Wives at War (21 page)

‘Bub Cameron,' Polly said. ‘The name suits you.'

‘Nobody calls me Bub any more,' Christy said. ‘I left that name behind years ago.'

‘Before you became a spy?'

‘For the last time—'

‘You're not a spy; all right,' Polly said. ‘I believe you.'

‘Have you thought about what I asked you to do?'

‘A little,' Polly said.

‘But you haven't reached a decision yet?'

‘No.'

‘Or spoken to Hughes?'

‘No.'

‘You don't want to do it, do you?'

‘Of course I don't want to do it,' Polly said.

‘I don't see how you can refuse,' Christy said.

‘Put it down to traits in my character that wouldn't show on a negative.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I mean, why should I give up what I've got to buy my husband—'

‘And your children.'

‘All right – and my children – American citizenship?'

‘If you don't come through,' said Christy, ‘my government will probably deport him back to Italy.'

‘Dominic's a British citizen.'

‘Maybe that's what it says on his passport, but in the eyes of the federal authorities he's the elder son of Carlo Manone and heir apparent to a criminal empire.'

‘Surely you're exaggerating.'

‘Am I?'

What Christy said was the simple truth. Britain had been ruthless in dealing with immigrants and foreign nationals, and America, she suspected, would be even more so. She was unsure just how much she owed Dominic, how much loyalty. She had a feeling that this was just a beginning and that Dominic was playing another of his deadly little games not just with her but with the Government.

‘What's in the bag?' she said.

‘My cameras,' Christy said. ‘I left most of my stuff with Babs.'

‘So you intend to go back there, do you, after Jackie leaves?'

‘I hadn't given it much thought.'

‘I can put you up,' Polly heard herself say. ‘I've lots of room upstairs. You can take the big bed tonight, my bed. It's made up. I'll fill you a bottle.'

‘A bottle?'

‘A hot-water bottle, to warm the bed.'

‘Oh yeah,' Christy said. ‘Where will you sleep?'

‘Down here,' said Polly. ‘I prefer it down here.'

‘Because of the air raids?'

‘Yes.'

‘What if there's a raid tonight?'

‘Come down,' she said.

‘Down where?'

She got up from the table, crossed around behind him and pushed open the larder door. ‘Here,' she said. ‘I shelter here.'

He stood behind her, glass in hand, looking at the narrow cot bathed in warm light from the little lamp, sheets and blankets turned back.

‘Cosy,' he said.

‘And safe,' said Polly, and led him, reluctantly, upstairs.

*   *   *

Jackie opened one bleary eye and peered at his daughter. She looked, he thought, like something off a Christmas card in a heavy red overcoat and a woollen cap.

‘Hullo, darlin',' Jackie said. ‘Are you glad t' see me?'

‘Where's Christy?'

It was pitch-dark outside, the bedroom lit only by a shaft of light from the hall. It was also cold, colder than it ever got in the barracks where a big barrel stove burned all night. His breath hung in the air and when he moved his legs he found only frosty space beside him. He pulled the clothes up and offered an unshaven cheek to his child.

‘Come on, April, give Daddy a kiss.'

She backed away, frowning.

‘Where's Christy?'

‘What's wrong, honey? Don't you remember me?'

‘Yes. Where's Christy?'

From the doorway, Babs said, ‘Christy's gone to stay with Aunt Polly.'

‘Will he be comin' back?' April said.

‘She doesn't remember me,' said Jackie.

‘It's Daddy,' said Babs, standing behind April now.

‘I know,' said April and, turning on her heel and brushing past her mother, darted out into the hall.

Jackie sighed, sank back and stared at his breath in the air above him.

‘Time is it?'

‘Half-past seven.'

‘She doesn't remember.'

‘She's only young,' Babs said. ‘Give her time.'

‘I don't have time.' He turned his head. ‘Where are you goin'?'

‘To work,' said Babs.

She got down on her knees beside the bed.

He peered into her face and said. ‘I thought you'd be stayin' home today. Can't you phone in, tell them you're sick or somethin'?'

‘I can't,' said Babs. ‘Anyway, I have to take April to nursery.'

‘Stay home, both o' you. We'll go to the farm an' fetch the others.'

‘Jackie…'

‘Christ!' he said, without emphasis.

‘I've left out two real eggs an' some bacon. Fry up when you feel like it. There's tinned soup in the cupboard an' a pie as well, if you're hungry.' She kissed him on the cheek and got to her feet. ‘You need sleep, m'lad, that's what you need. I'll be home about six.'

‘Phone in,' Jackie said in a pathetic whisper. ‘Why can't you?'

‘I wish I could, darlin',' Babs said, ‘but I don't want to let Archie down.'

‘Archie? Who's Archie?'

‘Mummy,' April called, clear as a bell, from the hall. ‘Late.'

‘Gotta go.' Babs kissed him once more and tucked the blankets under his chin. ‘Great to have you home, honey,' she said, and left him lying there in the darkness, wide awake and all alone.

9

The Anglia had been ordered only weeks before the war. There had been much hemming and hawing in council meetings about whether the order should or should not be cancelled. In the end, delivery of the Ford had been taken on the very forenoon that Chamberlain had made his announcement that Britain was at war with Germany and nobody in the Breslin Council offices had taken much pleasure in the arrival of a motorcar that might in a matter of weeks be blown to smithereens or, worse, be filled with German officers.

Since neither fate had befallen the car so far, however, the scramble among local government officers to use the machine had become intense, a little war within a war, as it were, and Bernard had to pull out all the stops to borrow the car for an hour or so that chill December morning.

He was not the most assured of drivers. He drove, in fact, just as methodically as he did most other things, which included planning his campaign to ensure that the Belgian widow got everything she deserved and perhaps a little more than she bargained for.

Bernard could not explain why he found the woman's plight so affecting. He was neither pro- nor anti-Semitic and, as a rule, suffered none of the emotional confusion about Jewish people that troubled his stepdaughters and most of the district councillors. He drove directly from the council building to Breslin Primary School where Miss Wilma Stewart, the headmistress, and Mr Lachlan Boyd, the janitor, were waiting for him, together with six little evacuees from the lower rungs of the social ladder.

Miss Stewart and Mr Peabody were old friends, for billeting and schooling were two hands in the same glove and, to mix a metaphor, there had been a good deal of mutual back-scratching between the schoolteacher and the council servant since the war began.

A drive in a motorcar was just what the doctor ordered for the sickly six. Their little faces were flushed with excitement as Miss Stewart ushered them into the rear seat of the Anglia and Mr Boyd, fat as a toad and smelling of lavatory fluid, clambered in beside them. They pressed their runny noses to the windows and clutched the seat with cold little hands as the gentleman from the council slid behind the wheel and, with Miss Stewart at his side, drove away from the school and turned uphill into Antonine Way.

Close to the top of the hill, just before the stately mansions of the very rich gave way to rugged moorland, Miss Stewart swung round to face her pupils and began her lesson. ‘Now, children,' she said, in a dry Highland voice, ‘Breslin is famous for being one of the forts on the Roman wall. The Romans were a bit like the Germans. They wanted to conquer Europe and a man called Julius Caesar led an army over here and conquered the English.'

‘But not the Scots, eh?' put in Mr Boyd who, at that opportune moment, had discovered a bag of toffees in his pocket and was quietly handing them out. ‘Naw, they Romans never got the better o' the Scots.'

‘Thank you for your contribution, Mr Boyd,' Miss Stewart said. ‘Now, one hundred and fifty years after Julius Caesar's invasion, the Romans ruled England. They wanted to rule Scotland too but the Scots were not going to have any of it and gave the Romans a lot of trouble by attacking them. So what do you think the Romans did?'

‘Runned awa', Miss.'

‘Choppit them up, Miss.'

‘I'll bet they brung in the tanks.'

‘Unfortunately they didn't have tanks in those days, Iain.' Miss Stewart paused and glanced at Bernard, who gave her the nod. ‘What the Romans did –' the Anglia came to a halt exactly on cue – ‘was build a wall. That wall.'

Six pairs of eyes swivelled to starboard and gaped out at the misty moor. There was nothing much to see: a ragged birch tree, some gorse and, jutting from the edge of the moor, a jumble of shaped stones.

‘That's no' a wa'.'

‘Antonine's wall, a piece of it,' said Miss Stewart. ‘Antonine was the name of the Roman officer who built it. It stretched all the way from Edinburgh to Glasgow and it had forts on it to keep out the marauding—'

‘That's definitely no' a wa',' Iain, the rebel, declared. ‘We've got a wa' behind oor hoose an' it never lookit like that in its puff.'

‘What's left here,' said Miss Stewart, patiently, ‘is only a fragment, a small part of Antonine's wall. It's nearly two thousand years old, after all, so we're very lucky to have it.'

‘Aye, well, Miss, y' can keep it.'

‘Enough lip out o' you, son,' said Mr Boyd in a voice that would have made the bravest Roman quail. ‘Listen t' Miss Stewart an' see if you canny learn somethin' useful for a change.'

But the educational portion of the trip, such as it was, had ended.

‘Well,' the headmistress said, ‘now you've seen it, you can tell all your friends there's a piece of Antonine's wall still here in Breslin.' She paused then said, ‘I believe you have some business to attend to in the vicinity, Mr Peabody.'

‘As it happens, I do,' said Bernard.

*   *   *

Angus was feeling rotten. The fact that his sisters were feeling even more rotten gave him no satisfaction.

The doctor, a lady, had called first thing. She had embarrassed him by stretching him out on top of the blankets without his pyjamas and lifting up his winkle with her big cold hands so that she could look at the spots on his thighs.

He had developed a rash, a serious one this time, on his back and arms, and almost overnight bigger spots had sprung out in his hair, on his face and the front of his chest, and the itch had got worse. He found cold air soothing and lay very still while the doctor examined him. His throat was sore too and when he spoke his voice sounded queer, like Ron grunting. He knew what the lady doctor was going to say, for Miss Dawlish had told Dougie last night what it was and Dougie had told him: ‘You've got the pox, son, the chickenpox.'

Angus had said, ‘Have they got it too?'

‘What, the chickens?' Dougie had said.

‘My sisters?'

‘They have.'

‘Worse than me?'

‘Just as bad.'

‘Worse?'

‘Aye, worse.'

Angus had taken Dougie's word for it for he could hear May whimpering through the wall that separated their bedrooms and, at an early hour of the morning, before daylight, he'd wakened to hear Miss Dawlish talking soothingly to the girls and May, or maybe it was June, retching.

Dougie had told him not to scratch with his fingernails and had shown him how to rub the rash lightly with the back of his wrists and he had lain awake in the darkness feeling rotten, rubbing away at his hair and chest with the back of his wrists until, with Miss Dawlish still talking to his sisters and a chink of light showing under the door, the itch had eased and he had fallen asleep.

Next thing he knew the lady doctor was coming upstairs.

After the doctor had gone next door to examine the girls Dougie came in to help him back into his pyjamas and tuck him into bed again.

‘Is it the pox?'

‘Aye, just chickenpox, not scarlet fever,' Dougie said.

‘Can you die of chickenpox?'

‘Nah.'

‘Can you go to school wi' chickenpox?'

‘Nup, no school for you this side o' the New Year.'

‘Hurrah!' said Angus, croaking.

‘No nowhere for any o' you for a fortnight at least. You're contagious.'

‘Am I?'

‘You are,' said Dougie and stroked his forehead, soothingly.

Later Dougie brought up a paraffin stove and fiddled away until he got it going for the doctor had said Angus must keep warm.

Later still Miss Dawlish brought up porridge, two pieces of soft toast and a mug of milky tea. He was glad of the tea but couldn't face the porridge, never mind the toast. Miss Dawlish took it all away without complaining about waste, which made him realise that he really was ill.

Then Miss Dawlish came back with a baking bowl half full of milky liquid, and a sponge. She bathed him with the stuff and told him it was boric acid and that it would take the itch away for a while.

While he was being bathed he could hear Dougie talking to his sisters next door, and May still whimpering.

Then after Miss Dawlish had gone away again he had to get up to pee but when he put his feet on the floor he felt as if his head was a barrage balloon floating on a cable and he shouted and Dougie came in quickly and brought him the pot, which was very embarrassing and made him feel worse.