Keep Calm and Carry On, Children

by Sharon K Mayhew

“Phyllis, you’ve been here before, do you know who might be keeping all this stuff here?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, but I do know one person can’t get all that sugar, even with a ration card and extra money,” Phyllis said.

  “Did either of you try the door?” Molly asked.

  Sam and I shook our heads.

  “It could belong to black market thiefs,” Sam said.

  “They’re probably hiding it way out here because no one ever comes out this far,” Phyllis said. “I bet they come at night, so no one sees them.”

  “We should try the door and see exactly what they have,” I said. “Perhaps we should get the police.”

  “Let’s go in first,” Sam said. “We might find somethin’ good to eat.”

  I walked up to the door. When I turned around everyone had gathered close behind me. They all turned their heads from side to side and back again like a fox in the middle of a hunt. I reached for the door handle and gave it a little push. It was unlocked. “Quick!” I said. We zoomed in and closed the door. Everyone dropped to their knees on the dusty wooden floor.

  Rabbit pelts dangled from the ceiling above us. The shelf above me had boxes of ration cards on it. A pile of stockings was on another shelf. Cigarettes were on the shelf above Sam. In the corner, stood a small table and two chairs. A box full of Brandy bottles sat on the table.

  “We better get out of here.” I glanced through the grimy window. “We could get in a lot of trouble if whoever owns this stuff catches us.”

  Everyone ducked below the window sill and crept out the door.

  “What about what we found?” Phyllis asked.

  “Let’s come back another day and look around down there. It’s getting dark, and I don’t want to be here if anyone’s coming to check out their cache,” Sam said.

  I dusted the knees of my breeches. “Right, if it’s agreed, we’ll meet at Sam’s house again and help him get his chores done, so we can come back and explore together.”

  Sam sighed. “That’ll be the only way I’ll be able to come with you. I don’t know why Mister Badderly is so stingy and mean.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  September 18, 1940

  8:00 AM

  We met up at Mister Badderly’s house, Gina tagged along to help Sam with his chores.

  “Who’s going to knock on the door?” Molly put on a false smile.

  “I’ll do it,” I said. I wanted to get to Sam as fast as possible. We hadn’t seen him in several days. No telling how he was doing. I hoped Mister Badderly hadn’t changed his mind about letting us have those apples and taken it out on him.

  I held my breath and rapped on the door twice.

  Mister Badderly cracked the door open. “What do you bloomin’ children want?”

  “We were hoping to help Sam with his chores again, so he could have some time to play this afternoon.” I stuck my hands in my pockets so he wouldn’t see them tremble.

  “Well, he’s already out back chopping up wood.” He scratched his chin. “You can help him by picking up all the fallen branches and carrying them up to my kindle pile.” His mouth curled up with dislike. “That is if you really want to help him.”

  Phyllis straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin. “Of course, we want to help Sam. He’s our friend.”

  Gina stood quietly behind me.

  “How long will Sam have to do chores?” Molly asked.

  “Depends how hard you work to help him.” He rubbed his chin and scowled at us. “When he thinks it’s done, he can come and knock on the back door. I’ll have a look and see wot I think.”

  With that, he closed the door in our faces.

  “He’s not very nice,” Gina said.

  “I know. That’s why I thought you should stay with Ma,” I said. Gina shouldn’t be around Mister Badderly. I’d have her pick up kindle with us until she got tired, then one of us would take her home. We didn’t need her hanging around all day. Going to the quarry would be far too dangerous for her…and for us. Plus, she couldn’t keep a secret if her life depended on it.

  We walked around the back and along the path to where Sam was splitting logs. Thank goodness they weren’t logs from a giant chestnut tree. Sam wouldn’t have the strength to split them.

  “’ello, girls!”

  “Mister Badderly says if we help you get done, you can come play with us,” Molly said.

  “Wizzo! I thought he’d keep me here all day.” Sam placed another small log on top of a tree trunk and whacked it with the ax. It went partway through the log and got stuck. “It usually takes me two or three chops to get through each log.”

  “That’s smashing,” I said.

  “Yeah but look at the size of the pile I have to chop, plus I have to pick up kindle too.”

  “We’ll pick up the kindle for you, Sam,” Gina said.

  “Ta, Gina. You’re the best mates anyone could ask for.”

  Gina put her arms around Sam’s waist and gave him a cuddle. Sam’s ears turned red. I found it sweet how he was always so gentle with Gina. I needed to make sure we didn’t speak of Sam’s situation in front of her. She’d just stopped wetting the bed and started playing with Phyllis’s old toys, like a child of her age should be doing.

  Sam went back to chopping. Molly, Phyllis and I picked up kindle and carried it up to the pile by the cottage. Gina stayed with Sam. Once he chopped a log in half, she carried it to the wood pile. Sam chopped faster than she carried, so when we finished picking up all the kindle, we pitched in with the log carrying.

  “I have a brilliant idea,” Molly said. “If we take the woodpile and make it into stacks, we have a better chance of getting Mister Badderly’s approval on our work. Then we can go…umm…then Sam can be finished sooner.”

  “Smashing idea! Who should be in charge of stacking?” Phyllis asked.

  “I don’t want to,” Gina moaned. “I’m tired. Can I go back to Ma’s?”

  “Phyllis, will you take her back and I’ll start the stacking?” I thought Phyllis would be the best choice, as she knew the route better than Molly or me.

  “Yes, and while I’m there I’ll see if Ma can give us a bit of lunch for the afternoon.”

  Sam grinned. “We can have a bit of a pic…”

  I cut Sam off. “We can dole out the lunch and keep working until Mister Badderly is happy.” I widened my eyes and tried to send a message to Sam to not say anything about going to the quarry.

  “Sure,” Sam’s head drooped, “we’ll keep working till he’s happy.”

  Phyllis and Gina walked hand in hand out the front gate and down the road.

  “Sam, we don’t want Gina to know about your troubles or about the quarry. She might let the rabbit out of the hutch if you know what I mean?” I said.

  “Golly, I didn’t realize she didn’t know about Mister Badderly.” Sam paused. “Thanks for not telling her ‘bout my problems. She’s too little to understand.”

  Molly and I smiled.

  “No worries, we should get back to work so we can get to the quarry sometime today,” I said.

  Sam chopped, Molly carried, and I stacked the wood. By the time Phyllis got back, with a nice-looking sack of lunch, the work was finished.

  “I’ll hide our lunch behind a bush, so Mister Badderly doesn’t know we have it,” Phyllis said.

  “I’ll go knock on the back door and see if he thinks we are finished,” Sam said.

  Sam carried the ax with him as he walked to the back door. He knocked, and Mister Badderly cracked it open. He shushed someone in the
house and came out.

  “It’s fine.” His eyes darted back and forth from the wood stack to the back door. “Go on, you lot, find somewhere other than here to spend your afternoon.” He sneered. “I don’t need no nosey children in my business today.”

  “Thank you, Mister Badderly,” Sam said. “Could we, perhaps, have some apples for our lunch?”

  “You can ‘ave one apple each…one each, if you hurry up and get going.” With that, he went back into the house and slammed the door.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  September 18, 1940

  1:00 PM

  We each picked the biggest apples we could find. He had no way of knowing what size we took since he wasn’t watching us this time.

  Phyllis grabbed our sack of food, and we zipped out of the garden.

  “I’m starving! Let’s have our lunch before we go to the quarry,” Sam said.

  “You’re always hungry,” Phyllis said.

  I gave her a stern look. It was obvious that Mister Badderly wasn’t feeding him enough.

  “I reckon a country graveyard would be a nice quiet place to have a picnic.” Phyllis’s cheeks pinkened in the sunshine.

  We bustled along the road and across the countryside. Wild rose bushes with lovely red blossoms grew along the sides of the road. Cowslip bloomed in the fields on the other side of the rock walls. A couple rabbits scurried into holes as we approached them.

  It took forever to get to the church. The small brick church appeared abandoned. Tall grasses grew into the yew bushes. Bird nests rested on the window sills and weeds grew in the pathway leading up to the sanctuary door.

  We dashed past the church and into the graveyard.

  “Cor, I wish we had a big blanket to sit on,” Molly said.

  “I’m sure we can find something to sit on.” I walked to the far end and saw two stone benches with four feral cats on them. “Have you ever noticed that cats like to be in graveyards?”

  “It must be because they have a good chance of catching a bird landing on a gravestone or a mouse in the grass,” Sam said.

  “Or perhaps they like being around dead people,” Phyllis added.

  We shooed the cats away, and Phyllis opened the sack. She spread out a tea towel on a bench and revealed what our lunch would be. Ma packed us each a jam sandwich, a chunk of cheese and a big bottle of fizzy lemonade to share. Plus, we all had big apples. It would be a jolly good lunch for Sam.

  “Wouldn’t some cold chicken be smashing?” Sam commented as he finished up the last bite of his lunch. “Or a sticky bun?”

  “Do you want my cheese, Sam? I’m rather full after the sandwich and apple.” I hoped he would take me up on it. Ma fed us well. I knew we’d have a nice dinner at home tonight, but Sam never knew. It was odd how easily I could call it “home.” Gina and I had so much to be grateful for. We were safe here. Ma and Grandpa took great care of us. The war hadn’t come to Leek. If only we knew about Mum and Daddy, and if Sam lived with someone other than Mister Badderly, we’d have no worries.

  “Awww, that’s bloomin’ nice of you.” A slow grin emerged on Sam’s face.

  We finished lunch. Then we walked towards Molly’s house.

  We walked around the back and followed the trail to the quarry. Our cardboard lay right where we left it.

  “What shall we do first?” Molly asked.

  “Let’s go in the hut and see if anything’s changed,” Sam said.

  We walked the long way to the hut, hiding in bushes to make sure no one would see us. It appeared no one was there. We snuck up to the window, and I peered inside.

  “It’s all clear,” I said.

  We crept up to the door and slowly opened it. The door creaked. The steps creaked. The floorboards creaked.

  “I say,” Sam said, “there’s a barrel of oranges in here. Where would you get oranges from this time of year and why would you keep them here?”

  “I heard Grandpa and Ma talking about buying things on the black market, last night. It might be connected to the stuff in the hut and what Molly and I found in the quarry,” Phyllis said. “Let’s slide down and have a look around. We didn’t know what to make of it before, but now it’s all making sense.”

  We left the hut, grabbed our cardboard, and rode doubles to the bottom of the quarry.

  “Do you see all those little caves round the edge?” Molly pointed at five small cave openings. “Phyllis and I looked in one of them before you called us up to the hut.”

  “It had a cage full of chickens in it,” Phyllis said. “Live chickens, all cramped up together. But there was a tray of food and a pan of water with them, so someone is caring for them.”

  “Which cave was it?” Sam drew lines in the dirt with his very worn plimsolls.

  Molly and Phyllis lead us to the mouth of a cave. We laid on our tummies and looked inside. I smelled the chickens before I saw the cage packed full of them.

  “Ewww, they smell horrid.” I pinched my nose.

  “Oh!” Phyllis said pointing to a tray of eggs. “That wasn’t here before. Someone’s been here.”

  Phyllis, Molly and I all looked at each other.

  Oblivious to the potential danger, Sam said, “If I had a pan, I’d do a fry up right now.”

  We should’ve taken one of the oranges for him, but that would be stealing. Is stealing still wrong if someone is desperate? Perhaps just taking one for Sam wouldn’t be such a horrid thing to do.

  “That sounds delish, but we don’t have a pan or a way to cook, plus what if we got caught stealing,” Molly said.

  Sam’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah, we’re not theifs.”

  “No, we’re not thieves,” I said, “we don’t want to be like whoever is hiding all this stuff.”

  We crawled back out of the cave opening and went to the next one. It contained a rabbit hutch in it. The hutch was full of white rabbits. White rabbits are tame rabbits, not the kind you catch when you go hunting. It seemed we had come across something rather serious.

  The third cave was deeper than the others. We couldn’t see in it by crawling in the opening. So, we made a people-rope. Phyllis held Molly’s feet. Molly held my feet, and I held Sam’s feet, and he leaned in as far as possible.

  “It’s cold in here,” he called out. “And it’s full of butter and cheese wheels.”

  We pulled him back out, and he dusted himself off. “I think whoever put this stuff here must have stolen it from someone.” He patted his growling stomach. “They won’t miss a wheel of cheese or a bit of butter. After all, who are they going to tell? They stole it first.”

  Sam made a good point. But we didn’t take anything. It would’ve been wrong.

  The fourth cave was wide and shallow. At first glance, it appeared to have nothing in it but molehills. I stomped on one and lost my balance. My ankle made a horrid snapping sound, and I fell to the ground. My ankle stung. I stopped breathing.

  “Are you all right?” Phyllis asked.

  I bit my lower lip and shook my head. Tears leaked out of my eyes without my permission.

  Molly pulled off my shoe and sock. I yelped. I tried to be brave and not cry. “Oh dear, Joyce, your ankle looks terrible!”

  “It feels as though I’ve been stung by a thousand bees,” I said. “I don’t think I can walk.”

  Sam kicked the mound of dirt I tripped on. Out popped a cigar box. He picked it up and opened it. It had a big stack of ten-pound notes in it.

  “We might be getting into some big time trouble,” Molly said.

  “Let’s get out of here. We should take the ci
gar box with us,” I said between gasps.

  “Phyllis, you smooth out the dirt and cover our footprints. I’ll help Joyce try to stand up and get out,” Molly said.

  Sam grabbed the box of money and shoved it in the waistband of his breeches then he and Molly tried to help me up. I yelped out in pain, and they dropped me. My foot and ankle were throbbing. The pain radiated up my leg and into my arm. Tears exploded from my eyes. It was no use. I couldn’t stand, let alone walk.

  “Please, I need to sit for a minute,” I said. I slowed my breathing in an attempt to control the pain.

  “Could drag me out of here on the cardboard?”

  “Brilliant idea!” Sam said. “I’ll get it.” Sam ducked out of the cave and collected our make-do sleds.

  “We should get help,” Phyllis said. “Doctor Haskell has a son. He’d help us and not tell. Once we get you to the doctor, we can say you tripped on a tree root while we were playing chase. Peter’ll go along with it.”

  “You can’t leave me here, alone, while you’re gone. What if someone comes?” I reached down and tried to move my leg. “I can’t exactly run and hide.”

  “We’ll find you a place to hide,” Molly said.

  I lifted myself as Sam slid the cardboard under me. Pain shot through my foot, up my leg, and through my whole body. Tears erupted, again. Each time they pulled me over a bump I winced, and they slowed their pace.

  “Now for a good hiding spot,” Molly said.

  We all looked around. There was water in the bottom of the quarry, a few boulders, and nothing else.

  “You could hide behind the boulders,” Sam said. “No one should see you there unless they looked over the edge on that side of the quarry.”

  “It’s a good spot, look.” Phyllis pointed. “The hut is over there, and the caves are on this side of the water. You’ll be safe. I’m sure of it.”

  Sam and Molly both picked up a corner of the cardboard and towed me to the boulders. I rubbed my leg and hoped it would ease the pain, but it didn’t. My shoe grew tighter. I needed some relief. As soon as they left, I slipped my shoe back off. It felt better for a minute, but then it began to throb. I grazed my fingers over my ankle. A huge knot formed on one side. “They’ll be back soon…with help,” I whispered to myself. “I hope Peter is strong enough to carry me out of here.” My first concern was my ankle, and my second concern was whoever had hidden all the stuff in the hut and the caves. If the people who stashed this cache here found me, no telling what they would do.