A Christmas Candle Page 7

  ‘He does sell it in his shop,’ Connie said sulkily. ‘Well, he would if there was a call for it, but folk in Liverpool buy their milk direct from Mr Hastings. They come out with jugs and he fills them from a great big can on the back of the cart … it’s the best milk in the world, the stuff Mr Hastings sells.’

  Eve sighed and turned away from the window. Why did Connie have to be so argumentative? Why couldn’t she, just occasionally, agree with what one said? Eve looked back on the halcyon days when she and Mabel had shared their thoughts and wished with all her might that those days could return. They might, of course; she knew that. It would soon be December and Connie had been loud in her determination to return to Liverpool for the Christmas holidays.

  ‘I’m not afraid of bombs,’ she had said scornfully. ‘I’d risk more than bombs to be in dear old Liverpool for the festivities. My mum will get a big chicken and Dad will give her extra housekeeping money and Auntie Bess was talking about handing out sticks of sprouts and a bag of potatoes to anyone who went home around Christmas.’

  A dozen snappy retorts rose to Eve’s lips and were banished. What was the point? As she turned from the window Chrissie clambered out of his cot, scooped his clothing off the little chair by his bed and gave his sister a seraphic smile.

  ‘I washed whilst you were looking at the cows,’ he said untruthfully. ‘But there’s strawberry jam on my shirt; shall I get a clean one out?’

  Eve tutted. ‘You have not washed, so you can do that now, if you please. Give me the jammy shirt and I’ll rinse it off in the kitchen when we go down for breakfast. Hurry up; it’s a glorious day so we might as well make the most of it.’

  Ten minutes later, scrubbed and brushed, Chrissie chuckled as they entered the kitchen. ‘Mrs Ryder says she’s going to light a fire in the drawing room and roast chestnuts today,’ he said gleefully. ‘Are you in school this morning, Evie? I don’t think you are, so you might come and help Mrs Ryder and get some roast chestnuts for yourself.’

  Eve smiled at her small brother; there were occasions now when she really loved him and did not have to put on an act. ‘You’re right, it’s the other group who are having lessons this morning,’ she assured the little boy. ‘It’s kind of Mrs Ryder to roast the chestnuts and I must say I’d appreciate a share. But come and sit down, darling, and eat your porridge, otherwise there’ll be no roast chestnuts for either of us.’

  Over the last few weeks, Eve, Connie and Chrissie had formed the habit of walking down to school with the evacuees from the neighbouring farms, for all of whom the lane that led past Drake’s Farm was the quickest way – and the prettiest, Eve thought. After breakfast, when they gathered outside the gate, she looked around at the assembled children as she always did, wondering whether she would see the boy who had been so rude to her at New Cross station. She knew his name now – Johnny – and that he lived with three other boys at Spindlebush Farm, about a quarter of a mile up the road, but apart from that he was still a mystery. He seldom joined the other children in their games and seemed content to keep to himself, not having any particular friend, it seemed, amongst the other children at the school. There were a good few more boys than girls, since most of the farmers had stated bluntly that they would prefer boy evacuees to girls, since boys could help on the farm.

  When she heard this Eve had been rather annoyed, for she thought girls could be every bit as useful as their male counterparts, but rather to her own surprise she had soon found she got on very well indeed with the boys. They were a nice crowd, always willing to help with homework or heave a girl over a stile, and today Eve had no qualms about cross-questioning Robbo, as the other boys called another of the lads from Spindlebush Farm, about the evacuee called Johnny.

  ‘Though I’ve never exchanged so much as a word with him,’ she hastened to explain. ‘I saw him on the station platform in London and he was quite rude, so I just want to ask him why he didn’t like me.’

  ‘Oh, that’s Johnny all over,’ Robbo said cheerfully. ‘There weren’t nothin’ personal in it, you may be sure; he were just so full of beans that he had to let them out on someone and you must’ve been the nearest. Don’t give it a thought. He ain’t avoiding you, it’s just that he’s having a bit of a laugh seeing you looking out for him all the time.’

  ‘Well, he’s a mystery to me,’ Eve said stubbornly. ‘Have you ever read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – or is it Through the Looking Glass? I’m never quite sure which is which. Any road, he’s like the Cheshire cat. I catch sight of him, up to some mischief no doubt, and then he fades away before I can grab him, leaving nothing behind but a grin.’

  Robbo gave a snort of amusement. ‘Wait till school starts properly after Christmas,’ he suggested. ‘Up till now, things have been in a rare muddle. What with all the coming and going teachers are finding themselves trying to take classes of kids from six or seven to thirteen or fourteen. The little ’uns don’t understand a word they say and the big ’uns get bored and start to play up. But they’re sortin’ themselves out, and after Christmas we’ll be in proper classes with registers an’ such, so Johnny won’t be able to slope off on his own affairs the way he does at present.’

  As he spoke, Robbo looked curiously at Eve. They were strolling along the stretch of tarmac road on the last lap of their walk to the village and now his dark eyebrows rose quizzically. ‘Why do you care? There’s plenty of boys who are rude to girls just to get a rise out of ’em. Why pick on Johnny? I gave you a shove when we were both after the same lovely big chestnut, and I called you a name, but all you did was laugh. What’s so special about Johnny?’

  Eve shrugged, then scowled down at her feet. It was a fair enough question. Why did she care what Johnny thought? Sure, he had been rude to her, but so had a dozen other people. Come to think of it she had been rude to Johnny, or as rude as she dared be with her mother’s eagle eye upon her. But Robbo was staring at her, clearly curious, and she made haste to answer. She stopped contemplating her stout lace-up shoes and met Robbo’s glance with an assumption at least of frankness.

  ‘Out of all the kids who’ve been dumped on the village there’s only one face I’ve recognised, and that’s Johnny’s,’ she said truthfully. ‘But it doesn’t matter; I guess you’re right, and after Christmas I’ll maybe find out what he’s got against me.’

  Robbo sighed. He was an attractive boy with a dimple in one cheek and floppy dark hair which he was forever pushing back out of his eyes. ‘I keep tellin’ you, Johnny will have forgotten whatever it was he said to you weeks ago. Still, if you end up in the same class you’ll be able to ask him yourself. How old are you, anyway?’

  ‘I’m nearly ten,’ Eve said. ‘Younger than Johnny, I think. Younger than you, for that matter. How old are you?’

  ‘I’m nearly twelve, same as Johnny,’ Robbo said promptly. They had been dawdling along the verge but speeded up as the cottages of the village came into view. ‘I know you’re not in school with us this morning, so I guess you’re helping out in the nursery, in which case both of us had better get a move on.’ He chuckled. ‘Your little brother’s joined up with Alex Ryder and the Caldecott twins, and between the four of them poor Mrs Ryder will have her hands full without you wandering in late.’

  Eve sighed. Privately, she considered her time spent helping at the nursery to be purgatory, but it would not do to say so. ‘Yes, I’m helping Mrs Ryder today,’ she said resignedly. She smiled at her companion. ‘Usually I don’t enjoy it very much, but it’s not so bad now that Christmas is getting close. We’re making paper chains and other decorations for the village hall, because as you probably know they’re having a big party there for all the evacuees; and later on, nearer the time, we’re going to make food for it: little buns and sausage rolls and so on, which should be fun. Better than trying to interest the little blighters in Bible stories, anyway, which Mrs Ryder will insist are told to the children at least three times a day.’

  Robbo whistled under his breath and c
ast his eyes heavenwards. ‘I thank the good Lord my ma was never blessed with children younger’n me,’ he said piously as they reached the rectory gate. ‘Want me to tell Johnny you’ve been askin’ for him? I don’t mind acting as go-between if it’ll help.’

  Eve felt a blush burn up her neck and into her cheeks and shook her head decidedly. ‘Don’t you dare,’ she said forcefully. ‘Johnny’s nothing to me.’ She put a hand on the gate and swung it wide. ‘Please, Robbo, don’t say anything. As you say, when things get sorted out …’

  ‘Robbo!’ The shout came from an older boy who had been designated a prefect and whose job it was to try to sort out who should be where and when, an unenviable task.

  Robbo sighed and gave Eve a shove towards the rectory. ‘All right, Mac,’ he called. He winked at Eve. ‘Just seein’ me girlfriend gets to work on time, then I’ll be at your service.’

  Eve, hurrying down the brick path towards the solid bulk of the rectory, turned to pull a face at him, but she was too late. Robbo and Mac, deep in conversation, were already crossing the playground towards the old Victorian school.

  Chapter Four

  The Christmas party was every bit as much fun as they could make it, and the children almost forgot there was a war on. Some of the evacuees had even returned to their families for the holidays, a few of the more homesick ones vowing never to return, but Eve and Chrissie, with Connie, Lily and Miriam, remained at Drake’s Farm, much to the Favershams’ delight. ‘For it’ll be our first year without Bob and Richard, and Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without some young folks in the house,’ Auntie Bess had confided to Eve as she was cutting the tops for mince pies and Eve was spooning the delicious-looking mincemeat into the waiting pastry cups. ‘I always think children round off Christmas the way candles round off a Christmas tree – they add the sparkle, and everyone feels happier because they’re there. That’s what you and Chrissie – and Connie, of course,’ she added, looking rather conscious, ‘will be this year – our Christmas candles.’

  And then, before the memory of paper chains and sausage rolls and Auntie Bess’s miraculous Christmas cake had even begun to fade, Eve woke up one morning to find that the long-promised snow had come at last.

  Sitting on her bed with her blue woollen dressing gown tightly buttoned against the cold, she watched, enchanted, as the falling flakes, white against the grey of the sky, began to settle. The locals had been muttering about significant snow for several days and now Eve could see that they had been right. A bitter but brisk wind whirled the flakes this way and that, and watching from her eyrie Eve could see Miriam slogging across the farmyard, her woolly scarf tied tightly under her chin and her land girl’s waterproof already bearing small pyramids of snow on either shoulder.

  Eve went to the washstand, where to her secret delight she had to break the ice on the ewer, but she soon discovered that the business of cleaning off the previous day’s grime with water whose temperature barely exceeded freezing point was not a pleasant one. After performing the sketchiest wash she could manage she eyed her slumbering companions as she dressed. After several sleepless nights in the Armstrongs’ old room Lily had returned to the attic to escape poor Miriam’s snores; her bed was empty, of course, but Chrissie was still dead to the world in the deep sleep of childhood, while Connie lay curled up into a tight little ball, her clothing spread out over the top blanket along with a rather threadbare winter coat and a bright red pixie hood which had been a Christmas present from her mother and father and was, she assured Eve, all the rage in her home city. Alone amongst the evacuees Connie came from Liverpool and so was able, Eve thought resentfully, to tell any number of tall stories about the place without fear of being branded a liar. Eve sighed and thrust her arms into the thick scarlet jumper which had been part of her own Christmas present from her parents. If only Connie had been more like Mabel! Mabel never sneered at anyone, but there was scarcely one evacuee who had not suffered from Connie’s malignant tongue, which had become even sharper since her parents had refused point-blank to allow her to make the journey back to Liverpool for Christmas. In fact the only person Connie had time for was the golden Lily. She fawned round the older girl, offering to do any small jobs for her, but Lily, though always kind, refused such offers as politely as she could.

  ‘That Connie! She’s lonely and miserable but has too much pride to admit it,’ Lily had once confided to Miriam when they were milking the cows, unaware that Eve had entered the shed. ‘If only she wasn’t so critical! I’ve tried telling her that she’ll never be popular if she finds fault all the time, but she just says she doesn’t want people to like her.’

  Miriam, her head tucked into her cow’s smooth flank, was busy stripping the last teat of its contents. ‘They shouldn’t have billeted her round here, where most of the other evacuees are from London,’ she remarked. ‘Naturally it gives her the perfect excuse to say anything she likes without fear of contradiction. But I dare say all they thought about was finding her a bed and a school place anywhere there was room.’

  Lily picked up the two full buckets and set off to pour the milk into the cooler. Over her shoulder, she put her own optimistic seal on the conversation.

  ‘She’ll settle in; they all do, in the end, and you couldn’t ask for a better billet than Drake’s Farm.’

  But that had been weeks ago, and so far as Eve could see Connie was still as objectionable as ever. She knew for a fact that the good marks which the other girl had got in the rather rushed arithmetic test had been the result of peering over her neighbour’s shoulder and copying both her workings and her results. Eve, who had never cheated in her life, had longed to tell; why should Connie benefit from the hard work of others, after all? But when she had found Lily alone in the scullery one day the older girl had put her straight.

  ‘In the end, cheats get their come-uppance,’ she had assured Eve. ‘Why don’t you try to be a little kinder to her – Connie, I mean? She must be miserably unhappy to spend all her time being so nasty. I’ve done my best to make her feel at home and see she gets her share of any little extras going, but so far she hasn’t appeared to notice.’

  ‘Oh, but you are the one person she really likes, Lily,’ Eve had said quickly. ‘Do you remember, when we had rabbit pie and apple crumble for supper, how she went on about being patriotic and said that Auntie Bess should think of our poor soldiers and sailors instead of feeding a lot of useless evacuees?’

  Lily had chuckled. ‘I do indeed! I bet she’d shout louder than anyone if Auntie Bess gave us bread and dripping instead of that rabbit pie. Look, Eve, I’m doing everything I can to try to help, but you must do your best as well. Believe me, Connie is absolutely miserable. I doubt if she’s ever visited the country in her whole life; certainly she’s never lived in it. That’s why she keeps telling us that Liverpool is so wonderful. Well, it might be, for all I know, but so is Devon, and it’s up to us to see she’s happy here. Are you game to try?’

  ‘I have tried,’ Eve had said indignantly. ‘Honest to God, Lily, I’ve done my best. I heard her crying one night when she was still quite new and hadn’t lived here very long. It was a freezing cold night but I got up and went and sat on the end of her bed, asking her what was the matter and could I do anything to help. She lay there quite quiet for a minute and I started to tell her how we were all homesick at first but we soon settled in, and do you know what she did? She bunched up like – like a sort of steel spring, and kicked out so hard that I shot across the room and bruised my shoulder on the washstand. And she called me a nosy cow and said she wasn’t going to take cheek from me. Then she hunched the covers over her shoulders, said three bad words in a row, and said she hoped my shoulder was broken. Honestly, Lily, she isn’t a nice person at all.’

  Lily had put a comforting arm around Eve’s shoulders. ‘Deep unhappiness sometimes comes out in the oddest way,’ she said. ‘You go on being nice to Connie and she’ll come round and show a side of herself that you’ve not yet seen. Ne
xt time you catch her out in a lie, pretend you think she was just kidding. No one’s all bad, Eve; it’s just insecurity which makes her tell such whoppers. Last time I heard her boasting about her life in Liverpool and her rich relatives I pretended I knew the city quite well, and she shut up like a clam and changed the subject. She’ll come round, you’ll see.’

  This conversation had taken place some days earlier and now Eve stared across at Connie’s rumpled head, just visible in the light which flickered palely through the attic window. Perhaps Lily was right and Connie was just lonely and unhappy and would gradually begin to show her nicer side. If she’s got one, Eve thought rather doubtfully. She remembered her promise to be nicer to the objectionable newcomer and sat up a little straighter on her bed. She would try, she really would.

  She was about to go downstairs and start on her chores, but then a thought struck her and instead she went over to Connie’s bed and perched on it, whispering, ‘Connie, the snow’s ever so thick and the land girls will be carting the milk down to the end of the lane presently. If you hurry you could come with me and give them a helping hand.’ She was watching Connie’s face as she spoke and saw the bright blue eyes open and fix muzzily on her face.

  ‘Is it time to get up?’ Connie asked in a slurred, sleep-blurred voice. ‘Don’t say it’s seven o’clock already?’

  ‘I dunno what time it is,’ Eve said. ‘But all our normal chores get turned upside down when the snow’s on the ground, Uncle Reg said so at supper last night. So I thought I’d get up early and see what I could do to help. There’s still the hens and the pigs to be fed, and—’

  Connie’s eyelids had been gradually lowering, but suddenly they shot open again. ‘Bugger off!’ she said loudly. ‘No wonder I never heard the alarm, ’cos it didn’t ring, did it? You’re just trying to smarm up to Lily, because you know I’m her favourite.’ She smiled suddenly, but it was not a nice smile. ‘Want me to kick you into the bloody washstand again? I could, you know; I’m quite strong enough.’