Orphans of War (18 page)

Barry was hiding behind some rocks canoodling with his latest girl from the town. He was a smooth operator. Greg had seen him chatting the girls up, necking with them in the fields. They were going at each other hammer and tongs so Barry wouldn’t miss his bike for a few minutes. Greg could blow out on the tracks, scare a few sheep, rattle his bones. It would be brilliant!

Heading into the wind he drove like the devil, up the track winding across the main road. No one was around and he didn’t care. Once he got up some speed it was as if it sparked an engine in his own head…Go, go, go!

How was he to know there was a milk lorry coming round the bend that swerved to avoid him? It crashed into him, knocking milk cans everywhere, milk spilling onto the road. Greg went flying and landed on his bum, dazed but unharmed. The lorry driver went berserk and cuffed him round the ears good and proper. The bike was a mess and he had to push it down the road. His new corduroy trousers were all torn and bloodied. Barry was nowhere to be seen but all hell broke loose at the Old Vic on his return.

He was up before the coppers for a caution, and the
biggest humiliation of all was when he was put back in short trousers, floppy grey ones, cut-offs that barely reached his knees like a kid, but he’d only himself to blame.

‘If you behave like a tearaway you’ll be treated like one,’ screamed Miss Blunt.

Mrs Plum went with him to the police station, where the sergeant gave him a right dressing-down, saying something about wasting precious petrol that men had died in ships to bring to this country. He was wasting precious milk that the children of England will be deprived of and taking a bike without permission so a soldier at his duty was put at risk.

You’d think he’d started a fifth column of collaborators, waiting to sabotage the Yorkshire Dales, the way the sergeant went on and on. He saw poor Mrs Plum blushing with embarrassment as he was told off and was put under orders to behave himself or else.

He didn’t care about the rest but he felt mean to have caused her bother. She didn’t need to tell him he’d let her down. Her face said it all. It was The Rug who seemed to take pleasure in his disgrace, picking on him. Bad enough to be grounded, confined to the barracks for the foreseeable future. The gang thought he was a hero. But he just wished it would all go away.

Maddy brought him books to read and there was an especially good one that caught his interest. It was all about how boys hid in the wild woods and lived rough. Now that was something he fancied doing.

He felt stupid in his short pants, his legs were
growing like twigs, all bones and hinges. If only Miss Blunt would keep off his back–but she kept on sticking a needle in until he was ready to explode.

If she were a man he’d have clobbered her, but only a coward would slap a woman down. She was like all the past billet tyrants rolled into one, with her piggy eyes and roly-poly shape, the way her wig shifted when she got worked up.

He couldn’t take his eyes off that wig. It made him laugh, taking his mind off her sarcasm. He knew it was only time before he’d take his revenge.

Maddy felt sorry for Greg. He just couldn’t do anything right, and she overheard the meeting in the drawing room when Miss Blunt complained about his sullen insolence.

‘In my book boys like that need breaking down. Byrne has too much spirit for a boy of the lower orders. He needs a taste of the birch, not a caution.’

‘Gregory just got carried away,’ said Plum in his defence. ‘He’s at that awkward stage, neither fish nor fowl. The in-between years can be trying but no real harm was done.’

‘I must say, Mrs Belfield, you take all this very lightly. I’m not used to such indulgence by my clients,’ said Miss Blunt.

‘In my experience, I just feel the more we punish, the less response we get,’ Plum replied. ‘My puppies, for instance—’

She was interrupted. ‘With respect, madam, this is a lad, not a pup.’

‘I don’t know…at this age there’s not much difference, but breaking the spirit is never a good idea,’ Plum defended her charge again.

‘He’ll have to be moved on. I’ll not stand for much more. The others see him as a hero with his Victory Tree HQ. He sets a very bad example.’ Miss Blunt was not letting go.

‘Do you want me to have a word?’ said Plum.

‘You Belfields must do as you see fit,’ came the guarded reply.

Maddy knew she must warn Greg to ease up on his campaign. Time to score some gold stars for himself, instead of black marks. Without him in the hostel it would be a very boring place and he was one of her special friends there. He’d taught her to ride her bike and she just liked him.

Rushing over to the Old Vic as soon as she could, Maddy spied them all having a troop review under the Victory Tree HQ, a line of troops for kit inspection. It was a war game they all played, a bit like being in the Boy Scouts, parading with pitchforks and spades as if they were guns, taking turns to spot planes in the trees. Greg was up the tree with the binoculars, but no sooner had she arrived than Miss Blunt came huffing and puffing up the steps behind her.

‘Just stop these silly games…I want you all back inside at once. When you’ve done all your chores, you can play out but not before. And where is Byrne? If that toerag’s skived off again…No one must take notice of a ruffian like that. He’s the scum of the earth and he’ll be ending up in gaol before long.’

The warden was facing them with her back to the tree, and Gloria, Sid and the troop were standing back. Everyone’s eyes were trying not to look up as a fishing rod with a hook on the end slowly dangled down over Miss Blunt’s head. Maddy gasped. The line was heading down silently towards Miss Blunt, down towards the thatch of rust-coloured hair. Slowly, slowly it descended as Greg, hiding in the branches, aimed for the crown as she droned on. She made to move, but the thatch lifted itself off neatly and swung in the air.

Once dislodged, it wriggled in the breeze like a wounded animal, dangling, exposing the fluff of her bare skull for all to see.

For a second, no one spoke, being too shocked, but Miss Blunt felt the jerk and then the draught, turning round to watch the wig disappearing from her grasp up the tree. She was speechless, her mouth opening and closing like a fish gasping for air.

‘Byrne!’ she screamed, shaking her fist into the tree. Maddy didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, sensing Greg’s triumph was going to be his undoing.

‘This time you’ve gone too far,’ said Mrs Plum, tearing a strip off the culprit standing before her. ‘You might think it funny and clever, but what you did was wrong. Miss Blunt wears a wig for a good reason, to cover a disability, just as Maddy must wear a patch to cover hers, but to defy her in such a way–I’m ashamed of you! I trusted you and you let me down again. I stood surety for your last stupid prank. This time I have to inform the billeting officer to find you another hostel.
I have no choice. Oh, Gregory! What do you say for yourself?’ she sighed.

‘Sorry, Mrs Plum.’ He looked suddenly smaller and lost in a short pants.

‘Sorry isn’t enough. You owe Miss Blunt an apology. Thoughtlessness is one thing. Cruelty is another. I won’t have behaviour like this at the Vic. I just can’t believe you’d be so stupid. And don’t stand there looking as if you don’t care because I can see through your act.’

Greg was standing with his head up, piercing her with those blue eyes. Had she met her match with the one pup she couldn’t train or control? There had to be a reason for all this defiance. All her instincts sensed he was a good lad at heart. ‘Why? Gregory, give me one good reason why I should keep you here?’

‘Dunno, miss. I couldn’t take no more. She’s on at me night and day like a pain in the bum. She don’t care for no one, just rules, and I’m sick of rules. Do kids who have mums and dads have to live by rules? Do they have to line up like skittles? Do they get slapped down? We’re always strangers on someone else’s stairs, shoved from place to place, and always rules! If I had a mum and dad, it would be different, yes? Why didn’t I get one of my own? When I come here it was the best billet yet, but then she come up with stupid rules like all the rest and I can’t stand no more of it.’

This was a side of Greg Plum had never seen before. It was as if for a second he’d lifted up that hard shell, showing the soft underbelly of the wounded boy. She wanted to take him in her arms, this motherless lad,
confused and lost, who lashed out against the world that had never given him much of a chance. Here was somebody worth saving.

‘If you will write a proper apology and try to make yourself useful, I’m going to try to reconsider, but I need your word of honour.’

‘But I am not sorry, miss. She’s just as hard as me.’ Those ice-blue eyes stared ahead.

‘But Miss Blunt is in authority over you. You can never win that battle. Sometimes we all have to do things we don’t want to, make a truce with the enemy, find common ground, compromise. I know it’s hard, believe me, but do you think you are man enough to do that?’

‘Not in these ruddy pants, I’m not. She makes me wear them out of spite.’

‘Long trousers don’t make a man, Greg. It’s in here.’ Plum stabbed at her head and heart. ‘This is where it counts, rising above petty rules and irritations. You behave like a proper man and I’ll make sure you get your trousers back. That is my promise.’

‘Thanks, miss…I won’t let you down again.’

‘I know you won’t,’ Plum replied, more in hope than certainty.

Two weeks later, Avis Blunt resigned, taking up a post in a private school.

‘I’ll not stay where my authority is undermined. I’ll not ask for references from people who have no idea how to curb bad behaviour. That boy will prove to be everything I predict and more. You’ll rue the day when
you took his word over mine. He’s a wild one, not easily tamed, and the sooner he’s in the army, the better all round. We can afford to sacrifice riffraff like that! I wash my hands of this place. The trouble with the lower classes is they have no sense of their place in society. I blame the Great War for shaking up standards. Now we’re educating children above their station. It’ll be the death of this country, and you should be careful who Madeleine mixes with in future. Pack her off to boarding school before it’s too late, is my advice.’

‘Thank you, Miss Blunt, for your opinion,’ said Plum, rising to her full height. ‘But if the staff of any female boarding establishment resemble you in any way, that would be the last place on earth I’d ever put a child. Good day!’

It was the talk of Sowerthwaite that a plane had gone down somewhere up on the tops, high up on the moors on a grim night in mid-March when there was still deep snow and mist. Everyone heard the roar of an engine in trouble, but how far it had limped before crashing into rocks, no one knew. The moors were raked over by the army and RAF, closing off all the lanes and tracks to the fells to all but essential workers.

Greg held an emergency meeting at Victory Tree HQ. This was their chance to do their bit and Gloria was all ears.

‘There’ll be loads of metal souvenirs, shrapnel scattered for miles, so we’ve got to get it afore the other gangs in Sowerthwaite do.’

‘But we’re not allowed up there,’ said Mitch Brown.

‘So? They’ll have cleared up the mess by now,’ Greg boasted. ‘I’ll ask up at the battery field and then we can go off on our own search.’

‘But it’ll be dangerous,’ said Peggy.

‘So? You don’t have to come. It’ll be lads only then.’

‘No!’ yelled Gloria. ‘I’m coming too.’ She wanted to
have an adventure to tell Maddy, who was now at the other school.

‘We’ll go Saturday afternoon while it’s light. Then we can say we’re all going collecting sticks. It’ll be fun, and Mrs Plum won’t mind if we’re doing something useful,’ came the order.

Things had taken a turn for the better now that Mrs Plum was in charge and Mrs Grace Battersby, the new cook, kept an eye on things. She’d sort of made their rules fun. They got points and stars for good behaviour and were split into teams for chores. They had singsongs round the piano and concert nights. Mrs Battersby got them baking buns. They needed kindling for the stove, and sticking was something even the little ones could do.

There’d been no more snow so Greg’s gang set out in the brightness of the blue sky on that Saturday afternoon, trudging uphill in a line, big boys racing ahead, scarves and balaclavas wrapping them from the cold.

Gloria’s short legs couldn’t keep up with the line and then they left the track and took a short cut over the fields, dodging the snow fence. Snow got down her gumboots and the cold chapped her bare knees but she wasn’t going to complain.

As they scaled the fell, the sky got greyer and darker but no one was bothered at first, too intent on finding the crash site up out on the moorside. There were a few smoking embers in the distance to urge them on. They looked near but were in fact much further away. They were three miles up and it was an overcoat colder up there.

When they reached the ridge Mitch complained, ‘There’s nothing to see here.’

‘Alf, at the battery, told me it was near the trig point, that triangle of stones sticking out on top of the rock. It’s not far, but it may be still guarded,’ said Greg.

‘Will we see bodies?’ Gloria asked, not sure if she wanted to see anything mangled.