The Boy with the Suitcase, page 13
‘You know my dad is in the Royal Navy, the one that fights?’ Alice, worrying about the ships that had been sunk, said to her family at the farm when she got home that lunchtime. ‘Do you think he’s all right?’
‘I expect so. We would soon hear if he wasn’t,’ Auntie Annie said but she didn’t smile as she usually did.
Alice sensed something was wrong and went to her, looking up at her face in concern. ‘Is something wrong, Auntie Annie?’
She hesitated and then nodded. ‘You’re old enough to understand, Alice. I’ve got a brother named Tom and he was wounded in the fighting before Dunkirk, but it was only a slight wound and no one was worried about it and they thought he was on the mend. But we’ve just heard that it went bad and he’s now in a hospital down in Portsmouth, very ill. We don’t know if he’ll live …’
Alice hid her face in Auntie Annie’s skirts, tears streaming down her cheeks. She didn’t know this Tom, but she was sad for the woman she had learned to love and wanted to comfort her. Auntie Annie knelt down and held her tightly.
‘Don’t cry, darling Alice. We have to be brave and believe he will come home again.’
But it was just after the school holidays began that the bad news came in a letter. Tom had died and Auntie Annie collapsed and had to be put to bed. The doctor came and looked at her and said she was suffering from shock and would be better soon. After five days in bed – during which time everyone went round with sad faces and even the evacuee boys were quiet – she got up again and started making dinner just the way she always had.
Alice thought that was the day the cheerful happy lady who had given her such a warm loving home began to change. It was little things at first, like the way she was losing weight and clutched her back sometimes as if she was in pain …
CHAPTER 13
Rose looked at the doctor hopefully as he stopped at the end of her bed and studied her chart. Perhaps this would be the day that she could go home at last. For more than a month she’d been lying here with various broken bones and fractures, fretting because she could barely move for the pain.
Dora had visited her the day after she’d had the accident. She’d taken Rose’s card which had miraculously arrived at the hospital with her, to post to Alice, saying that she was sorry for Rose’s trouble and would visit her again when she could. After that, however, she’d only popped in once. Other friends from the lane and the factory had visited, and Harry Smith had told her not to worry and that he wanted Rose back at work the minute she was fit enough. It felt, however, that the doctors were so busy caring for the wounded men who had been brought home in their thousands that her case had been pushed to one side. She pleaded with the nurses to let her go home, but was told she needed an operation on her leg or she wouldn’t walk properly again.
In the end, it had been done successfully and Rose was told she was healing well. Now all she wanted was to get home, even if she couldn’t return to work until the plaster came off. Neighbours had been taking care of things for her and Harry Smith had made certain her rent was paid, which was good of him, but made her feel beholden. She would pay it back as soon as she got out of here – whenever that was.
‘Well, Mrs Parker – how do you feel this morning?’ the doctor asked after replacing her chart. ‘That leg seems to have healed well. What about your shoulder, eh? Any pain?’
Rose still felt pain all over but she was determined to leave so she shook her head. ‘Can I go home today, Doc?’ she asked eagerly. He hesitated for a moment and then inclined his head in assent.
‘I think we’ve done what we can for you. You can visit your own doctor if the pain in your shoulder keeps up – oh yes, I know you’re lying to me so that I’ll let you go – but I think the pain is something you will have to live with for a while, and, to be honest, we need your bed. Just watch where you’re going in future, please. We don’t have time to be patching up young women who should know better than to get themselves knocked over. In case you hadn’t noticed, Mrs Parker, we do have a war on …’
Rose was about to deliver a mouthful when she saw that his eyes were twinkling and realised that she was being teased. ‘Right, Doc, thanks,’ she said and laughed. ‘I just came in ’ere for a rest that’s all.’
‘Pull the other one,’ he quipped. ‘I’ll see that you get an appointment for a check-up in three months’ time, all right?’
‘Yeah, whatever you want,’ Rose agreed and he nodded and left. A nurse stayed behind.
‘I’ll bring your clothes when rounds have finished,’ she promised. ‘One of your friends brought you some clean clothes – yours were covered in blood when you arrived. I doubt you’ll wear them again but they’re in a bag for you.’
‘Thanks.’ Rose grinned at her. ‘I am really grateful for all you’ve done – but I need to get back home and to work.’
‘Yes, I expect you do,’ the nurse replied, smiling. ‘Just don’t overdo it, Mrs Parker. You’ll feel tired for a time, I imagine.’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ Rose replied. She felt that she had been resting for months and hated it. Her whole life she’d worked and worked hard. Lying around in bed was the last thing she needed. Losing her wages was bad enough, but she couldn’t stand the boredom another day. She needed to know what was going on in the world and she would get back down the factory, plaster cast and all.
Dora had shivered as she listened to Prime Minister Churchill’s speech about fighting on the beaches on the wireless back in June. During the evacuation of Dunkirk she’d listened avidly to the stories of the hundreds of thousands of British men trapped on the beaches and wept when she saw pictures of the rescues in the newspapers. Even Mick had been gripped by what was going on, though he had no intention of serving in the forces himself.
‘Mug’s game, I reckon,’ he’d said once. ‘No offence to Dave, but at least he’s in the navy. They’d put me in the army if they could.’
‘But what if they make you go?’ Dora had asked him fearfully, because she’d come to rely on him, and the extras, he gave her. He’d winked at her.
‘I’ve fixed it,’ he’d told her and coughed. ‘It’s me chest, yer see, and me flat feet.’
Dora looked at him. He never coughed and he didn’t have flat feet that she’d noticed. ‘How did you get away with that?’
‘I sent someone else to take me medical,’ Mick said and grinned. ‘There’s ways round it, love. You just have to use this,’ he said and tapped the side of his nose. ‘You can get away wiv most things, so don’t you worry. I shall be here to look after you.’
Dora had smiled at him back then, but now, in September, she was frightened. The nation was on high alert. Invasion was imminent and the bombs they’d expected months ago had started to drop on London and the RAF and Luftwaffe fighter planes fought an endless battle in the skies overhead. Thus far, most of the bombs had fallen down near the docks and apart from the terrifying noise and the way the fires lit the night sky, Dora hadn’t been affected yet. She hadn’t been close to an explosion, but Rose had.
‘I thought me last bleedin’ moment had come,’ she told Dora when she came round to see her. ‘It was as I was passing that old disused factory down near the East India Docks – well, the buggers got that.’ Rose had been too far from the underground to make it there in time, because she still wasn’t up to running yet.
‘That place weren’t much good to anyone,’ Dora said, thinking the old factory was best gone. ‘The papers said our fly boys are reacting magnificently and winning most of the battles in the air.’
‘Well, the papers would, wouldn’t they?’ Rose sniffed her disbelief. ‘Jack Carter – you remember he was disabled in the last war? – well, he says we don’t stand a chance. He reckons the bloody Jerries will march right over us within six months and the Home Guard ain’t got a hope in hell of stoppin’ ’em.’
‘What is he, another Lord Haw-Haw? One of them bleedin’ propogandists?’
‘Nah, he’s just a bloke I meet down the pub sometimes. Your Mick would know him. He’s got a weak chest and flat feet so he works as a night watchman at the factory and he’s in the Home Guard. He’s all right, but I hope he’s wrong about us being taken over.’
Dora nodded but didn’t answer. She knew quite a few people felt the same, that invasion was inevitable and the Home Guard – Dad’s Army, as they were nicknamed – wouldn’t be much help. Many of the older men who couldn’t join the fighting forces had joined and they did a lot of marching and planning, but Mick said they were badly equipped and wouldn’t be of much use if the invasion came.
‘Mick reckons the fly boys will stop ’em,’ Dora said.
‘He ought to be in the army,’ Rose said, annoyed at Dora’s determination not to agree with her.
‘Yeah, I know,’ Dora said and heard the noise she dreaded from the bedroom. ‘I’d better go up …’
Rose nodded. ‘Sally’s hangin’ on much longer than you expected, ain’t she?’
‘It seems like years,’ Dora admitted, ‘and I didn’t think she’d last this long. I tell you, Rose, those bleedin’ doctors, they wouldn’t let a dog suffer the way she has. I’ve asked them if they can give her somethin’ to finish it and they looked at me as if I’m a murderer – but if she were an animal, they’d put her down.’
‘Bloomin’ heck, Dora!’ Rose looked horrified. ‘What yer sayin’, girl? Your Sally wouldn’t thank yer for it. She ain’t the sort to give in. Why do yer think she’s lasted so long?’
‘I know.’ Tears welled in Dora’s eyes. ‘She’s so patient and good and I’m a cow. I’d better go up to her now.’ She walked as far as the door. ‘It’s just I can’t bear to see her suffer like this!’
Rose had just looked at her and Dora lifted her head and went up to her mother. Sometimes, she found her suffering unbearable and even though she now had help through the night, because Mick George paid a woman to come in for a few hours, and so she wasn’t as tired, Sally’s suffering still tore at Dora’s heart.
It was months since she’d thought of anything but her mother’s sickness. She hadn’t even been down to see her daughter. Alice would think she’d been deserted. Mick said the letter she’d had from Annie proved Alice had settled in and was fine, but Dora still felt vaguely guilty about sending her away. She’d also had these recurring nightmares about what had happened to Davey because there was still no news of his whereabouts and the council people were convinced that he’d fallen into the sea and been lost the night before they docked.
‘Yes, Davey lad, that’s good,’ Bert encouraged, as Davey finished scraping the skin off the racoon they’d caught in their trap. He’d told Davey that if he made a good job of skinning and scraping the animal’s skin, he could have it made into something. ‘That will make you a proper warm hat, it surely will.’
Davey nodded, happy in his task. At first, he’d been squeamish about handling the trapped creatures, especially when they had to kill something to finish it off. He’d wanted to protest that it was cruel and wrong to kill a living thing, but Bert had explained that he couldn’t catch enough fish to keep them both alive. He’d told him, ‘You’d soon get tired of eating just fish or seafood every day. No, this is how it is meant to be, lad. I use the meat for food and the skins make all kinds of things – bags, clothes, bed covers and the like. Sometimes I sell them at the trading post – it’s not called that these days; they have a fancy name I can never recall – ah, yes, Conrod Stores – it’s owned by a guy named Corky and there’s a schoolhouse, a few homes and a couple of shops built near a ford across a river and they’ve started calling it Waterford because of that, though it’s not even a village. Mostly, though, I use what I trap. The people who used to live on this land used everything – teeth for jewellery, claws, bones, the lot. They didn’t have fancy pots of jam or sacks of flour delivered in those days.’
Davey had thought about it and then he realised that they were not the only ones to eat the creatures they caught. The groundhog was plentiful and popular for food, and, as Bert pointed out, ‘If we didn’t eat them, we’d have to cull them and throw their bodies to the bears, because they’d become a nuisance, way too many of them.’
Bert’s nearest neighbour was a Mi’kmaq man called Two Bears who dressed in a mixture of western and native clothes, with a much-worn bowler hat with a feather in it and buckskin breeches with fringing, a worn jacket that might have been worn by an East End docker and soft boots he made from leather he’d cured. He kept himself to himself and troubled no one, often disappearing for weeks at a time. Davey wouldn’t even have known he was there if they hadn’t met when he was checking the traps with Bert. He’d just appeared from nowhere and stood watching for a moment. The two men had nodded and exchanged greetings before passing on. As Bert said, you just left folk to themselves if that was the way they preferred it, and although he knew Two Bears trapped animals, he would never have touched anything in the other man’s traps, nor the other man his.
‘I respect him and he respects me. It’s a pity so many people can’t be like that.’ Bert had shaken his head. ‘Then maybe we wouldn’t have wars like the one goin’ on now.’
In the opposite direction from Two Bears’ home, but a similar distance away, was another neighbour, a man who called by sometimes to buy skins from Bert for a few coins. He had a foreign-sounding name and Davey didn’t much like him, even though Bert always seemed pleased he’d called, because he bought the pelts from the groundhogs they trapped.
The groundhog was a bit like the squirrels Davey had seen in London parks when his father took him on an outing, but it lived in burrows rather than in the trees and its tail wasn’t the same. It had a cute face and Davey felt sorry when they caught one, even though they made good eating. Bert often roasted them over an open fire outside and the meat was tasty – he thought it a bit like chicken, only with a stronger flavour.
He continued his work until Bert called him in. ‘Davey, it’s time for your schoolwork, lad. I shall get into trouble if you don’t complete the exercises they gave you.’
‘They’re too easy,’ Davey replied. However, he came in obediently and settled down at the board table Bert had made himself. The assortment of chairs had each been made by a different cabinet maker, and although none of them matched, in a funny sort of way that gave them a charm all of their own.
‘This one is genuine George IV, made by an English maker, a good one I was told.’ Bert had shown him one of the dark mahogany elbow chairs that stood by the kitchen range and was Bert’s favourite place to sit after he lit the fire inside the range of an evening. Nights were very cold in the shack, though the days were sunny and often warm. If you went up into the mountains it would be colder, which suited the animals that ranged there, like the cougars and bears that came down now and then to feed, especially when they had young. The bears would catch fish in the streams and small lakes that threaded the landscape for miles in this area. Bert had told him that in the old days, wolves were sometimes to be seen, though they’d usually stayed clear unless it was a Wolf Winter.
‘What’s a Wolf Winter?’ Davey had wanted to know.
‘It’s when the weather is so bad that wolves are starving and they come down to human settlements to try and steal food. Mebbe farm animals, or people’s babies if they get the chance, so it is said. Wolves’ll even attack people if driven to it by extreme hunger.’
‘I don’t want to be eaten by a wolf!’ Davey had looked uneasily behind him, but Bert only laughed.
‘Well, I most always have my gun with me in case I see somethin’ worth eatin’ and they do say one shot over their heads and they’re off. But there have been no wolves in Nova Scotia for about a hundred years, I reckon, cos men used to hunt them and eat their hearts to become strong and brave like them.
‘What you do get around here are black bears,’ Bert said. ‘And they’re too lazy to attack us, I reckon, unless they’re starving or scared or mebbe protecting their young from us. You’ll mebbe see a couple of bears wandering through if they’re looking for food – they have a real passion for honey, just like that Winnie the Pooh – but unless you do something to startle them, they’ll leave you alone. Best thing is to stand absolutely still and stare at them and they’ll just go away.’
Davey hoped Bert was right. He knew the woods around the lake and the little streams that fed into the inlet were teeming with wildlife of all sorts, bright, beautiful birds as well as small animals, and it made sense that predators would be there too. However, he saw little sign of them, because he stuck close to Bert when they visited the traps and spent his free time wandering the shore of the inlet, where he could smell the salty tang of the sea and watch flocks of geese fly over and different kinds of seagulls and he tried to put a name to them. One of the books the schoolmaster had sent for him had pictures of geese and other creatures he might see, and he’d been told to write whatever he saw down in a log each day. He enjoyed doing it and his handwriting was improving, because Bert monitored Davey’s work and grumbled if he couldn’t read it.
‘Why do I have to do so much schoolwork?’ Davey asked him one day when he’d been given an essay to write and had no idea what to write down.
‘Because one day you will leave here,’ Bert said. ‘You’ll go out into the world, perhaps to a town or city here in Canada – or perhaps you’ll return to England – but you’ll need a job and for that you need education.’
‘Why do I have to go anywhere?’ Davey asked. ‘I’m fine here with you, Bert.’
The flicker of a smile crossed the old man’s face. ‘I’m fine with you here too, Davey, but one day I shan’t be with you any more and it would be a lonely life for you then. Besides, I thought you wanted to go to sea and see something of the world?’
