The Penny Bangle (2 page)

As she made her way along the lane, Cassie saw the looming, shadowy outline of what looked like a castle from a book of fairy tales. It was built of pale golden stone, it had tall, twisted chimneys, fancy turrets, and its small, dark windows all glittered in the moonlight.

But afterwards, there was nothing – just hedges, trees and fields. Or anyway, she thought they must be fields. They didn’t look like the parks she’d seen when she had gone on outings with her granny, with swings and ducks and flowerbeds and ponds, even though there were trees.

Later, she passed the ruins of a house, its fire-stained walls and rotting timbers pointing drearily at the winter sky, but softened by a muffling of snow. Someone should come and level it, she thought, and make use of the bricks.

She went on down the lane, following the map and hoping she was nearly there, afraid she was going to freeze to death in this white, empty wilderness.

The cottage loomed up suddenly as she came around a bend. This too looked like something from a children’s picture book, one she’d had when she was five or six. Long and low, with tiny latticed windows and a mossy, gabled roof, it was the sort of place where naughty children got made into pies.

She dumped her shopping bag in the front porch, flexed her frozen fingers and, after looking in vain for any sort of bell or knocker, banged a bit too loudly on the door, which could have used a lick or two of paint.

As she was despairing of anybody being in, a tall, middle-aged woman came from round the back, carrying two white enamel buckets. Cassie took in her muddy rubber boots, her hessian apron underneath a man’s old army trench-coat, and her long dark hair escaping from a tartan scarf which had worked loose.

‘Mrs Denham?’ Cassie asked, and wondered if this woman had a mirror.

‘Yes, I’m Rose Denham.’ The woman put down one bucket, and then held out her hand and smiled. ‘You must be Miss Taylor,’ she continued. ‘Miss Sefton from the WVS said we should expect you about five o’clock today. I hope you had a pleasant journey?’

‘It was all right, thanks,’ said Cassie, shaking Mrs Denham’s hand and wondering why she lived in such a tiny little cottage and dressed in army trench-coats when she talked so posh?

‘Come in, why don’t you?’ Mrs Denham added, kicking off her Wellingtons in the porch. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

The place was better once you got inside. It smelled of wood smoke, baking bread and Mansion polish.

The kitchen was very warm and welcoming, with a scrubbed pine table in the middle of the room and a dresser full of pretty china taking up one wall. There was a smell of something cooking, too – something with a bit of meat in it – and Cassie’s mouth began to water.

Mrs Denham put a big black kettle on the hob. ‘Sit down by the range,’ she said. ‘I’ll make us both some tea. There might be a bit of seed cake, too. Or there was this morning, anyway.’ She took down a cake tin, opened it and looked inside. ‘Yes, there’s still some left.’

Cassie sat, and soon she had her hands curled round her cup, warming them blissfully. She sipped her tea and ate her cake. Eventually, her toes and all her other frozen bits began to thaw.

She glanced at Mrs Denham, who was standing at the sink and peeling something – vegetables for supper, she supposed. Now she’d taken off her awful coat and tartan scarf, Cassie could see her new employer was a pretty woman with a slim, attractive figure and a handsome profile, too.

Cassie had never liked her own snub nose and, if she’d had a choice, she’d have had a nose like Mrs Denham’s, straight and elegant above a generous, well-shaped mouth.

If she had her hair cut, Cassie thought, if she wore some lipstick, she’d be beautiful. Some pale silk stockings and some nice high heels would set her off a treat.

‘I’m sorry, I’m neglecting you,’ said Mrs Denham suddenly, making Cassie jump. She smiled, and Cassie noticed she had near-perfect teeth. ‘Do have another piece of cake, and pour yourself more tea.’

‘Thanks,’ said Cassie, wondering if she was dreaming this, and if she was going to wake up at her workbench in the factory any minute now.

‘This will be your room,’ said Mrs Denham.

She had shown Cassie all around the ground floor of the cottage, which consisted of the homely kitchen, a small, stone-flagged scullery full of pickles and preserves, and a cosy sitting room, in which there were comfortable armchairs, a well-polished modern sideboard on which there were lots of photographs in silver frames, mostly of some glamorous blonde, and a glowing grate. There were also shelves of books and piles of magazines. The place looked like a library.

Then she’d taken Cassie up the stairs, where it was absolutely freezing, and shown her to her room.

‘It’s rather small, I know,’ she added, as she edged round Cassie’s little bed. ‘But it’s the warmest in the house. It’s right over the kitchen and the heat collects up here.’

I bet, thought Cassie sceptically, looking round.

The room was tiny, containing just a chest of drawers and a small iron bedstead, thankfully piled high with quilts and blankets and topped off with a fat, pink eiderdown. The ceiling sloped down at an angle almost to the floor and there was a little dormer window.

I’ll have to be careful I don’t brain myself when I get out of bed, she thought, looking up to see if this room had electric light. She hadn’t noticed what was in the kitchen, and wondered if they had just oil lamps, out here in the wilds?

She put her bag down on the bed and looked at Mrs Denham. ‘What shall I do now?’ she asked.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Mrs Denham, frowning.

‘Work, I mean,’ said Cassie.

‘Oh, we’ll talk about your work this evening, when we all have supper together, shall we?’ Then Mrs Denham smiled again, and Cassie saw that her grey eyes were kind. ‘So which part of Birmingham do you come from?’

‘Smethwick,’ said Cassie shortly. ‘Do you know it?’

‘I’m afraid I’ve never been there.’

‘You ain’t – I mean, you haven’t missed much,’ said Cassie. ‘It’s mostly factories and houses, and lots of them’s been bombed to bits by Jerry.’

‘You people from the cities are so brave,’ said Mrs Denham, looking as if she meant it. ‘Does your whole family live in Smethwick?’

‘Just my granny, and she’s all the family I’ve got.’ Cassie shrugged her shoulders. ‘She’s getting on for eighty, and she says she’s had her life, so she doesn’t care if Hitler and his merry men go flattening all of Brum. But she wanted me to get away.’

‘Mm, that’s understandable, poor lady.’ Mrs Denham sighed, then shook her head and flicked her long, dark hair out of her eyes. ‘Well, I expect you’re hungry. My husband and the boys should be in soon, and then we’ll have our supper.’

‘Boys?’ repeated Cassie nervously, hoping Mrs Denham hadn’t got half a dozen teenaged kids. Young ones she could manage, just about. All you had to do with them was cuff them round the head if they got out of line. But fourteen-year-old hooligans …

‘Robert and Stephen, they’re both in the army, in the Royal Dorset Regiment. At the moment, though, they’re both on leave,’ said Mrs Denham. ‘I think I just heard someone coming in. Let’s go back downstairs.’

The man downstairs was in his early twenties, Cassie guessed. Dark haired and six feet tall at least, he had to duck under the beams to walk across the kitchen.

He looked a mess, she thought. His trousers had great tears across the knees. His old tweed jacket was all frayed along the cuffs and seams. ‘Mum,’ he said, ‘I’m starving. When will supper be?’

‘In half an hour or so,’ said Mrs Denham, and then she turned to Cassie. ‘Robert, this is Miss Taylor. She’s kindly going to help us on the farm.’

‘Really?’ said the man.

He looked her up and down. Quite rudely, Cassie thought, although now she noticed that his eyes were the most striking she had ever seen. They were large and dark, with long black lashes, rather like Clark Gable’s, she decided – you could drown yourself in eyes like these.

‘Good evening, Miss Taylor,’ he managed to grunt at last.

‘Hello,’ said Cassie, still staring back at him.

He was quite good-looking, she supposed. Well-made, broad-shouldered, with a head of black or dark brown hair to match his equally dark eyes. Yes, he was very attractive – if you liked that sort of thing.

But, Holy Mother of God, the face on him – as long as from Castle Bromwich to Halesowen! He must have lost a quid and found a farthing.

He grumbled off upstairs to change his clothes. Or that was what she thought he’d said. Just like his mother, he talked as if he was a member of the Royal Family.

But what they had to swank and be so posh about, when they lived in this tiny little house, Cassie couldn’t imagine.

They heard him clunking round above them. But then he stuck his head back round the door.

Cassie glanced up. The clunking was still going on, together with a bit of cursing now.

She frowned at him, perplexed.

He came into the room and smiled in welcome, holding out his hand. ‘Hello, I’m Stephen Denham,’ he began. ‘You must be Miss Taylor, our new land girl?’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Cassie. She looked up at the ceiling once again.

‘Oh, didn’t Mum say?’ asked Stephen, and he grinned. ‘I’m sorry, there are two of us. We’re twins.’

Chapter Two

Mrs Denham sent Cassie to her room to get unpacked and, as she emptied out her shopping bag, she heard the twins discussing her in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs.

‘She’s very skinny,’ muttered one of them – she thought it was the grumpy twin. ‘I reckon she’s a slum kid. She looks pasty-faced and feeble. I’ll bet you she’ll be useless, and she’ll be bone idle, too.’

‘Mum will fatten her up and crack the whip,’ his brother told him, making Cassie shudder. Then they went into the kitchen. After she had put away her things, tidied her dark blonde hair a bit and dabbed some powder on her pasty face, Cassie went downstairs.

‘This is my husband, Alex,’ Mrs Denham said, smiling at a man who had grey streaks in his dark hair, and who had obviously just walked in, because he still had snowflakes on his shoulders.

‘It’s Miss Taylor, isn’t it?’ The man held out his hand, and Cassie sighed – another toff, she thought. But she took Mr Denham’s hand and shook it firmly. At least he smiled nicely, and – just like his wife’s – his eyes were kind.

Mrs Denham helped him take his coat off. She brushed the snow out of his hair with gentle fingers, and then she took his hands in hers and rubbed them, to warm them up again.

‘How are you feeling, Alex?’ she enquired, and Cassie heard concern, or it might have even been anxiety, in her voice.

‘I’m fine, my dear,’ said Mr Denham.

‘You’re better than you were this morning, then?’

‘Yes, much better, thank you.’

‘Good,’ said Mrs Denham, but she didn’t sound convinced, and Cassie wondered why.

Then they started supper, and it was a nightmare. Mrs Denham filled Cassie’s plate with stew, and this was mostly orange lumps – carrots, she supposed, or maybe they were swedes or turnips, who could tell – and chunks of dark brown, chewy meat.

There was a dish of baked potatoes, and these didn’t taste too bad, even though they were full of scabby bits. She couldn’t eat the skin. It was too tough. She didn’t know human beings could eat potato skin. At home, they gave their peelings to the scrawny chickens Mrs Gray across the road kept in her yard.

She sighed and thought how much she fancied a plate of fish and chips. A couple of bangers, or a nice pork pie.

The whole plate swam with gravy, and if there was one thing Cassie hated, it was gravy. Its slimy, greasy oiliness always made her feel like throwing up. But now she had to try to force it down. What was this disgusting greyish-yellowish-whitish stuff floating round in it, she wondered, poking at it crossly. It looked like lumps of snot.

Mrs Denham saw her prodding it with her fork. ‘I hope you like pearl barley,’ she said briskly. ‘It’s nutritious and it’s very filling. We use a lot of it in soups and stews.’

‘Yes, it’s nice,’ said Cassie, feeling sick.

‘You should eat your potato skin,’ chimed in the grumpy twin, who was gnawing at his own and talking with his mouth full. ‘It’s full of vitamins. It’s good for you.’