The Magic Mooncat

The Magic Mooncat

by Lois Fenn

Published by Amolibros at Smashwords 2012

Book One of the Lincolnshire Trilogy

Contents

Notices

Note

Acknowledgements

The Author

About the Magic Mooncat

Comment

About Cobwebs in Time

About Edge of Square Nine

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Notices

Copyright © Lois Fenn 2012

Amolibros, Loundshay Manor Cottage, Preston Bowyer, Milverton, Somerset, TA4 1QF

http://www.amolibros.com | amolibros@aol.com

The right of Lois Fenn to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted herein in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, is purely imaginary

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data | A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This book production has been managed by Amolibros

Note

The government policy of the evacuation of children during the Second World War, changed lives for ever, albeit in greater or lesser degrees. Some children longed to return home, whilst others dreaded it, and the resulting traumas became firmly embedded in stored childhood memories. Cobwebs in Time continues to show how the past weaves a pattern for the future in family relationships, leading the reader either, to recall events in The Magic Mooncat, or perhaps feel inclined to seek out the past in this story, at a later time. Whatever the order of reading, I am assured that both books stand strong in their story line.

The Magic Mooncat, www.loisfenn.co.uk

Acknowledgements

As, in my world of fiction, my own family ties are strong, and I would like to thank my family for their continued support, particularly in the field of computer literacy, which often appears quite alien to me.

My daughter Lisa and her husband Fred are close at hand for urgent consultations, my daughter Karen is an invaluable ally in computer skills, my son Andrew provided the original photograph for my book cover design~ my daughter-in-law Kathryn (Kate) points me in the direction of marketing avenues, and my son Ian links me with web-site ‘know how’. My grandchildren, Vicky, Angela, Christopher, James and Daniel keep me in touch with youth, and my three great-grandsons Connor, Samuel and Joshua point to the future with index fingers seemingly programmed from birth to activate a ‘push-button’ world. From childhood evacuation to all of this. What huge webs time weaves!

My thanks to Jane Tatam of Amolibros for editing and typesetting and for her invaluable advice.

The Author

Lois Fenn is a retired school teacher with four children, six grand-children and nine great grand-children. Her life is reflected both in the wartime background and country life of The Magic Mooncat and Cobwebs in Time and continues to do so in Edge of Square Nine, the third part of A Lincolnshire Trilogy.

She enjoys the constant support of her family, and of her colleagues during the regular meetings of their writers’ group, and takes a keen interest in poetry, art, piano and classical guitar, together with a passion for home improvement and gardening at her country home.

Now, as the matriarch of an ever-increasing family, she closely identifies with the values, dreams and aspirations of her leading character in A Lincolnshire Trilogy, yet allows herself the freedom to create fictitious, yet larger than life characters, in a way which is wholly believable.

About the Magic Mooncat

It is September 1941 and nine-year-old Hannah Flynn is about to leave her native Hull and become one of that illustrious number known as ‘them townies’. Standing at the station, with few possessions in the little case she is clutching, she is ready to leave that scarred city to experience life as an evacuee in rural Lincolnshire, an environment as far removed as any foreign country.

This child is a dreamer, a gentle, intelligent, passive soul, and not at all the sort of girl to cope with the coarse ways of her foster parents. Elsie Porter’s rough and obsessive mothering combined with the horrors of earth closets, fat bacon, sexual abuse and complicity in murder cause deep unhappiness and a fear of life itself. When she finds herself suddenly orphaned, life becomes intolerable.

The Magic Mooncat is a perceptive novel about Hannah’s life, probing the effects of those early experiences as she grows into a young woman, until she is finally forced to confront the ghosts of her past.

Comment on The Magic Mooncat, Book One in the Lincolnshire Trilogy

‘Compelling Hull saga…convincing characters, intriguing situations and a captivating storyline…a thoroughly recommendable novel.’

Hull Daily Mail

‘…great ability to create an atmosphere…beguiling dialogue. I was very interested in the local descriptions of Hull at that time…sharp and sincere…’

Richard Whiteley

About Cobwebs in Time (Book Two in the Lincolnshire Trilogy)

The story initially focuses on Hannah Clayton’s grandson Leigh in America describing the circumstances of his early years and ultimate orphan status, but it soon settles in to life at Willow Cottage in a small village in Lincolnshire where time unravels to reveal the big picture of Hannah and her extended family, and several generations.

Murder, abduction, and family tragedy mixed with extraordinary psychic happenings and close family bonds give this story a fantastical quality as it follows in the footsteps of The Magic Mooncat. Lois Fenn studies each of the individuals involved in a way that is entertaining and heartfelt, and has a wonderful gift for creating believable characters as she deftly interweaves the threads of this family tale to create a compelling yet comforting picture of rural life through the generations.

About Edge of Square Nine (Book Three in the Lincolnshire Trilogy)

Time is moving on too quickly, it seems, for Hannah Clayton, and the birth of Elphine, a strange handicapped child, reminds her that life and attitudes are changing. However, she finds herself drawn inexorably into the joys and tribulations of family life, although her continued interest in paranormal happenings and her strong belief in predestination cause concern.

The family relationships continue to develop, where life moves into a digital world full of new ideas, yet Hannah Clayton maintains the standards set in the formative years of her life.

The Edge of Square Nine is the third book in A Lincolnshire Trilogy. As with the first two books, The Magic Mooncat and Cobwebs in Time, Lois Fenn offers a strong story line, full of nostalgia for many. Although the book is enjoyable as a standalone, it is worth seeking out the earlier two books, beginning with those evocative years of Hannah’s evacuation from the war-torn city of Hull to the green fields of Lincolnshire.

Lois Fenn encourages her readers to brush up against both reality and fantasy, perhaps prompting them to recall strange and intriguing experiences in their own lives. These are stories that are much loved.

Dedication

Dedicated to my husband Ralph with love and in memory of my dear mother Lilian Lois. Thanks to our children, Lisa, Andrew, Ian, and Karen, and to my friends Norma Sedler and Marion Ware for their love and support.

Chapter 1

Tennyson Street

It could have been any weekday in any September. The trees and shrubs in the town gardens were displaying their autumn colours, and dead leaves caught up in sudden small winds rustled across the paths and pressed against the walls. Women were doing last-minute errands, and children were behaving as children do at the end of the school day. Yet, in other Septembers, dust did not hang in the air, nor did Bonfire Night appear to have come early with its pungent smells of burning timber. The words ‘blackout’ and ‘shelters’ would not be present in everyday vocabulary, nor would gas-mask drill be part of the school timetable. But then nothing would ever be quite the same again, for this was September 1941 and Hull was on fire.

The two friends laughed and skipped along as though it was any day in any September. They still had a blissful ignorance; an ability to cast aside memories of the previous night when they had shivered in the air raid shelter. Life was lived in moments, and each day was so crowded with moments that there was no time for looking back.

‘We’re getting another baby,’ Sally Blenkin suddenly announced, her thick blond pigtails bouncing in rhythm with her legs as she shared in the daily ritual of dodging the cracks in the pavement.

Hannah Flynn stopped dead in her tracks and spun around to face her companion. ‘Another one!’ she exclaimed. ‘That’s not fair. There are three of you already.’

Sally grinned, jubilant in her news. She rarely had grounds to boast. ‘Now you’ve made me tread on a crack,’ she giggled. ‘The big bear’ll get me.’ She ran the short distance to the corner of the next street and screamed in mock terror as she disappeared out of sight.

‘Don’t be so stupid,’ Hannah shouted. ‘Anyway, how do you know?’

‘I heard my mam telling my dad. She said, That’s the third time I’ve been sick and you know what that means. ’

Hannah carefully stepped over the cracks, not believing in the bear story any more but unable to disobey the rules dictated by this stretch of the route from school. ‘What’s that got to do with babies?’ she protested. ‘My mam gets sick sometimes. You’re just making it up. You do tell big fibs, Sally Blenkin.’ She glared and ran ahead. Sometimes, she didn’t know whether she liked Sally. Her mother described her as being a stranger to the truth, and they did live in Liddon Street before they were bombed out and moved in next door. According to her dad, Liddon Street was one of the slummiest streets around.

‘Just listen, will you,’ Sally yelled, her face flushed with the exertion of the mock terror, and her blue eyes wide with indignation. ‘It wasn’t just being sick. She said, Another mouth to feed and with a bloody war on as well. And then she said that it had better be a girl this time and if it was another boy she would go mad.’

They crossed Sedgemore Street and continued along the concrete path that cut through to Tennyson Street.

‘Did she really say that word?’ Hannah asked.

‘What word?’ Sally’s voice was full of contrived innocence.

‘You know. That bad one about the war.’

‘Oh that one. She didn’t mean that word. She meant the other one when you’re bleeding. She meant about people getting killed and bleeding and things.’

Hannah gave her the benefit of the doubt. Sally was the best friend she had ever had, and the fact that they were born on the same day, the ninth of September and had recently shared their ninth birthday, seemed to have some significance.

They had reached the beginning of the track known as the ten-foot, which ran along the back of the terraced houses. It was easy to pick out their garden gates about a third of the way along the ten-foot. An ash tree grew near to the boundary fence, spreading its branches into both the Flynns’ and the Blenkins’ gardens. ‘It’s shedding its leaves in a great hurry,’ Martin Flynn had commented that morning with a British pre-occupation with the weather. ‘We’re in for an early autumn.’

‘That’s the least of our problems,’ Sylvia Flynn had replied, dragging the brush through her daughter’s hair with no regard for the yells of ‘Mam, you’re hurting me.’ She was never in a good mood in the morning and now, with every night spent in the shelter, tempers were becoming more and more frayed.

‘Get down,’ Sally hissed. ‘My mam’s in the garden talking to your mam. She’ll find a job for me.’

‘She doesn’t look any different,’ Hannah whispered. ‘She doesn’t look sick. I’m going to have four children when I get married. Two of each. What are you going to have?’

‘I don’t want any. I’m going to marry a rich man and have a fur coat and servants. If I did have any, they could go to boarding school like in School Girl Annual. I don’t want to spend ages washing up. It’s always me. Michael and Gavin never have to do it. They drop things and leave bits on. Crafty little devils.’

‘My mam says it was a miracle when I arrived. It was in a thunderstorm and the waters broke,’ Hannah said in dramatic breathlessness, her knees pressing into her stomach. ‘She said I’m so special that she didn’t want any more.’

‘It couldn’t have been a miracle. They only happened in the Bible and that was millions of years ago.’

Hannah grunted, not being too sure of her facts, although she wanted to elaborate on her belief that somehow it had been like God holding back the water for the Children of Israel and then letting it go again. But then Sally would laugh, and, in spite of their friendship, Hannah liked to keep her innermost thoughts away from criticism and possible ridicule. She wished she hadn’t mentioned the miracle now.

The two women were deep in conversation, and Hannah noticed how her mother pushed at her hair, a habit of hers when she was upset. She wished she had hair like her mother’s, black and curly. Her hair was blond and apparently as straight as a poker. Sometimes she had it in rags; strips of old sheet wound around and around strands of hair, twisting them into corkscrews; not conducive to a good night’s sleep.

‘I bet they’re talking about Sunday,’ Sally whispered. She altered her position, straining to hear the adult conversation and losing her balance.

‘There you are, Sally,’ came Millie Blenkin’s harsh voice. ‘That’s a clean frock. Come on in and put your old one on. And I want some errands. Where’s the lads? Little flamers! If they’re on that railway line again I’ll skin their backsides!’

Sally stood up and smoothed the dust and creases from her dress. ‘I’d better go in,’ she sighed. ‘Roll on Sunday.’

Hannah wandered a little way up the path and thought of Sunday. She picked up a ball and began to throw it against the brick wall of the air raid shelter. A raucous voice broke her concentration, and the ball escaped her hands and rolled along the path.

‘Rag Bone. Rag Bone.’ The words gave the voice identity. Hannah was about to alert her mother but remembered how last time she declared that they needed all their clothes, raggedy or not. ‘Make do and mend,’ she’d said, quoting a recent government directive.

Martin Flynn likened old Sam to a modern-day Pied Piper. He told his daughter how first the rats and then the children were enticed away by his music. Hannah shared her father’s love of poetry and didn’t follow old Sam too closely after that.

A scream of anguish competed with the hoarse cry. It was followed by the sound of a resounding slap on bare flesh. Janet Pearson was dragging her little brother Kenny along by his only garment, a heavily soiled vest.

‘Who’s got a bare bum then?’ Hannah heard the big girl shout. ‘Stop struggling, ya little bugger. Me mam’ll kill you! That’s her best jumper.’

Hannah took a few steps towards the back gate and giggled, remembering how last time little Kenny had made off with his grandfather’s trousers to exchange them for a balloon.

‘Seen enough, gal?’ Janet Pearson pulled a hideous face and stuck out her tongue. ‘Made you look. Made you stare. Made you cut the barber’s hair,’ she jibed.

Hannah turned and ran back into the shade of the shelter. She knew the rest of the rhyme about crawlies in the hair and put her hands over her ears. That was Sally’s voice now.

‘Who wants to stare at you face aches,’ she heard her shout at the retreating Pearsons. ‘You’re the ones with fleas.’ She gave a jeering laugh before joining Hannah behind the shelter. ‘They’ve gone in now,’ she said. ‘You can sound the all-clear. Just give ’em as good back again. Shout sticks and stones next time.’

Hannah didn’t speak. Words did hurt even more than sticks and stones. Words stayed locked up inside, escaping into her thoughts when she couldn’t sleep, and refusing to be banished from her mind. She still didn’t believe Sally about that bad word. ‘Bloody war’ her brain reminded her. She found it hard to concentrate on the game that followed, dropping the ball so many times that they both became bored.

Sylvia Flynn watched them playing and thought of her conversation with her neighbour. She’d taken pity on her and asked her in for a cup of tea. Pregnancy was bad enough in peacetime, she thought. Hannah didn’t look well. The child worried her. Mrs Blenkin had commented on her delicate build and it seemed to Sylvia like a direct criticism of her ability as a mother. Why wouldn’t she eat more? Where would she end up on Sunday? What if they didn’t care whether she ate or not? And then there was the problem at night. She’d thought it was a thing of the past, but disturbed sleep sometimes twice in a night and taking refuge in that cold shelter seemed to have triggered it all off again. ‘Does the child wet the bed?’ it had asked on the evacuation papers. She’d ticked ‘No’. She’d heard that bedwetters were put in communal hostels and she couldn’t bear the idea.

‘Why don’t you go with Hannah?’ Mrs Blenkin had asked. Sylvia sighed. If only it was that simple. She would love to escape from the monotonous rows of houses and the vulgar way of life which pressed in on her from all sides. ‘Roses round the door. Babies on the floor.’ The words of a popular song of her childhood drifted across her thoughts. No, she didn’t want the babies, but the roses would be wonderful. The bitterness was back with a vengeance, creating ugly thoughts of her sister Vera in her big house on the city boundary. She’d never offered to accommodate their parents and all their possessions after they were forced to abandon their home.

She wandered into the front room brandishing the remains of a cotton vest which now served as a duster. Martin frequently commented that she must have been born with a duster somehow welded to her wrist and had asked her on the previous day if she had dusted the shelter. Oh well. Let him have his silly jokes. She looked around her best room with little pleasure. The piano was trapped behind her mother’s settee, and the chairs were crammed in a continuous row giving the area the appearance of a doctor’s waiting room. Her small china cabinet, which housed a few precious items from their wedding day eleven years ago including two fluted cups and saucers and four plates, now thickly wrapped in newspaper, was totally obscured by one of the chairs. Pictures and mirrors were propped against the walls, casting strange reflections of the worn carpet square and chair legs.

She reached over to dust the piano, flicking the duster as far down the back of the settee as she could reach. A shaft of late afternoon sunlight suddenly entered the net curtain, and illuminated the room with transfused light. Particles of dust hung in the air, and sprang from her cloth.

‘Oh tittle!’ she exclaimed, and decided that it was a job for Monday after Hannah had gone. The thought of having a spare bedroom to house some of the excess furniture and a chance to restore her front room to its former glory cheered her for a moment, but then the guilt of having such feelings and a sense of a kind of future bereavement, dulled her mind back into depression.

She returned to the kitchen and tipped some potatoes into the washing-up bowl. Two ounces of stewing beef simmered in the pan on the stove together with a marrow bone. She tutted impatiently as she cut the black areas from a large potato. ‘Only fit for pigs,’ she muttered. The second one also revealed blighted areas under the peel. She threw down the knife in exasperation and sighed, her shoulders drooping with weariness.

The two girls were squealing with the joy of kicking their legs up against the shelter wall. Their skirts were tucked into their knickers with a total disregard for modesty and the world outside of their youthful exuberance. Sylvia envied them their forgetfulness of the previous night’s terror, yet at the same time pitied them for their insecure future. She wanted so much happiness for Hannah. If it wasn’t for the war, she mused, she would not encourage this friendship. The likes of Sally Blenkin were not part of her plans, although to hear Millie Blenkin speak, her daughter was a genius. Sylvia snorted in humourless mirth. No doubt Sally would end up in a factory she decided, whereas her Hannah was destined for greater things. She’d told her neighbour as they shared a pot of tea, that her daughter always had her head in a book, and what she didn’t know about the Romans was nobody’s business.

Her attention returned to the potatoes. War or no war, it shouldn’t be allowed. She rapped on the window, bringing down two pairs of legs from the shelter wall.

Hannah pushed her hair out of her eyes. ‘Oh Mam,’ she wailed, ‘can’t we have another five minutes?’

Sally cast a nervous glance towards her own back door. ‘I’d better go in and find our lads. They’ll be belted if they’re out after blackout,’ she said.

Moments later, Hannah set off clutching the condemned potatoes, with strict instructions not to return without a fresh quarter of a stone. She ran her fingers along the brickwork of the passage, enjoying the musty smell and reminded as always of imagined secret tunnels. As far as adults were concerned, a passageway was an added bonus, providing an extra foot or two to the bedroom space above and a drying area on wet wash days. Sheets and towels were draped over a clothes line suspended between two rusting hooks and left to drip the worst of their wetness, creating soap-scented puddles. Hannah and Sally were proud of owning a passage. There were only a small number evenly spaced along the terraced row. House-proud mothers, intent on keeping the front step clean and the front room free from dusty feet, locked the door, enforcing entrance from the back only. This could mean a lengthy trek to the end of the street and back along the ten-foot.

Hannah responded to the change in the atmosphere as she left the dank gloom of the passageway. Life was noisy at the back. Doors were left unlocked; children played; dogs barked; women gossiped over the fences; cats scavenged amongst rubbish and sparrows and starlings joined by seagulls in hard winters, flew down to gather up food from scraped pans and plates. In contrast, the front way had an air of hostility; an expectant silence as the closely netted windows seemed to spell out ‘Private. Keep away’. Repeated rappings on a door sometimes echoed along the row and curtains twitched. The paperboy, the milkman and the postman were welcome, but the rent man, the club-man and debt collectors were often ignored. The rat man, as the truant inspector was known because of his long thin nose and meanness of disposition, fooled the system by sneaking around the back and pouncing on freedom-seeking kids along the sides of the railway track.

Hannah giggled as she passed the Higsons’ house. Paul Higson was clutching his trousers with one hand and hammering on the door with the other. ‘Go round the back,’ came Mrs Higson’s voice. ‘But Mam,’ Paul wailed, ‘I want the lavvy.’ His cry went unheeded. Hannah dawdled, watching at the gate and then looked quickly ahead and broke into a run as young Paul relieved himself in the privet. ‘Ugh, boys!’ she exclaimed under her breath.

It was a relief not to have a scene over the potatoes. The greengrocer lady made no objections. ‘Tell your ma I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘We get all sorts these days.’ She shivered and clutched her woollen cardigan across her chest.

‘Someone just walked over your grave,’ Hannah said.

‘Cheeky monkey! More like you’ve left the door open. Make sure you shut it on the way out.’

It was a funny expression, Hannah thought as she dawdled back along the street. Her mother had said it that morning and she didn’t understand it at all. You’d have to be dead first, she mused. A huge shiver ran up her spine. The sun was out of sight now behind the houses and a grey mist dulled the sky into early twilight. Now, as coal fires were stoked up, rows of chimneys belched out black smoke adding to the gloom.

‘Want a ride?’

Hannah spun around at the sound of a familiar voice. ‘You’re early, Dad,’ she yelled, her face flushing with pleasure at the sight of her father on his ancient ‘sit up and beg’ bike.

Martin Flynn stopped and steadied himself against the kerb. ‘Now then, Poddletoes. Had a good day?’

‘Don’t call me that!’ Hannah chided, although she didn’t really mind. She perched on the crossbar of his bicycle and held on to the middle of the handlebars. ‘I had to go for some more spuds. Me mam’s in a bit of a mood.’

The smile left Martin’s face. Sylvia was not going to like his news. He concentrated on steering the bike, vaguely aware of his daughter’s chatter. They wobbled to a halt, level with the small front garden.

‘What’s the book?’ Hannah reached into the front basket.

‘It’s poetry. I thought you would like it.’

His daughter gave a squeal of delight and had scarcely put her feet on to the pavement before she opened it, scanning the first page. Martin pushed the bike into the passageway, scraping the handlebars against the flaking brickwork.

‘Me dad’s here,’ Hannah announced as she burst in through the back door.

‘Been entertaining?’ Martin enquired with a forced brightness.

‘I expect it was Mrs Blenkin,’ Hannah said, innocent of the repercussions.

Sylvia jumped up, grabbing the cups and saucers and made for the kitchen sink.

‘What’s she doing round here? On the scrounge?’ Martin snapped. ‘Jerry’s done her a good turn. It’s a pity all of Liddon Street didn’t get it.’

‘Don’t be awful, Martin. How can you say that? I thought it would do her good to get out of the house for half an hour. Those kids of hers are a right handful.’

‘Give ’em an inch and they’ll take a mile. I know their sort. I bet they’re paying less rent than us. Perhaps not paying any.’

‘Poor soul,’ Sylvia said defiantly.

‘Poor soul! What do you mean poor soul?’

‘She’s pregnant.’

‘Good God! Still, you know what they say: new house, new baby. Didn’t work for us, did it?’

The sudden scraping of the chair as her mother got to her feet alerted Hannah to caution. She kept her head bent over her book and wondered about the word ‘pregnant’.

Sylvia’s eyes, dark with anger, focused on the small shabby book. ‘Get that put away and set the table,’ she yelled. ‘Anyway. Where did that come from?’

‘Me dad gave me it.’

‘Honestly, Martin. Fancy giving the kid that. It looks filthy. You’ve no sense. Put it in the ashcan, you Hannah. I’ll use it to light the fire. It looks as though it’s been in someone’s outside privy for donkeys’ years!’

Martin thought of the first entry ‘Ode to Autumn’, and wondered what Keats would make of this autumn. ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’! More like season of bombs and bloodymindedness! The picture of the pile of rubble, the remains of the back street antique and bric-a-brac shop which had given him a living for the last seven years, was clear in his mind. He had picked up the small first edition anthology from amongst the bricks and broken tiles. It was an old friend, which he had kept away from public scrutiny. How could she be so obsessed with cleanliness when generations of dust and decay hung in the air over the city? He saw the pain on his daughter’s face and wanted to defend her right to keep the book but he knew that his wife’s anger was aimed at him. Oh well, he thought, she’ll be rid of me soon. His call-up papers should be arriving any day now.

He ran his fingers through his wiry, sandy coloured hair, and, turning away from her anger and Hannah’s misery, reached in his pocket for his cigarettes. He would tell her when she had calmed down. Poor old Charlie. He’d refused to go in the shelter in case of looters. He’d always said he would die with his boots on. Martin imagined him reaching for his cash box as the bomb blew him to kingdom come. All those years of scrimping and saving for his old age. All those coins counted and hoarded. ‘Bloody Germans,’ he muttered.

‘What did you say?’ Sylvia asked, half turning from the potatoes which were adding to her feelings of frustration, being little better than the rejected batch.

‘Nothing.’ Martin drew the cigarette smoke sharply down his throat and blew it back out in the direction of the ceiling.

‘Have you got the sack? Is that why you’re home early? Can’t afford to keep you, I suppose. He could have waited until your call-up. Still, who wants useless ornaments these days? You should have taken that job on the railway. Look at my father. A good job and maybe you wouldn’t have to go. But no! You have to work in a junk shop!’

Martin sighed. On good days he was an antique dealer.

‘Get away from the fire, Hannah.’ Sylvia hung on to her aggression. ‘I’ve told you before about sitting with your back to the fire. You’ll melt your spine, and go out to play. You’re getting on my nerves. These potatoes are no better. Couldn’t you see?’

‘Just made it before the blackout!’ The entrance of Hannah’s grandparents through the back door was greeted with strained glances. Hannah scanned the pages of the little book and listened to her grandmother’s description of Auntie Vera’s new carpet. She knew from her mother’s tone of voice as she replied, ‘Oh well, I don’t suppose they’re worried about bombs where they are,’ that she didn’t approve of her sister’s ways.

Her grandfather gave her a quick look. ‘The place is too big for me,’ he said. ‘There’s nowt like a good fire and a cosy room.’ He coughed over his pipe and grinned.

Hannah ate her bread and jam slowly, squeezing the jam through the sides and licking it. Her mother returned to the potato problem glaring accusingly at Hannah and suddenly became aware of her bad table manners. ‘For goodness sake, Hannah! If you can’t eat properly you can do without. And you can have an early night. Catch up on your sleep. We’ve got a lot of sorting out to do tomorrow and shut the door after you.’

Her mother said that every night, but tonight Hannah sensed an urgency in the words and stayed close to the other side of the stairs door listening. It was a habit of hers when she couldn’t sleep. Her favourite place was on the third step up where there was room to stretch her legs yet be within listening distance. At bedtime, the stairs door was a solid reminder of the division between childhood and the world of the grown-ups. She pressed her ear against the door and listened.

‘It was a direct hit,’ she heard him say. ‘A landmine no doubt by the size of the hole. Poor old Charlie. We dug down but it was hopeless. No trace of him. Blown to kingdom come. Everything smashed to bits. Just that little book. But you were right, Sylvia. It’s in a bit of a state now. I’ll get her another poetry book sometime.’

The sounds of dishes clattering and water running competed with the voices and Hannah, afraid of exposure, trod carefully up the stairs, taking a big stride halfway up to avoid the creaking step. She huddled under the blankets and thought of old Charlie. He’d given her a tiny wooden doll, apparently the smallest in the family of painted Russian dolls who lived together one inside the other. ‘She’s lost all her folks,’ he explained. ‘She’s an orphan. You must take care of her.’ Now he