her mother. Dot was certainly rattled. The girl turned away and asked no more, but from her bedroom window she watched Arthur creep out into the night dressed in a black sweater and trousers. He was also wearing a cap pulled low over his forehead. To her surprise he didn’t get into the van, but disappeared into the darkness on foot.
Whatever was he doing?
Three nights later, Jenny found out and then wished she’d stayed in blissful ignorance.
‘I need you both to come with me tonight,’ Arthur announced at teatime.
Dot stared at him. ‘Me?’
‘Both of you.’
Jenny quivered inside. Instinct told her that creeping out in the blackout couldn’t be innocent. Arthur was up to something.
‘I need you to help me, Dot, and the kid can keep watch.’
Dot glanced at Jenny and then back at Arthur. ‘I don’t think we should involve her.’
Jenny held her breath. Was her mother – for the first time that she could ever remember – actually thinking of her daughter’s welfare? But the brief thought was dashed in a moment as Dot added, ‘She might blab.’
‘No, she won’t.’ Arthur turned his winning smile on Jenny. ‘You wouldn’t tell on your dad, would yer, Tich?’ He reached out and grasped her arm with a firm squeeze that was perhaps meant to be friendly. But Jenny felt it was a threat.
She glanced at her mother for help, but Dot was avoiding her gaze.
‘What do you want us to do?’ Dot whispered.
‘I can get a good price for chickens and ducks in Sheffield. I’ve made one or two good contacts there and a couple in Manchester too. Butchers who don’t ask too many questions but are glad of anything they can get their hands on. Now, there’s a farm about five miles away in the next dale where the chickens are in a field a good distance from the house. And there’s ducks too. Ducks fetch a really good price.’
Jenny was glancing helplessly between Arthur and her mother. Surely, Dot was going to put a stop to this. It was stealing; there was no other word for it.
But Dot was nodding. ‘We’d better get some dark clothes like—’
‘For you, yes, you’re coming to help me, but it doesn’t matter about Jen. She’s going to be keeping watch near the farm.’
Already Jenny was shaking inside.
‘What if someone sees her? A kid of her age shouldn’t be out late at night.’
Arthur grinned, obviously pleased with himself. ‘Exactly. So if someone does see her, she starts to cry – loudly, mind, so we’ll hear her,’ He nodded towards her, now including Jenny in explaining the part she was to play. ‘It’s obvious she’s a stranger here, an’ when they get talking to her she can tell ’em she’s an evacuee and she’s got lost coming home in the dark from a friend’s house. You’ll have to take your time
with the story, Jen, to give us time to get away and get home in the van. Then you can tell ’em where you live but take a long time about it. Make out you’re not really sure where it is. They’ll be a while bringing you here and that should give us plenty of time.’
‘What if they call the police to deal with her?’ Dot said. ‘They might.’
‘It’s possible but most folks don’t involve the police, specially now, if they can sort things out themselves.’
Dot sniffed as she muttered, ‘Law-abiding citizens might. They’re not all like you who wouldn’t call a copper if you were dying.’
Arthur ignored the barb. ‘So, you go and have a nice kip, Jen, and we’ll wake you up when we’re ready to go.’
Jenny went up the narrow staircase to her bedroom at the back of the cottage. They weren’t even asking her if she agreed to help them. She was being given no choice in the matter.
Sleep was impossible; she lay on her bed, racking her brain as to how she could get out of this. But there wasn’t anything she could do, short of packing her belongings and running away. And where could she run to? She had no idea really where they were. She had a vague picture in her head of where Derbyshire was. She remembered it from the atlas at school. Somewhere in the middle of England, a long, long way from London. Lincolnshire was nearer, but she couldn’t go there. Dot had said the Thorntons had sent her back because they no longer wanted her. And besides – she buried her head in her pillow and beat it with her fist – they certainly wouldn’t want her now she was about to become a thief.
Thirty-One
As Jenny climbed into the back of the van she was shivering with cold and fear. Thrown from side to side as the vehicle bounced over the rough track, she was still trying to think of a way to escape. Arthur drove slowly through the blackout, anxious not to draw attention to himself and it seemed an age until the vehicle stopped. There was a pause whilst Arthur got out of the front and opened the back door for Jenny.
‘Be very quiet, Tich,’ Arthur whispered. ‘The farm gate’s up the lane there. Go and stand by it, but don’t go into the yard. They’ve got a dog and if you start it barking the farmer’ll likely come out to see what’s going on.’
‘Where – where are you and Mum going?’
‘We’ll be in the field further down the lane. Don’t worry if you hear a lot of squawking and quacking. You’ve only got to worry if the lights go on in the house and someone comes out.’
‘How – how do I warn you?’
‘First of all, you wave this torch. Yer mum’s going to keep watch for it. Then, if they come out, you start to cry like I told you.’
‘But – but you’re going to leave me here. You’re going to drive off and leave me here on my own.’
‘They’ll look after you.’
‘You know them?’
‘No, ’course I don’t, but folks aren’t going to leave a kid wandering about in the dark on her own, now are they?’
‘I – suppose not.’
‘Good girl. Now, off you go. Give us a wave with the torch when you get to the gate and then I’ll be moving the van a bit further along the road. When we’ve done, I’ll signal you with my torch and you come to us. Aw’ right?’
‘Aw’ right,’ Jenny said in a trembling voice. There was nothing else she could say, but it was very far from ‘all right’. She stood near the gate, every limb trembling. She glanced at the farmhouse. The windows were all in darkness, but that, of course, could be because of the blackout curtains. She couldn’t tell if anyone was still up or awake. But there was no noise from a dog. At least – not yet. She strained her eyes and her ears in the darkness, trying to see down the lane to where Arthur and her mother were. Faintly, she could hear the vehicle moving but then it stopped again. She thought she heard the door of the van shut, but after that she could see and hear nothing, for there was no moon and a light breeze carried any sounds in the opposite direction. Besides, Arthur would be minding they didn’t make any noise. She shivered and her teeth began to chatter.
After what seemed ages to the frightened girl, but was, in fact, only a few minutes, she heard squawking from the hen huts in the field. Jenny glanced towards the farmhouse and held her breath. Surely, the dog would hear and would begin barking. Animals had even better hearing than humans, she’d been told, and even she could hear the scuffling and cackling getting louder and echoing through the night air.
Suddenly, she heard the welcome sound of the van’s door being shut. Jenny peered into the darkness and saw the thin beam of a torch being waved. She ran down the lane, tripping and stumbling in her haste to reach them.
‘Ssh,’ came Arthur’s whisper through the darkness. ‘Don’t make such a noise. Quick, get in the front with yer mam.’
Jenny scrambled in, squeezing in beside Dot. ‘Mind where yer putting yer elbows,’ Dot hissed as Arthur got into the driver’s seat and started the engine.
Slowly he drew away, but the hens and ducks in the back started to squawk again.
‘Gawd, I hope we’re not stopped by a copper,’ Dot moaned. ‘There’s no hiding what’s in the back now.’
But they reached the cottage safely and took the three hens and two ducks into the shed at the back of the house. Arthur threw down some corn and the birds soon quietened.
‘I reckon what I ought to do,’ Arthur mused when they were safely back in the house and Dot had made them all a mug of hot cocoa, ‘is to get a few hens and ducks all above board, like, and—’
‘Then we wouldn’t have to steal any,’ Jenny said before she stopped to think.
Arthur glared at her, but he couldn’t argue with what she’d said. What they’d done this night was stealing and there was no getting away from it.
Except that they had got away with it. This time.
‘It’d hide the ones I – acquire.’
‘Why can’t you get rid of ’em straight away and why do you have to keep ’em alive?’ Dot wanted to know. ‘If you’d wrung their necks, we wouldn’t have had all that racket.’
‘Two reasons,’ Arthur answered sharply. ‘One, I can’t be running backwards and forwards to the city with three chickens and a couple of ducks. ’Tain’t worth the petrol and besides,’ he admitted sheepishly, ‘I don’t know how to kill ’em.’
Dot and Jenny stared at him. ‘Then you’d better learn pretty quick, hadn’t you?’
Arthur looked at Jenny. ‘Maybe you could ask your friends at the farm how I’d go about getting some chickens and that. Tell ’em we’re trying to do our bit for the war effort.’
Jenny stared at him and her insides quaked. The last thing she wanted to do was to ask such questions.
‘Don’t you have to have permission from the authorities?’ Dot put in. ‘There’s that many rules and regulations these days.’
‘To keep a few chickens?’ Arthur laughed. ‘Nah.’ He paused, was thoughtful for a moment before adding, ‘Do you?’
Dot put her mug on the table and got up. ‘Anyway, I’ve had enough for one night. I’m off to bed. You too, Jen. You’ll never be up for school in the morning.’
Jenny dragged herself wearily up the stairs, but she slept fitfully, waking every so often in the middle of a nightmare where she was surrounded by huge cackling hens pecking her.
‘I’ll come up to the farm with you, Jen,’ Arthur said on the Saturday morning. ‘I want to talk to Mr Fenton.’
The stolen chickens and ducks were still shut in the shed at the back of the cottage. Arthur fed them every day from a sack of grain that had suddenly materialized.
‘Oh Uncle Arthur, I don’t—’
‘Dad! You must call me “Dad”.’
Jenny bit her lip. She’d never had anyone to call ‘Dad’ and the name didn’t come easily. She was much more used to ‘Uncle’. ‘Won’t he think it funny we’ve suddenly got chickens?’
‘I’m not going to tell him we’ve already got some, silly. I want to find out about getting some. What I have to do.’
‘Build a hen house and feed ’em,’ Dot put in rationally. ‘What more can there be to it than that?’
‘He might be willing to sell me a few and – he might teach me how to kill them.’
Jenny shuddered, but there seemed no way she could get out of Arthur going with her to the farm.
‘Morning, guv’nor,’ Arthur greeted Mr Fenton jovially. The big man glanced at Jenny and smiled, but the look he cast at Arthur was wary and certainly not so friendly. ‘I wonder if you could give me a bit of advice. Now we’re living in the country, we’d like to do our bit – ’
Jenny scuttled away towards the back door of the farmhouse; she didn’t want to hear any more. But even when she found Beryl and they began to play Ludo, her mind was still on what was going on between Arthur and Jack Fenton in the farmyard.
Thirty-Two
Jenny’s fears were unfounded. To her surprise, Jack Fenton was only too willing to help. But then, she thought, Uncle Arthur could be very charming and persuasive when he wanted to be. And he’d have laboured the point about wanting to do his bit, she knew.
‘He’s told me where to buy what I need to build a hen hut,’ Arthur told Dot and Jenny later. ‘There’s an old wood yard not far away. I don’t have to use new wood, he said. And he’s agreed to sell me a few chickens and a couple of ducks to start us off. He wasn’t sure about regulations for someone starting out to keep livestock, though he did say there were definite regulations about keeping a pig. You have to have a licence to kill a pig.’ Arthur grinned and patted his pocket. ‘As if I didn’t know that. Already got one or two of the very documents.’
Dot blinked. ‘Whatever for? And however did you come by them?’
‘They’re forgeries, yer daft mare. I thought they might come in handy if we ever moved to the country.’
Dot’s eyes narrowed. ‘’Ave you been planning leaving London for a while, Arfer?’
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