Wartime Sweethearts

by Lizzie Lane

  Everyone scrutinised everyone else’s boots, Frances, still their chief suspect, most of all. She was wearing wellington boots over a pair of hand-knitted socks. Like everyone else her feet were too small to have made the footprints.

  Satisfied that none of them were the culprits, Deacon took charge again and suggested they followed the footprints.

  ‘Just like the Indians,’ he added in an attempt to make it sound as though the suggestion had been his in the first place.

  Frances was happy to let him.

  Twenty yards later the foliage hid the soft earth from view. The search party, keen to hunt down the real thief came to a dead end, feeling quite disappointed.

  Deacon flicked his hand over the tops of the bushes so that they whipped backwards and forwards. Everyone could see he was exasperated, though none dare challenge him and say so. He was gang leader after all.

  Even though most of them were not yet in full bloom, the bushes carried enough leaves to hide the ground.

  ‘Damn his eyes,’ snarled Deacon the words reflecting the fact that he was very keen on anything to do with pirates and had picked up a few of their phrases.

  ‘He’s got away. The bastard’s got away,’ added Ralph. He’d picked up his damning phrases from his father mainly on his return from the pub and filled to the gills with cider.

  Frances frowned as she regarded the bushes. There were so many directions the thief could have gone in.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ whined Gertie, who was digging her knuckles into her tired eyes and yawning.

  Merlyn was humming softly to herself while stuffing a piece of paper into a hole in an oak tree.

  ‘It’s a prayer to the earth mother,’ she said.

  Frances jerked her chin as though she knew that, when actually she didn’t. Anyway, it was what would happen next that she was interested in.

  ‘So what do we do? Call the police?’ Deacon asked wryly.

  Frances shook her head. ‘Of course not. They wouldn’t do anything. We’re just kids and they’d tell us to shove off home to our parents. What we have to do is to set a trap.’

  ‘What sort of trap?’ asked Evan.

  ‘Something tasty. Another rabbit perhaps or a pigeon. Anything that sizzles over a hot fire. Anything we can get hold of. When the thief smells it and shows himself we’ll jump on him. Right?’

  Everyone agreed except Deacon. ‘How do we know he’s still around here? Whoever it was might already have gone home.’

  They all thought about it.

  ‘Well, if nobody takes it this time, we can eat it all ourselves,’ suggested Evan.

  It was agreed. Frances felt proud of herself. Not only had she integrated well with her new friends in the Forest of Dean, she’d also proved she could lead them when they were unsure what to do next. She liked that.

  Two nights later, after eating their tea and promising to be home before dark, they gathered at ‘their place’, the gang’s forest headquarters where the trees drooped over the narrow gorge and the wind swooped overhead; a nice sheltered spot.

  Deacon had already got the fire going by the time everyone else arrived.

  Ralph arrived with his offering for the feast, a fresh trout plus what looked like a pot full of wriggly worms.

  Frances took one look and gagged. ‘Yuk! He won’t come out and steal a pan of worms!’

  Ralph sniggered and everyone else joined in. Frances felt like an outsider again because her friends knew something she didn’t.

  ‘Elvers,’ said Ralph. ‘Baby eels. Only get them this time of year. What you do is boil ’em up, then fry ’em off in a bit of butter or dripping. Me mam didn’t ’ave any butter, so I nicked some dripping.’

  He held up a brown paper bag, the top screwed round and round so the dripping wouldn’t leak out.

  Evan had brought a dead and rather squashed pheasant.

  He grinned broadly. ‘Me dad ran over it in the tractor. I scooped it up before he noticed.’

  ‘It ain’t bin hung. It’ll be too tough to eat,’ remarked Deacon.

  ‘Might not be seeing as it bin squashed,’ said Evan.

  ‘It’ll still smell all right,’ Frances added.

  The fish was skewered on to the stick and the handle of the pan containing the elvers was slid along too.

  The pheasant had to be plucked and drawn, the job being willed to Ralph who didn’t seem to notice the smell of the bird’s innards as he pulled it out like so much slimy string. He also seemed oblivious to the plucked feathers left clinging to his sticky hands, fluttering upwards and settling in his hair.

  It took a while but eventually the aroma of food cooking in the great outdoors was rising upwards. So was the steam from the elvers.

  Frances heard her stomach rumbling. Nothing, she decided, smelled as good as food cooking out in the fresh air.

  They all began smacking their lips.

  ‘Might as well eat the elvers ourselves,’ suggested Ralph. The others agreed. Soon he was scooping them into a rusty old frying pan he’d also stolen from home.

  ‘It won’t be missed. Me mam only uses it for cooking up potato rinds and mash for the chickens,’ he declared.

  Gertie screwed up her face at the rust, but didn’t seem worried that poultry food had been cooked in it.

  The moment the dripping was sizzling, the elvers were dropped into the pan. They weren’t long cooking and Frances had to admit, even if only to herself, they did smell good.

  Everyone ate a handful with relish. Frances looked on. No matter how good they smelled and no matter how much the others encouraged her to try some, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. ‘Only when I’m starving,’ she said to them.

  ‘All the more for us,’ laughed Ralph.

  Even Merlyn was tucking in.

  ‘I can’t help it,’ said Frances, wrinkling her nose. ‘They still look like wriggly worms.’

  The time came when the stars were beginning to appear and the food was almost perfectly cooked.

  ‘Time for hide and seek,’ said Deacon.

  Nobody was in any doubt what he meant. The time had come to leave the trap they had set, but this time, instead of hiding from each other, they were going to hide in the bushes around the fire and wait for whoever it was – wolf or man – to come for the feast.

  One by one, they hid themselves, arms wrapped around their knees, eyes fixed on the food. The silence and the waiting became unbearable, not least because the smell of the food was making them hungry, despite having eaten the elvers.

  Gertie fell asleep. Merlyn looked up at the sky. Evan sneezed and Ralphie sucked his fingers, relishing the residue of taste left by the baby eels.

  Frances prided herself on not moving. Only Deacon, strong, alert Deacon, sat as still as she did, eyes narrowed and focused on the trap they’d set.

  It was Deacon Frances wanted to be like. She admired him greatly, not just because all the other kids looked up to him, but because she liked his smile and the freckles scattered over his nose. In fact she wished that she was a boy, though only if she was exactly like him. She even liked the way he’d kissed her even though he’d really been tasting her, not really kissing; she felt a thrill every time she thought of it.

  ‘Shh,’ Deacon said suddenly when Evan stretched his legs setting a small avalanche of stones and earth sliding out through the bushes they were hiding in.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Evan.

  Darkness was falling fast, the familiar sights of the forest glade black beyond the glow of the fire.

  All of them had promised to be home before dark, the reason Evan was fidgeting. His dad was likely to clout him around both ears for being late home and making Gertie late home too.

  Frances had also promised to be home but had decided that while Deacon remained, she would remain. She would not give in. Let Evan give in and take Gertie home with him. She would most certainly not.

  An hour passed. Even Deacon began to lose his patience, grinding his teeth and making low growlin
g noises. ‘It’s no good. I have to go,’ he said suddenly.

  Frances was taken completely by surprise at him giving in before everybody else – that was before she heard the tinkling of water as Deacon relieved himself against the trunk of a tree.

  ‘I’m off home,’ Deacon said, having finished relieving himself.

  Frances was dismayed that the boy she looked up to was giving in. Everyone else recognised the fact too. Gertie was nudged awake, sleepy and yawning.

  ‘Might as well call it a night. Everybody home.’ Deacon issued what constituted an order though his tone was casual.

  Something inside made Frances want to see this through. Everyone was giving up, including Deacon. Well, she would not. Clenching her jaw she hunched her knees further into her body, wound her arms around them and fixed her gaze on the dying embers of the fire.

  The knot of figures faded into the shadows, the bushes rustling as they headed along the narrow path that would take them back to the main track.

  In the darkness, barely able to see each other, they didn’t notice that she wasn’t with them.

  Stomachs full of elvers, they’d left the trout and the squashed pheasant to sizzle and blacken on the fire. The smell was still appetising if a little burnt.

  To Frances, teatime seemed a long time ago. Normally at this time she’d be given two digestive biscuits and a cup of Horlicks on her way to bed.

  She’d be in trouble when she got back, but she couldn’t bear to leave – not just yet. On the other hand she was very hungry and good food shouldn’t be left to go to waste – everyone was saying that at the moment, what with a war on.

  Carefully so as not to slip down the slope and disturb the small stones and loose earth, she was within yards of the fire when she saw him, a ragged figure, black from head to toe.

  The figure kicked at the fire, covering it with earth until the flames were extinguished. All the while he was doing this, he cussed and swore, using words Frances knew but wasn’t supposed to utter.

  Afraid of being discovered, she slunk back into the shadows. Just as the man reached for the food she lost her footing.

  With an anguished cry she fell on to her backside and went hurtling down the slope like a toboggan on snow, finally coming to a halt on the other side of the embers from the man in black.

  Flat on her back, she managed to raise her head and met a pair of pale green eyes staring from out of a dirt-encrusted face.

  He had already bitten into their feast, bits of scorched trout skin hanging from his mouth. One hand held the stick on which it had been grilled and still held the pheasant, its flesh a little blackened, but edible.

  The fire was still warm and she was lying next to it. There was also a lantern, a funny old-fashioned sort made of iron and holding a flickering flame.

  Like a pirate’s lantern, she thought, and wished that Deacon was still there.

  Suddenly he spoke. ‘You not s’posed to leave fires alight in the forest. Cause a fire. People get angry if you make fires. Hear me?’

  His words were halting and heavily accented; it didn’t help that he spat out bits of bone as he spoke.

  Curiosity replaced the fear of monsters she’d been feeling. She was still frightened, but not so much as she had been. Anyway, what right did he have to lecture her about fires when he was standing there calmly eating trout and pheasant that didn’t belong to him and had been cooked on the fire that he so disapproved of.

  ‘That’s our food,’ she shouted from her supine position. ‘You stole our food the other night and you’ve stolen it again.’

  He slid his teeth along the flesh of the trout so that half of it disappeared into his mouth. To her amazement the whole skeleton was all that remained which he flung aside.

  ‘No. I took. It was left for somebody who was hungry. I was hungry.’

  Frances watched him fascinated because he had begun eating the pheasant in a similar fashion to the trout, flesh stripped and skeleton left intact.

  ‘Where do you live?’ she asked him.

  He chewed and tore as he eyed her. ‘There and there.’

  ‘There and there? What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Like I say. There and there.’

  Frances looked all about her, suddenly aware that night had fallen and she wasn’t sure of her way home.

  ‘I need to go home.’

  ‘Nobody stopping you.’

  ‘I think I hurt my head when I fell. It aches.’ She touched her hand tellingly to her head. It was aching, but she didn’t want to find her way home alone. The forest was so dark.

  Two green eyes looked at her from over the fleshless carcass of the pheasant. ‘You not from here?’

  ‘No. I’m not. I’m staying with Ada Perkins. I don’t know the forest that well.’

  It was hard to see his expression in the darkness, but his silence conveyed that he was considering his options.

  ‘You not stay out here.’ He sighed. ‘Come.’

  Something scrabbled for the bones he threw into the undergrowth as he strode away, pushing at bushes as he went. Frances followed him, a black figure in black surroundings.

  She wondered how long he’d been living in the forest. Did he really know the way or was he going to eat her too?

  The prospect was worrying so she decided that once she recognised her surroundings, she would run away and leave him behind.

  Suddenly she saw a light ahead and smelled the tasty odour of things being smoked. Home was up ahead. She began to run, screaming out Ada’s name and shouting for help.

  The door of the shack opened and Ada’s amiable figure came into view. ‘What’s all that noise, and where the devil have you been?’

  ‘There was a man,’ shouted Frances, running so fast her face ended up colliding with Ada’s bosom. ‘He had green eyes. He ate our feast. Everything down to the bones.’

  When she looked round she saw other figures. Men were shouting. ‘It’s him! It’s the Italian.’

  Frances looked up at Ada. ‘The man brought me home.’

  Ada sighed. ‘He might well ’ave done, but anyone who’s foreign is suspect. When you didn’t come home I sent out a search party and called the bobby. They’ve been looking for Mario for a while.’

  ‘Mario?’

  Ada shrugged. ‘He’s lived wild for years; bit of a hermit you might say. The problem is that he’s Italian and they count him as an enemy alien. Enemy aliens have to be interned. Stupid when it comes to Mario. I’ve known ’im for some time. But there you are. That’s war for you.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  It was hard to concentrate on what had to be done once they’d received the message from Michael’s commanding officer telling them that he’d had to bail out over the North Sea.

  ‘His colleagues insisted that they saw his parachute open. We are doing our best to locate him.’

  Every day Mary visited Mrs Hicks hoping for news. It had been five days now and still nothing.

  Ruby lifted the brown glazed mixing bowl, tilting it so Mary could see what was in it. ‘Look what I’ve made.’

  Mary peered into the bowl and tried to sound enthusiastic. ‘It looks good. What is it?’

  ‘I mixed some of that dried egg with some preserved gooseberries from last year. I added an ounce of sugar and whisked the whole lot together. It’s a kind of gooseberry fool. I thought I’d crumble ginger biscuits into the bottom of each ramekin and pile the mixture on top. Do you think it works?’

  Mary had to agree that it did. ‘Have you written down the recipe?’

  Ruby winced. Devising dishes was one thing, writing down measures of ingredients was something she kept forgetting to do – even though the ministry required it.

  Mary shook her head in mock disapproval. ‘Ruby! Mr Sinclair will not be amused!’

  ‘I’m nervous,’ she added. ‘I mean, this is the first real demonstration I’ve had to do, and not just one, three of them.’

  Mary reminded her that the
one here in the bakery had been very successful.

  ‘A lot of them were people we know, and Mrs Hicks has told a lot of her friends. This time I’m going to be standing up in front of a hall full of strangers.’

  ‘I can go if you like?’ offered Mary. ‘Nobody will know the difference.’

  Ruby shook her head. ‘I got myself into this. It’s my responsibility to do a good job. Anyway, if our Charlie is brave enough to serve on a ship bringing in the food I should be brave enough to stand up in front of a farmers’ wives group and show them how to put it to best use, should I not?’

  Mary agreed that she should. She looked up at the big old black clock above the kitchen mantelpiece. ‘What time is your driver coming?’

  ‘Half past nine.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’m not looking forward to the company I must say. He’s probably an old codger who served in the last war and won’t be taking kindly to driving a silly girl around.’

  ‘Our dad’s an old codger – if you care to look at it that way.’

  Ruby laughed. ‘I supposed you’re right. Anyway, it’s only until Mr Sinclair thinks I’m capable of driving myself around.’

  ‘It had better be soon if they really are considering giving you a mobile kitchen to drag along behind you.’

  Mary helped Ruby place everything she needed into the large wicker picnic hamper they used to use on those pre-war days when the fields were yellow and the sky was deep blue. Sometimes they’d taken it along to the vicarage when he was holding one of his garden party events for the village school.

  Henceforward it would be used to cart ingredients, recipe cards and leaflets giving advice on everything from how best to conserve fuel to how to turn a blanket into a brand-new coat.

  She also had a small leather case in which she placed leaflets and recipes, some of which were those devised by herself and Mary; it still gave both of them a feeling of pride to see their creations actually in print.

  Besides the leaflets she placed her own precious blue book, plus a small bag containing her hairbrush, lipstick and a small phial of Evening in Paris. Mrs Hicks had given her the bag and the perfume. ‘Standing up in front of all those people, you have to look your best.’