by Pam Weaver
The other women laughed.
‘I’ve a good mind to tell his wife,’ said her mother.
‘I’m telling you,’ Lillian went on, ‘I spent more time worrying about his hand than watching the road. If I’d had a skirt on, I dread to think what might have happened. I couldn’t get out of that blessed car quick enough.’
‘Oh dear,’ Stella commiserated as she dabbed at a tear of laughter in her eyes.
‘One thing is for sure,’ said Lillian. ‘I’ll have to find somebody else to teach me. I can’t possibly go out with him again.’
The four of them sipped their tea.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a car lurking in that garage of yours, have you, Stella?’
Stella looked over the rim of her cup and smiled. ‘As a matter of fact, I have.’
CHAPTER 9
‘Somebody’s been in here.’
Billy Stanford and Gideon Powell were inspecting their den. The old shed to the side of the derelict house at the end of the street had been their hideout for several months now. They guarded its whereabouts with their lives. Only members of the DD Gang (the Desperate Dan Gang) were allowed in, and they could only enter by using the secret password. The boys had taken the name from their favourite character in the Dandy comic. Desperate Dan was, of course, the world’s strongest man. He could lift a live cow with one hand, and the pillow on his bed was filled with building rubble. Dan’s beard was so tough he had to use a blowtorch to shave, and because he was a goody, it was the ambition of every boy in the gang to grow up to be just like him. The gang consisted of eight. Each boy had taken an oath, swearing that if he divulged any of their secrets, his tongue would be cut out. Nobody had the stomach to carry out such a threat, but Gideon had read all about such things in his book of Arabian Nights stories. There was even a picture of Abdul Abulbul Amir, a fierce Turkish warrior who couldn’t be beaten, so cutting out a boy’s tongue would be nothing to him.
They kept their collection in the den. Anything from old pram wheels to a service lapel badge, obviously dropped by a serving soldier, a pair of goggles to bits of shrapnel. Now that they could add some finds from the plane crash to the trophy box, it was imperative that nobody pinch it.
‘What do you mean, somebody’s been in here?’ Gideon asked.
Billy pointed. Their notice forbidding girls to enter had been tampered with, and the door swung from only one hinge. ‘That door is big enough for an adult to get inside now.’
‘Then we’ll have to move everything and hide it somewhere else,’ said Gideon.
‘Put everything in that tin box,’ said Billy.
They stuffed it in the box, all except the goggles and their spent bullets.
‘I daren’t take them home,’ said Billy. ‘My mum would skin me alive.’
‘Don’t look at me,’ said Gideon. ‘I’ve got three sisters. I could never hide anything from them.’
Billy looked thoughtful. ‘Let’s give them to Georgie Sinclair,’ he said.
‘Are you sure you can trust him?’ Gideon asked. ‘He’s only a kid.’
‘If we tell him Abdul Abulbul Amir will get him, he won’t say anything.’
‘Abdul will cut out his tongue,’ said Gideon, acting it out. ‘And string him up from a tree.’
‘Just like he did that German pilot,’ said Billy, giving a delicious shiver.
It was Sunday. The three female friends gathered with their children at Stella’s place to take a look at Johnny’s car. They hadn’t dressed up for the occasion. In fact, Pip was in dungarees, and Lillian wore some very old slacks. They had decided to make a day of it by pooling their rations for a meal and letting the children play in new surroundings. Pip had brought some of her nursery toys, and Flora was having her first outing since the accident. Her face and neck was still red, but the burns were not that deep. Funnily enough, neither Georgie nor Hazel made any mention of the change in the way Flora looked. They treated her exactly the same as they always had done. In fact, it didn’t take long before the children were settled and happy, especially when Stella had produced some old clothes they could use for dressing up.
‘Have either of you heard from your hubbies?’ Stella looked at the two women over the rim of her cup of tea, but they shook their heads. ‘I’ve had a letter from Johnny,’ she went on.
‘Since he’s been a prisoner?’ said Pip. ‘Well, that has to be good, doesn’t it? At least you know he’s alive.’
‘Does he say where he is?’ Lillian asked.
‘A place called Benghazi,’ said Stella. ‘He says he’s being well treated.’
‘They all say that,’ said Lillian. Pip gave her a kick under the table. ‘Well, they have to,’ she said indignantly. ‘You’ve got to read between the lines.’
‘He does say that his rations are not up to much,’ said Stella. ‘Hang on, I’ll go and get it.’
When she’d left the room, Pip said, ‘Be careful what you say. Don’t go upsetting her.’
‘I won’t,’ Lillian frowned, ‘but you have to be realistic. It won’t be easy for him stuck in a place like that. It’ll be bloody hot, for a start.’
Stella was back. Her letter, when she took it out of its envelope, was only one page. ‘My dearest,’ she read aloud. ‘As you will know, I am a POW of the Italians. We are being well treated in a place called Benghazi. I don’t have much stuff, but a chap from the South African Tank Corps gave me a blanket. It gets very cold here at night. We have rations, which include a pint of water a day for everything. I think of you and long for the day when we can be together again. I hope this finds you well. I’ll say cheerio for now, Freckle-Face, and God bless. All my love, Johnny.’
There was a silence in the room when she’d finished; then Pip said, ‘That’s a lovely letter, Stella.’
‘Freckle-Face?’ said Lillian.
‘A pet name for me,’ said Stella, her cheeks colouring slightly. She put the letter back into its envelope, and turning her back to her friends, she reached up and put it on the top of the dresser. Her shoulders trembled and they knew she was fighting a tear or two.
Lillian was the first to move. Standing up, she said, ‘I’d better check on how Flora’s doing.’
Pip followed, but not before she had given Stella’s shoulder a gentle squeeze as she walked by.
‘A pint of water for everything?’ Lillian hissed in Pip’s ear when Stella was out of earshot. ‘Bloody hell, that’s hard.’
‘Don’t say anything to her,’ said Pip. ‘It’s best that she doesn’t understand.’
‘For God’s sake, she’s not stupid,’ Lillian retorted.
A little later, Stella emerged from the house with a bunch of keys. The lock on the garage door hadn’t been used since Johnny shut it up at the beginning of the war. As soon as petrol rationing began, they had decided they would keep their car but not use it. They would enjoy their excursions to the countryside once the hostilities were over. The door creaked, resisting her gentle pull, until she gave it a good yank and the daylight flooded in. The car had been jacked up off the ground.
‘I don’t know a thing about cars,’ Stella had admitted the day they had decided on this venture, ‘but Johnny said jacking it up would protect the wheels.’
The garage smelled musty and unused, which of course it was, but it was neat and tidy. Johnny was clearly a man who liked order and everything in its place. Their first job was to get the car off the jacks. Lillian had a vague idea of what to do, having seen some of the activity in the goods yard at the station, so it didn’t take long to get the car onto its wheels again. Stella produced a foot pump, and Lillian was given the task of getting air back into the tyres.
They knew there would be no petrol in the tank, so over the past few days all three of them had tasked themselves with asking friends and relatives for as many petrol coupons as they could spare. They’d managed to get four between them. They weren’t sure how much petrol four coupons would buy, but Pip set off for the local garage
with the empty petrol can. Stella lifted the bonnet, but she had no idea where to begin, so she satisfied herself with cleaning the car’s interior. When Pip came back, the car was looking good, but she quickly realized that she was the only one who knew how to do the really important things. She cleaned the spark plugs and filled the radiator with water.
‘How come you know so much about cars?’ Stella asked admiringly.
Pip shrugged. ‘I just picked it up along the way, I suppose.’
Everything else was cleaned and polished, and by lunchtime, they honestly believed that once the petrol was in the tank, the car would be roadworthy.
‘Oh no!’ cried Lillian as they began to fill the petrol tank. ‘The garage must have made a mistake. It’s pink!’
‘So?’ said Stella with a shrug. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means if we’re caught with this petrol in the tank, we’ll be in trouble,’ said Pip. ‘This stuff is only for designated drivers. You know, the doctor or some essential war worker.’
‘Well, that’s put the kibosh on everything,’ said Lillian. ‘What are we going to do? If we get stopped and they find out, we could end up in prison.’
‘All is not lost,’ said Pip. ‘Have you still got your gas mask?’
‘Yes,’ said Stella. ‘It’s inside somewhere.’
‘Then get it,’ said Pip.
No one bothered much with their gas mask now. At the beginning of the war, people were vigilant and carried it everywhere, but with the threat of gas attacks proving unfounded, anyone spotted carrying a gasmask box would more likely have their sandwiches inside than the mask itself. After a few minutes, Stella re-emerged from the house with her gas mask in its box. Pip placed it over a bucket and began to pour petrol through the visor.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ cried Lillian.
‘This takes out the colour,’ said Pip, and sure enough, pink petrol went in but the petrol in the bucket had its normal transparent bluish tinge.
‘How did you know about that?’ said Lillian, her voice full of awe.
‘Don’t ask,’ said Pip, and the other two laughed nervously.
They ate their lunch in the garden with the children, who, flushed from the sunshine, sat on a blanket and ate fish paste, shredded cheese and beetroot sandwiches, followed by a few more of the strawberries grown in the garden belonging to Stella’s in-laws. When they’d finished, it was obvious that Flora was tired, so they laid her on the sofa in Stella’s sitting room. While Georgie played trains and Hazel drew her daddy a picture, Pip was happy to sit with them all, and if she was honest, she was glad of the rest.
Now was the moment for Lillian to set off with Stella for her first driving lesson.
They decided to drive to Goring-by-Sea, but first Stella had to get the car out of the garage and onto the road. She was a bit nervous because she hadn’t driven for three years. Luckily, it started after the third attempt, but as Stella revved the engine, the car belched a pall of black smoke from the exhaust. It felt like touch and go, but joy of joys she managed to inch it forward with no further mishap. Lillian had made two ‘L’ plates out of cardboard and string, which she hung on the front grille and from the handle on the back of the boot.
When the car was on the road, Stella got out of the driver’s seat and climbed into the passenger side. By this time, Lillian was a bag of nerves. Would she manage this? Stella made it look easy enough, but to hold all that power in your hands was rather daunting.
‘Good luck,’ Pip called from the front door.
Lillian gave her a wave; then taking a deep breath, she climbed into the driver’s seat. Yes, she told herself sternly, she jolly well could do this. She had to. She wanted that job. She needed it. It was part of the plan.
Stella turned out to be a patient teacher. First, she explained the terminology, something Cyril had failed to do. ‘This is the gearstick; this is the accelerator, the brake pedal, the clutch and the handbrake. This pull knob is called the choke. You may need it in cold weather, but you don’t need it right now.’
There was so much to remember: press your left foot on the clutch, right down as far as it will go; first gear, second gear, up and over into third gear and finally fourth. Lillian was horrified to realize that she not only had to remember all that, but with her left hand on the steering wheel, she had to do hand signals with her right arm out of the window as well!
‘Arm straight out for going right,’ Stella explained. ‘Arm held upright at a right angle from the elbow for turning left, and a slow up-and-down movement to signal that you are stopping.’
The car bunny-hopped along Salisbury Road into Richmond Road, but before long Lillian could manage a reasonably smooth gear change. The change from second to third gear was the most tricky. The car made a loud grating noise almost every time. It was exhausting and stressful, but by the time they had reached the village of Ferring, about four miles from the centre of Worthing, Lillian was beginning to enjoy herself. Then Stella threw a spanner in the works by deciding that it was time to practise some three-point turns and reversing the car. The sense of panic came back.
‘I think you’ve got the seat too close to the steering wheel,’ Stella remarked as Lillian struggled to look over her shoulder to see where she was going. ‘There’s a lever under the seat. If you pull on it and push with your feet, the seat will go back.’
Lillian did her best, but the seat hadn’t been moved for three years and the runner was unyielding. All at once, the seat shot back so far that only her fingertips were on the steering wheel. ‘Oh . . . Oh!’ cried Lillian. Her feet were nowhere near the pedals. The driver of the car behind tooted angrily as they trickled to a halt. He overtook them, shouting expletives as he went by. The two girls looked at each other and burst out laughing.
Once they’d got the seat into a comfortable position, Lillian wiped her brow with the heel of her hand. ‘It’s going to take me ages to get the hang of this.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Stella. ‘You’re a natural.’
Pip was in the loft. It was two days after Lillian’s driving lesson and she was alone in the house. By way of saying thank you for looking after Flora, Lillian had taken Georgie and Hazel to her place to play.
Pip didn’t normally go up in the loft, but she was looking for something special. The news that the King’s younger brother, the Duke of Kent, had been killed in an air crash had profoundly affected her. It wasn’t as if she knew the man, and she’d never even seen him in the flesh, but it was obviously a bitter blow to His Majesty to lose his brother, and all at once she’d wanted to look at an old photograph.
Pip had precious little from her past life before she’d met Peter. Young as she was, she had come to Worthing for a fresh start and to put all the sadness behind her. Up in the loft, she was searching for the old vanity case. It should have been easy enough to find because in among all the dark and shadow, it was white, but thus far she’d had no luck. There really was so much junk up here. When Peter came home, she’d ask him to clear it out.
She moved a small pair of steps and a tennis racquet fell down. She picked it up and tutted. With no brace, it was warped and several strings were broken.
That’s for the victory bonfire, when we have one, she thought ruefully.
Apart from a few baby things, most of the stuff in the loft was Peter’s. It brought a tear to her eye when she came across his old school cap and a rowing oar signed by all the boys in Chalkhill. All the houses in his school had been named after Sussex butterflies: Holly Blue, Chalkhill Blue, Common Blue and Adonis Blue. His school report book was on the top of his old trunk. The last time he was home, Peter must have come up here himself. She opened it and scanned a few pages at the back.
English: Peter has worked well and I hope he will be successful in the final English examinations. J.H.E.
Physical education: Satisfactory progress. S.L.F.
Peter was a class-one entrant to this school and I expect him to get a really good m
ark for his final certificate. The marks in the ‘mock finals’ afford few grounds for complacency. J. D. Neil (headmaster)
Her husband was a man who tried, but he wasn’t a much better businessman than he had been a student. She’d understood that as soon as she’d married him. His builders’ merchant business had only ticked over, and he hadn’t been willing to listen to her suggestions. She was convinced that was the main reason why he’d closed everything down before he left. Of course, he’d given her a more palatable explanation. ‘Darling, with two small children to care for and a house to run, I don’t want you to have to worry about the business as well,’ he said between kisses. ‘We’ll keep the premises, but we’ll wait until I get back before deciding what to do with it, all right?’
And she’d agreed. However, since he’d been gone, with a better business plan and some forward thinking, she had turned a disused building into a profitable concern.
‘Oh, Peter,’ she said aloud, ‘I do miss you.’
She lifted the lid of the trunk and slipped the school report book inside, and that’s when she saw what she was looking for. It was right at the back of the attic, resting on a rafter. With a bit of an effort, Pip managed to clamber over a few things and reach it. Inside were some old clothes and a couple of books, but that wasn’t what she was looking for. On the inside of the case, there was a ruched pocket containing a handkerchief and a map of the South of England. Next to the pocket was a slit in the fabric. It was well hidden, but Pip knew it was there. She slid her fingers inside. For a couple of seconds, she couldn’t feel it and her heart constricted. When she drew it out, she sat down on the floor and turned it over.
It was a photograph of two people. She hadn’t looked at it for seven years. Seven long years and it was just as she remembered it. The day it was taken had been sunny, the weather warm. She recalled the colours and how they had stood under the lilac tree, although being a black-and-white photograph, that would have been lost to anyone who wasn’t there.
Pip ran her fingers across the dear face, and with an audible gulp, she began to weep softly.