Always in my Heart

by Pam Weaver

  ‘He couldn’t do it,’ Shirley agreed.

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Granny Roberts. ‘He’d have been bent in half.’

  ‘It wasn’t so much that,’ said Shirley. ‘It was the smell.’

  Granny Roberts shook her head sadly.

  ‘But that would have been – what, five months ago?’ said Janet. ‘Don’t tell me a body was down there all that time?’

  ‘I reckon that must have been why the village flooded last winter,’ said Granny Roberts.

  They heard the sound of footsteps and men’s voices. Shirley put a plate of doorstep sandwiches in the middle of the table. ‘Who was it? Do you know?’

  ‘Reuben Fletcher,’ said Granny.

  ‘What on earth was he doing in the culvert?’ said Shirley.

  ‘Search me,’ said Granny with a shrug.

  Janet frowned. ‘I know that name.’

  ‘He used to work here,’ said Granny. ‘When the first Mrs Oliver was alive.’ She put the big teapot beside the plate of sandwiches and frowned. ‘Come to think about it, he disappeared about the same time as she drowned in the pond.’

  ‘I met Elizabeth’s mother when I was on the train,’ said Janet.

  Granny Roberts shook her head. ‘Poor woman. She was all right with you, though?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Janet. ‘It was a bit embarrassing, but she wasn’t horrible or anything.’

  ‘Well, she wouldn’t be,’ said Granny.

  ‘She said she’d heard I’d had a baby,’ Janet went on. ‘Then she said Gil served me better than her daughter. What do you think she meant by that?’

  The men were in the porch taking off their boots. ‘All Elizabeth ever wanted was to be a mother,’ said Granny. ‘She and Gilbert were married all that time, but no babies came along.’

  ‘So she was barren,’ said Janet. ‘What a shame.’

  ‘But some say that she was pregnant when she died,’ said Granny.

  In Europe, things were not looking good. In the middle of the month, Germany had invaded Belgium and Holland. When German Panzers came through the Ardennes, the French Army and the British Expeditionary Force were trapped at a place called Dunkirk. The British mounted a fierce rearguard action, with many thousands of Allied soldiers pouring onto the beaches, but the town of Dunkirk itself was almost obliterated by the concentrated bombing raids. Large swathes of the port were flooded to a depth of two feet in an effort to prevent the enemy from sending in its infantry and heavy guns. With the Germans snapping at their heels at the rear and the English Channel in front, just thirty miles of water separated the British Tommy from his loved ones and home.

  As part of the rearguard, Len had been deeply affected when he and the lads arrived on the beach. More than a quarter of a million men crowded the sands, a sight that chilled him to the bone. The noise made him feel he had walked right into the mouth of hell. Whistling shells, machine-gun fire, the thud of anti-aircraft fire, the snarl of enemy planes as they dived towards their quarry, the sound of exploding bombs and the screams of frightened men filled the air. Many lay dead and dying. Others had made foxholes, and whenever an enemy plane screamed overhead, they pressed themselves into the sand and prayed to be missed. At the water’s edge, men stood knee-deep, waist-deep and shoulder-high in the sea waiting to be picked up by the flotilla of small boats that ferried them to the bigger ships. The navy was there but far out to sea.

  ‘Looks like they can’t get in any closer,’ someone said as Len shielded his eyes from the dying sun.

  The engines of a German plane screeched as it made its way towards the line of men on the jetty, spraying bullets. A couple of men fell into the water, already bright red with British and French blood. There was nothing anyone could do. The line carried on moving. A thought crossed Len’s mind. Only a year ago, this beach would have been filled with French holidaymakers eating ice cream and wearing ‘Kiss me quick’ hats. (Did they have ‘Kiss me quick’ hats in France?) Look at it now. Even the smell of the place was a mixture of cordite, wet sand, vomit and blood.

  Len was tired. No, more than that – exhausted. Days of fighting, nights without sleep and all the time knowing that they were fighting a losing battle, retreating, beaten and defeated, had taken its toll. And for what? If he survived all this, he would most likely be a prisoner of war and at the mercy of Hitler’s murdering henchmen.

  Since they’d been separated from their commanding officer, he and Chalky White had stuck together. The shelling intensified. Taking their cue from the others, they dug into the sands and hoped their foxhole would give them some shelter. Despite the noise and the gathering gloom, almost as soon as he lay down, Len slept. He only woke when Chalky shook him.

  In the half-light before dawn, Chalky had spotted a few men climbing from the massive Mole, a sea wall made of stone, onto a pleasure steamer waiting alongside.

  ‘Better get in line, Len,’ said Chalky. ‘I hear that lot are getting free tickets to see Betty Grable.’

  Always the joker, Chalky made his weary way down to the water’s edge. Len followed. Eventually, they joined about two hundred other weary men who lay silently on the deck. Apparently, the steamer had been there for two hours under cover of darkness, but now the German battery had trained its guns on the Mole. Behind Len and Chalky, about a dozen other men clambered aboard, but then the captain said he could wait no longer. The shellfire was becoming more accurate. He reversed engines, turned and then they headed out to sea. Len raised his head to watch the French coast get smaller and spotted another group of men running along the Mole. Shellfire crashed all around them, but it was too late. The steamer couldn’t risk going back for them. Len watched in horror as some of them fell. Another ten or maybe twelve brave men were left to die in this hellhole called Dunkirk. He couldn’t weep. He didn’t feel a thing. He was numb. It was at that moment that he thought of Florrie. She’d been in his thoughts a lot just lately. He longed to see her bright smile and hear her voice again.

  Nobody spoke, but someone offered him a cigarette. He put it between his lips, but when the match was struck, he was so tired he didn’t even have the strength to draw on it. The chilly dawn was giving way to a balmy heat. The sea breeze was pleasant, and the rush of water as the steamer ploughed on was music to his ears. Florrie. The English coast appeared at last – not the White Cliffs of Dover but the Seven Sisters near Brighton and the coastal waters of Worthing and, finally, Littlehampton, where they docked.

  Mustering what little energy he had, Len followed Chalky onto the quayside, where a group of WVS women were serving tea and buns and cigarettes. His heart lurched as a slim woman picked up a tray of buns to hand them out. Florrie? She turned, but it wasn’t her. He drank the scalding tea as if it were nectar from the gods; then a sergeant called them into line. They were to march to the station, where, they were told, a train would take them to a fleet of army trucks waiting in Chichester and on to the barracks. As they marched, the people of the town came out of their shops and houses and lined the streets. Len could hear applause and cries of ‘Well done, lads’ and ‘Good luck’. What began as a weary dragging of the body became a firmer step and finally, as the station came into view, he and the others had their heads held high and even managed to give their arms a bit of a swing. As he sank down in the seat of the railway carriage, all he could think about was Florrie. What a fool he’d been. Life was too short to wait any longer. He’d held back for too long. Somehow or other he’d help her to get that divorce, but if she couldn’t, he’d do his best to persuade her to live with him. If it embarrassed her, he’d suggest that she change her name by deed poll. What did it matter what people thought? She had been his guiding light. It was just the thought of seeing her again that had got him through all this. He couldn’t let her go, not now, not ever. For the first time in his life, he owned up to the fact that he was totally, hopelessly in love with her.

  ‘Um?’ said a sleepy Chalky beside him. ‘What was that you said?’

 
‘Night, Florrie, love,’ murmured Len as he fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 22

  It was the twins’ sixteenth birthday. The postman was late, but when he finally arrived, he brought several cards and a letter addressed to Janet. As soon as she saw the stamp in the corner, Janet knew who the letter was from. His Majesty’s Prison. She slipped it into her apron pocket until she was sure she was alone. She had mixed feelings. Contempt that Gil had embarrassed her in public at the trial; shame that he’d been in the dock in the first place; frustration that he would soon be out; worry that he posed a real danger to herself and her daughter; and finally, frustration that justice had hardly been served. She was also scared of the future.

  Shirley had gone to the potato field to bank up the rows and clear the weeds. Tom was grooming the horses and mucking out the stables, and Granny Roberts, who surprisingly seemed a lot more spritely these days, had taken Lucy into the village in the battered old pram Janet had bought from the Red Cross shop. Having made herself a cup of Camp coffee, Janet took out the letter and laid it on the table. She stared at it for some time before taking two flimsy sheets of paper out of the envelope. She could see at once that it had been heavily censored. Thick inky patches littered the page, obliterating word after word. It didn’t take long to understand why.

  It began, ‘I had a letter’ – no ‘Dear wife’ or ‘Dear Janet’ – ‘from my solicitor saying you want your name on my bank account. Keep your — fingers off my money. You can go to — before you’ll ever get a — penny of mine. You’re nothing but a — —. That’s my — farm not yours. So — —.’

  Janet laid down the page. She didn’t bother to even look at the second. How on earth Gil thought she could keep the place going without money was beyond her. The man was a complete idiot. When he’d turned on all his charms to get her, she’d honestly thought that if she did her best to be a good wife to him, eventually they could have a happy life together. She felt her eyes smarting, but she refused to allow herself to cry. What a hateful person he’d turned out to be. She stuffed the pages back into the envelope and squared her shoulders. ‘Right, Gilbert Oliver,’ she said aloud. ‘I’m telling you now, before I leave this place, I’m taking you for every penny I can.’ She got to her feet and put the letter behind the clock on the mantelpiece, then having gulped down her now lukewarm coffee, she pulled on her wellington boots and went to call Shirley and Tom.

  Apart from Christmas, Shirley had never had so many cards waiting for her when they both came in for their mid-morning break. She and Tom were used to getting a card from Mum, Auntie Doreen and Auntie Betty, but apart from the odd friend at school, that was it. This year, she had the usual three, plus cards from Granny Roberts and Seth, Janet, Vince, Hazel Freeman, Gwen Knox and Miss Smith.

  ‘We’re sixteen,’ she told Tom. ‘We could have gone at Easter, but now we have officially left school.’

  ‘Will I have to go out to work now, Shirl?’

  ‘You already have,’ said Janet. She handed him a small brown envelope. ‘This is your first proper wage and you’ve earned every penny.’

  Tom was thrilled to bits. Janet had already taken out a small amount for his board and lodging, so everything in the envelope was his to do with as he wanted.

  ‘I want to send it to Mum,’ he said, ‘to help pay for her to get better.’

  Shirley’s eyes smarted. ‘She won’t need all of it,’ she said, glancing at Janet, ‘but we’ll get a postal order and send it to her the next time we go down to the village.’ And he was happy with that.

  The day was much the same as any other until the afternoon. Shirley was hoeing in the fields when she spotted a small gaggle of people coming along the lane towards the farmhouse. Coming indoors, she discovered that Janet and Granny Roberts had arranged a surprise tea party for them.

  ‘Is it me,’ asked Granny Roberts, looking at the wall, ‘or is that mantrap crooked?’

  ‘We were trying to take it down,’ said Janet. ‘Shirley and I can’t stand it, but it’s too firmly fixed.’

  ‘I’ve got an idea for it,’ said Granny.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Shirley.

  Granny Roberts thumbed her nose. ‘Wait and see.’

  By the time Shirley and Tom had washed and changed, it felt as if half of Angmering was crammed into the farmhouse kitchen. Bobbi Mackenzie and Hazel Freeman came, and Gwen Knox, although she kept apologizing because she had to dash back into Worthing before five because she was in a show at the Pavilion. Everyone was very impressed.

  ‘I’m only in the chorus,’ she said modestly, ‘but it’s a start.’

  Shirley was delighted that her teacher, Miss Smith, had come too. Shirley noticed her looking around. ‘Would you like to take a walk around the farm, miss?’

  ‘Oh, I know it like the back of my hand, Shirley,’ she said.

  ‘You do?’

  Miss Smith leaned forward and whispered confidentially in her ear, ‘I used to come here when Elizabeth was alive. She was my best friend.’

  Shirley was about to ask more, but Miss Smith stepped back and said loudly, ‘No news of the exam yet, Shirley, but as soon as I hear, I’ll let you know.’

  ‘It’s a long time coming,’ Janet remarked.

  ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ Miss Smith said, mimicking one of the characters from a radio programme, and everyone laughed.

  ‘What on earth have you done with that trap thing?’ cried Janet, looking up and noticing it for the first time.

  Granny Roberts had draped the mantrap with an enormous pair of men’s underpants, and Vince had drawn a cartoon face of Hitler on a piece of brown paper which they’d stuck to the wall next to it. It looked as if the Führer was turning his head to look at his big bottom. By now, everybody was laughing. ‘If you don’t like something,’ said Granny, ‘give everybody a good laugh, I say.’

  ‘Come on, Shirley,’ Janet cried. ‘Open your presents. We’re all dying to see.’

  The twins opened present after present, but best of all was when Auntie Doreen walked through the door. Dressed in a WAAF uniform, she had been driven down from London by a small, slightly balding man, who was also in uniform.

  ‘This is Popeye,’ she said, and when Shirley looked slightly surprised, she added with a laugh, ‘His real name is Ernest, but the boys call him that because he likes his greens.’

  Shirley wondered if it was more to do with his jutting jaw and the pipe he had in his mouth, but she said nothing. Popeye gave everyone a hearty handshake. Shirley took to him straight away. He had merry eyes and a hearty laugh. Auntie Doreen hugged Shirley to death and even managed to give Tom’s arm an affectionate rub before he moved out of the way. ‘Oh, it’s good to see you at last,’ she cried. ‘I was so disappointed to miss you last time.’

  ‘You came here?’ Shirley gasped. ‘To the farm?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Doreen. ‘Didn’t Mr Oliver tell you? He met me at the station because you were on a school trip and he wanted to save me the walk.’

  Shirley glanced at Janet. ‘We’ve never been on a school trip.’

  Doreen frowned. ‘That’s odd.’ As they discussed it further, they realized it must have been the time when Shirley was rehearsing for the pageant and that it was Auntie Doreen who had brought the suitcase full of clothes. Shirley was hugely relieved that she hadn’t missed her mother but cross that she’d been denied seeing Florrie’s oldest friend. She was keen to hear how her mother was doing.

  ‘I haven’t seen Florrie for a while,’ Doreen admitted. ‘I was in the WVS, but then I joined the WAAF, and would you believe it? I’m stationed at Tangmere, just down the road from here.’ She glanced at Popeye and grinned. ‘Best thing that ever happened to me.’

  ‘That’s where you’re stationed too?’ said Seth, looking at Popeye.

  Popeye nodded. ‘Best damned station in the South.’ With a nickname like Popeye, his cut-glass accent took everybody by surprise.

  ‘We’ve seen a few of you
r dog fights around here,’ said Vince. ‘You seem pretty good at seeing Jerry off.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t fly,’ said Popeye. ‘I’m only in the office, but yes, our boys have their work cut out.’

  ‘Did you have a card from your mother?’ said Auntie Doreen, changing the subject.

  ‘I did,’ said Shirley. ‘We both did. She says she’s moving to a new place, but she doesn’t have the address just yet.’

  ‘Right, come on,’ said Janet, putting the big teapot on the table. ‘Let’s get this party under way.’

  While they ate, Shirley caught up with the London news. Auntie Betty was still in the shop, but she’d handed it over to Phyllis Walters for a week because her husband (‘Uncle Raymond’ to the twins) was home on leave. Most of those who had been evacuated with Shirley and Tom were back home now, and a lot of them were already going out to work. Joseph Harper was a telegram boy with the GPO, but as soon as he was old enough, he planned to join the fire service. Helen Starling, who had been sent to an approved school for shoplifting after the day the whole school went to Southend-on-Sea, hadn’t learned her lesson. She was currently on remand for stealing something from an old lady in the borough. Auntie Doreen didn’t know what had happened to Ann Bidder. After the shame of the shoplifting incident, her whole family had moved away. Len? No, Auntie Doreen had no news of him except that he had been in France with the British Expeditionary Force.

  ‘Terrible business, that,’ said Popeye.

  ‘They’ve been bringing the poor devils in at Littlehampton,’ said Granny Roberts. ‘Mrs Beecham from the post office said she saw some being marched to army trucks near the station with their clothes all soaking wet, some of them wounded and all of them half dead.’

  ‘Still, at least they’re back home,’ said Janet.

  Everyone nodded in agreement.

  ‘I’ve just come back from Coventry from seeing my mother,’ said Auntie Doreen.

  ‘Oh,’ said Shirley, ‘and how is she?’ She was only being polite. She didn’t really like Mrs Kennedy. In fact, the feeling was mutual. Mrs Kennedy only ever spoke to her to criticize. ‘Why are you wearing those awful ankle socks? For heaven’s sake, sit up straight, girl, and stop swinging your legs like a barn door.’ Tom was terrified of her.