‘It’s preposterous! Absolutely preposterous!’
Rusty was leaning over the heavy wooden banister eavesdropping. The outraged voice that was soaring from downstairs belonged to her grandmother. All Rusty’s mother had managed to tell her was that she had been left Beatie’s house. Her grandmother hadn’t allowed her mother to get any further.
‘The woman must have been deranged!’ she stated. It was Monday evening, Rusty’s last night before returning to school. She and her mother had spent most of the day travelling back.
On Sunday, when her mother had returned to Beatie’s, she had immediately started tinkering around with the Bomb. As soon as it had fired into life, she had driven them for miles along the narrow Devon lanes, and in the evening they had bought fish and chips and had driven out to a beach, where they had eaten them sitting on the running-board of the car, facing the sea.
On the way back, her mother had caught a red fox in her headlights. She slowed down so that it could escape, but it was mesmerized by the lights. Eventually she stopped the car and switched them off.
‘Go on, foxy,’ Rusty whispered. ‘Go find yourself a nice safe hole somewhere. Say, why am I whispering?’
‘I don’t know,’ replied her mother. ‘I suppose it’s because it’s dark.’
She turned the lights on again. The fox had gone. The Bomb gave a loud bang and started to rumble.
‘The dark doesn’t make her whisper,’ laughed Rusty.
They lurched forward.
Rusty sat back. The dials on the wooden dashboard lit up and blinked, making the car strangely cosy.
‘You really like this “bomb”, don’t you?’ said Rusty.
‘Love her.’
‘But she’s so old!’
‘There’s nothing wrong in being old.’
‘But how can you…?’ She stopped.
‘You’re wondering why I love her so much?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Well, this is the first thing that I’ve ever paid for out of my own money, and also / made her work. So she’s a sort of symbol, do you understand?’
‘I think so. You mean, when you see her, it reminds you of what you achieved, that you didn’t just dream it all up.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Yeah. I know what you mean. Me and Skeet helped Uncle Bruno build a rowboat last summer. When we put it into the water, I was so excited I could hardly hold the oars.’
‘Yes, I felt something similar when I first drove this old girl,’ said Peggy. ‘A sort of butterfly-feeling inside.’
That morning, after their good time together the previous day, Rusty felt mean about sneaking the tools into her grip. She had tied an old pair of her mother’s navy overalls firmly around them so that they wouldn’t rattle, placed the bundle at the bottom of the grip, and packed the rest of her clothing on top.
Now the bundle was hidden at the bottom of her bedroom wardrobe. All she had to do was to persuade her mother to let her take an early train to Benwood House so that she could hide it before school started.
‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ she heard her mother saying. ‘You’re always complaining that you find young children a bit of a strain. Charlie and Virginia can spend their summers there.’
‘When’s summer?’ came her brother’s high-pitched voice. ‘Is it tomorrow?’
Rusty returned to her room.
Lying on the bed were four letters: one from Uncle Bruno and Aunt Hannah, one from Kathryn, one from Skeet and one from Janey.
She picked up the snapshots beside them and sat on the bed, her back resting against the high wooden rail. Most of them were of Kathryn with the summer stock company, looking calm and happy, but the snapshot she had looked at over and over again was the one of Uncle Bruno and Skeet standing barefoot, a huge fish dangling between them. There was Uncle Bruno, like a big bear, with his dark summer beard, his old floppy hat, check shirt, and pants cut to the knees. And beside him stood Skeet, all blond crewcut and freckles, his jeans rolled up, his white T-shirt filthy, and his eyes screwed up from looking at the sun. They were both grinning and pointing madly at the fish.
‘Next summer,’ she whispered, ‘I won’t be in some leaky house in Devon – I’m gonna be with you.’
The letters worried her, though. Uncle Bruno had mentioned that he and Aunt Hannah had sent on a trunk of hers to England with the help of a Navy friend of theirs three months ago and had she gotten it yet? Rusty didn’t want them sending any of her stuff over; she wanted them to keep it all for when she came back.
Kathryn talked of rehearsals for a Christmas show at high school. She was taking real voice classes now in her spare time. Rusty remembered her saying in that quiet manner of hers, ‘You know, you ought to work in the theatre. Maybe be a scene painter, or stage carpenter, or even a set designer.’ It would never have occurred to Kathryn not to try for something you really wanted to do. Uncle Bruno was always telling them that if you were lucky enough to have a dream, you ought to go for it hell for leather, and even if you didn’t succeed or you changed your mind, you’d still have had some interesting experiences on the way.
But it was Skeet’s and Janey’s letters that worried her most of all. She felt that they were both growing away from her. Janey had been asked out to a football game by one of the boys in the high school. He was the son of a doctor. Janey’s mom had bought her a camel coat to wear.
And her date had bought her a corsage, a huge single chrysanthemum, to wear on the coat. Rusty knew they cost at least fifty cents, sometimes even a dollar. He must really like Janey. It sounded serious. And Skeet mentioned that he had gone to a roller-skating party, and he’d lent Rusty’s skates to a girl in his class. He hoped Rusty didn’t mind.
‘Virginia?’
Rusty hopped off the bed and opened the door.
Her mother was standing in the hall, holding Charlie in her arms; he was still attached to his teddy bear like a Siamese twin.
‘I want you to keep your grandmother company.’
‘You mean, I have to be alone with her?’
‘You can tell her about your holiday. I’m going to give Charlie a bath and put him to bed. Then the three of us can have supper together.’
Rusty gave a resigned sigh and opened the door into the drawing room.
Her grandmother was sitting in her winged armchair. ‘I suppose,’ she said, after an awkward silence, ‘you had better be seated.’
Rusty threw herself into the hard stuffed armchair opposite and gazed at the dark, ticking clock on the mantelpiece.
Her grandmother stared at Rusty’s feet, which were tucked up underneath her. Rusty pulled them out and swung them to the ground.
‘Well, Virginia,’ her grandmother said sweetly. ‘And how was your stay in Devon?’
‘It was O.K.’
‘What did you do there?’
‘Well, Mother and I went out in the Bomb for a ride yesterday, and then –’
‘The Bomb?’
‘It’s her car.’
‘I see.’ She paused. ‘And where exactly did you go?’
‘Oh, all over the place. Mother showed me where she and lots of other W.V.S. ladies had to evacuate hundreds of people so that the Americans could get ready for D-Day, and then we –’
‘The Americans weren’t the only ones fighting in the War, you know.’
‘I didn’t say they were,’ said Rusty, bristling. ‘Anyways, we bought some fish and chips and put vinegar and salt on it and ate it out by one of the beaches. It was –’
‘You ate fish and chips?’ said her grandmother slowly.
‘Right.’
‘On the beach?’
‘Uh-huh. We sat on the running-board and –’
‘You ate them out in the open?’
‘Uh-huh. Out of newspapers. With our fingers.’
Mrs Dickinson Senior sat back and pursed her lips. ‘I see.’
Thank goodness for that, thought Rusty. She didn’t want to have to repeat the whole thing all over again.
Suddenly there was a loud knock at the front door.
‘Oh dear,’ said her grandmother, flustered. ‘It’s Mrs Grace’s day off.’
‘It’s O.K.,’ said Rusty, springing to her feet. ‘I’ll go answer it.’
As she walked through the hallway, she could hear splashing sounds coming from the bathroom and Charlie giggling.
She opened the door.
Outside stood a tall thin man in his forties, wearing the uniform of an army major. He was deeply bronzed, and his cropped hair and moustache were bleached almost white. Over his arm was a khaki raincoat. A large leather attache case stood by his feet.
‘Hi,’ said Rusty. ‘May I help you?’
He frowned for an instant and took a long hard look at her, from her brown-and-white saddle shoes, bobby socks and jeans that had been folded up to calf length, to her sloppy blue sweater, her cascade of long, flame-coloured hair, and the piercing green eyes.
‘Virginia?’ he said.
Rusty was startled. ‘How’d you know that?’
‘Don’t you recognize me?’ he said quietly.
She shook her, head.
He looked so tired and bewildered that she felt sorry for him.