A Step Too Far

by Meg Hutchinson

  ‘Reuben!’

  She had cried the name and pushed at the tall dark-suited figure, but it did not move. Square in her path he had said quietly.

  ‘Please Mrs Carson, I do understand your being afraid but to let you into that building could be to put you and your son in danger.’

  ‘I want my son!’ She had tried to dart past, to run to the squat grey stone building that was Saint Bartholomew’s School for Boys, but the man caught at her before she had taken a step. Holding her firmly by the arms he had spoken quietly as before.

  ‘Mrs Carson . . .’

  Somehow the words had breached the fear pounding like waves in her head.

  ‘Mrs Carson, screaming can only draw attention, which could affect what both of us know is happening in that building.’

  ‘Reuben!’

  It was the sob of a mother terrified for the safety of her child.

  ‘He will be unharmed. You might see only myself in the street, but I assure you there are others and we all have the same goal, to see this business over and your boy home. We do realise the strain you are under, but we must insist on your returning home; you can do so with the assistance of a police constable should you so wish.’

  Drawing together the rough cotton blackout curtain, Miriam turned from the window. We. It was the same word Philip Conroy had used, that all-effacing we; it had also been said with that same quiet authority Conroy displayed, a firmness that conveyed the certainty he would brook no refusal, and the offer of police assistance had been no offer but a veiled proposition. She had been left with no alternative, but every step back to Cross Street had been a knife in her heart.

  ‘This is the BBC Home Service. The news at nine o’clock with Alvar Liddel reading it. There has been more heavy fighting . . .’

  Reuben had turned up the volume on the small wireless set she was buying on hire purchase. ‘A tanner a week, waste o’ money be what it is, you gets the news just the same wi’ the newspaper!’ Her father had protested and sixpence a week could, she had admitted, be spent buying extra vegetables from the allotment when gardeners had some to spare, it could be saved toward a bag of coal. She would have foregone the wireless had not her father smiled and said to go ahead. And she was glad she had, for by listening each evening to the news she felt somehow closer to those far from home, men risking their lives for people like herself, closer to women who as she had done, sat in dread that the next report would involve the area in which their own loved ones fought.

  The broadcast over, she switched off the wireless, told Reuben it was time for bed and reached for the socks her son wore through quicker than she could darn.

  ‘Germany continued its advantage.’ It might not have been reported quite so bluntly but that had been the thread underlying the latest bulletin. So many men, so many lives, so many Toms with life snatched away before it could be lived, death finding them in places so far from home, each man killed by another whose face he never saw.

  But enemies were found not only on foreign ground. Letting the mending fall to her lap, Miriam stared into the fire.

  ‘We knew information was being passed,’ Philip Conroy had explained, ‘but we did not know exactly how or from where. It was in order to obtain proof that we asked Reuben take a further step.’

  That could so easily have proved a step too far.

  ‘’Night, mum.’

  Lifting her face for her son’s goodnight kiss, she vowed silently, never again. Never again would she allow him to do anything so dangerous, no matter it had gone without a hitch.

  ‘It was okay, mum,’ Reuben had laughed at her anxiety. ‘I was never in a moment’s danger, it was all a bit of a let-down; Mr Conroy and another man came into the room and Mr Browne just shrugged his shoulders, said he was ready to go and that was it . . . finished!’

  Watching him hug his grandfather goodnight, Miriam felt a pull at her heart. It had been like listening to Tom, he had always downplayed the worrying side of things, he would never have a mountain made out of a molehill; father and son, they were so alike. Tears sudden and hot rose to her throat, she should thank God for the safekeeping of her son but she could only cry her reproach at His taking her husband.

  Reuben hesitated at a rap to the door. The front door! It would be no neighbour; no one from Cross Street or those streets in close proximity to it ever used the front door, they invariably came to the rear of the house, giving the door a tap and calling ‘it be me . . . be you in Miriam, wench?’

  Isaac laid aside the newspaper and went to open the door.

  ‘I apologise for calling so late . . .’

  Philip Conroy! Miriam’s blood froze. No! She threw aside the sock she was mending. No more . . . ! He would never use her son again!

  Ushered into the tiny living room, Philip Conroy smiled at the lad, his hand already extended in greeting. The boy’s bravery deserved recognition, but how many brave souls received that reward?

  ‘I felt I had to call . . . I was hoping to speak to Reuben, to offer my congratulations . . .’

  ‘It was nothing!’

  ‘Nevertheless, I wanted to give my personal thanks, catching up with that fellow would have taken a lot longer had it not been for you; I also wished to apologise personally to you Mrs Carson, I’m sorry we could not allow you to go into the school, I hope you understand the problem that could have caused.’ She couldn’t know the problem was a likely bullet in the chest and another in her son’s head!

  ‘As I said to you afore, Mr Conroy, I don’t ’ave the learnin’ o’ some so I asks your patience wi’ my failin’ to fathom the involvin’ of a lad.’

  ‘Things had to appear normal, Mr Eldon.’ Philip Conroy answered Isaac. ‘So very much depended upon that. Believe me, we thought long and hard before making a decision.’

  ‘That decision bein’ to use my grandson!’ Isaac’s pent-up emotions ground the exclamation.

  ‘I didn’t mind, granddad, I wanted to help. I had to do what was best, you see that, don’t you?’

  ‘Ar I sees that, I be proud o’ you, lad.’

  Miriam’s own pride was overshadowed by question. Had Reuben realised the potential danger? Could a boy of fourteen reason fully what it was he was being asked to do? Had she? Miriam’s senses flared. Had she entirely comprehended what she had agreed to, the situation she had allowed her son to be placed in?

  She looked at the man opposite: well-kept hands, neat dark suit and immaculate white shirt a vivid contrast to her father’s well worn trousers and once blue shirt faded to grey as a result of boiling to remove the grease of factory work. So many differences, but beneath them both men were the same, both did what was necessary in fighting this war; and so did she in her way. Like Tom, she was willing to give her all, but that did not grant her the right to gamble with the safety of their son, to consent to his exposure to such risk. If she had lost him!

  Miriam fought the tide of fear that still accompanied that thought. Hardly able to disguise it even now, barely able to hold the tears pressing against the dam of her reserve she glanced at the clock, trying to smile as she asked Reuben be excused, adding as a salve to teenage feelings that so many nights disturbed by air raids compelled people to take advantage of sleep while they could.

  Once more the father shone in the son. Miriam’s heart expanded with pride as Reuben thanked Conroy for his visit, replying quietly to the man’s repeated thanks that it was no more than his father would have wished. Then shaking hands and wishing Conroy goodnight, he had turned to her and in that moment she had seen a cloud cross his face, the bright glint of tears before they disappeared beneath a smile that hid a deep unhappiness.

  ‘I didn’t get it, mum,’ he said softly. ‘I didn’t get to be lieutenant . . . I’m glad dad didn’t have to know.’

  21

  Isaac Eldon had not been arrested!

  Bitterness a gall in her throat, Katrin stared from the window of the train carrying her to Birmingham.

  Why had he not
been arrested? Why not charged? Those maps she had helped retrieve from the ground might have been crudely drawn but she had seen what they depicted: factories, chemical works, railway depots, sensitive material compiled, the boy had said, with the aid of Isaac Eldon. Yet nothing had happened to that man, no action had been taken against him even though she had reported what she had seen. It could only be that the boy had told him of bumping against a woman and repeated the short conversation which had followed. That would have alerted Eldon. The man might be no more than a factory hand, he might have only a basic education, but that did not make him a fool. He must have realised the possibility of a report being made to the authorities, of some investigation being instigated and so had destroyed the evidence, had probably burned those papers while impressing on his grandson the need for secrecy.

  But what he did not know was the identity of that woman.

  Leaving the train at Snowhill Station enmeshed in rancour, Katrin paid little mind to the bomb-damaged properties, the fire-blackened buildings rising like skeletons from graves of rubble and broken concrete.

  Isaac Eldon did not know who had spoken with his grandson. Nor did he know her vengeance! Let him rejoice in his security, let him wallow in the idea nothing could befall him, nothing would spoil his mundane working-class life; but Katrin Hawley would. One method had failed but there had to be another, sooner or later the chance to destroy Isaac Eldon would arise and when it did Katrin Hawley would grasp it with both hands.

  Her father had returned to Prodor, he was back in the job he loved, in the place he had worked since leaving school a lad of less than thirteen years of age. But he had not returned as department manager.

  ‘That don’t be for me wench. I don’t be one for paperwork; give me a job wi’ metal, the mekin’ of it or the forging of it into whatever be wanted; ask me about the designin’ of new machinery or set me the problem of how to produce two of anythin’ in the time it had teken for the makin’ of one and I’ll do my best in the solvin’ of it, but management and paperwork don’t be for me.’

  Looking at her father sitting with his newspaper, the sense of relief Miriam had felt on hearing of his rejoining Prodor lived another brief moment.

  She had worried so much when she’d learned of his ‘being sacked’. He had ‘been marched off ’, ‘teken away afore even the shift ended . . .’, ‘be said he’s been a tittle-tattlin’ about what be made at them works.’

  Those had been some of the hushed remarks, but they had not been so hushed she could not hear. They had been meant to be heard, said by people who knew nothing of the reason behind her father’s being dismissed and cared less for the hurt their gossip caused.

  She had asked her father the reason, of course she had. But he had said only she should not fret. Not fret! How could he have imagined she wouldn’t have fretted? How could he have left her to worry? But that was unfair! He had not given the true reason because he had been bound by the same Act had bound them both on the business of Philip Conroy . . . the Official Secrets Act; her father had been given a job of vital importance, one he would not speak of even to her. Was it the outcome of that job, the project he and Jacob Hawley had worked on together, the revolutionary new method of producing shells without having to separately machine the inside of the cavity? That much he had since been able to share with her.

  Had something of that project leaked despite precaution? Was that the information Philip Conroy said was known to have been passed to the enemy? The man had not confirmed that of course, but it did not take a mastermind to construe its being the reason of the hoax concerning the golf links.

  ‘. . . they said as ’ow it were a fractured gas main . . . I never smelled no gas . . . you ask me I says it be a load o’ codswallop, there ain’t no broken gas pipe.’

  Elsie Partridge had complained of the evacuation of nearby houses claiming it a nuisance, but what would have been her complaint had Wednesbury undergone an all out air attack?

  ‘D’you think there really would have been a raid, I mean one deliberately aimed at the golf links?’

  Reuben could have been reading her thoughts.

  ‘No, just the golf links, son . . .’

  Miriam watched the pair, Reuben at his grandfather’s feet, face upturned to the grave look of the older lined one. ‘Not simply that place.’ Isaac shook his head. ‘I reckon had it not been for you the whole of Wednesbury would ’ave suffered what Coventry went through; once the Germans had wind of where that new plant was supposed to be then this town would ’ave been wiped out completely.’

  ‘It was a big risk Mr Conroy took, wasn’t it, granddad? I mean letting me hand in my project.’

  ‘Ar lad.’ Isaac replied touching a hand to his grandson’s head. ‘An’ it were a risk you ran in tekin’ them maps to that bloody spy! I don’t know what I were a thinkin’ of lettin’ you go through that!’

  ‘I wanted to do it granddad, I wanted to help same as my dad helped.’

  Miriam’s heart lurched. Glancing at her father, she saw, that his heart was asking the same question as her own. What if Reuben had paid the same price, if helping protect others had cost his life as it had cost Tom’s?

  ‘You done that lad, you helped, and I know your dad would’ve been proud, he’d ’ave been like a cock wi’ two tails; had you been a man you’d ’ave been awarded a medal, but as it is, you get naught, not even an official thank you.’

  ‘I don’t want any thanks, granddad, I’m satisfied knowing that German agent was captured.’

  Isaac’s look was grave. ‘Ar,’ he nodded, ‘we all gives thanks for that, but I finds meself wonderin’ ’ow the hell he got that post along of the school; when Anthony Eden called for men to volunteer for local Civil Defence, applicants was vetted in order to weed out potential Fifth Columnists, so ’ow come that bloody Nazi weren’t weeded out, ’ow come he slipped through the net, an’ to be appointed ’eadmaster no less?’

  ‘Philip Conroy explained . . . as much as he was allowed.’

  ‘Oh ar, he explained!’ Isaac was not to be mollified. ‘He said as the man were a retired schoolmaster, that he lived along o’ Dartmoor but had volunteered to return to teachin’ when so many were forced to leave the profession due to conscription, but that don’t explain his gettin’ away wi’ pretendin’ to be English; it be bloody careless on somebody’s part, most like couldn’t be bothered to check his background or they would have found ’im to be a German immigrant an’ he would have been put in internment camp same as other foreigners.’

  ‘That must be what happened to the Peoli family.’

  ‘Who?’ Isaac frowned.

  ‘The Peolis.’ Reuben looked up from his books. ‘They are Italian, they have a sweet shop in Darlaston, it has a small café at the back serves tea and delicious ice cream . . . or they did up until a couple of weeks back, seems they just left giving no reason.’

  ‘And how does Wednesbury’s very own oracle know this?’ Arms crossed over her chest, Miriam regarded her son.

  Reuben grinned. ‘Simple mum, Bobby Walker told me. He’s a boy at school, lives in Dangerfield Lane, that’s near to Darlaston shops so he gets to go there with his sister who keeps house for his dad since his mum died . . . so the news of the Peolis . . .’

  Isaac glanced at his daughter. ‘Who needs the Express and Star when they have a news reporter livin’ in the house?’

  ‘Mmm.’ Miriam dropped her arms. ‘Well, that particular reporter had best be careful over exactly what news he communicates.’ Then she said seriously, ‘Remember Reuben, you gave Conroy your promise to say nothing of what was said in this house nor of what happened at school.’

  ‘I remember.’

  Reaching for the coat she had laid ready alongside her gas mask, Miriam shrugged into it. ‘There is something else it’ll pay you to remember Reuben Carson,’ she said, buttoning the coat, ‘that is the promise you gave not to go on any more night wanderings. If the alarm sounds you are to go with next door into their
shelter.’

  ‘Mum, I’m nearly fourteen!’

  ‘So you are . . . but it’ll be when you’re forty you can argue with me!’

  ‘Best give up, lad.’ Isaac smiled over his daughter’s curt reply. ‘You gets nowheres arguin’ wi’ a woman.’

  ‘Reuben . . .’ Miriam began warningly.

  Reuben held up both hands. ‘You win,’ he laughed, ‘but just you wait ’til I’m forty!’

  He had laughed, but then why shouldn’t he? He couldn’t realise her heartache of having to leave him, of knowing he was alone in the house once her father returned to his work at Prodor.

  ‘I knows what it be like for you wench, but it ’as to be done . . .’

  Her father had sympathised. ‘. . . but the lad be sensible . . .’

  Sensible! Could her father call it sensible for a young lad to roam alone at night? Lord, he could have been thought a spy!

  Passing a word with the watchman at the gates of the Alma Tube Works, Miriam entered the machine shop and stamped her time card in the large wall clock.

  A spy! But wasn’t that what Reuben had been suspected of? The accuser had believed those maps not to be a project set as homework but something injurious to the safety of the country.

  Indeed, given to that headmaster they could have proved just that. Wednesbury and probably near enough the rest of the Black Country would have been annihilated.

  Miriam donned her overall and crossed to her own machine. Whoever it had been helped recover those papers had not intended harm to Reuben; the person had foresight enough to see what a young lad had not, that such information should not be in his possession.

  Even so . . . Miriam stared at the bar of brass waiting to be turned into gleaming carriers of death . . . that person could have come to Cross Street, have spoken with her personally, have enquired of what Reuben was doing with those maps; that way the shock of it all could have been lessened, she herself would have taken Reuben and those papers to the police station.