Jenny's War

by Dickinson, Margaret

  ‘Oh yeah. And let everybody know where we’re living?’

  Dot glared at him in the flickering candlelight and Jenny sensed a row brewing. ‘Yer can send it anonymous.’

  Arfer lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair. ‘Go to bed, Dot. Yer’ll just have to put up with it.’

  Dot – and everyone else in the area – had no choice. The RAF were indeed training for something very special and continued to fly low over the reservoir night after night. Some of the locals did write to the authorities to complain about the low-flying aircraft.

  ‘My milk yield’s down,’ complained one farmer and another declared that his hens had stopped laying.

  It wasn’t until the middle of May when the papers were full of the raid that had been made on the German dams in the Ruhr valley that the locals realized just what had been going on. The aircrews of the Lancaster bombers, specially adapted to carry the ‘bouncing bombs’, had been practising low-level, night flying.

  ‘Ah well, then, if that’s what it was all about,’ the local farmers who’d protested to the authorities when all the noise had been going on said to one another, ‘in that case, I don’t mind my livestock being frightened half to death. If only they’d told us . . .’

  But of course the training had been done in strict secrecy, known only to a few – apart, that is, from the people living near the Derwent reservoir, though at the time even they hadn’t known why.

  Forty-One

  ‘Jen, I’ve got something to tell you.’

  Dot stood uncertainly in the doorway of Jenny’s bedroom. Surprised, the girl looked up, her paintbrush suspended in mid-air. It wasn’t often her mother sought her out and she hardly ever came to find her. Usually, it was a yell from downstairs. ‘Jen, get yerself down here this minute.’

  Dot came into the bedroom closing the door quietly behind her. That was something else that was different. Usually, Jenny thought, you could hear just where Dot was in the house by the noise; slamming doors, rattling pots and pans or the wireless blaring out the latest dance music. Dot loved the Glenn Miller band and was always begging Arthur to take her dancing. But now she perched on the end of Jenny’s bed, twisting her fingers nervously. ‘We’re leaving.’

  Jenny said nothing. This news was no surprise. Her mother hated the country, but she’d thought that at least here, where her mother was able to get into the city regularly, it had been better than at the first cottage. At least, for Dot. And for Jenny. Apart from not attending school, she was drawing and painting every day with Arthur’s encouragement and even with Dot’s tacit approval.

  ‘I’m – leaving Arthur.’

  Now Jenny was surprised, shocked even. ‘Leaving Uncle Arthur?’ She regarded her mother steadily, but Dot was avoiding meeting her gaze.

  ‘Has he got another woman?’ Jenny asked bluntly.

  Dot bit her lip and shook her head. ‘No – no. It’s – it’s me. I – we’re – going to live with Jim.’

  ‘Jim? The butcher?’

  Dot nodded.

  Jenny was silent for several moments, digesting the news, taking it all in and its implications before she said, ‘What about Arthur? Does he know?’

  Dot nodded.

  ‘So – was that what the row was about last night?’

  It had been nothing unusual to hear the couple quarrelling. Jenny had hidden her head beneath the bedcovers, trying to block out the raised voices. But now she realized that the noise had gone on longer than usual and had ended with a slam of the back door and the sound of Arthur’s van driving off.

  She’d fallen asleep then and hadn’t heard the van return. When he hadn’t appeared at breakfast, she’d just thought Arthur had had another of his late nights on ARP duties. She hadn’t realized that he and his van hadn’t returned at all until Dot said now, ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘Gone? Gone where?’

  Dot shrugged. ‘He’ll have stayed with one of his mates in the city, I ’spect.’

  Jenny paused a moment, staring at her mother, before she asked, ‘Don’t you care?’

  ‘Not really. He was a bad lot. Getting you involved in his thieving.’

  Jenny almost laughed aloud. It hadn’t bothered Dot at the time and, young though she still was, Jenny knew her mother would bend the truth to fit her own needs. Whilst she’d been with Arthur and he’d been generous with money and had looked after her – looked after both of them – Dot had turned a blind eye to his bad ways. She’d said nothing at the time about Arthur using Jenny as his accomplice. Only now, when it suited her, was it a useful excuse to leave him.

  ‘How long’s this been going on? You and Jim, I mean?’

  ‘Er – well – soon after we got here, really. When I went into town, I’d call and see him and we’d have a cuppa in the back when the shop wasn’t busy. And we got to talking. You know how it is.’

  Not really, Mum, Jenny wanted to say. I’m only thirteen. But she didn’t say a word because, yes, in a way she did know how it was. At least, she knew what her mother was like.

  Arthur Osborne had lasted longer than most of the previous ‘uncles’. Some had lasted only a few weeks, others a few months. Only Arthur had lasted over four years. But now even his time was up.

  ‘Are you sure about this, Mum? Uncle Arthur’s been good to you. To both of us.’

  ‘I know he has, Jen, in his own way. But he’s going to get caught eventually. Oh, I know he thinks he’s got the Devil’s own luck, but one of these days – ’ She broke off and then added, ‘And I don’t want either of us to be accused of being his accomplice.’

  ‘I agree with you there, Mum, but is Jim any better? He’s been taking the meat that Uncle Arthur’s been supplying. Maybe he’s not doing the actual stealing, but he’s receiving stolen goods, isn’t he? And that’s a crime too.’

  Dot looked uncomfortable. Her pathetic excuse for leaving Arthur was not standing up to Jenny’s shrewd assessment of both men. One was not much better than the other.

  Dot stood up suddenly. ‘Well, we’re going and that’s an end to it. We’re moving in with Jim above the shop and you can go to school and help him in the shop when you come home and at weekends. And he says when you’re old enough to leave school, there’s a job for you with him.’ She smiled brightly as if she was trying to convince herself as well as her daughter. ‘Now what could be better than that, eh?’

  Jenny’s eyes narrowed. ‘Staying on at school, passing my exams and getting into Sheffield School of Art, that’s what.’

  Dot stared at her for a moment and then burst out laughing. ‘Well, you can forget about that, sunshine. You’re not with them bloody Thorntons now.’

  Jim came with his butcher’s van and loaded all Dot’s clothes and shoes together with Jenny’s few belongings into the back.

  ‘You can both squeeze into the front, girls,’ he said, his round, florid face sweating, causing him to mop it with a handkerchief. ‘Now then,’ he said, climbing into the driver’s seat, ‘off we go.’ Jenny saw him put out a podgy hand to touch Dot’s knee. ‘I can’t tell you how happy you’ve made me, Dot love. It’ll be wonderful to have you living with me. Both of you,’ he added hastily. ‘I’ve been very lonely since my wife died. And we weren’t blessed with children, so there’s been no one – only my brother, and I don’t see him very often.’

  Dot smiled and patted his knee and then left it resting there. Jenny looked out of the window, sickened by her mother’s flirtatious ways and the string of men she’d had. She’d make sure she wasn’t like that when she was older.

  As she watched the houses flashing by, the truth hit her with a jolt. There’d only ever be one man that she’d truly love. Young though she still was – and she knew that if she were to confide in anyone, they’d only laugh at her – she already knew that she loved Georgie Thornton like she would never love anyone else. The realization brought tears to her eyes, for even though she stoutly believed that he was still alive, that one day he would come back, she very much
doubted that he would ever want to see her again.

  And even if he did, he would always view her as a scruffy little urchin. Jenny Mercer – as Dot had told her she must call herself again now – was not the sort of girl that Georgie Thornton would, or could, ever love and want to marry.

  The knowledge caused her bitter pain.

  Forty-Two

  Jim Bradshaw was trying to impress them both.

  ‘This is our room, Dot. I’ve had it all decorated specially.’ The smell of fresh paint still hung in the air. ‘I hope you like it. And then Jenny shall have the spare room. I’ll get that done out for you too.’

  ‘What about when your brother comes to stay?’ Dot asked.

  Jim shrugged. ‘He doesn’t come very often and if he does, he can sleep on the couch in the front room. Jenny,’ he added firmly, ‘must have the spare room.’

  They unpacked, Dot taking three times as long as Jenny to arrange her clothes. She even commandeered half of the wardrobe in the spare room.

  ‘Tea’s ready when you are,’ Jim called up the stairs and they went down to find a sumptuous meal on the table.

  ‘I’ve not seen food like this since before the war,’ Dot marvelled. ‘Oh Jim, you are good to us.’

  ‘So, what do you like to do, Jenny?’ he asked as they tucked into the meal.

  ‘Oh, don’t ask her that. She’ll bore you to death with all her talk of painting.’

  ‘You like to paint?’ Jim persisted.

  Jenny glanced at her mother, who was pursing her lips in disapproval, but then she nodded in answer to Jim’s question.

  ‘We’ve got an art school in Sheffield, but it was badly damaged in the bombing at the end of 1940. I believe the students are housed in temporary accommodation, though, so it’s still going. Have you left school yet, Jenny?’

  Again Jenny glanced at her mother for guidance.

  ‘She’s not been able to go to school for a few weeks – ’

  Another lie, Jenny thought. She hadn’t been to school for almost a full school year.

  ‘And,’ Dot was saying, ‘she’s fourteen in August so she should be able to leave then. I don’t think there’s any need for her to go back now, do you? She can start helping you in the shop right away, Jim.’

  Jim blinked. ‘Oh, I think she should go back even if only for a few weeks until she can leave legally.’ He leaned towards Dot and lowered his voice, though Jenny heard him add, ‘I don’t want attendance officers and the like coming here.’

  Dot stared at him for a moment and then smiled. She put her hand over his on the white tablecloth. ‘Of course, you’re right, Jim. Whatever you say.’

  Jim smiled and glanced at Jenny. ‘There’s a school just round the corner from here. I’m sure they’ll take you.’

  Three days later, Jenny was enrolled at the school. She was apprehensive at first, worried in case she was asked too many questions about her previous school, but it seemed the headmaster and his staff were used to their pupils having varying abilities. Though she had missed months of schooling, Jenny found she was by no means the worst in the class. And there was another thing she hadn’t expected; the city kids were more like the ones she’d known in London. True, they spoke funny, but then they said she did too. But there was a mutual respect. Sheffield had had its share of bombing so all the children could identify with Jenny and sympathize with the Blitz which Londoners had suffered.

  ‘There’re lots of kids still away,’ they told her. ‘Evacuated to the country when the bombing started here and they haven’t come back yet.’

  The ones that were left were tough kids, too, who stood no nonsense, and they soon recognized that same feistiness in Jenny. And there was something else that was similar to back home: the boys and girls mixed freely. True, there were the groups, gangs almost, she supposed, but they weren’t enemies with others. Boys didn’t jeer at the girls and pull their plaits and the girls joined in the games of playground football rather than sticking to the girlie games of skipping and hopscotch. At the last village school she’d attended, the girls and boys had been strictly segregated and had skirted around each other warily. If a boy was seen walking home with a girl, or even speaking to one, he was teased unmercifully by his peers. ‘Is she your girlfriend?’ And the boy would blush, hang his head and thrust his hands deep into his trouser pockets and walk away. And that had been the end of any blossoming friendship, nipped in the bud before it could even begin.

  But here it was different. The school had separate playgrounds for boys and girls, but they never seemed to stay in them. Boys came into the girls’ quadrangle and girls into the boys’. And no one seemed to bother to stop them. The teaching staff were conspicuous by their absence at break time and lunchtime, no doubt huddled in the staff rooms taking a well-earned respite.

  Jenny now attended a secondary school. There were no primary school children there, only eleven-year-olds and upwards.

  ‘I’m surprised you’ve been evacuated to us,’ her form teacher reiterated the children’s comments as Jenny answered her questions about her age and previous school. ‘A lot of our children have been evacuated out of Sheffield, not into it.’

  ‘Don’t tell ’em we’ve been in Derbyshire,’ Dot had warned her as she’d set off for school on the first morning. ‘Make out you’ve just come from London.’

  But the children who were still left in the city were friendly enough and soon Jenny was involved in their games and forming tentative new friendships. And the very best thing about the new school was the art teacher, Miss Wells – a perceptive, go-ahead young woman who spotted Jenny’s natural talent at once and, without setting her apart from her peers, quietly encouraged the girl.

  They settled in with Jim; he was an easy-going man who was pathetically grateful for their company and even more thrilled to have a woman like Dot sharing his bed. And he was kind and generous towards Jenny. As he had promised, he redecorated the small bedroom where she slept, bought new bedcovers and told her to tell him if there was anything she needed. ‘Anything at all, Jenny, and I’ll try to get it for you.’

  Tears prickled her throat. They were the same words that Charlotte had used when Jenny had first arrived at the manor. Now she smiled at Jim and murmured, ‘You’re very kind.’

  ‘Now don’t you go spoiling her,’ Dot simpered.

  Jenny was surprisingly happy at the school and whilst she still missed Bobby and the rest of the Hutton family, most of all she yearned to go back to Lincolnshire. She knew she couldn’t – they didn’t want her – but it didn’t stop the longing deep inside.

  ‘You’re leaving school at the end of term,’ Dot announced one morning over breakfast. Jim was already at work in the shop, but Dot was still in her dressing gown, her hair done up in curlers, smoking her first cigarette of the day and drinking tea.

  Jenny’s chin stuck out stubbornly. ‘I don’t want to leave. I like it there. Miss Wells says—’

  ‘Miss Wells, Miss Wells – that’s all I seem to hear from you. And who’s this famous Miss Wells, when she’s at home?’ Dot glanced at her daughter and her eyes narrowed spitefully. ‘At least she seems to be taking the place of those bloody Thorntons.’ She snorted. ‘I s’pose that’s something to be grateful for.’ There was silence between them whilst Jenny gritted her teeth and glared defiantly at her mother.

  ‘And you can take that look off your face. If I say yer leaving school, then yer leaving, ne’er mind what any teacher ses. Jim wants you to work in the shop and I want you to be earning yer keep, so there.’

  Jenny turned away, her eyes filling with tears. She already helped Jim out in the shop after school and at weekends. It was all right, she supposed. He was nice to her and thoughtful, but it could be very cold standing behind the counter all day. The meat had to be kept as cool as possible and Jim insisted the shop door was left open at all times, even when there was a gale blowing or it was pelting with rain. And it was summer now. What on earth it would be like in the winter, Jenny
dared not think.

  ‘My customers’ll think I’m closed if my door’s not open,’ Jim explained one particularly wet day. ‘Can’t have that, now can we? Now, love, would you like to check the coupons for me?’ He bent towards her, leaning a little too close for Jenny’s liking. ‘You can sit in the back where it’s warmer.’

  And so when the holidays came, Jenny said a sorrowful farewell to her classmates and an even sadder goodbye to Miss Wells.

  ‘Keep up your drawing and painting, Jenny. You’ve a real talent. If only . . .’ The young woman had bitten her lip, not wanting to cause the young girl any more anguish. She knew of Jenny’s hopes and dreams. But she’d met Dot once and knew without even being told that Jenny’s chances of further education were nil. Jenny’s mother wanted her working and the sooner the better.

  It was not unusual for parents to want their children to leave school as soon as they were able, but it was such a shame in Jenny’s case. She was only of average ability in other subjects but her artwork was outstanding. Miss Wells even enlisted the headmaster’s help, but there was nothing either of them could do in the face of the mother’s demands.

  On the first morning of the summer holidays, Jenny started work full time in the butcher’s shop. She’d wondered if she’d see Arthur bringing further supplies but it seemed he never came near the place now.

  ‘Can’t blame him, I suppose,’ Jim had said when she’d feigned innocence and asked. ‘After all, I’ve stolen his girls, haven’t I?’ But it seemed that Jim still had other black market suppliers and the ‘under-the-counter’ meat was still available for those who could afford to pay an extortionate price for it. The only wonder of it all was that no one ever reported Jim to the authorities, but she supposed most of them were only too glad to take advantage of a bit more meat now and again and purposely never asked questions. As for Dot, she went out into the centre of town every day, roaming around the shops, trying on all the latest fashions and coming home most days with something new. Jim spoiled her even more than Arthur had done, his gratitude for her presence in his life knowing no bounds.