String of Pearls

by Madge Swindells

  ‘Well, I wasn’t talking about growing up, I was talking about fun – teenage fun. She only has three years left of being a teenager . . . not much time to pack in a hell of a lot of enjoyment. Forget childhood, that’s over around twelve or even before.’

  Ignoring Helen’s pique, Simon turned to Miro. ‘What about you, Miro? Can you dance?’

  ‘Heavens, no.’

  ‘I’ll teach you both, then you can practice together.’

  Helen decided to leave them to it. She got up and went outside. It was a perfect day for giving the roses a light pruning, she decided. That would take her most of the afternoon. She would clear up the lunch dishes later.

  Dad had sensibly fenced off the rose garden. This was a task she loved and it was just what she needed to revive her feelings, but the strains of the dance music bothered her. Simon’s subtle criticism had hurt. He didn’t understand; the boby-socks cult had not yet reached Britain. British youth had two choices: child or adult, and being in between was tough, but it was all she knew about. She’d never experienced anything else, never thought about anything else. She’d read articles in magazines about youth in America, but that was America. This was Britain.

  It was tea time when Simon came to fetch her. He looked happy and his skin had a light sheen to it. It made him look younger. She had no idea how old he was, but she guessed he was in his early forties.

  ‘I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘They want to give you a short demonstration.’

  Helen got on with her pruning. ‘You didn’t offend me at all. What are you talking about?’ Why should he have the satisfaction of knowing his words had hurt?

  ‘I guess things are very different here. Back home, teenagers and the teenage years are considered very precious.’

  ‘Well, I guess you don’t have much else to worry about.’

  She looked round and saw that he was laughing at her. Damn him. There and then she made up her mind to spend what little leisure time she had at the dancing studio in town. She would learn to jive, since it seemed to matter so much. She wasn’t going to be a ‘has-been’ at the Yanks’ Christmas dance. Fuck them all, she thought, feeling astounded that she should use such appalling language, even in her thoughts.

  Not wishing to disappoint them, she went inside to watch Daisy and Miro dancing and, despite her annoyance, she was impressed.

  Twelve

  Many weeks had passed since Miro had first met his controller. At the time he had wondered how he could possibly survive his trauma, for he was sick with self-loathing. Nevertheless, on every second Wednesday, throughout October and November, he had cycled to the pillbox and each time he had supplied disinformation that he hoped would confuse Paddy’s bosses, keep his parents fed and safe, and guarantee his survival. Paddy seemed satisfied with his work, but at each meeting he was alternatively threatened and bullied to bring more and still more.

  After one particularly unjust accusation of laziness, he had protested.

  ‘There’s nothing else. How could there be?’ He peered into the darkness, unable to see his enemy’s face, let alone discern the man’s expression, which left him baffled. ‘We live in the country. Gramps is retired. My foster mother works hard in a factory, but she has no knowledge of the war effort. My sister goes to school. My friends study hard. Most of their fathers have been called up. Apart from the Yanks, whom I don’t know, Mowbray is a village of women. How could anyone know anything that could be of use to you?’

  Paddy had hit him hard. The blow had been unexpected and he was caught off guard. It hadn’t hurt all that much, but the shock had been devastating. It was the first time anyone had hit him. At that moment he wanted nothing more than to kill Paddy. He had to hold back his natural instinct to go for him. That was when he learned about the dark side of his psyche.

  ‘Don’t think I don’t know about your morning rides with Captain Johnson,’ Paddy snarled. ‘Pump him for information.’

  What if I kill him? Miro thought. Miro was becoming very tall after an intense growing spell. Since August he had been taking boxing lessons at school. Lately he had a flick knife in his pocket, bartered from a classmate. It was more like a stiletto than a knife and Miro had to part with his stamp collection, but it was worth it. After all, he’d outgrown the hobby, Miro considered.

  What if he knifed Paddy in the dark? It would be so easy. His hand tightened around the hilt. He was squatting on the sand, close to the man’s ribs. He wouldn’t see it coming and no one would know who had knifed him.

  But Paddy dead would be no better than Paddy alive – it would be a mistake, Miro decided. The Brits would never know he was involved, but possibly Paddy’s controllers might and it would risk his parents’ survival. Besides, someone else would take his place.

  ‘Don’t argue, boyo. Just do what you’re told,’ Paddy was saying quietly. ‘I would think a nice young man like you would be anxious to help your parents. Shall I tell the camp commandant that you aren’t cooperating? That would be tickets for them, Miro. What’s it to be? Maybe you don’t care enough.’

  ‘Of course I care.’ He tried to keep his voice even and give nothing away. Feeling deeply humiliated, he’d blinked hard, fighting his fury which he had managed to keep under control for the past weeks.

  Towards the end of December, Paddy announced that he was going away. He would be back early in January and he would contact Miro then. He left him plenty of work to do in the interim. Miro had been given a prodigious task of counting the number of army tents erected in and around Mowbray and checking out the equipment hidden under tarpaulins and dumped in parks and behind the barriers of closed-off roads.

  He spent most of his free time during the Christmas holidays on this task and the figures were impressive, but he had no intention of passing on the information. He would divide every figure by five, he decided. Whether or not that would help his conscience, his parents, or even himself he could not say. What if it were a trap? What if all these statistics were known to Paddy?

  Free from Paddy for at least two Wednesdays, Miro brightened up. The war news was yet another plus factor. As 1942 drew to a close, the tide of war was turning in the Allies’ favour at last: The Red Army’s great victory at Stalingrad was almost complete; there were signs of success in the Pacific War: the Japanese were losing badly in Guadalcanal; Japanese troops were trapped in Papua; and the Allied position in the Solomon’s was improving daily. British soldiers, too, were still pushing laboriously forward through the jungles of Burma. Lastly, Rommel had been forced to retreat in North Africa. But despite the press cuttings pinned on his wall and the map he pinned on his pegboard, where he could mark the new Allied positions with flags, Miro was suffering from depression, and lately it was because of the GIs’ Christmas dance which had been a roaring success for everyone except Miro.

  Daisy, who had looked fantastic in her flared, midnight blue skirt with the frilly white blouse and who had relied on Miro for dancing practice every day, ignored him at the party. Instead she teamed up with her young sergeant and danced exclusively with him all evening. His name was Mike Lawson, Miro learned at last. After two rebuttals from Daisy, Miro had retreated to the bar where he consumed several glasses of wine and a Scotch and finally lost his temper listening to the young GIs, who were hardly older than himself, boasting of how the Germans would run like rabbits when they crossed the Channel.

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, Yanks,’ he had said, interrupting their jokes. ‘It’s a mistake to underestimate the enemy. The Germans are tough and nasty and they fight to the death . . . the closer you get to Germany, the fiercer they’ll become. Look at Stalingrad – Germany’s Sixth Army was surrounded by Allied forces, their weapons had seized up in sub-zero temperatures, they were wearing summer uniforms, they had no food and they were dying by their hundreds daily of cold, typhus and hunger, but they still carried on fighting.’

  ‘What the heck! We’ve got a Nazi sympathizer here, b
oys.’ They were all a little drunk when they piled into Miro. It was Simon who saw the incident and hauled him out.

  ‘Don’t you think picking on a schoolboy is a little beneath you,’ he told the GIs, which put the lid on Miro’s humiliation. He was patched up in the camp clinic and went home nursing a black eye.

  He tried to explain to Simon at breakfast the following morning. ‘All I wanted was to warn them not to underestimate the enemy.’

  ‘Most of these kids have never seen action,’ Simon told him. ‘They don’t know what to expect. Not one of them knows how they will react to extreme danger. What they need is self-confidence, not fearful premonitions. Keep your mouth shut in future.’

  That was the only piece of information Simon had ever let slip and it certainly wasn’t going to be passed on to Paddy.

  As Wednesday, January the thirteenth, drew closer, Miro’s fear was like a virus, it fed on his guts and his mind, growing stronger by the day. It invaded his dreams and brought bile to his mouth in his first moment of wakefulness. He was all screwed up, hunched like a soldier under fire. His concentration was severely disabled, his studies suffered and once again Miro became a pariah in the house. Best to leave him alone, everyone agreed, since he had become impossibly rude and inattentive. So they let him be, and Miro was too wrapped up in his own fearful introspection to notice the change. He had only one defence to cope with life’s setbacks, to retreat into himself and shut out the world. But the world would not let him be.

  The thirteenth was a particularly dark night, which was a good omen, Miro decided. As he approached the bus shelter adjacent to the pill box, he switched off his headlight and dismounted. The beach front was as dark as pitch. He could hear the sea lapping on the shore, but not a glimmer of reflected light, or a gleam of evanescence penetrated the Stygian darkness. He crept down five stone steps and set a straight course through the sand to the pill box. So where was it? Without any wind, the stench was so much worse and the damp sand saturated his shoes.

  ‘Over here, boyo.’ He heard the whisper coming from his right and slightly behind him. So much for his navigation.

  ‘Whistle or something,’ he said.

  ‘Just keep walking.’

  Moments later he reached the cement wall. Feeling his way with his hands, he moved around the corner. ‘It’s so dark,’ he murmured.

  ‘You’re not afraid of the dark, are you, Miro? There are thick clouds, a sea mist and no moon. So what have you got for me?’

  ‘The GI billeted on us spends most of his time in London,’ Miro replied, shaking inwardly. ‘When he’s around he eats at the camp and returns to sleep pretty late, but I went to the locksmith and copied his key, so I’ll be able to get in his room when he’s out.’

  ‘Good thinking. And the figures?’

  ‘Here.’ He drew six sheets of note paper out of his pocket and handed them over. He was glad of the darkness now for he could feel his cheeks burning. Paddy put the notes in his pocket.

  ‘Did you bring any pictures?’ Miro had chosen bravado as his best cover, hoping his voice wouldn’t crack.

  ‘What sort of pictures?’ Paddy teased.

  As if the bastard didn’t know. ‘Proof that my father is alive.’

  ‘That takes time, Miro. You made a deal . . . you agreed to work for the SS to support your parents. Everything else is extraneous. You can’t expect them to take you seriously with the sort of information you’re bringing in.’

  ‘What do you expect, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Make friends with your lodger. Keep your ears open. Particularly for any kind of a scandal. Find something, anything, or they’ll have your mum on half-rations until you come up with the news they want. They do that sort of thing . . . just to keep us on our toes.’

  Raging inwardly Miro climbed to his feet.

  ‘I’ll go then?’ he suggested.

  ‘Do better next week. Same time, same place,’ Paddy said. ‘Let’s hear what the Yanks are saying about the invasion. When will you be seventeen?’

  ‘In June.’ He was pretty sure Paddy knew that.

  ‘The GIs are not much older than you. If you can’t get anything out of the lodger, take one of them riding. Yes, why don’t you? Let them know about your Gramps’ riding school.’

  The thought of Paddy snooping around their house brought another wave of oppressive fear. Trapped though he was, he had no intention of harming any member of his foster family. He loved them all, just as he loved his parents.

  ‘You might as well go if this is all you have.’

  ‘You have three weeks of painstaking research in your pocket. Don’t always think the worst,’ Miro retorted.

  ‘They always want more.’

  The shroud of oppressive blackness had lightened a little. He could see the sand dimly. He trudged back to the steps and stumbled around until he collided with the shelter and found his bike. He switched on his front lamp and wheeled the bike to the road. Soon he was riding into the dim pool of his headlights towards home. He had survived another Wednesday, they were winning the war. One day he would be free.

  Thirteen

  The NAAFI canteen which Helen ran, together with four other women, bore witness to the empty coffers of a nation whose total resources had been spent on war technology. It had been set up in the corner of a warehouse on the outskirts of New Milton and it boasted three gas burners, two paraffin heaters and several primus stoves in case of gas cuts. There were paraffin lamps hanging around in case of electricity cuts and a paraffin fridge standing alongside a newer electrically-operated one. The walls were painted dark green and posters showing smiling land girls, factory workers and WRENS were plastered over the green. The ceiling was very high and consisted of corrugated iron sheets fastened to girders. It was a dark, draughty, gloomy cavern, but no one working there had time to worry about that.

  Helen and Joan, the headmistress of a local school, ran the evening shift on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays on a voluntary basis. Usually there were two of them working together, but tonight Helen was alone and for some reason they were unusually busy. Her worn corduroy slacks were spattered with fat, her new woollen blouse looked the worse for wear, which was her own fault, she reasoned, since she had forgotten to bring her clean overall, and she had burned herself several times. Her hair was concealed by a scarf tied like a turban, which was the fashion for women coping with canteen and factory work.

  By ten p.m. she was exhausted and her feet burned. A strong smell of sizzling fat on the burner, over-strong coffee and burned toast laid witness to her rush to get through the orders from a never-ending queue of uniformed men and women who were cold and hungry. The floor space was crowded. There were a few troops from the nearby army base, eight Land girls, who had been served and were sitting at a tubular steel table in their khaki and green gear and laughing a lot, plus a crowd of ARP (Air Raid Precaution wardens) in their navy battledresses. They were all over fifty and looked as tired as she was.

  ‘Baked beans and a pork pie, a packet of ten Woodbines and a cup of tea, miss,’ said an old man in the uniform of the Home Guard.

  She raced to hand him his order. ‘Two and sixpence. Next . . . next . . . next . . .’

  The room was getting more crowded: several policemen had joined the queue and nearer to the door she saw the navy blue jackets of the AFS (Auxiliary Fire Service).

  Joan, a well-built, capable women of fifty with iron grey hair and a ready smile, arrived at half past nine. ‘Sorry Helen. We had a school concert,’ she apologized. ‘I had to be there.’

  Helen smiled. ‘Don’t worry. I guessed it was something urgent. I’ll run to the toilet and have a cup of tea. I need a short break. I’m getting careless.’

  ‘You look all in. Busy tonight?’

  ‘Crazy . . . has been ever since I got here.’

  At ten p.m. a group of soldiers returning from duty in Southampton walked in. They were grimy and they looked shocked.

  ‘Jesus! You can’t be
lieve what it’s like, whole streets going down like ninepins . . . the sky’s alight with incendiaries, like a fireworks show, only a thousand times better. In next to no time those old houses are bursting into flames.’

  Helen nodded, not wishing to remember her own experiences in Southampton.

  ‘Did you hear about the new giant shelter?’

  ‘The one by the civic centre?’

  ‘That’s it. It was supposed to be impregnable. Well, a landmine fell clean through the exit. Everyone died of blast. Hundreds of ’em.’ When we cleared away the debris to get in, we saw everyone sitting upright in rows, just as if they were alive, but they weren’t. Gave me a nasty turn, I don’t mind telling you.’

  ‘Knock it off, Mike. You’re scaring the ladies half to death.’

  ‘Only because I was right there with my family, night after night for almost a year, while our house was flattened and Daisy’s school was burned to the ground,’ she muttered to Joan as she rushed to cook his two fried eggs. She overheated the skillet and splattered herself with hot fat. Flames shot up from the burning fat on the gas burner. Her own private blitz.

  ‘Oh God! Mind out!’ Joan rushed from the till and rammed the lid on the pan. ‘That’s what I did to an incendiary that landed in my garden last week. I popped the dustbin lid on it. Worked like a charm,’ Joan told her.

  ‘Red or Blue?’ The blue exploded, the red merely burned, Helen knew.

  ‘Blue. It made a mess of the lid, but that’s all.’ Helen wiped over the stove and they were back in business. ‘Next . . .’

  Simon’s feelings for the English had changed considerably since he moved in with the Conroys and he thought about this on the long drive back from London. He tried to analyze his emotions, which were part love and part irritation, but it seemed that he could seldom forget Helen, nor the amazing vision of her standing naked when he gatecrashed her bathroom. He had always known she was lovely, but she had not inspired any physical attraction, perhaps because of those awful clothes she wore. Since then sexual tension was spoiling his sleep and invading his dreams. He had the feeling that she felt the same way, but she had no intention of giving in. Instead they had been scrapping and snarling. He had frequently voiced his criticism of the austere life she lead and the way she had walled up her emotions, the way she neglected to instill joy into her children’s lives, and the sad atmosphere in the house.