LETTERS

Mam was standing at the kitchen window, staring out as if she’d been watching for me.

Mr Bennett was there, too, right beside her, so close they were almost touching.

‘Did we miss anything exciting?’ he asked, when I came in.

I shrugged.

‘Don’t keep us in suspense.’ He moved away from Mam and went to the strong wooden table that was right in the middle of the kitchen. It had been there as long as I could remember. And when Mr Bennett sat down, I thought about how Dad would sit there to clean his shotgun, and Mam would get mad with him for making a mess. Dad would tell her not to get so het up and he’d look across at me and wink as if we were sharing a joke.

There wasn’t a gun there now, though. Instead, there were two cups, side by side.

‘Well, I don’t think much of it at all,’ said Mam. ‘It might be excitin’ for you young’uns, but all that racket nearly frightened the life out of me. And then all that smoke coming this way, ruinin’ my washing? Now everythin’ smells and we’re on the last of the soap powder and—’

‘I might be able to get you some more of that,’ Mr Bennett said.

‘Oh, I don’t want you to go to no bother.’

‘No trouble at all,’ he said, lifting his cup and taking a sip. He screwed up his face as if he’d drunk something nasty, then looked into the cup and swallowed hard before putting it back down again. His tea must have gone cold. ‘Maybe I can get a few bits and pieces for you, too, Peter. I don’t suppose you’d say no to a few sweets, eh?’

Just about everything was rationed – clothes, sweets, sugar, meat, tea – but some things were easier for us to get because we lived in the countryside. We had a few hens, so we could get eggs, and we had a bit of a garden, so we could grow vegetables. We kept all the scraps and slops in a bin outside and Trevor Ridley’s dad came on a pony and trap once a week to collect them for the pigs. Sometimes he’d slip us a chop or a couple of slices of bacon as a way of saying thank you, but no one could get the things that Mr Bennett could.

‘That would be nice, wouldn’t it?’ Mam said. ‘Mr Bennett’s very kind, isn’t he?’

‘Mm.’

‘Well, I won’t stay any longer,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘I suppose I should go and find out what’s going on with the crash. See if the lieutenant needs anything.’

He came close to Mam again, the two of them just a few inches apart.

Mam smiled like she was embarrassed about something, and glanced at me. ‘Aye. All right. Bye, then.’

Mr Bennett nodded, paused for a moment, then came to ruffle my hair before he turned and let himself out.

When he was gone, I flattened my hair back down with one hand.

‘So who was that lad I just saw you with?’ Mam said. ‘Someone new?’

‘She’s not a lad.’

‘Really?’ Mam went to the window again and looked out, as if Kim might still be there. She stood for a while, just staring out. ‘Hm, well,’ she said. ‘Looked like a lad to me.’

‘Well, she’s not. She’s a lass and she’s called Kim.’

‘Excuse me,’ Mam said in a sarcastic voice as she came back to me. ‘And how are you feeling, pet? Your knees all right?’

‘Fine.’

‘You feel dizzy at all?’ she asked. ‘Sick? Does anything hurt?’

‘No.’ I sat down at the table.

She nodded gently. ‘Good.’

‘Someone got out of the plane,’ I said. ‘Jumped. There was a parachute.’

‘Did they catch ’im?’ She looked worried.

‘Not yet. But the soldiers said they will.’

‘Well, let’s hope they do. We can’t have Germans runnin’ around all over the country, now can we?’ She went through into the scullery as she spoke.

From my pocket, I took the penknife Dad had given me. It had two blades – one large and one small – and the handle was made of fake pearl that had a yellowy tinge to it. I opened the small blade, and used the tip to scrape dirt from under my fingernails. ‘What will they do if they catch ’im?’

‘What’s that?’ she asked, coming back into the kitchen carrying a small package wrapped in paper.

‘What will they do to ’im?’ I said again. ‘If they catch ’im?

‘Haven’t a clue.’

‘Will they shoot ’im?’

‘They might. And you can stop doing that,’ she said. ‘We’re not animals.’

I closed the knife and squeezed it in my fist.

‘Now, let’s get some tea on, shall we?’

‘What is it?’

For a moment she looked at the package as if she wasn’t going to tell me. ‘Tripe.’

I pulled a face. ‘Isn’t there anythin’ else?’

‘Don’t go gettin’ all pernickety, young lad, there’s lots of people who’d be happy to eat your tripe. This is all we’ve got left until we can collect the rations from Mr Shaw. Maybe, if we’re very lucky, Mr Bennett will bring us somethin’ tomorrow.’ She looked at me with a hopeful smile.

‘Tell ’im to keep it. I’d rather have tripe.’

‘What?’

I thought about Trevor and his father over at the Ridley farm. I thought about Dad fighting a war in Africa – a country I’d hardly even heard of. And I thought about what Ridley had said about Mr Bennett; about him coming here, trying to take Dad’s place.

‘I don’t like ’im,’ I said. ‘And I don’t like ’im comin’ here.’

Mam swallowed hard and put a hand on the fireplace. The surround was deep black and shining because Mam had scrubbed it with a shoe brush just yesterday.

‘Why ever not?’ she asked.

‘He’s always coming since me da’ left.’

‘He’s looking after us. Your da’ worked hard for him and now he’s repaying us. He’s looking after us until your da’ gets back.’

‘People are sayin’ he’s your fancy man.’

‘Are they really?’ She looked indignant, but there was something else there too. An expression the children at school had when they’d been caught doing something they shouldn’t have. ‘Well, he’s been very kind, and people can say whatever they like. You’d do well to rem—’

‘I don’t want him givin’ us stuff and I don’t like him comin’ here all the time.’

‘It’s not up to you, young man.’

‘I’m the man of the house now.’

Something like a smile came to her lips and her expression softened. ‘Aye, I s’pose you are, pet, but you’re not an adult, and there’s a lot of things you don’t understand. We all do what we have to.’

I looked at my penknife and opened the blade. Opened and shut it. Opened and shut it.

‘It’s hard for us looking after you on me own.’

I looked over at her and sighed. ‘I wish me da’ was here.’

Mam came over and put her arms around me so my head was on her stomach. She was warm and smelt of soap.

‘I wish he was here, too,’ she said. ‘I wish it more than anythin’.’

*

Mam cooked the tripe and put it furry side down on the plate so it didn’t look too nasty. There were boiled potatoes and carrots from the garden, too, so I ate the vegetables, avoiding the rubbery blob, pushing it around the plate for a while. I knew I’d go hungry if I didn’t eat it, though, because there was nothing else, and if I left it, Mam would only give it to me for my breakfast. Nothing was wasted. Not a thing. So, eventually, I forced it down, cutting it into small pieces so I didn’t have to chew it.

When it was gone, and my stomach was as full as it was going to be, Mam went through to the scullery and put the kettle on to boil.

‘I think we deserve a treat, don’t you?’ she said, taking a teapot from the sideboard and putting a small amount of tea into it. ‘Somethin’ sweet.’

She made weak tea and poured it into her cup, adding a tiny amount of milk. When that was done, she opened the sugar pot in front of us on the table and we both looked in at the last two sugar cubes.

‘One lump or two, vicar?’ Mam said in a posh voice, just like she always did when she opened the sugar pot.

‘Just the one for me,’ I said with a grin.

Mam dropped her cube into the cup and stirred it gently. I popped mine straight into my mouth and savoured the sweetness as the lump dissolved in my spit. I waited until it had melted into almost nothing, then I ran my tongue around my mouth to find the last taste of it. A few undissolved grains crunched between my teeth.

‘Delicious,’ I said.

‘Agreed.’ Mam took a sip from her cup and stood. She did a little curtsey and said, ‘I think I’ll take this on the settee. Would you care to listen to the wireless?’

Beside the fireplace in the kitchen, there was a huge sideboard. It looked like it was a hundred years old. On top of it was a wireless that Dad bought before he went away to win the war. We didn’t have electric in the house so it ran off three big glass-sided accumulator batteries that had handles over the top to make them easy to carry. And when they ran out, it was my job to take them down to the garage to get them recharged for a few pence.

We listened to Children’s Hour, sitting on the settee, not talking, just listening. We always did that together – Mam called it our ritual – but she only sometimes brought her cup of tea with her.

I looked up at the shotgun on the wall above the sideboard, and then at the small collection of letters that leant against the wireless. There were only five, all of them from Dad. Mam had read them out when they arrived, her hands shaking with each letter, her mouth tightening as she carefully opened them. Then she had taken out the folded paper, opened it up and breathed out as if she’d been holding her breath the whole time. After that she had smiled at me, a kind of forced smile, and read out what Dad had written.

The letters were all about how much he was missing us and how he couldn’t wait till it was all over and he could come home. Each time, Mam had a tear in her eye when she read the words, but I always pretended not to notice.

Mam had tied them together with an old piece of string and put them beside the wireless so we’d think about Dad whenever we sat on the settee and listened to it. We hadn’t had a letter for a long time now, but I always looked at his gun and his letters and imagined he was beside us on the settee, with his arm around Mam’s shoulder. She would draw her knees up so that her feet were tucked under her and I would do the same. Dad would smell of fresh air and gunpowder and mud and he would laugh at the names and copy the voices that came out of the wireless. And when it was over, he’d listen a while longer, hearing the news, before going back out to check the estate.

I always thought the news was boring, all those voices droning on, and I used to sit on the hooky mat and read a comic instead. But since the war started and Dad went away I listened every night. Without fail.

There’d been something on one time last year, about Operation Dynamo, and British soldiers retreating from a place called Dunkirk in France. They’d said there might be an invasion after that, and when I looked over at Mam, she’d had one hand on her mouth and she’d gone white. I thought it was because she was frightened of a German invasion, and when I told her it was going to be all right, she hugged me tight. Back then, last year, I hadn’t realised why Mam had looked so scared, but I knew now. It’s because Dad had been in Dunkirk, and Mam was afraid for him. Afraid for his life.

But I had something else to think about now, and while we listened to the voices, my mind turned to the crash and to the girl I had met out there at the top of the hill. I thought about what she’d said before we parted. And so, for that moment, I forgot about Trevor Ridley and his promise to find a way to deal with me. I forgot about my father fighting a distant war, and I forgot about Mam’s struggle to raise me alone. Instead, I thought about Kim, and about going out in the night to collect souvenirs from the crashed plane.