TUPPENCE TO SPEND

Chapter One

   ‘They’re sending you all away?’ Nora Hodges said, staring at the letter in her hand. ‘They’re sending all you kiddies out of Portsmouth to the country – this Friday? But why? I thought they were still trying to make Hitler stop it - I thought they didn’t want there to be a war.’
    It was almost the end of August. Sammy had been given the letter at school and almost forgotten about it, but his teacher had said that the letters must be given to the children’s mothers the minute they got home, so he fished it out of his pocket and handed it over, grubby, crumpled and sticky from a half-sucked bullseye Tim Budd had given him in class. He pulled the sweet off the letter and started to picked off the fluff.
    At first, Nora had stared at the envelope, her heart sinking. Letters from school usually meant trouble – she’d had plenty of that sort from the school while Gordon was there. Or, more often, not there. Playing truant – being cheeky – tormenting little girls by sticking their pigtails into inkwells – and, worse, pinching things from the cloakroom – Gordon was always in trouble of some sort. Sammy hadn’t ever got into that sort of trouble before, but then he was only seven – there was plenty of time for him to follow in his brother’s footsteps.
   ‘What is it?’ she said. ‘What’ve you done?’
    Sammy had picked off most of the fluff and popped the bullseye into his mouth. He sat down on the floor and began to stroke the tabby cat curled up on the mat.‘I haven’t done nothing. It’s about the war. We all got one. We’re being sent away.’
   ‘The war?’ Her heart sank further. She’d hoped, tried hard to believe, that it wasn’t going to happen. Even with the Anderson shelters all delivered and standing like grey hillocks in all the back gardens, even with those horrible gas masks being handed out to everyone, even with the blackout and leaflets being dropped through the door almost every day, and men being trained for Air Raid Precautions, and all the talk about evacuation – she’d hoped and hoped that it wouldn’t really happen, that Hitler would back away and not invade Poland after all, that Mr Chamberlain would find some way of persuading him. He’d promised, hadn’t he? Peace in our time – that’s what he’d said when he came back from Munich, waving his ‘piece of paper’. Peace in our time.
‘When?’ she asked Sammy now, staring at the piece of paper in her own hand. ‘When are you going?’
   Sammy took the bullseye out of his mouth to examine it. He’d sucked off the rest of the fluff and it had reached the red layer now. With another few hard sucks it would turn yellow and then green, before reaching the hard little bit in the middle. ‘Friday,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to have our suitcases packed and go to school at seven o’clock. It says so in the letter. Have I got a suitcase, Mum?’
   ‘No, of course you haven’t! Where would we get the money to buy suitcases – anyway, we never go anywhere to need them. I don’t know what we’re going to do.’ She looked at the envelope again and began to open it. ‘Oh, Sammy – I don’t want you to go away.’
   Sammy got up and came to lean against her. He was small for his age and very like her, with fair hair that curled all over his head and large blue eyes. Gordon was dark and solidly built, like his father. He’d always been a handful, even as a toddler, able to climb almost as soon as he could walk, and into everything – you couldn’t leave him alone for a minute. And as he’d grown up he’d followed his father everywhere, wanting nothing more than to do the things Dan did – going to football matches to see Pompey play at Fratton Park, working on the ships at Vospers’, or at Camber dock. He hated school from the very first day, and made everyone’s life a misery until he finally reached his fourteenth birthday and left school to go to work at Camber.
   But Sammy had been much more his mother’s boy, content to be with her. Gordon sneered and called him a cissy, and Dan said the boy needed toughening up, but for once Nora took no notice of her husband. Sammy had come after three miscarriages, and it had been touch and go whether he’d survive, he’d been so tiny, but she’d tended him through those early weeks, keeping him literally wrapped in cottonwool, and now, even though he was still small he was strong enough, and there was a bond between them that would never break. And just because he was close to her and had fair curls and big blue eyes didn’t mean he was a cissy, she told Dan. Sammy was every bit as much a boy as Gordon was – he was just a different kind of boy, that’s all.
   ‘I don’t want to go away either,’ Sammy said to her. ‘Couldn’t you come too? Some of the mothers are going, I heard Tim Budd say so. His mum’s going.’
   ‘That’s because she’s got a little baby,’ Nora said, putting her arm round him. ‘Maureen can’t go without her mother, can she? She’s only a few weeks old.’
   Sammy looked at her. ‘So if we had a baby you could go as well, and we could go together. Couldn’t we have a baby, Mum?’
   Nora gave a short laugh. ‘A baby! No, Sammy, we couldn’t. It takes nearly a year to get a baby, and – ’ Her voice broke suddenly and she rubbed the back of one wrist across her eyes. ‘Well, anyway, we can’t.’ She opened the envelope at last and pulled out the sheet of paper. ‘Seven o’clock Friday morning… But you don’t have to go. It says here, it’s just advising that you should.’
   ‘So can I stop home with you, then?’
   ‘I’ll talk to your dad about it,’ Nora said, folding up the sheet of paper again. ‘Tonight, when he comes home from work’ She leant back in her chair, feeling a great wave of tiredness wash over her. The thought of finding Sammy a suitcase, collecting his clothes together and packing it, was almost too much for her.
   I’m getting more and more tired these days, she thought. It’s all this talk about the war. It’s upsetting me, it’s upsetting everyone. I just feel I’m crawling through the days, and can’t hardly manage to do all my jobs. Getting the dinner ready’s about all I can do, and even that’s a struggle.
   Perhaps she would feel a bit better when they’d finally decided whether there was going to be a war or not. Perhaps everyone wouild feel better then, once they knew what they had to face. But then she thought of the bombing they’d been warned about, the possibility of the Germans invading Britain itself, and a sick fear gripped her body. Almost without realising it, she pulled Sammy against her. I can’t let him go, she thought. I can’t let him go without me, to strangers who wouldn’t understand him and might not be kind to him. I can’t.
   ‘Lay the table for me, Sammy, there’s a love,’ she said, leaning back in her chair and closing her eyes. ‘Your dad’ll be in soon, wanting his tea, and so will our Gordon. And I’ll have a talk with him later on. I don’t see why you’ve got to go away if you don’t want to, specially when we still don’t know that there’s going to be a war. It might not happen even now.’
   Sammy spread the old tablecloth on the battered table in the middle of the room, and got knives and forks out of the sideboard drawer. They’d been brought from the pub when the family had left it to come to number 2, April Grove, along with a few other bits of furniture. The brewery had claimed a lot of it was theirs, but Dan had had a row with the man who came to oversee the move and told them they had to let the family have beds and tables and chairs, it was the law, and anyway a lot of the stuff had belonged to Nora’s parents and even her grandparents, and if the brewery tried to keep them it would be stealing and he’d go to law about it, see if he wouldn’t… And the man had looked at Dan, towering over him, big and dark and powerful, and backed away. They ought to send my Dan to talk to Hitler, Nora thought, remembering it. He’d soon sort the horrible man out!
   But it didn’t seem as if anyone could sort out Hitler. And now the war, that had been looming for so long, had come terrifyingly close. The children were being sent away… She leant her head back again, feeling once more the wash of sickness and fatigue. I can’t manage it, she thought. I just can’t manage it. I’ll have to talk to Dan.

*******

   ‘They’re taking all the kiddies away. Sammy brought the letter home today. They’ve got to go to school early on Friday morning, with sandwiches, and we don’t even know where they’ll be going.’ Her voice shook.
   Dan pushed the tabby cat off his chair and sat down to unlace his boots. He was tired and frightened, though he could never admit that to Nora. He couldn’t even admit it to himself. But when he thought of the war that he had known – the trenches, the mud, the endless noise, the crying and the screams, the dead men at his feet – he felt sick. He felt furiously, helplessly, angry. It was coming again, and there was nothing he nor anyone else, it seemed, could do to stop it.
   He scowled, his eyebrows drawing together in a thick, black bar.
   ‘They’re bloody mad, the lot of ’em. Any tea on? I’m parched.’
   Nora heaved herself up from her chair and moved slowly across the little back room to the scullery. I’m so tired, she thought, but if I feel like this now what’s it going to be like when the bombing starts? She caught a glimpse of herself in the bit of cracked and freckled mirror hung above the sink and wondered when her fair hair had started to go grey, and when its curls had turned into straggles.
   She filled the tin kettle with water and set it on the gas stove. The tea packet stood on the cluttered cupboard top, and she put three spoonfuls into the chipped brown teapot. While she waited for the kettle to boil, she took down two cups, adding milk from the meat safe outside the back door and sugar from the blue paper bag it had come in from the grocer’s.
   Tibby had followed her into the scullery and was mewing for milk, so she poured some into an old saucer and watched him crouch over it. She made the tea, gave it a couple of minutes to brew, then poured it into the cups and carried them back into the living-room. The effort of it all left her exhausted.
   ‘Dan, I don’t want our boys to go,’ she said, sinking back into her sagging armchair. ‘I don’t want them going out to the country, to strangers.’
   ‘Well, our Gordon won’t.’ Dan slurped his tea.    ‘He’s out at work, he won’t be qualified to go.’
   ‘I don’t want Sammy to go either. He’s too little.’
   ‘He’s getting on for eight. They’re taking kids younger than that.’
   ‘Yes, but he’s so little for his age, and he still needs me. And I need him, Dan. He helps me.’
   ‘Well, it don’t look much like it,’ Dan said, glancing round the bleak little room. ‘There’s dust you could grow potatoes in on that sideboard, and there was mouldy bread in the bin when I went there for me sandwiches this morning.’
   ‘I know, it’s the heat… But he does the shopping, and hangs out the washing, and things. And I’ll miss him so much. I don’t want him to go, Dan, I don’t really.’ Tibby came back and jumped up on her lap. ‘And there’s the cat, too. He’d break his heart if he had to leave Tibby behind.’
   Dan rubbed a hand across his forehead. He didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to think about the war at all. He looked at his wife, lying back in her chair, weary and white-faced, and wondered if she was ill in some way. The thought brought fresh fear and that, in turn, a fresh surge of irritation.
   ‘Well, what d’you want me to do about it? It’s for you to decide, you’re the boy’s mother. If you don’t want him to go, just tell ’em so. They can’t force you. It’ll save us some money anyway. They want five bob for each kid, you know. We can feed our Sam on less than that, he don’t eat enough to keep a sparrow alive.’
   Nora closed her eyes. ‘It’s just that all the other kiddies are going. The Budd boys, and the Collinses, and those two from Atkinses’, the greengrocers. I don’t want people to think I don’t care –’
   ‘I don’t give a toss what people think!’ Dan broke in. ‘Lot of snobs round here, think they’re better than anyone else. I passed that Mrs Glaister coming down the street just now and she turned her head away as if I smelt! And that Mrs Chapman, she ain’t no better.’
   ‘They’re all right when you get to know them. Jess Budd at number 14, she’s a nice little body, and I thought you got on all right with her hubby. It was him told us this house was up for rent.’
   ‘Yes, well, Frank Budd’s all right, he went through the last lot with me, but he’s so strait-laced he’s not human! Won’t go to the pub, won’t have a drink – and he was just the same in the Army, the blokes used to go on at him to have a pint and he never would, no matter what they said or did.’ He was silent for a moment, struggling with unwanted memories. ‘Had to put his fists up more than once - good job he’s a big bloke.’
   There was a short silence. Then Nora said, ‘It’s all right, then, if I tell the teacher Sammy ain’t going? Only there won’t be no school here for him to go to, see, there’ll be no teachers left. They want all the kiddies to go.’
   Dan looked at her, unsure for a moment what she was talking about. He had retreated briefly into that dark place in his mind that he tried to avoid. The familiar anger gripped him and he stood up quickly, knocking over his tea. The cat leapt down from Nora’s lap and fled from the room.
   ‘Now look at that! Bloody tea wasted… Well, if that boy’s going to stop home he can make himself a bit more useful about the place. He can clear this up for a start. Sammy!’ he roared, knowing that his younger son must be upstairs. ‘Come down here! There’s a job for you!’
   Nora closed her eyes again. I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing, she thought as she heard Sammy’s timid footsteps on the stairs. Perhaps it would be better for him to go away, after all. It couldn’t be worse than being at home…
   But she knew that she could not let him go. Sammy was her companion. If he went away, she felt, she might never see him again. Whether there was bombing or not, he might be lost to her for ever. And Dan did think a lot of the kiddy really, she knew he did, it was just that he didn’t know how to show it. It wasn’t Dan’s fault he was the way he was.
   The door opened and Sammy came slowly into the room, small and pale, his blue eyes and fair, curly hair a mirror image of her own at that age. His thumb was stuck firmly in his mouth and his eyes, huge with anxiety, went straight to her face, and she gave him a tremulous smile.
   ‘It’s all right, Sammy. You ain’t done nothing. Your dad’s just spilt his tea, see, and wants you to wipe it up. Bring him another cup, there’s a good boy, there’s some in the pot.’ She held out her hand to him. ‘And guess what, he says you can stop at home with me, instead of being evacuated.’
   Sammy stared at her, and then at his father. Dan gave him a reluctant nod.
   ‘That’s right,’ he growled. ‘Your mother don’t want you to go, so that’s it. But you got to be a proper help to her, mind. You’re not going to be on your holidays. And take that everlasting thumb out of your mouth!’
   Sammy nodded, and then slipped across the room to his mother and buried his face against her thin chest. Nora held him for a moment before pushing him gently away.
   ‘Get your dad his tea now,’ she whispered, aware that Dan’s irritation could break out again at any moment. ‘Go and fill up his cup, and don’t forget the sugar.’
   A wave of dizziness swept over her and she lay back again, waiting for it to pass. It always did, after a few minutes. It was just the worry of it all, she told herself, the worry of the war and whether she would lose Sammy. But at least she didn’t have to think about that any more. Sammy was going to stay with her.


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