We'll Meet Again

by Patricia Burns

  ‘Who, your dad?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  Her face was dark and brooding.

  ‘Does he make you work hard?’

  ‘He’s a slave-driver.’

  The edge to her voice shocked him.

  ‘Don’t you like your dad?’ he asked.

  ‘I hate him.’

  She sat hugging her knees to her chest, glaring through the barbed wire. Tom felt at a loss. There were times when he hated his father, but most of the time he was all right. If pushed, he would admit that he loved him.

  ‘Why?’ was all he could think of to say.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  She picked up a stone and tossed it through the barbed wire. When she spoke again, it was cheerfully. It was as if a shadow had lifted.

  ‘Tell me all about your family, and your house and where you live. I want to know everything,’ she said.

  Glad to be back on firm ground, Tom complied.

  ‘Well, you’ve seen my mam and my sister,’ he said. ‘Mam looks after the house and us. She moans a lot about all this rationing. Our Joan’s all right, I suppose. She used to be quite sweet when she was little, but now she’s getting right bossy. And our dad, he works all hours—’ He skipped over a description of his father, because it seemed like rubbing it in that his was nice when hers wasn’t. ‘And we live in this house on the edge of Norseley. Mam says she’d like to move somewhere nicer, and Norseley’s just an ugly pit village, but Dad says we shouldn’t be ashamed of us roots. And anyway Norseley’s all right. It’s just a bit mucky, that’s all.’

  ‘I wish I could see it,’ Annie said. ‘I’ve never been anywhere. Just Brightlingsea, where Gran and Grandpa live, and once I went to Colchester.’

  Tom looked at her in amazement. Colchester was no distance. It had been the last main line town on their journey here, where they had changed on to the branch line for Wittlesham.

  ‘Where’s Brightlingsea?’ he asked.

  ‘Just down there a bit—’ She flapped a hand southwards, away from Wittlesham. ‘Tell me some more.’

  So he told her about the rows of cottages and the fires that were always kept burning and the rattle of the winding gear, about the big house at Norseley Park and the family with their horses and their Rolls Royce, and about his school and his friends and the cricket club and the cycling club. And all the while Annie fixed him with her wide blue eyes, and asked questions and smiled or looked angry or sympathetic in all the right places so that he forgot all about time and place in the pleasure of talking to a willing listener.

  ‘Tom! To-om!’ His sister’s voice shrilled over the seawall.

  Tom stopped in mid-sentence and put a finger to his lips. Annie grinned in instant understanding. Silently, they listened to Joan calling.

  ‘Tom, where are you? Mam wants you. Tom—’ She was puffing now as she climbed the grass slope.

  ‘I’m just coming,’ Tom called back. ‘Go and tell her I’m coming.’

  He looked at Annie.

  ‘I’ve done nothing but waffle on about me,’ he apologised softly.

  ‘All right. But you’ve got to come right away,’ said an aggrieved voice quite close to them.

  ‘It’s nice. I liked it. It’s like seeing a different life, like when you go to the pictures,’ Annie whispered.

  ‘I said, you’ve got to come right away,’ the voice insisted.

  ‘All right. I am,’ Tom repeated. He smiled at the thought of his life being like a film. ‘I don’t think they’d put me on the pictures. I’m right ordinary.’

  ‘No, you’re not. You’re not at all ordinary,’ Annie said.

  Tom felt oddly breathless. His heart was thumping in his chest.

  ‘Nor are you,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, there you are,’ exclaimed Joan.

  Tom could have killed her. He swivelled round to glare up at her in the twilight.

  ‘Yes, here I am. Now clear off and tell Mam I’m coming, all right?’

  He would never hear the last of this now.

  ‘All right,’ Joan repeated. ‘And I’ll tell her who you’re with, shall I?’

  With an irritating laugh, she made off.

  ‘Blooming sisters,’ he groaned.

  Annie stood up. ‘I got to run. It’s nearly dark.’

  ‘Will you—will you be back tomorrow?’ Tom asked, the words tumbling out of his mouth.

  ‘I’ll try,’ she said.

  And that was all he had to live on for the next twenty-three hours.

  The next day was broken up by a very different visitor. In the afternoon, Mrs Sutton, the lady who owned the chalet, arrived with her lump of a daughter and her small son. Tom heard them arrive, heard the mothers all talking together and the kid go off to play with his cousins. He kept very still in the sunny spot where he was playing patience, hoping he’d be forgotten. No such luck.

  ‘Ah, now, here’s poor Beryl with no one to play with,’ he heard his mother say. ‘Tom’s in just the same position. I’m sure he’ll be glad to entertain you. Tom! Where are you? Come over here!’

  He ignored her, hoping she’d assume he was out of earshot, but again he was out of luck. Joan snitched on him and he was forced to make an appearance. The girl was standing there with a silly expression on her face while all three mothers smiled at them both.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, trying hard not to sound too put out about being interrupted.

  ‘Hello,’ the girl said, smiling for all she was worth. ‘My mum was coming so I thought I’d come along too.’

  ‘Oh,’ Tom said.

  There was an awkward pause.

  ‘Well, run along, the pair of you,’ his mam told them. ‘Perhaps you’d like to show Beryl some of your paintings, Tom.’

  ‘Not on your life,’ Tom muttered. He caught his mam giving him a warning look. He suppressed a sigh. ‘Come on, then,’ he said to Beryl.

  She followed him round the side of the chalet.

  ‘Do you do painting, then?’ she asked, in the same tone of cheerful politeness that his mam used with strangers she wanted to impress.

  ‘Not really,’ Tom said.

  ‘Can I see them?’ Beryl persisted.

  ‘They’re not good enough,’ Tom stated. He wasn’t sharing that with her. It was private. He stopped at the far side of the chalet from the grown-ups and the children, where his game of patience was laid out on a bare piece of earth.

  ‘D’you play cards?’ he asked to distract her.

  ‘Oh, yes!’ Beryl exclaimed, looking delighted. She studied the arrangement on the ground. ‘Look—you can put that seven of clubs on the eight of hearts.’

  ‘I know,’ Tom told her. ‘I was just going to do that.’

  He squatted down and swept the pack up.

  ‘Patience is no good with two. What else can you play?’

  ‘We play rummy and happy families at home so that Timmy can join in too, but they’re a bit babyish. My mum’s teaching me canasta,’ she said.

  ‘That’s no good with just two,’ Tom said.

  Snap and pelmanism were dismissed by both of them as stupid. Newmarket and chase the ace needed more players. Tom had an inspiration.

  ‘Can you play poker?’

  Beryl looked a bit shocked. She shook her head.

  ‘It’s easy,’ Tom told her. ‘We’ll play for matchsticks.’

  He explained about pairs and runs and flushes. Beryl nodded and said that it all sounded pretty straightforward. But she couldn’t get to grips with the timing. She had no idea when to raise and when to quit.

  ‘Shame it’s only matchsticks,’ Tom said as he swept her stake into his pile yet again. But there was no pleasure in it really. You needed really sharp competition to make it fun.

  Tom shuffled the cards. If only Annie were here instead of this stupid Beryl.

  ‘D’you know a girl called Annie Cross?’ he asked suddenly. ‘She lives at the farm over the fields there.’

  The minute the words
were out of his mouth, he regretted them.

  ‘Yes,’ Beryl said.

  Tom said no more, but carried on shuffling.

  ‘Why?’ Beryl asked.

  ‘Oh—no reason. I just met her the other day, that’s all.’

  He riffle-shuffled the pack, neatly layering them together, not looking at her.

  ‘I was at school with her, at the elementary. I’m at the grammar now,’ Beryl told him.

  It was a safe subject, so he took it up.

  ‘So am I, back home, that is,’ Tom said.

  ‘Annie stayed on at the elementary. She’s left now. At fourteen,’ Beryl told him.

  Tom said nothing, hoping she’d drop it. He dealt the cards.

  ‘So she’s never done Latin or French or science,’ she pointed out. ‘Not like you do at grammar school. Not like us.’

  There was an unpleasant edge to her voice.

  Tom clamped his teeth together to stop himself from answering. He should never have mentioned Annie. Like his painting, she was something private, too special to share with the likes of Beryl.

  He picked up his hand and studied it.

  ‘You playing?’ he asked.

  He glanced at his watch. Only four hours till he might see Annie again.

  Beryl and her family finally left. The time crawled round to evening. To his joy, Annie managed to get away from the farm. This time they decided to go for a walk along the promenade.

  ‘Just in case my mam takes it into her head to call me in,’ Tom said. ‘Every now and again she thinks I shouldn’t be spending so much time by myself, and makes me come and join them. I don’t want that happening when you’re here.’

  They wandered along towards the town. The beach was deserted and there weren’t the crowds about that there were during the day, but there were still plenty of people enjoying the warm evening, couples strolling arm in arm, girls in chattering groups dressed up for a night out, men on their way to the pub.

  ‘I got good and caught today,’ Tom admitted. ‘That Mrs Sutton who owns the place came to call, and I got lumbered with her daughter.’

  To his surprise, Annie stopped still and stared at him.

  ‘Beryl? You’ve been talking to Beryl Sutton?’

  ‘Well—yes,’ Tom said. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Her, that’s the matter. I can’t stand Beryl Sutton. She’s my worst enemy.’

  ‘Oh—I see—you never said,’ Tom floundered. There was so much he didn’t know about Annie. ‘What’s she gone and done, then?’

  ‘Everything,’ Annie said. She started walking along again, her body stiff, refusing to meet his eyes. ‘She’s just such a stuck-up madam. She thinks she’s so much better than me, just because her dad owns a factory and she goes to the grammar. I could’ve gone, you know. I was always better than her at school, but she got to go to the grammar and I was stuck at Church Road Elementary.’

  ‘That’s so unfair,’ Tom said.

  ‘And another thing, she’s got the same birthday as me. Imagine that—having to share your birthday with your worst enemy. Her mum and mine met in hospital when they were having us, and now her mum comes over and has her clothes made by my mum—’

  ‘Your mam’s a dressmaker?’ Tom asked. This was a piece of information she hadn’t let drop before.

  ‘Yes. And you should see the flap she gets into when Mrs High-and-Mighty Sutton is coming! The best china comes out and the embroidered tablecloth. You’d think it was the flipping Queen coming to tea. Makes me sick, it does.’

  ‘It must do,’ Tom agreed, though he couldn’t really see what the problem was.

  ‘And now you’re seeing beastly Beryl behind my back!’

  ‘It wasn’t deliberate! I tried to get out of it, but Joan went and told Mam where I was and then I was stuck with her. It wasn’t any fun, I can tell you. She’s boring and stupid. Not like you.’

  Annie flexed her shoulders and made a h’rmph noise in her throat.

  ‘You’re a thousand times nicer than she is,’ Tom elaborated.

  Annie stole a look at him. ‘Really?’

  ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’

  ‘If you really mean that—’

  ‘Look, we don’t want that great lump to spoil things, do we?’ Tom insisted, tired of these games.

  Annie tossed off her bad mood like a coat.

  ‘No, we don’t,’ she agreed. ‘Tell me what else you’ve been doing today.’

  Peace restored, they ambled along as far as the pier, then turned to go back towards Silver Sands. At one point they swerved to go round a large group of young men spilling out of a pub. Their hands touched, and then, of their own accord, it seemed, slid into each other. The warmth of their joined palms, the touch of their fingers, glowed all up Tom’s arm. The blacked-out promenade of a small seaside town was a place of magic.

  Neither of them noticed a solitary figure behind them staring with outrage at those clasped hands.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE storm had been brewing all day. Annie could feel it in the viciousness of her father’s criticisms. He always picked holes in everything she did, but on some days it was different. Instead of it being just the way he was, there was an added force behind his words, winding tighter and tighter until the inevitable explosion. The best thing to do was to keep out of his way, but it wasn’t always possible. When the mood was upon him, he seemed to seek difficult jobs that needed both of them to complete so that he could feed his anger at the world and at her. Today it was replacing some fencing. Annie had to hold the posts while Walter hammered them into ground hardened by the summer sun. As they started on their task, planes droned across the sky—a formation of bombers. To the south, ack-ack fire started.

  ‘It’s them, the Jerries,’ Annie said, gazing up and seawards at the dark shapes. Puffs of smoke were breaking around them, but they flew on unharmed. ‘Where are our boys?’

  Her father took no notice.

  ‘Hold it still, yer useless bitch,’ he growled. ‘How can I hit it if yer waving it about like that?’

  Head averted, eyes screwed shut, Annie held the post at arm’s length as Walter smashed down with the sledgehammer.

  From the west she heard a higher-pitched engine noise. With an accelerating roar, fighters swooped overhead. Annie squinted skyward. Spitfires! Her hands shook as she held the fence post.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, you stupid mare—’

  Her head stung as her father caught her a blow with the back of his hand. She looked at the post. Straight, she had to hold it straight.

  Gunfire cracked over the sea. The engines whined and roared and droned. Caught between fear of her father and of the approaching planes, Annie hung on to the post for all she was worth. Walter swung the sledgehammer. Each blow drove the stake a fraction of an inch deeper into the unyielding soil. The vibration kicked up her arms and felt as if it were shaking her brain inside her skull. Half a mile away over the sea, there was an explosion. Annie looked up. A bomber was going down in flames.

  ‘They’ve got one!’ she cried.

  At that moment the sledgehammer descended again, out of true. The post split at the top.

  Walter’s hand cracked into her.

  ‘I told you!’

  ‘Sorry,’ Annie gasped.

  The life-or-death struggle continued in the air, the planes passing over the coast not half a mile to the south of them, but Annie dared not look up from her task. Her father was nearer than the invaders, and she feared him more.

  Each fence post seemed to take an age; none of them went in entirely straight and it was all her fault.

  As always, her mother had the meal ready dead on midday. Not even the possibility of a German plane landing on the farm would stop Edna from having dinner ready the moment Walter wanted it.

  ‘Did you see—?’ she started as Walter and Annie came through the back door.

  Then she saw their faces, sensed the atmosphere and lapsed into silence. Her hand shook a l
ittle as she ladled out the stew and handed it round. Annie noticed that, as usual, most of the meagre portion of meat was on her father’s plate, while she and Edna had vegetables and gravy. It didn’t even occur to her to question this. Appeasing her father was the number-one priority.

  Both women ate silently, covertly watching Walter. Faintly through the window came the sound of another dogfight somewhere in the summer sky.

  Walter threw his knife and fork down. ‘What d’you call this, then?’ he demanded.

  Annie held her breath. This was it. Fear throbbed through her.

  ‘B-beef and vegetable stew,’ Edna muttered, keeping her eyes on her own plate.

  ‘Beef? There’s no beef in this. It’s nothing but carrot and swede. Swede! Flaming cattle food!’

  Edna said nothing. Long experience had taught her that anything she said would be fuel to the fire.

  Walter’s hand slammed down on the table. ‘Where’s the meat in it?’ he demanded.

  The silence stretched, marked out by the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece.

  ‘Well?’ Walter barked.

  ‘It—it’s the rationing,’ Edna whispered.

  ‘The what? What did you say, woman?’

  Edna’s lips trembled. Annie felt sick. She longed to intervene, but knew that it would only make things worse.

  ‘Rationing,’ Edna repeated, her voice barely audible. ‘I got to m-make it stretch.’

  ‘Rationing? Flaming government! Here I am, working my fingers to the bone producing beef and those flaming pen-pushers up in Whitehall think they can tell me how much of it I can eat? I’ll give them rationing—’

  Relief washed over Annie, leaving her limp and wrung out. It was all right. Her father’s rage had been diverted. She and her mother sat silent, not even meeting each other’s eyes. They ate, though neither of them had much of an appetite left, but the food must not be wasted, so they pushed it into their mouths, chewed, swallowed. All the while Walter’s invective flowed round them, battering their ears, hurting their brains, and they were glad, for words directed at a distant authority were nothing compared to blows rained on them.

  When the meal was over, Edna immediately started washing up, busying herself to deflect any possible criticism. Annie was left to follow her father out into the fields again.