Orphans of War. Leah Fleming

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СКАЧАТЬ however poor he was, if he was handsome and kind. He wouldn’t mind that she was leggy and plain with a turn in her eye that never seemed to get any better. She didn’t want another operation to straighten it out. The last one in Chadley hadn’t worked for long.

      Aunt Plum promised when things were less hectic they would take her to see a specialist in Leeds who might sort out her eye once and for all. With the war on, though, Aunt Plum said all the best surgeons were at the front so they might have to wait until peace came again.

      It was so peaceful here. The war hadn’t bothered Sowerthwaite, and it wouldn’t if Grandma had anything to do with it. Maddy touched the bark of Uncle Julian’s poplar for luck.

      Gloria Conley skipped round the playground singing ‘Little Sir Echo, how do you do…’, her bunches bobbing behind her. She’d just been chosen to sing a solo in the school concert and Miss Bryce said she had lovely voice. She couldn’t wait for it to be Christmas now.

      She didn’t mind being moved out of the Hall because now Sid and she had their own special auntie and uncle of their own and all because of Sid’s ear.

      It had gone septic and now he couldn’t hear in it at all. Miss Plum had explained how ill he was when the Welfare came to take them away, and that he couldn’t be moved. Then Mrs Batty asked Mrs Plum if they’d like to come and stay with them. It was such a relief. How Gloria’d prayed not to be taken back to Elijah Street. She hoped that the Lord understood why she had to fib like mad about how Uncle Sam, God rest his soul, had beat them and poor Mam had shoved them on the train out of harm’s way. In her heart she knew it was all lies but it made a better story than the truth–that nobody wanted them.

      She woke up on that first morning in Brooklyn Hall and thought she’d died and gone to heaven, snug in clean sheets and pyjamas, with thick checked shirts and corduroy dungarees to play out in. There was yucky porridge for breakfast but hot toast and real butter and jam for afters.

      Everyone had fussed over Sid until he was better She wished they could stay in the big house for ever but then they’d been allowed to stay on in the grounds at the Battys’ cottage, which would have to do.

      Mrs Batty did all the washing for the Hall and the ironing. She had a big copper boiler in its own shed and an iron mangle that she turned with strong arms. She made big stews out of rabbits and stuff that Mr Batty ‘found’ in the woods. Huntsman’s Cottage was small but clean, and the old couple let them run wild in the woods and play with the other vaccies after school.

      Even school was turning out better than she dared hoped. Her reading and writing were coming on and Maddy sometimes let her practise the difficult words in the reading book. She was getting quite good now but would never catch up the Belfield girl.

      The only worry was that Constable Burton was sending someone to find Mam. She was in big trouble now. Gloria prayed that Mam’d take her time to fetch them back or come and live with them up here. She still couldn’t believe that she’d just shoved them on that train…It didn’t make any sense. Gloria never wanted to go back to the cobbled streets and dark corners of the city again, now she’d seen Brooklyn Hall.

      It was Miss Plum who explained that Mam was no longer living in Elijah Street. In fact no one knew where she had gone. ‘Gone orff, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘Not to worry, Gloria, she’ll come looking for you soon enough.’

      How could Gloria explain that she wasn’t worried, she was relieved to be staying put? Old Mrs Belfield said they ought to be put in an orphanage, so she cried and hollered and made herself so sick that Maddy’s gran relented, saying that they could stay ‘for the duration but in somewhere more suitable’, whatever that meant.

      It didn’t take a numbskull to work out that old Mrs Belfield thought she wasn’t good enough to share a room with Maddy. She was not family, but Miss Plum explained that she could come and play with Maddy any time she liked. Try and stop me, Gloria thought.

      She loved the Brooklyn, with its wide curving staircase, the pictures up the walls in gold curly frames and the smell of wet dogs and lavender polish. Every shelf was covered in china Bo-Peeps and silver trinket boxes, statuettes and ornaments.

      Why must she be banished just because she wasn’t born rich and petted with pretty dresses? There were no dancing lessons for her, or ponies to ride. The Belfields lived in another world, in a big space with fields to play out in, not cramped in a bricked back yard with noisy neighbours, barking dogs and horrible smells.

      Yet this war had done something wonderful in transporting the two of them from the town into the country. There would be no budging her now. She and Sid might live in a humble cottage but she was going to stick close to the Big House like glue. Maddy would be her best friend and where she went Gloria would not be far behind, she smiled to herself.

      Huntsman’s Cottage would do for now but when Gloria Conley grew up she was going to find her own rich man with a house with a hundred rooms and servants so she could live the life of a film star. She loved going to the Saturday pictures with the other vaccies to see Mickey Mouse and Charlie Chaplin, and Shirley Temple in Poor Little Rich Girl.

      If being rich meant learning to read and write proper…no elbows on the table and no slurping her soup, sucking up to her betters, then she was up for it. She was prettier than Maddy any day. That must count for something, and she could sing the best in her class. When they saw her on stage in the school show, then they would see she was as good as any of them.

      Greg Byrne took the corner fast. He’d borrowed some pram wheels off the salvage lorry, just three to make his racing cart. It was low to the ground with ropes to guide the steering. This was the fastest he’d made –if only he could control the damn thing. There was a touch of black ice on the tarmac ahead that was going to be tricky but skidding would be even better, he grinned to himself.

      It was worth weeks of cleaning and polishing the Daimler, fetching and carrying empties, to have the money to build this racer.

      There was something about going faster and faster that made his head spin with excitement. There was nothing to beat it. The trudge up the steep hill track onto the moors, with its five sharp bends, made it all worth it, scaring horses and carts, making tramps dive into the walls out of his way when he careered down pell-mell.

      The best thing of all was to cadge a ride on the back of one of the soldier’s motor bikes up to the battery field, towing ‘Flash Gordon’ behind him.

      One push and the cart flew downhill all the way with the soldiers’ shopping list for the village stores. All he could think of when he trudged back up the hill was the loose change he’d earned and the day when he would be old enough to own a racing bike himself. Even a two-wheeler would be a start but the old ‘sit up and beg’ two-wheeler bike in the Vic belonged to The Rug; an ancient black metal affair with a basket up front, that made Miss Blunt look even more like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. She rode it to Scarperton on market day and no one was allowed to borrow it.

      She ran the hostel like HMS Bounty, with her rules for wayward evacuees, a strict rota for chores, curfew hours, punishment meted out for bed-wetting and lateness, so once or twice he’d let her tyres down just to get even. One of these days he’d do a bunk but not yet.

      There was something about the Old Vic that he’d taken to. It wasn’t a bad billet. He’d been in far worse, and something Miss Plum had said about him being ‘officer material and a born leader’ pleased him, even if he did lead the gang into mischief. He was the one that started them off giggling when Miss Blunt’s wig went all of a quiver, which made it wobble even more. The others looked up СКАЧАТЬ