Read The Most Precious Thing Online

Authors: Rita Bradshaw

Tags: #Fiction, #Sagas, #Historical

The Most Precious Thing (33 page)

 
‘
Get out.
’
 
‘It wouldn’t reflect well on you, would it? Lads have a thing about their mams being pure and above reproach. Funny that.’
 
‘I said, get out.’
 
‘I’m going, I’m going.’ His voice was calm. He moved across the kitchen and into the scullery before he said, his hand on the back door knob, ‘I meant what I said, I do love you.’
 
‘You don’t know the meaning of the word.’ He could threaten her and in the next breath talk of love?
 
‘If you had been halfway reasonable, this could have all been so different.’
 
‘
You
talk of reason!’ She glared at him, her face flushed with anger.
 
‘So I’m going without your forgiveness?’
 
‘You’ve never asked for it.’
 
‘I’m asking now.’
 
‘Fourteen years too late.’
 
‘I see.’ His voice was very soft and as his shoulders hunched slightly, Carrie told herself, don’t fall for it, don’t get taken in by the hangdog look. Two minutes ago he was talking of telling Matthew, which meant David too, and blowing everyone’s world apart.
 
‘Goodbye, Carrie.’
 
She couldn’t bring herself to say goodbye or wish him well. Instead she inclined her head stiffly, her eyes on his face.
 
He turned, his shoulders straightening as he opened the door and then he was gone.
 
 
The next morning David and Matthew went to see Alec off at the station, and later that night, when David had returned from his shift at the colliery and they’d finished their evening meal, he said, ‘You know, lass, I’m glad I went this morning. I’ve never got on with Alec as you well know, and there’s not one thing we’d agree on if we sat and talked from now till doomsday, but I felt sorry for him this morning and that’s a fact. All the other men had wives and bairns and mothers and goodness knows what, but he was standing all alone when we got there, and the look on his face . . . Well, it didn’t look like Alec somehow. He was scared, Carrie. Scared out of his mind.’
 
He was expecting her to say something and she knew she had to respond, but she felt numb, strange. Eventually she managed to say, ‘What about your mam? Why didn’t she go?’
 
‘I don’t suppose she knows. She’s never really forgiven him for refusing to have her when Da went, and I think Isaac is pretty firm with her, from what Lillian says. Isaac won’t stand for any nonsense, that was one of the conditions of taking her in, so she can’t throw her weight about like she used to. I think Lillian stands up to her and Mam has to toe the line, whereas at Alec’s she was expecting to have the upper hand with Margaret.’
 
‘Lillian and Isaac were marvellous to have her.’
 
‘Aye, you can say that again. Every time we’ve been round there and I feel her giving me the evil eye, I think that.’
 
‘She’s civil enough.’
 
‘Because Isaac’s told her she’ll be out on her ear if she isn’t, and the only place then is the workhouse.’
 
The conversation continued along the lines of how well his da was doing down south, and Carrie kept it away from any mention of Alec for the rest of the evening, but once she was lying beside David in bed and his heavy regular breathing told her he was asleep, hot tears flowed down her face. She could not have translated her thoughts into words, nor could she have explained the pain that gripped her, but she felt desolate.
 
Chapter Fifteen
 
‘Have you heard?’
 
‘About the raid? Aye, lass. Bad business. They reckon the four lads who copped it in Laing’s shipyard are all goners. It’s a miracle there aren’t more dead, considering fourteen bombs fell overall, but there’re plenty injured, especially round the Royal. The Ali Baba Sauce factory is practically demolished, according to what I’ve heard, and Wreath Quay Road and Wreath Quay Lane were hit. They were aiming for the shipyards and the bridge, if you ask me.’
 
Carrie stared at David, who had just walked in from his shift at the colliery. There had been no bombs dropped on Sunderland in the first few months of the war, but since Alec had left, several had fallen, the first one in a field adjoining the Old Rectory in Whitburn, which had demolished a tithe barn and killed some horses. Up to yet, however, there had been no people killed, but a bombing raid at midday had changed all that.
 
‘This is the beginning, isn’t it?’
 
‘Aye, well, we’ve got away light till now.’
 
They stared at each other for a moment more before Carrie said, ‘I saw the Ali Baba Sauce factory this afternoon, David. If a bomb can do that to a big factory, a shelter would be no good if there was a direct hit, especially one like ours.’
 
‘The chances of that happening are tiny, lass, now then, and ours is a darn sight better than one of the Morrison shelters which is all some poor blighters have between them and Jerry. Give me an outside one any day. I saw Sid White’s the other night when I was on duty and called in to say his blackout curtains needing pulling, and it’s nowt but an oblong box. They use it as a table most of the time but during a raid they all climb inside and pull mesh panels into place on the sides and ends. Mesh panels against the sort of blast we’ve seen evidence of in the last little while!’ David shook his head disparagingly and walked through into the scullery to wash his hands.
 
The meal was ready and Matthew needed calling down from his bedroom, but Carrie continued to stand still, the agitation which had gripped her when she’d seen the destruction of the factory still strong. She knew their brick surface shelter in the backyard could withstand a considerable blast, but she wished they had a patch of earth so they could have an Anderson. These were half buried in the ground and made from six curved steel sheets bolted together at the top and with steel plates at either end, and then covered with earth. A front entrance with a blast wall to protect it and an emergency escape panel at the rear gave far better protection, in Carrie’s view, than a brick box with a concrete roof which had the potential to crush them to death.
 
She glanced across at the emergency pack which consisted of a torch, cushions and blankets, and a flask which she’d fill before they all retired to bed. The pack had gone unused for months at the beginning of the war but the sirens had sounded in the dead of night more than once lately. She hated that sound. Oh, how she hated it. She’d never get used to it. And it was worse when David was on duty because then she worried that the explosions and thuds they could hear were where he was, as well as being scared of a hit on Matthew and herself. Not that she would have tried to stop David becoming an air raid warden, but she wished he’d been given their road to patrol, rather than one near Nelson Square some streets away and much closer to the river where industry lined the banks, an ideal target for the bombers.
 
‘Something smells nice.’ David walked back into the room, sniffing the air appreciatively in a way that always made Carrie smile.
 
‘Harry kept a rabbit back for me.’ Harry Forsyth, the butcher, had a contact who slipped him a few rabbits and the odd pheasant now and again, and since the war had begun he kept these for his favourite customers. This caused a certain amount of resentment among some of the old wives who frequented his shop, but no one dared complain or point out that it was supposed to be first come, first served.
 
Rationing was now part of life and the ration of bacon and ham per person per week was 4oz in total; other meat was rationed by price, a shilling’s worth per week, so Carrie appreciated the elderly man’s kindness. She had made a christening gown for his granddaughter some years before, and had refused to accept any payment when the daughter’s husband had been killed while unloading crates at the dock days before the service. It seemed Harry didn’t forget such things.
 
It took a bit of thinking to make 2oz of butter and cheese, 4oz of margarine and cooking fat, 3 pints of milk, 8oz of sugar and one egg a week - when available - plus 11b of jam every two months stretch to provide filling meals for David and Matthew. But with Harry making sure that any sausage and offal - not rationed but scarce - came their way, and vegetables from old Amos’s allotment, which Terry had passed over to David and Walter and was now tended by Matthew and Veronica, things weren’t so bad. And David had made a long window box which he’d fixed along one side of the shelter, in which Carrie grew tomatoes. They hadn’t gone to bed hungry yet. With stomach ache, certainly - there was a glut of plums at present and at twopence a quarter they ate them at every meal.
 
It was with this in mind that David now said, a twinkle in his eye, ‘What’s for afters, lass? No, let me guess. Fresh plums, stewed plums, baked plums or perhaps even plum crumble if I’m lucky.’
 
Carrie wrinkled her nose at him. ‘Stewed plums,’ she admitted.
 
‘Just what I fancy.’
 
‘Oh, you.’
 
‘I’m not complaining, lass.’ He pulled her to him. ‘Just so long as you don’t try any of these government recipes they’re pushing. Carrot fudge and All-Clear sandwiches, who do they think they’re kidding? And this so called Woolton Pie! One of the lads was saying his missus dished it up the other night and he asked her why she’d given him steak and kidney pie without the steak and kidney. Even the dog wouldn’t touch it, according to John.’
 
Carrie tilted her head to smile up at him. If that had been David he would have eaten the potato, parsnip and oatmeal pie - named after Lord Woolton, the Minister for Food - without a word of complaint. She had served up the odd disaster in her time and on at least one occasion had been unable to eat the meal herself, but David would insist she was a ‘grand cook’ regardless. ‘I’ve used our points this month on two pound of dried fruit,’ she said softly, ‘so there’s sly cake for supper.’
 
‘Now you’re talking.’ David released her as they heard Matthew’s footsteps coming down the stairs. ‘You know the way to a man’s heart, Carrie Sutton, and no mistake.’
 
Oh, David. As Carrie walked across to the hob and began to dish up the rich rabbit stew, crammed with chunks of potato, turnips, onion, parsnips and other vegetables, she told herself for the hundredth time that everything was all right. It didn’t matter that Matthew insisted on writing long letters to Alec all the time or that her lad had become - her mind balked at the word selfish and substituted difficult. Not really. She and Matthew and David were all alive and well and in these times that was all that counted.
 
‘Sit down, it’s nearly ready,’ she said to Matthew and a pair of bright, heavily lashed eyes in a face that was becoming more handsome with every month that passed smiled back at her.
 
‘I’ve finished that book.’ Matthew sat down at the table without acknowledging David beyond a quick nod and reached for a piece of stottie cake made with the coarse flour which was all that was available these days.
 
‘Already?’ Carrie’s voice was cheerful even as she thought, he’s so clever, it’s a crime he’ll be down the pit come September. She couldn’t bear to think of it, her lad in that place. But he was a miner’s son, and with the talk of ex-miners being brought back from the front to work down the mines, there was no way Matthew was going to escape his lot, not with the country’s need for coal so critical.
 
‘What book is that?’ David asked pleasantly, making an effort to communicate with Matthew, as he always did. Sometimes Carrie found herself wanting to say, it’s no use, not with Alec brainwashing him drip by drip. Can’t you see that? But she never did.
 
Matthew turned his head in the manner that was so like Alec’s. ‘
A Farewell to Arms
by Ernest Hemingway,’ he said coolly. ‘Have you read it?’
 

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