War Baby (6 page)

After she'd gone, Ruby stood thoughtfully. Heading upstairs to dust the bedroom was only an excuse. She told herself her sister just had a case of wedding nerves. Everything would be fine – including having babies.

 

 

SPRING HAD COME
to the forest. Days of watery sunshine intermingled with breezy days, and days when it rained, though lightly.

Frances stood in a forest glade, enjoying the chirping of birds in the trees and watching their coming and going with twigs and bits of sheep's wool tugged from barbed wire fences.

When evacuation had first been suggested to her, she hadn't wanted to leave home and stay with Ada Perkins – mother to Gertrude Powell and grandmother to Miriam – across the River Severn in the Forest of Dean. She'd wanted to stay with her uncle and cousins in the only safe home she'd ever known. As it turned out, she settled in well with both Ada and the local kids and hadn't grumbled too much when it had been decided, in light of the recent bombing raids, that she should come back for a while. For the rest of her life she would remember this carefree time, days of learning how to tickle trout, how to snare rabbits and how to forage for lunch when it was too late to go home.

Frances was now thirteen. In another year she'd be leaving school, probably to help out in the family bakery in Oldland Common, unless she obtained a job in a factory producing war materials. There was one at the bottom of Cherry Garden Hill that used to produce lawn mower parts before the war. Apparently it was now producing nuts and bolts. There was a chance she might get a job there, although her age might count against her.

In the meantime she was enjoying her few days back in the forest. Soon she would be returning home to be a bridesmaid at her cousin Mary's wedding.

‘Mary's marrying a pilot,' Frances proudly told her schoolfriends while on a foray to pick wild mushrooms and garlic and to see if the odd rabbit or two had got caught in one of Ralphie's traps.

Deacon, with his cheeky face and tumbling hair, was the friend she most wanted to impress. She was over the moon when his face lit up with awestruck delight.

‘Get on! Bombers or fighters?'

‘Bombers,' said Frances, his response causing her to glow with delight.

‘What sort of bombers? Hampdens? Wellingtons? Halifaxes? Lancasters?'

All Frances knew was that he flew in bombers. She hadn't a clue about what
type
of bomber. ‘I'm not sure: He didn't say. I think it's a secret.'

Deacon narrowed his eyes so he could better read her expression. ‘You don't know, do you?'

‘Yes I do,' Frances replied hotly. ‘But I can't tell you. Remember what that poster in school says: “Careless talk costs lives”.'

Deacon winced. She could see by his expression that he wanted to know more, but was an out-and-out patriot so wouldn't dare press her further.

‘Are you going to be a bridesmaid?' asked Merlyn, the only girl Frances had really latched on to.

Uncertain whether being a bridesmaid would impress them, she considered denying it. She'd spent most of her childhood in the company of boys, preferring to climb trees and make dens rather than play with a doll and pram.

It was only remembering Deacon's reaction to Susan, a blond-haired girl at school who lisped a little, but was full of confidence and favoured wearing dresses with bows and an Alice band in her hair, and how Deacon became dumbstruck when Susan was in the room, that Frances finally admitted, ‘I suppose so.'

Merlyn persisted. ‘What colour?'

‘Na, na, na-na, na. Frances is going to wear a dress and bows in her hair,' mocked Ralph – or Ralphie as they usually called him. He was a scruffy boy from a large family. On account of there being rarely enough food to eat at home, he had become a skilled hunter of anything edible. This included salmon, trout, rabbits and pheasants.

Deacon clipped the back of his head with the flat of his hand. ‘She's a girl, Ralph. Girls wear pretty dresses. Haven't you noticed?'

Ralphie, scornful of anything sissy, wiped his nose on his shirtsleeve in an act of contempt. He'd never actually quite taken it on board that Frances was a girl. From the moment she'd arrived in the forest, she'd joined in every scrape they'd ever got up to and could climb a tree quicker than anyone else.

‘What colour?' Merlyn repeated. Merlyn had also spent most of her childhood ranging the forest with the boys. Of late she'd taken to wearing a ribbon in her hair. And now she was asking about the colour of the bridesmaid's dress Frances would wear. Like Frances, Merlyn was growing up.

Confused by conflicting emotions, Frances shrugged. ‘I'm not sure. Blue, I think.' Blue was the first colour to come into her head, mainly because she'd glanced around her and Deacon was wearing a navy-blue pullover. ‘Not navy blue,' she added as an afterthought. ‘I think sky blue.'

‘I like pink best,' said Merlyn. The answer was not surprising. The ribbon in her hair was pink.

Frances didn't know quite how to respond except to say that it most definitely wouldn't be pink. ‘I don't care what colour you like, Merlyn. I like blue best and my dress will be blue.'

There were plenty of mushrooms growing, especially around a part of the forest frequented by deer.

‘Deer's poo! You can't beat it for growing mushrooms,' Deacon had declared.

Frances gathered up enough mushrooms to fry in butter, perhaps with a few scraps of bacon added.

Deacon was close by doing the same. The line of mushrooms she was following joined up with those he was picking. She could have gone in the other direction, there were plenty growing there too, but Deacon was like a magnet. She was drawn to him, but couldn't as yet understand why.

They ended up standing next to each other, out of earshot of the rest of them.

‘You can have one of these.'

He handed her one of the rabbits he and Ralphie had trapped earlier that day.

‘I thought you only caught two today,' she asked, thinking perhaps that she'd got it wrong, though she didn't want it to be wrong. She wanted to be favoured by him. She wanted him to like her more than he liked Susan, the girl with the lisp and the pretty dresses.

Deacon, undisputed leader of the local lads and heartthrob of every adolescent girl in school, turned a touching shade of pink.

‘It's a present, seeing as you're off to this wedding by and by. And I'm leaving school before you. Got a job an' all.'

Frances let the rabbit dangle from her fingers and blushed just as brightly as Deacon. ‘I will be back you know.'

He shrugged. ‘You might. You might not. Anyway, I'm starting my job at the quarry. I might not be around when you're over here visiting.'

‘I'll find you.'

‘Come elvering tonight?'

‘Yes. I think so.'

Ada Perkins looked at Frances searchingly when she asked about going elvering with young Deacon Fielding. She had recognised the besotted look in her young charge's eyes. She'd seen the same in her daughter Gertrude's eyes when she'd been in love. Seen the disappointment too when the man she loved had left her and she'd been forced to marry someone who had demanded her complete obedience. To Ada's eternal sorrow, her daughter had buckled under his domineering ways. She had become as hard and as sanctimonious as he was. There had been no forgiveness in his religion. Gertrude tried her best, but her best had never been good enough. She'd been stripped of compassion, stripped also of the affection she should have given her daughter.

Ada sighed. But that was Gertrude. Her daughter. This was Frances Sweet, Stan Sweet's niece. She only hoped a dark evening in the forest didn't lead to the same scenario. Even if Frances was a lot younger, the forest lived and breathed the ways of nature and wasn't easily resisted.

‘Seeing as you're back home on the other side of the Severn shortly, you can.'

‘I'll get my coat!'

Ada grabbed her arm as she swept by. ‘You'll eat your supper. Then you can get ready. I'll get my net.'

‘You're coming too?'

‘Of course I am! I go elvering every year, don't I?'

As dusk fell, men, women and children trooped along the slippery paths at the side of the river, some of them lugging home-made elver scoops over their shoulders.

Netting that might once have been hung up at a window were spread tautly over a frame, the resultant shape vaguely resembling a small bathtub. There was a handle at one end, this slung over the shoulder, the scoop hanging over behind.

Elver fishermen not carrying a net or a parcel of sandwiches, carried torches with which to attract the young eels; others had storm lanterns and a few, notably those that worked in the forest coal mines, used the Davey lamps on their pit helmets.

Ada kept her home-made scoop sitting on top of the shed roof. Once she had shaken the leaves out of it, she and Frances joined the others, seeking out and claiming what they considered the best pitch possible.

‘Just here,' she said, pointing at a favourite spot where a natural jetty of fallen stones speared out into the dark water.

Ada was one of those lucky enough to own a storm lantern, the little flame flickering into life once they were settled beside the river. Ada attached it to a long pole so the light fell directly on to the water.

Ada told Frances what to do. ‘Scoop it in. Shine yer light down into it and the little critters will come swimming in.'

Frances fixed her eyes on the spot of light, which looked as bright as the moon. Even though this was her second spring in the forest, it was the first time she'd been elvering. She felt very confident of success, Ada leaving her to it while she sat back on the wet grass, her boots in the mud, her smoking pipe clenched in the corner of her mouth.

Intent on what she was doing, she didn't notice Deacon and his father Joe walking along the path behind them, but Ada did. ‘Off early, Joe?'

‘I am that. Just been brought a message that our Roger is shipping out so got a bit of leave. Waiting fer us at home, along with Will Pegg and his daughter.'

Mention of Will Pegg's daughter was uttered with apprehension.

‘I won't ask what that's about,' Ada muttered, shifting her pipe from one side of her mouth to the other.

‘You don't need to,' grumbled Joe.

Deacon's eyes met those of Frances before he followed soundlessly behind his father, the elver scoop bouncing over his back.

Will Pegg's daughter was named Della. Frances hadn't had anything much to do with her. She merely knew her as one of the older girls, though she had noticed she had a winning smile and an ample bosom. She'd overheard Deacon and the other boys remarking about those breasts using their hands to describe the size of them. Once when Roger Peters had been home on leave, they'd almost tripped over him and Della in the forest. Della's dress had been up around her waist and Roger had been lying on top of her.

They'd hidden in the undergrowth, watching in silent fascination until the pair had finished and stood up, rearranging their clothes.

They didn't speak much, mostly just kissed and fondled each other. The only thing Frances remembered Della saying was that she hoped Roger hadn't got her in the family way.

‘I suppose Della Pegg's in the family way,' Frances said to Ada.

Ada opened one eye; she had been dozing. A whorl of smoke rose from her pipe. ‘Aye. I suppose she is.'

‘Roger Peters's for it,' she heard somebody say.

‘Before he goes off to war by the sound of it,' shouted somebody else.

Another voice rang through the forest, high as the sound of metal ringing against metal. ‘Won't be the first.'

‘Won't be the last either,' muttered Ada.

It wasn't a bad haul of elvers, and although Frances was delighted, she still couldn't bring herself to eat them. They'd cooked some up in the forest once, she and the other kids. Ralphie had brought them along, a mass of wriggling in a tin can. He'd told her he'd got them from the river and that they were quite fresh. One look had been enough to turn her stomach.

She half turned, hands still holding the net, as she informed Ada that she wouldn't be eating the elvers.

In the glow of the storm lantern that Ada had hung from a low hanging branch, Frances saw her eyes narrow. ‘No need to. We can sell them to people who do like eating them.'

Just a few days later Frances was standing at the door of the little house in the forest that she'd stayed in ever since she was evacuated. There were logs piled up outside the smoke house where Ada smoked salmon poached fresh from the river. There was also a leg of ham, courtesy of a wild boar that everyone said didn't exist in the forest. They did. It was just that you had to know where to look.

Ada noticed her reluctance. ‘My door's always open.' The pipe in the corner of her mouth jiggled as she spoke.

Frances nodded. A thought came to her. ‘Will you be coming over to visit Mrs Powell and Miriam?'

Sadness clouded the old lady's eyes but was swiftly hidden. ‘I visit there when I think there's a need – like there was with you. You needed me to be there.'

It seemed a strange answer, but then, Frances thought to herself, Ada Perkins was a strange woman, but likeable, very likeable.

Frances grimaced. ‘I've never liked wearing dresses, but I suppose I have to get used to it.'

There was a wise look on Ada's face as she regarded her charge – not without some affection. ‘You don't have to, but you will. You're still a child,' she said, patting Frances's shoulder. ‘That's what you are this week. But next?'

Frances frowned. Ada sometimes talked in riddles. ‘Don't be silly, Ada. I'll still be thirteen.'

‘And then you'll be fourteen, and one year is going to make all the difference in your life – whether you like to wear fancy dresses or not!'