A Wartime Friend

by Lizzie Lane

  ‘It’s possible. He liked Mrs Dando. He still stops at her garden gate and looks in as though expecting to see her.’

  John was intrigued. ‘Does he now?’

  It was gone ten when John shrugged himself into his coat and Meg shepherded him to the front door. He paused before leaving. There was so much he’d like to say but he settled for, ‘Thank you for a lovely dinner.’

  ‘Thank you for a lovely dinner. I don’t know where you got those rabbits, but they were first class.’

  There was a sudden narrowing of space between them, a pregnant pause in conversation as both weighed up the possibility of a goodnight kiss. But the awkward moment was swiftly shattered as the dog dashed between them, bounding to the leafy convenience of a laurel hedge where he paused to relieve himself.

  John wished her goodnight. Meg waited for the dog to finish before going back inside.

  PC Carter walked away from Bluebell Cottage deep in thought. He was thinking about Meg, the little girl and the dog. He’d been touched by the story of Meg’s husband finding Lily and Rudy together in occupied France, the pair of them bound by some inner understanding. That was the thing with animals, they still had instinct, able to size people up with a look or a sniff. A good dog that, he thought to himself.

  Thinking of the dog took him back to thinking about Ivy Dando. He could do with making more enquiries, and if you wanted to know anything in this village you went to the pub. Upper Standwick was hardly a hotbed of crime, most of it confined to poaching or warning the local pub landlord not to serve drinks after hours. So even though he was off duty tonight, it was in that capacity that he called in at around quarter to eleven that night and pointed out the time.

  ‘P’raps it’s a bit fast,’ he said, frowning as he pulled back his coat sleeve and peered at his wristwatch. ‘Mine’s just before ten twenty-five.’

  ‘Best have a half while I check it,’ offered Cliff.

  This scenario was acted out quite frequently. PC Carter didn’t need any newfangled detecting methods to find out what was going on in the village. All he had to do was call in at the pub and, after a half of bitter, he knew everything. Old Tom went on about the air raid and Gladys told him about the dog and how she’d removed the wire from around his back leg.

  Carter swiped at the froth from the beer that clung to his ginger moustache. ‘Poor thing must have been in some pain.’ He frowned suddenly. ‘Funnily enough, there were bloodstains up on Mrs Dando’s landing. But I swear the dog wasn’t injured then. I would have noticed it.’

  Cliff frowned. ‘I didn’t know that. So he couldn’t have got it trapped in a snare when he was with her.’

  The policeman shook his head. ‘No. His leg was injured after that.’

  ‘After he toppled you from your bike,’ Cliff said with a smirk. There were chuckles all round.

  Carter ploughed on regardless. ‘It still doesn’t explain the blood on the landing and the spots of it on her bedroom carpet.’

  ‘He didn’t bite her by any chance?’

  Carter shook his head. ‘No. Ivy Dando died of a heart attack. There wasn’t a mark of anything else on her.’ He frowned as a sudden thought hit him. ‘Though the doctor said she had a few bruises he couldn’t explain. But definitely no bite marks. Yes, definitely a heart attack. And she’d spilt her cocoa and her book was on the floor. Still, the blood must have come from somewhere.’

  ‘Are you having it tested? I’m group O by the way. The doc told me so.’

  ‘No point. The doctor confirmed how she died so that’s that. He said bruises at her age aren’t that uncommon. Old folk are prone to falling down and bruising themselves.’

  ‘I do that meself,’ said Old Tom and everyone laughed.

  ‘Yeah, but that’s from the drink!’ More laughter.

  Carter remarked on Gladys removing the wire from around the dog’s back leg. Cliff replied, ‘That dog must have been in pain for days. No wonder the poor thing wasn’t keen to have anyone take it off. It’s a miracle he let anyone at all. He let my Gladys do it. Didn’t make a peep when she did.’

  ‘I wouldn’t stand any nonsense if he did,’ Gladys interjected.

  Cliff’s belly wobbled as he laughed. ‘And don’t we just know it, my sweet!’

  Even after Carter’s watch had been adjusted and despite being officially off duty, he left to do his last round. Cliff was unsure that he’d got it right about the dog but was in agreement with the policeman that it had been hale and hearty, using all four legs right up until Ivy Dando’s funeral.

  Gladys told him not to dwell on it. ‘P’raps Ivy didn’t notice it was injured. She did wear glasses.’

  ‘Leave it out, love. Carter confirmed he wasn’t injured right up until he toppled from his bike. The dog caught it in a trap at some point. Still, don’t it make you wonder? I mean to say, if it weren’t the dog’s blood on the floor, whose was it?’

  Gladys gave it some serious thought. ‘Liver,’ she finally exclaimed. ‘I expect Ivy had a bit of liver for her supper and spilt some of the gravy on the floor. John said himself it was only a few spots.’

  Cliff frowned as he nodded, but although his wife had a point, he wasn’t entirely convinced. He’d have another word with PC Carter at some point just to make sure he’d heard right and the blood spots had been found on the floor upstairs not down. Drinking cocoa in bed was one thing. Eating liver was another.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  After the soaking he got the night the dog had got the better of him, Bert Dando hung his wet clothes over the beam running through the attic room. He was so livid that he chose to ignore the air-raid sirens. Neither had he cared about the sound of bombs dropping in the distance. Not one bomb had fallen on him in London and he wasn’t expecting one to get him here in Upper Standwick.

  So instead of worrying about bombs, he put his mind to ferreting out some of his old clothes from the chest where his mother had stored them. The clothes were old but not what he would call worn out. As he got out what he needed, he threw aside the mothballs his mother had put in with them, not quite realising what they were or how strongly they smelled. He’d never had a nose for smells.

  He had bathed his cut wrist in the sink downstairs, being careful to throw the water outside on the garden and leave everything as clean as possible. That damned dog! First, it had bit his calf and now it had injured his hand. It was neither here nor there that it was his own fault due to snaring the animal with the deeply cutting wire. Bert didn’t think that way. Everything should have gone according to plan but the dog had turned the tables and injured him again. Never mind, Bert, he said to himself, you’ll get even, my old son.

  On his way back from falling into the pond, he’d stolen a truckle of cheese from the storeroom in the dairy along the road. There were at least twenty-four truckles drying out and it wasn’t likely one would be missed, especially as he’d taken one from the very back. The truckles were used in sequence, drying out sometimes for a year before they were used. There would also be no sign of forced entry. This was Upper Standwick. Doors were left open, neighbours entered freely.

  Cigarettes were more of a problem than food. The village store sold cigarettes but the only way of getting his hands on any was to break in and steal them. He couldn’t do that just yet, not until he was really desperate and close to leaving. Breaking in might give him away and he didn’t want to be discovered, at least not until he’d taken his revenge on that bloody dog!

  In the meantime he would survive, though he wasn’t too sure he liked the silence of the house. Much as he hated to admit it, he was missing his mother. It came as quite a surprise to find that he’d got used to the sound of her bustling about downstairs. The old woman had looked after him, cooking reasonable meals and doing his laundry. His culinary skills only stretched to fried bacon, egg and a bit of fried bread, not that he had such luxuries. For the moment he would use up everything that was in the kitchen larder, preferably eating it cold during the day. Tinned s
tuff was best. Beans, corned beef, tinned pineapple rings and peaches. Night-time would be the best time to cook anything up, but even then he would have to be careful. Not having a good sense of smell made him vulnerable, in which case he would have to curtail cooking to the dead hours of night. As for laundry, well, as long as his thick jumper and tweed trousers were comfortable and kept him warm, that was enough for him.

  Thanks to the home-made cider from the scullery, he slept well that night. In the morning he was hungry and, although he preferred to go downstairs only at night, his need was greater than his fear of being discovered. He took the tin of treacle from the back of the larder, carrying it upstairs with him, spooning it into his mouth until half the tin was gone. He didn’t bother making tea, washing down his odd repast with more cider.

  Between eating and drinking he propped himself up to look down at the outside world, village life going on all around him. This was the one thing he did like about his lone existence: peering unseen from the attic window, watching the ebb and flow of people passing by, knowing he could watch their daily lives unfolding without them knowing he was there. He grinned when he saw the vicar, nodding his small head on his giraffe-like neck and smiling at Mrs Crow, a woman of rotund proportions and a sharp tongue, chairwoman of the flower-arranging committee and well known for being the font of all gossip. When he was a boy – well known as the biggest scamp in the village – he’d climbed over her garden fence to steal cherries. Nobody in the village had a cherry tree except her.

  One day she’d caught him, grabbed him with her staunch hand, pulled down his trousers and plastered his bottom with brown paper spread with honey. His dad had been alive then, seen the state he was in, found out the truth and given him what for. He’d never touched honey since then, though Bert hadn’t let things rest there.

  Continuing to harbour a grudge, he’d gone back in the middle of the night three years after his father had died and trod all her dahlias into the earth. Every year it was an accepted fact that she would win the dahlia contest at the village horticultural show. She didn’t that year and there was nobody around to point the finger at him. Nobody to chastise him either. His father would have suspected his involvement and tanned his backside, but his father was dead and gone by then, and if his mother had known she’d never dare mention it. He’d had her under his thumb and, truth to tell, he missed having somebody to bully. Still, it wouldn’t be too long before things in London would have cooled down and he could go back to live life high on the hog. But not until he wanted to. He still had that dog to deal with.

  The village kids were in his front garden playing hide and seek, carefully keeping to the lawn without trampling the flowers. Very considerate of them. His eyes narrowed. The grass was growing. He suspected somebody in the village would be along to cut it. No doubt that meddling air-raid warden, Reg Puller. A wicked grin came to his face along with a wicked thought. He’d love to rush out there and clip them all around their ears, or kick their errant little backsides and shout, ‘Get out of my fucking garden!’

  When PC Carter cycled past, he ducked down out of sight. Even a simple village policeman like John Carter made him nervous. He did the same when the air-raid warden strolled past early in the evening. Must be the uniforms, he decided.

  The pair of them had a habit of inspecting the cottage, making sure nothing had been disturbed since his mother’s death, walking up the garden path and ducking under the rose arch at the side of the house and into the back garden. They even chased out the kids playing there. He kept dead quiet when he knew they were around.

  His favourite subjects were the young women who he leered at in private while appraising each one in turn. Some of them he remembered from school. Some of them he’d bullied. He grinned at the thought of it. There were many pigtails he’d pulled, many sweets he’d stolen from hands weaker than his. He espied Alice Grey, who he recalled had married Peter Wickes, so she was Alice Wickes now. He grinned at the thought of how he’d targeted her when she was younger. They’d been strolling across a summer meadow when he’d thrown her to the ground, tearing at her underclothes as she screamed and cried. Nobody had come to her rescue.

  ‘And don’t you go saying anything or that’s your reputation gone. Nobody will want to marry you if they knew you were a tart.’

  She’d protested that she wasn’t a tart. That he’d been too strong for her. He’d liked the thought of that, him being strong enough to do as he liked with her. The downside was that she’d never gone out with him again. Never allowed herself to be alone with him at all, hurrying away at the sight of him. He wondered if she still remembered what had happened?

  For a while after that he’d been sweet on Pammy Fielding, a girl of buxom proportions, a ruddy complexion and well known for being easy to entice into a hayrick for a bit of rough and tumble. Since living in London his tastes had changed. Plump, rosy-faced girls, no matter how willing, just didn’t appeal. He’d tasted city girls and developed definite tastes. Village girls were no longer for him.

  One or two of the girls he recognised pushed kids along in prams and pushchairs. The looks of some of them had improved since their schooldays, though none of them roused any desire. Bert preferred the London girls with their loud laughter and their scarlet lipstick. The village girls were like dormice compared to their town cousins. There wasn’t a woman in the village he’d go out of his way to seduce.

  He maintained that view until he saw her, the young woman who walked her blonde-haired daughter to school. The woman’s hair was so golden it glowed when hit by sunlight. She moved gracefully, like the racehorses he’d seen in the paddock at Kempton Park. He’d been a bookie’s runner then, loved the money and loved to watch the horses, their muscles rippling beneath their lean forms. Graceful, they were. And so was she.

  He’d watched her every day, making a point of getting up earlier on schooldays than at weekends so he could enjoy the sight of her walking by. Looking at her was a pleasure he relived in his mind all day. He’d never seen her with a man so presumed she didn’t have one. He could tell from the way she dressed that she wasn’t local, and smiled appreciatively. He knew a London girl when he saw one. ‘Just my type,’ he muttered to himself and licked his lips.

  This morning she was accompanied by a dog, an Alsatian with sharply pointed ears and a way of lunging into his collar as he walked along. Bert’s jaw clamped hard; he recognised immediately the dog his mother had taken in, the one who’d wrapped its teeth around his calf.

  As his eyes hardened and he ground his teeth, he rubbed at the wound in his leg. It was slowly healing thanks to the contents of his mother’s medicine chest but it would leave a scar. He’d failed to catch and deal with the creature the night he’d fallen into the village pond, but he wouldn’t give up now. The dog would get what was coming to it.

  True to character as the bully he was, Bert never forgave any perceived slight or wound received from others, but seeing the dog with the woman he considered just his type riled him and, oddly enough, even made him feel jealous. What right did the vicious creature have to be walking with such an elegant woman? If he had his way, he would be the one walking with her.

  He saw Mrs Crow plough along the road, stopping to speak to the London woman, her round face as wizened as a raisin, her small mouth pecking at her words like a bird dissecting a pike of ripe millet. The woman with the dog looked taken aback. It occurred to him that Mrs Crow might be picking on her. For what reason he didn’t have a clue, but he didn’t like it. In one fleeting moment, he’d claimed the elegant woman with the dog and the little girl as his personal property. Not that she’d know about it, but then, she didn’t need to.

  Bert frowned. He couldn’t hear what was being said, but didn’t like the look on Mrs Crow’s face. She had her angry look, one he knew well. Head in the air, Mrs Crow stalked off, leaving the woman with the golden hair looking upset. Well that was typical, but he was having none of it! He wouldn’t have let the old bitch get away
with upsetting her if he’d been there. He’d have dealt with it. He stretched his neck as far as he could until the woman he’d become infatuated with was out of sight. Mrs Crow had been her usual nasty self to the good-looking woman. He was convinced of it.

  Suddenly he espied PC Carter chasing after his London beauty on his bicycle and heard him call out her name.

  ‘Meg!’

  The name drifted softly upwards. Meg. So that was her name. He vaguely recalled his mother telling him about some woman and her daughter who’d come to the village from London following a heavy air raid, and that her husband had been in the air force but got killed. This had to be the one. But where the hell did the dog fit in?

  Both the dog and the woman had entered his life without him inviting them. He was becoming obsessed with both but for different reasons. The dog would be disposed of. The woman – Meg – was his for the taking. That was the great thing about these dark nights. At some point he would creep up on her and get what he wanted – just as he’d done with the woman who was now Mrs Alice Wickes.

  All that morning he spent planning what he would do about Mrs Crow in retribution for her treatment of the lovely Meg. The contradiction between his intention to rape the lovely lady and to defend her against Mrs Crow’s sharp tongue was wasted on him. What Bert wanted, Bert got.

  After setting the matter straight in his mind, his thoughts turned to what he would do in London when he went back there. The old lady didn’t leave much money in the house when she died. He needed to make some more, but in the meantime this village was set for a wakening.

  At lunchtime he sneaked down into the kitchen and made himself a corned beef sandwich. There were about five tins of corned beef in the larder, plus a loaf of bread he’d stolen from the back room of the bakery when nobody was looking. It would do him for a week or so, toasted once it turned stale.