Bia's War Page 14

  Victoria couldn’t make any sense out of this garbled explanation, but she could hear the venom in her grandmother’s voice and wondered exactly what had William done. But she wasn’t going to find out that day because she heard the side door open and her mother and father moving into the kitchen. When she would be able to listen to another part of Nana’s story was in her mother’s hands and those hands could be incredibly volatile.

  Chapter Nine

  The next day was a normal working day after the excitement of the Christmas season and Victoria wondered what her mother had planned for her to do. She was concerned about Nana Lymer because she had looked so frail the day before when she had related what the butcher had tried to do to her and Victoria was worried that she wasn’t strong enough to relive such terrible events without it harming her in some way. It was with a sense of panic therefore that she heard her mother explaining to her father that Nana Lymer was very tired that morning.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Victoria asked her mother, worried that she was the cause of her grandmother’s fatigue.

  “Just old age, I should imagine,” was her mother’s curt reply. “She’s not getting any younger and she’s bound to have her off days. I just hope that she isn’t going to start wandering again, because I don’t need the hassle of searching for her in the middle of the night, not on top of everything else I have to do.”

  “Do you want me to sit with her again, so that she’s not on her own when she wakes up?” Victoria offered, wanting to watch over the old lady.

  “I thought you had revision to do for your mocks? Christmas is over now so it’s time you started it.”

  “I can revise in Nana’s room the same as if I’m sitting in my room. If she’s asleep she won’t disturb me, will she?” Victoria suggested.

  “That’s true.” Her mother considered the offer, loath to give in too easily to something that Victoria wanted to do, but aware that Victoria’s presence in her grandmother’s bedroom would save her from having to run up and down stairs to check on the old lady’s health.

  “Go on then,” she conceded, “You might as well do both jobs at once and it’ll give me time to get the shop sorted out for the New Year rush. But you get your revision done, my lass, don’t be wasting time talking to the old girl. I’ve told you before what a romancer she is, you can’t believe half of what comes out of her mouth.”

  Victoria couldn’t understand why her mother had such a low opinion of Nana Lymer. She wouldn’t dare speak to Bia like Bia spoke to her mother and Victoria wondered how old her mother had been when she had begun being so off-hand with Nana. Why hadn’t Nana stopped her? She thought it was unlikely that she would ever dare be so rude.

  Victoria collected her English Literature folder and one of her set books from her bedroom and then tip-toed across the landing and slowly opened Nana’s bedroom door. The old lady was fast asleep in the large double bed; making hardly a mound in the bedclothes she was so tiny. Victoria’s face was creased with concern as she gently moved a lock of hair which had fallen across Nana’s face. The big brown eyes opened at her touch and made Victoria jump.

  “I thought it was your mother, that’s why I was pretending to be asleep.” Nana said, dimpling at Victoria. “Has her ladyship given you permission to sit with me again?”

  “Yes, she’s worried about you being so tired, so she said I could come in here to do my revision and watch you at the same time.” Victoria answered. “But she said you weren’t very well and I was worried that you were upset about what you were telling me yesterday. You don’t have to tell me anymore, not if it’s going to make you ill.”

  “It’s not making me ill, I just couldn’t be bothered listening to your mother whinging about her hard life, so I pretended to be asleep.” Nana confessed with a grin. “She has no idea how hard it was for my generation during the Great War, she thinks I’ve had it easy all my life.”

  “Haven’t you told Mam what happened to you?” Victoria was dumbfounded that Bia knew nothing about her own mother’s early life because she had grown sick of listening to her mother complain about her early life and conditions in the Second World War. Most of her mother’s reminiscences had been about her older brother, who had been the family favourite (according to Bia) and how he had consistently tormented her when they were children. She reckoned that she had regularly been punished for retaliating against this tormenting, although her brother was never punished for being the instigator.

  “Your mother has never been interested in anyone else’s point of view.” Nana answered tartly. “She was a bad tempered little girl and she grew up into a bad tempered woman. I’ve told you before; your father is a saint for tolerating her moods and her rudeness. I often wonder how Sam and I managed to produce such a miserable child, he was always so sunny-tempered and he had a marvellous sense of humour.”

  Victoria had to agree. She had never heard her mother laugh at anything, although she had never given the matter much thought before, accepting that, in general, mothers didn’t laugh. Nana Lymer interrupted her musings.

  “Have you got time to listen to more of my story today, or should you be doing your revision for your exams?”

  “I’ve got plenty of time, Nana.” Victoria said. “I’ve got the rest of this week and all next week to revise in and, in any case, it’s only the mocks we are sitting when we go back, the real exams aren’t until June. But you mustn’t tell me any more if it’s making you tired and upset.”

  “Rubbish.” Nana said, emphatically. “It’s been the most fun I’ve had in the last ten years. It’s all too long ago for it to be upsetting me now. Anyway, there’s another reason for me telling you what happened and you can help me with that. Will you run an errand for me tomorrow and not tell your mother what I’ve asked you to do? If she knows what I’m asking, she’ll do anything in her power to stop it and it’s vital that I see him.”

  “Of course I won’t tell Mam.” Victoria said. “See who? And why? And what do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to go to Mr Vine’s office in Station Road and ask him to come and see me. I want you to make an exact time for the appointment and I want you to let him in through the side door while your mother is working in the shop. That way, she won’t know he’s here and the deed will be signed, sealed and done before she finds out about it. Will you do that for me?”

  “Of course, Nana.” Victoria replied. “But Mam wouldn’t want to stop you seeing your solicitor. Everybody has the right to see their own legal representative, that’s what those two world wars were fought for.”

  “You are right, Victoria, but your mother wouldn’t see it that way, I know. At least, not in my case she wouldn’t. If it was happening to her we’d never hear the last of it, but I’m a different kettle of fish all together. Anyway, on with the story. Are you sure you want me to go on with it?”

  “Sure?” Victoria squeaked. “Of course I want you to go on with it. I want to find out what happened to the pig butcher after you bit his ear. Did you bite any of it off or was it still attached to his head?”

  “Oh I didn’t bite any of it off. I think I would have vomited if I had done that.” Nana Lymer shuddered at the thought of having part of Dennison in her mouth. “Over the next couple of days I was very unsettled, never sure if he might have gone to the police over what Peter and I had done to him. But Sammy was right in what he said. Dennison would never have let anyone know that he been bested by a slip of a lass and a lad who ‘wasn’t all there’ as Peter was so horribly described. After a few days had passed I calmed down and stopped expecting the police to turn up at any moment.”

  “Within the week, however, the gossips began talking about Dennison’s accident, putting forward various ways in which he could have come by the injuries he had sustained. I wasn’t sure at first whether he had been in another ‘accident’ or if the injuries the gossips were talking about was what I had done to his ear. I didn’t want to make it obvious that I was extremely inter
ested in these injuries, so I tried to be very casual when I asked about them and it wasn’t long before I realised it was the injury to his ear that I had bitten that was the subject of all the gossip.”

  “I tried to be nonchalant in my attitude when Dennison was discussed, but anybody who knew me well would have known that I was hiding something. Thankfully, those people who knew me well, like Annie and Sam, already knew what had happened and weren’t likely to share their knowledge with anyone else. So none of the gossips knew that it was I who had caused Dennison’s injury and they were all ready and eager to discuss what had happened to him. It was reported that the pig butcher had once again turned to drink to compensate for what he thought were the hard blows that Fate had dealt him and that he was becoming more and more aggressive and intolerant every time he was seen in one of the local hostelries. He wasn’t opening his shop anymore, so it was only a matter of time before he ran out of money to fund his drinking binges and I shuddered to think what he would do then. I hoped that he wouldn’t come looking for me again.”

  “The weather didn’t get any better, in fact half way through February it got a lot worse. The snow which had fallen earlier in the winter had never melted because the temperature was so low and then gale-force winds began to blow, so cold they felt as though they were coming straight from the arctic. It didn’t matter how many layers of clothes you wore, that wind could pass through anything and there were a few cases of frostbite among people who worked outside. The dock workers were particularly hard hit because that cold wind was coming straight off the sea, with nothing to take the edge off it. Every time I went down to the warehouse I took flasks of hot tea and soup with me and I wished that I could do the same for all the soldiers who were huddled in trenches, trying to stay alive in that horrendous weather.”

  “Although the daylight hours were starting to get slightly longer it didn’t make any difference to the weather and when snow fell, it made even the middle of the day a dark, depressing time. William was suffering a lot of pain in his legs, because the icy conditions seemed to make every nerve ending susceptible and he was taking a lot of the painkilling drafts that the doctor prescribed for him. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to work when the pain was at its worst and he began drinking in order to numb it, spending nearly every night at the Red Lion. I didn’t consider that it was a good idea for him to depend on alcohol so much, but his absence every evening made home life a lot more bearable and Simon soon stopped asking where his Daddy was. William stayed sober long enough each day to take Simon to school and then to fetch him home again, leaving for the Red Lion as Simon was having his tea. He would roll home about midnight, when I had already gone to bed, but as long as he was up in time to take Simon to school, I didn’t question what he was doing.”

  “One Friday, during the second week in February, William set off to collect Simon from school as usual. It had stopped snowing, so when they got home he announced that he wanted to take Simon down to the market on Nelson Street and they would both have hot chestnuts from the cart which came every Friday. I agreed because Simon was so eager to go to the market with his Daddy and if it kept William out of the Red Lion for another couple of hours, then all to the good. It was already getting dark when they set off and I did wonder if it had been a good idea after all, but the market stalls always had lanterns lit and I thought Simon would probably enjoy the atmosphere of the bustling market as much as he would enjoy the chestnuts”

  “I lit the lamps in the shop that day while Hannah continued to serve customers, but then the steady stream of eager buyers dried up and it gave me time to look outside. It had started to snow again and even as I watched, the tiny flakes of the first shower got bigger and bigger until they were the size of golf balls, flying horizontally past the window and forming a curtain through which it was impossible to see. As I stood staring out of the window, Sammy crashed through the door in his haste to get in out of the storm.”

  “‘By, it’s rough out there, lass,’ he said when he had shaken the snow off his face so that he could see again. “Looks like its set in for the night again. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much snow in all my life. I’ve never known a winter like this one.’”

  “I agreed with Sam but my mind was concentrating on Simon and William. I had expected that they would have been home by now, because it wasn’t that far to the market and if they were only buying chestnuts, it wouldn’t have taken very long. It was completely dark outside by that time and most people had returned to their homes. No-one would want to go outside again on a night like that.”

  “We closed the shop and I set about making tea for us all, expecting Sammy to say that he would go home to sort a meal for his other two girls, but he didn’t. He hung around in the kitchen and was unusually silent, while I bustled around him, setting the table for us all to eat. I couldn’t speak because I was far too worried about Simon and his whereabouts, although I saw the glances being exchanged between Annie and Sam. It was Peter who put my worries into words, however, when he innocently asked, ‘Where’s Simon? Why hasn’t he come home for his tea?’”

  “That was the final straw for me. I dropped the serving spoon I had been holding and swung round to look at Sammy.”

  “‘Do you think something’s happened to them?’ I asked, my voice quivering with the fear which was clutching at my stomach.”

  “‘What time did they go out?’ Sam asked. ‘It can’t have been too long ago because Simon was at school today, wasn’t he?’”

  “‘Yes, Simon went to school and William brought him home after school tonight. Simon wanted to go and get hot chestnuts from the stall at the market, so William took him there. But the market will have ended ages ago. They will have packed up and gone when the snow got heavier, because all their customers will have gone home. I thought William would have brought Simon home long before this.’”

  “I dropped onto a chair and rested my head in my hands. My brain was whirling with thoughts of all that could have happened to them and I could feel the panic welling up inside me, threatening to escape and take all my self-control with it. Sam sat down next to me and took hold of my hand, forcing me to look at him.”

  “‘Don’t panic, lass,’ he said, very quietly and calmly. ‘They’ve probably taken shelter in one of the pubs near the market place and they’re waiting for the storm to pass. When the snow stops, they’ll likely come straight home.’”

  “‘You don’t believe that any more than I do.’ I replied. ‘Something’s happened to them and that’s why they haven’t come home.’ I had an overwhelming sense of doom, even though my sensible side was agreeing with Sammy that they would have taken shelter somewhere out of the storm and that they would return home when the snow abated. In my mind, William and Simon’s disappearance had something to do with Butcher Dennison and once that connection had formed, I couldn’t separate the two.”

  “I stood up and began pacing the kitchen floor, my mind jumping from Simon to the pig butcher, back and forth, back and forth until my brain was reeling with the worry and I was almost running round the kitchen. It was Annie who put into words what we had all been thinking.”

  “‘Hannah and I will stay here, in case William and Simon come home. Why don’t you three go round by the market and see if anyone has seen the pair of them?’”

  “Sammy showed that he was nearly as worried as I was because he didn’t hesitate. He was pulling his coat on almost while Annie was still speaking and stopped only long enough to urge her to lock all the doors and not open them unless he or I spoke to her. I was as quick as Sammy and wrapped myself into my thick winter shawl and donned my gloves while Annie shoved Peter’s arms into his coat and pulled a woollen hat onto his head.”

  “We set off into a complete whiteout, unable to see the hands in front of our faces as the snow whirled round us, deadening all sound apart from the wind and hiding all the familiar landmarks such as houses and roads. In order to walk along King Street we had to join
hands in a line and Sam felt his way along the house fronts so that we knew we were going in the direction of Lorne Terrace and the market. I was the middle one of the line of us, with Sam on my left and Peter tugging my hand on the right side of me. The gusting wind was so strong that it was only these two anchors that stopped me from being blown over and I worried how we were ever going to find anyone in those terrible conditions. A picture of soldiers huddled down in trenches while the snow raged around them popped into my mind and for a second I almost believed that I was seeing the front line of a battlefield, until the wind gusted again and the snow formed white pillows in front of me. I learnt years later that it is possible to have mirages in a whiteout, the same as people have in deserts.”

  “We made our way slowly along King Street until we came to its junction with Middlesbrough Road, turned right and crossed over this main road and continued down Lorne Terrace towards the market place. It seemed to have turned even colder since we had left the shop, with the wind coming straight towards us as it blew in from the North Sea, laden with snow and carrying the bitter chill from the Russian steppes. Many people say it can be too cold to snow, but that night was the coldest I have ever known and the snow was unrelenting as the wind whipped it against our bodies.”

  “There were very few people about because the weather was so bad and those who were outside were hurrying as fast as they could with their heads down against the wind, intent on reaching home and shelter. Sam had to grab at arms as they went past in order to ask them if they had seen William and Simon. The answer was always in the negative and, by the time we crossed onto Station Road without any trace of them, my apprehension had reached fever pitch. I had a fear on me unlike anything I had ever experienced before, although I would have been hard put to have justified why I was so fearful. It was animal-like in its intensity and it made me want to sit down on the pavement and howl my fear to the skies.”