Chrissie's Children Read online

  ‘Sophie!’ She was almost sure of the name, but there were so many girls and all looked alike in their uniform, so she added, ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, miss.’ Sophie climbed to her feet and brushed down her gym slip. The youth from the boys’ school on the other side of the copse scrambled to his feet and ran.

  Ursula shouted after him, ‘Stop! Stop!’ but he took no notice and in seconds was lost beyond the trees. She demanded of Sophie ‘Who was that?’

  ‘I don’t know, miss,’ Sophie answered with wide-eyed innocence. ‘I just found him in here when I came to look for some nature study specimens.’ That was almost true. She had been seeking leaves when she saw the youth on the playing fields on the other side of the wood, and had called to him . . .

  Ursula did not believe her, and had the damning evidence of her own eyes. She said, trying to be stern, but squeaking, ‘This is a very serious matter. You’ll go before the headmistress this afternoon. Come along now.’ She ushered Sophie out of the copse ahead of her.

  Sophie also knew this was a serious matter. There had been cases before, and all had ended in expulsion. Then she would have to face her father – and her mother. That would be the worst. The sky had darkened as if to match the cloud hanging over her. Thunder rumbled and as she trailed across the field ahead of Ursula Whittle the first fat raindrops began to fall. So she was driven into the school hall along with all the other girls seeking shelter.

  There were five hundred of them. Their voices, echoing in the high-ceilinged hall, drowned the sound of the storm outside. Crowded together and excited they ran amok, playing hastily devised games, scuttling in and out of the rows of chairs, leaping over them, kicking them aside. Ursula stood on the stage and ordered, ‘Sit down! Find your usual places in assembly and sit down!’ None of them heeded her, her words lost in the din. The clock on the wall told her that the headmistress and other teachers would return in fifteen minutes. If they found this chaos then she would be dismissed.

  Sophie saw an opportunity. There was the piano on the stage. In front of her was an audience. Did she dare? She was a crash-bang pianist, and the chord she struck made Ursula Whittle jump and produced one moment of silence while the five hundred girls gaped at the stage. Sophie sang ‘Stormy Weather’ and they giggled and booed – but then they listened. And when she finished the song and went straight into another, they still listened. Her voice was a powerful contralto, husky and adult. She held them, their heads nodding in time, humming and rocking to the music, until the bell clanged for afternoon school.

  Ursula Whittle had sidled off to the side of the stage. She returned now as Sophie closed the lid of the piano and stood up. Ursula lectured her, ‘That might have become a very serious matter. You must be more careful where you go to collect specimens. Promise me you won’t go there again.’ It was meant to be a severe warning but it came out weakly, gratefully, because Ursula knew she had been rescued.

  ‘Yes, Miss Whittle,’ Sophie answered meekly, knowing she, too, had been saved. She was still grinning when Helen Diaz put an arm around her.

  ‘That was marvellous!’ Helen said with admiration – and surprise, because she still could not believe that it had been her friend performing on stage. ‘You can really do it.’ Sophie nodded, laughing.

  Not everyone was as enthusiastic. Pamela Ogilvy was the only daughter of a director of a shipbuilding firm. She was in Sophie’s form and never understood why Sophie Ballantyne befriended Helen Diaz rather than herself. She had not joined in the applause, and dismissed Sophie’s performance as ‘exhibitionist’. However, she did not say so aloud, and she smiled at Sophie in passing. Sophie did not notice and Pamela sniffed and walked on.

  Unaware of this, Helen opened an exercise book and took out a sheaf of leaves, carefully picked and pressed. ‘Here you are.’

  ‘What?’ Sophie was still excited.

  ‘I got these in the park for this afternoon’s lesson, some for me, these for you. I told you I would. You said you had some homework you wanted to catch up on.’

  Sophie smiled. ‘That’s right. I did.’

  Helen admonished her. ‘You shouldn’t leave your homework till lunchtime.’

  ‘I’ve promised not to do it again,’ Sophie said, as she secretly thought, In another place, at another time . . .

  She lived through those fifteen minutes on stage again and again through the afternoon, thinking, So it’s as easy as that.

  Sophie was still singing when she arrived home and found her mother using the telephone in the hall. Chrissie set down the receiver tight lipped. Sophie glanced through to the sitting-room and asked, ‘Where’s Matt?’ She had to tell someone about her performance in the hall and dared not tell her mother.

  Chrissie answered grimly, ‘You may well ask. He left a note. I’ve just phoned your father with the news.’ She handed the sheet, torn from a sketching pad, to Sophie, who read, in Matt’s neat script, ‘Gone to Finchale. Cook fitted me up with supplies. Back in a few days.’

  Chrissie snapped, ‘It’s no laughing matter.’

  Sophie tried to stop grinning and agreed, ‘What a cheek, sloping off like that. Of course, he’s Cook’s blue-eyed boy. She’ll have seen him all right for grub.’

  ‘She did – and claims she assumed he had permission to go off.’ Chrissie suspected the truth of that, knowing the cook’s fondness for Matt.

  Sophie soothed, ‘Still, he’s been away like that a few times now.’

  Jack said the same when he returned that evening: ‘Well, he’s done it before.’

  Chrissie pointed out angrily, ‘Not without asking our permission first.’

  Jack shrugged. He had spent an afternoon dealing with problems at the yard and that had taken the edge off his original anger. ‘He said too much earlier, so he’s got out of the way. He’ll come home in his own good time and I’ll have a word with him then.’

  Chrissie said unhappily, ‘He worries me, Jack. I want him to be happy.’

  ‘So do I. And I hope he is now.’

  Finchale Priory lay some six miles away. Matt got down from the slow train at the little station, shrugged into his pack and walked the country mile to the priory. It lay by the river in its steep-sided valley. He found a clearing where he had camped before, a hundred yards from the ruined priory and close by the river. There he set up his little tent, cooked his supper of sausages and potatoes on his fire and ate it by the light of the flames. Then he unrolled his groundsheet and blankets. He lay peering out of the open door of the tent, blinking at the embers glowing in the darkness, listening to the run of the river beyond. In minutes he was asleep.

  In the days that followed he would wake thinking of the row before he left home and the one that awaited him on his return. Then he would become involved in the small chores of the day – washing up and cooking – and afterwards take his pad and pencils and go sketching, or sink into one of the books he had brought with him, or go roaming the countryside, long striding, for hours.

  He missed Tom. They had grown up together, different but close, playing, fighting, scheming, arguing – and uniting to look after Sophie. They had gone to the same school with less than a year between them. Now they met only at weekends when Tom came home. Matt didn’t want to complain to Tom or ask his advice – though he had in the past and would again. He just wanted his brother there. However, that was not possible. He reminded himself that they would be camping together in France in the summer and was more cheerful. Meanwhile tomorrow could wait; he would let life take its course.

  He returned home at the end of a week, in time for dinner, and was made welcome. He did not have a prepared speech, but after dinner he just spoke his mind: ‘I’m sorry, Mother, Dad, but I just had to get away. I like to read, sketch, play rugby – but when I feel like it, not doing a period on this, another on that, according to a timetable. I don’t want to go to school at all but I know I need a certificate, a piece of paper to be able to get a job. The trouble is, I just don’t kn
ow what job I want.’

  Jack glanced ruefully, exasperated, at Chrissie. ‘Which leaves us where we were before. What are we going to do with him?’

  Chrissie did not care, was only glad to have her boy back.

  Pamela Ogilvy was blonde, and big for her age. She had heard of Matt’s running away and thought him romantic. She waylaid him as he left the house with Sophie and Helen, who had called to see Sophie. Pamela met them at the gate, smiled at all of them, but a little more at Matt than at the rest. Her eyes were still on him when she addressed Sophie: ‘I wondered if you could tell me one or two things about this trip.’

  Matt asked, ‘What trip?’ and thought she was a pretty girl.

  Pamela still smiled at him. ‘We’re going to Germany this summer.’ She was aware of Helen listening and added, ‘Well, some of us are – about a dozen or so actually.’

  Matt said, ‘That sounds great.’

  Sophie glanced from Pamela to Matt and back again, then asked, ‘What did you want to know?’

  Helen Diaz started to walk away. ‘I’m going home.’ She was not going to Germany and Pamela knew this.

  Sophie had read the situation and said quickly, ‘I’ll see you as far as the tram. Come on, Pamela.’

  Matt said, ‘I’ll walk with you.’

  Sophie cut in, ‘Dad said the car wasn’t running properly. He was going to ask you to mend it.’

  ‘Not running properly?’ Matt halted, puzzled. ‘What d’you mean?’

  Sophie called back to him, ‘That’s all I know – except that you need to keep on the right side of him after this last week. Come on, Pamela!’

  So Pamela had to go, while Matt made his way back to the house wondering, Not running properly? I’ll have to ask Dad . . .

  When he did, Jack Ballantyne answered him, ‘Must be some mistake. The car’s ticking over like a clock, nothing wrong with it.’

  Later, when Matt challenged Sophie, she replied cheerfully, ‘I was keeping you out of trouble. You’ve been in enough without getting off with Pamela. She’d put you through the mangle.’

  Riled, Matt answered, ‘You can stop interfering in my affairs.’

  Sophie walked into her room and paused only to tell him, ‘Somebody has to look after you. I’d have thought you’d be glad I was prepared to do it because lots wouldn’t.’ Then she closed the door in his face.

  Joshua Fannon came home from the pub early because he had spent all his own money and had only the rents he had collected that day. The coins chinked in the pockets of the old raincoat buttoned tight over his belly, but he dared not spend them. He smelt the gas when he opened the door and heard the hissing.

  ‘What the hell . . .’ He shoved the door wide and stepped into the kitchen. The gas lamp was not lit because the room was still twilit on this spring evening. He saw his wife, Meggie, lying fat and loose in her armchair by the fireplace as usual, though the grate held no fire, only dead ashes. A half-empty bottle of gin and a glass stood by her chair, again as usual. In the hearth was a teapot and a gas-ring with a kettle perched on top of it. The hissing came from there.

  Fannon swore. ‘Ye daft cow!’ He guessed that Meggie had turned on the gas to boil a kettle for tea but, in her drunken stupor, failed to light it. He lumbered across the room, belly wobbling, and bent to turn off the gas, then froze there with his hand on the tap. Meggie was a very bad colour and breathing harshly. He rose slowly, wheezing, then moved quickly to close the door with barely a click. Stepping carefully and light on his feet, he went to the gas meter in a cupboard on one side of the fireplace, dug down into his raincoat pocket and brought out a handful of change. He picked out the pennies, bent down and fed them into the meter one by one. As each rattled down inside, a nerve twitched in his cheek. He was sweating and watching Meggie but she showed no sign of waking. As he rose he knew the gas would flow for several hours.

  He left the house quietly, and as he had entered it, by the back door and the back lane. No one saw him go. The rooms upstairs were empty and would be until his neighbours came home after the pubs shut at ten.

  He went on to the Pear Tree and the barman greeted him. ‘Aye, aye, Josh!’

  Fannon answered, ‘Give us a pint,’ and as the man pulled it Fannon went on, ‘I’ve just left the Frigate. There’s a rare crowd in there tonight.’ That was true.

  The barman said, ‘Is there?’

  ‘Aye.’ Fannon pulled out the money from his raincoat pocket. He could spend the rents now. ‘Have one for yourself.’

  ‘Ta, Josh.’ The barman lifted his glass in salute and drank.

  Fannon stood at the bar through the rest of the evening. He had time to think about what he had done on the spur of the moment and now he realised he had committed murder. If he was found out he would be hanged. He sweated with fear and drank feverishly, talked to anyone who would listen. He was one of the last to leave the Pear Tree when it closed. Then he stood outside because he could not go home, talking with a group of late leavers.

  His neighbour found him there, the man hurrying up, panting, to lay a hand on his shoulder. ‘I’ve got some bad news for you, Josh.’

  Fannon mourned in public and recovered his confidence as the death was accepted as an accident. He celebrated in private. The bank book was found by the coroner’s assistant, secreted in a pocket on Meggie Fannon’s vest, and he returned it to Fannon. There were legal procedures to go through because Meggie left no will, but nor did she have any other kin and eventually Joshua found himself a man of property with money in the bank.

  He had not planned for this day as long as he had yearned for it, but he was not unprepared, either. He decided he would not be idle but would use his inheritance to build a bigger fortune by uniting his capital with his experience. He would become a bookie. He would not stand on street corners to take the bets and risk being chased by the pollis. He would pay somebody else to do that while he sat in comfort, checking the gambling slips and money as they were brought to him, and grew rich.

  It was beyond his fearful imagining that he could be involved again in the plotting of murder – but in time, he would.

  Sophie did not know that, nor did she know him, and slept peacefully in her bed.

  8

  Summer 1936

  The Bavarian bierkeller was crowded, dimly lit and smoky. The four girls, all made up and trying to look older than their fifteen or sixteen years, had secured a table near the little dance floor and the band. They had set out in a spirit of bravado, led by Sophie, who told them, ‘The old girl will be sound asleep by eleven.’ She was referring to their headmistress. ‘She won’t know anything about it.’ So they had crept past her door, run down the stairs and out of the hotel. Now it was past midnight. They sipped beer and tried to keep up their act as blasé young adults, tried also to ignore the ogling of the handsome young men at the tables around them.

  Pamela Ogilvy collected most of the glances. She was tall, and her full figure and long, blonde hair attracted the men. She was aware of their glances, and while nervous of returning them she blushed and basked in the admiration.

  Sophie returned any of the looks that came her way, grinned and shook her head when one of the youths came to speak to her. Pamela asked, jealous, ‘What did he say?’ The other two girls leaned forward to hear.

  Sophie shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Couldn’t hear with all the noise. Probably what they all say.’ Now the band had stopped playing and were leaving the little stage to take a few minutes’ break. Sophie watched them go. Only a pianist was left.

  Pamela suggested, provoking, ‘Why don’t you get up and sing, Sophie?’ The others laughed.

  So did Sophie. ‘All right.’ Then she was on her feet and edging between the tables, crossing the floor and climbing on to the stage. Her painfully acquired German deserted her then, but the little man at the piano knew more than enough English to understand what she wanted. He started to play the introduction and Sophie turned to face the crowd. Everyone in the bierkeller knew
this was one of the English girls. And was she about to sing? There were cheers, jeers, catcalls and laughter.

  Sophie stepped forward, and paused with her weight on one long leg, the other slightly bent, hands on hips. High heels added two inches to her height while the poor lighting carved hollows in her cheeks, putting ten years on her age. She pitched her voice even lower than usual to match the song and the act – a take-off of Marlene Dietrich. And the crowd were watching, listening to, another striking blonde. They were silent as she sang. When she finished they bawled their appreciation and hammered on the tables.

  They easily persuaded her to sing again and she held them until the band returned, then sang all the way back to the hotel. Pamela Ogilvy said little.

  Helen Diaz spent some of her summer holiday training with the St John’s Ambulance Brigade. She had joined at eleven as a cadet, with her mother’s urging (‘It will help you when you go to be a nurse’). She worked enthusiastically and was proud of her white cap and grey dress, with the Service Star and single stripe on her sleeve that showed she had proved efficient in First Aid and Home Nursing.

  Some of her time was spent helping her mother, cooking and scrubbing. On washday she lit the boiler in the washhouse, pounded the washing in the tub with the poss-stick and heaved on the handle of the mangle as her mother fed the clothes into the wooden rollers. If the weather was fine the clothes were pegged on the line in the yard. On a day of rain they were hung on the clothes horse – and Paco Diaz cursed Helen as he shoved them aside because they hid the fire: ‘Fool! Take them away!’

  Chrissie returned from two weeks’ walking in the Scottish Highlands with Jack and met Sarah Tennant in the kitchen of the Railway Hotel. ‘What did you do in your holiday, Sarah?’

  The girl looked up from the pile of potatoes she was peeling and smiled. ‘I spent nearly every day on the beach.’ She had walked across the bridge over the Wear and down to the sea front, carrying a basket containing her towel, bathing costume and a packet of sandwiches. When it rained she stayed in her room and read. Every evening she reported to the club for her part-time job of washing glasses. Sarah was living frugally and saving.