Only a Mother Knows (26 page)

‘They’ll be on someone’s plate, come Christmas, you mark my words.’

‘Ahh, don’t say that, Aunt Olive.’ Barney looked heartbroken at the thought, but Olive knew that unscrupulous persons would find a way of making money from this. First they’d sell the eggs, then sell or eat the chickens.

‘You’d better take them into my house,’ Olive decided, looking up and down the row, ‘otherwise somebody might take them from you.’ Not that anybody would have dreamed of doing such a thing before the war, not in this district anyway, but a lot had changed since then and there were some people who didn’t like to go without their little luxuries, and a succulent, golden roast chicken was a prize to behold.

‘See, you understand, don’t you, Aunt Olive,’ Barney said with a satisfied nod as he picked up the sack.

‘It’s not me you’ve got to worry about.’ Olive looked at the wriggling sack. ‘Your dad’ll make you take them back.’

‘I’ll tell him that they’re orphans!’ Barney beamed at the suggestion as if it would make everything all right.

‘Tell him what you please, but he won’t have it, and if I know anything, after a long day trawling the streets of London and then doing another four hours’ fire-watching, he’ll be in no mood for chicks.’

‘Where is he now?’ Barney asked nonchalantly.

‘Gone to buy a hat,’ Olive said dryly. Barney shrugged and moved towards her house.

‘Will you cook us somethin’ to eat, Aunt Olive? I’m starving,’ he called over his shoulder.

‘Just put that sack in the Anderson shelter and then stay with Sally until I get back. I’ve got to go and see Mr Whittaker and make sure he’s had his supper.’ Olive tried to sound stern; he was becoming a bit of a handful of late, was Barney, and she didn’t know what had got into him.

Sally had just put baby Alice’s nightdress on and was combing her curls when the child suddenly looked up and, throwing her chubby little arms around Sally’s neck, gave her a huge hug. Sally, delighted, wondered how she could ever have wanted nothing to do with this beautiful little girl, who had been through so much in her young life. Already she had lost her mother and father and had to get used to a new home in a new city with people she had never seen before; it must have been terrifying for her.

But all that was behind her now, Sally vowed, and she would never let the child feel unloved or insecure ever again, especially when she had such a loving ‘family’ here in Article Row. And when George came home, whenever that might be, he too would lavish every ounce of love he could muster onto this wonderful child.

Looking at her now, all clean and shiny and smelling of talcum powder that Dulcie had managed to get from who knew where, Sally hugged Alice with all the love her heart could hold. But their rare moment of privacy was soon shattered when Barney came into the front room carrying a hessian sack that was making a heck of a racket.

‘What have you got there, Barney?’ Sally asked, putting Alice onto the rug in front of the guarded fire as Barney brought the sack over to her.

‘Mrs Robbins told me to bring these in here and put them in the Anderson,’ Barney said, opening the sack and showing her the contents. Sally’s mouth fell open as baby Alice shot out a podgy hand to try and grab a tweeting chick, her eyes bright with delighted wonder.

‘Don’t let her get hold of them, Barney, she’ll squeeze the living daylights out of them!’ Quickly Barney dived across the rug in front of the fire and tried to snare the speeding escaped chick that had just run beneath the table under the window.

‘Where did Olive find a sack of chicks?’ Sally asked, amazed at the swift, bright yellow movements of such a tiny bird.

‘I found them,’ Barney said, his words low. ‘I got them for helping a woman who …’

‘The truth, Barney.’ Sally brooked no argument as she was not in the mood for his stories.

‘I was asked to keep them safe for someone,’ Barney said, looking very contrite as he placed the chick in the sack and shuffled from one foot to the other, his face under the grime of the day growing quite red and not due to the fire in the grate.

‘Who asked you to look after them – and why?’ Sally was feeling quite suspicious as Barney had been a good boy lately, especially since that time he had protected Nancy Black’s grandson, when everyone at number 13 considered him a little hero. But now it looked like he was up to his old tricks again.

‘You know what Sergeant Dawson said last time, don’t you, Barney?’ Sally said in a stern voice. She liked the boy and thought he’d had a rough time of it, but what kid hadn’t in these uncertain times? He also had to understand that there was a certain standard of behaviour that was expected of him and he must stick to it. He couldn’t carry on behaving like a delinquent and get away with it.

Just then, much to Sally’s wide-eyed surprise, Barney burst into tears. That’s when Sally realised thatBarney probably didn’t understand what he was getting himself into.

‘I told them I didn’t want nuffink to do with their dodges, but they said I’d be in fer it if I didn’t do as they said,’ Barney managed after a few moments, when he was able to pull himself together enough to speak coherently again.

‘Who said this, Barney?’ Sally was suddenly fearful of the mess the child had become involved with. ‘Tell me the truth, Barney, and we can sort it out.’ She gently eased the information from him bit by bit. He admitted he had been waylaid on his way home from school by the dockside boys he had been friendly with before the war, the ones who gave him the shiner near Chancery Lane.

‘They said that if I didn’t look after their booty, I was going to get another good hiding.’

‘Oh, did they now?’ Sally said, determined to get every last drop of information from him. And just as the last piece of the jigsaw was completed Olive returned home with Agnes following behind her. It wasn’t long before the front room was a hive of chatter.

During the animated exchange there was a knock on the front door and Olive, who was still wearing the WVS coat she’d put on to go to Mr Whittaker’s, was undoing her buttons with one hand and turning out the hall light before answering the front door with the other. She was surprised to see Archie, tapping the rim of his fire-watcher’s tin hat, and looking very worried indeed.

‘Come in, come in, he’s here,’ Olive smiled, ever glad to see his reassuring presence, but her words didn’t seem to make him any more relaxed and then to her horror she discovered why.

‘Olive, I know you’ve been popping in to see my wife and run errands for her when she is unwell, but is Mrs Dawson here now?’

Fixing the blackout curtain into place, she switched on the light, and noticed Archie looked like he’d just seen a bad accident as she ushered him into the hallway.

‘No, I haven’t seen her at all today, but Barney’s here.’ Olive’s brow creased in bewilderment as Archie moved forward, passing her in haste as he headed to the front room where everyone was gathered.

‘I tried to get in earlier after school,’ Barney explained, as he edged closer to the fire after coming in from the Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden, ‘but the door was locked and I couldn’t get any answer.’ Olive noticed that he didn’t mention the chicks.

‘This is not right!’ Archie said, passing Olive at speed. Quickly she followed him as he flung open the front door and tore up the street towards number 1. No wonder Barney had gone to his old haunts if he couldn’t get into his own home, Olive thought, and her heart skipped a beat when she realised that he could still be walking the cold dark streets now if she hadn’t met up with him earlier that evening.

In moments Archie had disappeared into the dense blanket of fog. Olive knew there had been talk of Mrs Dawson going to live in the countryside for the duration of the war. Or rather, Nancy Black had told her that, as her nerves were very fragile, Mrs Dawson and Barney would be better off out of the bomb-damaged capital. But Archie wouldn’t hear of it according to Nancy; instead he’d said he wasn’t eager to fill the mouths of some of Article Row’s residents. Archie’s disparaging remark was most surely aimed at Nancy, Olive knew, as her next-door neighbour had only recently been heard to say how relaxed Archie had seemed when his wife was in hospital and not at all worried at her slow progress.

‘I tried to get inside the house but my key won’t work.’ Archie’s usual calm features were pale. ‘I think she’s locked herself in because of all the bombings and the disruption, either that or the front-door frame may be in need of attention, but it seemed fine this morning.’ He sounded really worried now. ‘I thought she may have wandered down to your house for a little assistance … She wouldn’t have left the lad to roam the streets … She dotes on him …’

It only took two hefty kicks of Archie’s boot to separate the front door from its frame. It hit the wall with such a thud that the occasional table which had been wedged behind it splintered under the force.

Archie swiftly disappeared to the back of the house and into the kitchen where Mrs Dawson would usually be making his supper at this time of night, whilst Olive stood at the front door not wanting to intrude. She hadn’t seen Mrs Dawson for a little while; she had popped in a few times, but now she realised she should have done more. She should have invited Mrs Dawson into her own house for a cup of tea and a chat, made friends with her and kept her spirits up. After all, it couldn’t be easy losing your own child; maybe she would have liked to talk to another mother?

A small shiver of dread ran down Olive’s back and guilty thoughts filled her head. If she hadn’t been so busy with other things she knew she could have made more of an effort to help out poor Mrs Dawson. However, her self-admonishment was cut short when Archie came rushing back down the long hallway from the kitchen.

‘Go for help!’ he called as he lifted his forearm to his face and headed towards the kitchen. As he did so Olive caught a whiff of the overpowering gas smell and, taking her handkerchief from her sleeve, she covered her nose and mouth.

‘Oh my word!’ she exclaimed, knocked almost sideways by the pungent odour. Fearing that Archie, too, would be overcome by the noxious vapours she hurried into the front room and quickly threw open the windows. Then frantically she hurried back into the hallway and informed Archie that his wife wasn’t in there either.

‘There must be a leak?’ she said as Archie began to open all the other windows and doors to let the damp air come in to blow away the poisonous miasma. A few moments later she heard an anguished cry and a scramble of footsteps, ‘Olive, quickly, go and get Sally!’

Olive’s heart was beating so fast she could feel it in her throat as she made her way down the street and back to her own house, all the while praying – even though she didn’t know what she was praying for.

‘It was too late for Mrs Dawson by the time I got to her,’ Sally said later as they huddled around Olive’s hearth, and although there was a cheery fire in the grate everybody felt suddenly cold. ‘The noxious gas fumes had already done their work. I reckon she’d been dead for some hours judging by the degree of rigor mortis.’

The chicks were forgotten for the time being. As was the letter addressed to Agnes. It had been sitting on the hall table all day, with the sender’s address on the back of the envelope, Carlton, Mending and Carlton, Solicitors, visible for all to see.

Olive couldn’t rid herself of the gnawing guilt that prompted her to question if there was more she could have or should have done for Mrs Dawson.

‘But, Olive, there was nothing else you could have done,’ Sally said as she gave baby Alice her breakfast before dropping the little girl off at the child-minder and going on to work at the hospital. ‘How were you to know number 1 had a gas leak?’

That was the story Archie had begged her to offer if she was asked how Mrs Dawson died. Everybody was in bed by the time he got back from the hospital and, as Olive had arranged for a new lock to replace the one that had been broken when he’d had to kick in the front door, he could not use his old key. She’d left a note and he called round, looking shattered, in the early hours of the morning.

‘I am so sorry to disturb you, Olive,’ Archie had said when she ushered him into the now-freezing kitchen. Lighting the gas on top of the stove to get a modicum of heat in the place, she pulled her woollen dressing gown securely under her chin.

‘Don’t give it another thought,’ Olive had said, handing him a hot cup of sweetened tea as Archie sat at the kitchen table and told her everything. He confessed to Olive how his wife had saved the sleeping tablets she had been given in hospital and fooled everybody into thinking she was well again, then, to make sure she did a thorough job and there would be no chance of revival she’d turned on the gas tap and put her head in the oven, never to wake again. Tears were rolling down both their faces when Archie finished speaking, and for a long time they said nothing.

Eventually, his tea stone-cold, Archie scraped back his chair and got up from the table saying in a low, almost angry voice, ‘How could she do it, Olive? How could she put the boy through this again? Not a thought for anybody else …’

‘Oh, Archie.’ Olive’s voice was a mixture of pain and pity. ‘The poor woman must have been desperate. The war has taken its toll on everybody.’ Nobody was immune to the misery, the shortages, the rationing or the fractured families.

‘Nothing will be the same after this,’ Archie said, seemingly a broken man as he walked down the hallway towards the front door.

‘What will you do now?’ Olive asked. ‘You need to get some sleep.’ Her heart went out to him for the utter misery he was suffering now. If there was anything she could do …

‘I have to sort things out, there is a lot to see to and questions will need to be answered.’

‘Don’t worry about the boy. I’ll look after Barney for as long as you need me to.’ Olive’s voice was hushed, so as not to wake anybody as she followed him down the hallway.

‘I’d be grateful if you let people know,’ Archie said, looking in the direction of Nancy’s house, ‘that Mrs Dawson’s death was an accident. A tragic accident.’

‘Of course, and whilst you are busy making the necessary arrangements I will make sure you are not inconvenienced. If there is anything you need just let me know.’