‘Oh. Miss Bancroft,’ the old lady said, with a slightly flustered smile. ‘I never heard you arrive. Now let me just finish sorting through this metal for salvage, then you can sit along of Andy and I’ll get young Mabs to bring you out a pot of tea. It’s too nice a day to be inside.’
Andy laughed at the selection of metal items his new wife was holding. He nodded to the chamberpot. ‘Now then, our lass. Tha’s noan after giving away that old po for scrap?’
Ginny put the chamberpot and pans on the pile with the other metal items. ‘Well, and why not? It’s tin, isn’t it?’
Andy laughed again. ‘Would tha credit it, eh, Miss Bancroft? Twenty year that were under my bed, till Ginny moved in and made me buy a new one. Seems this time next month, it’ll be t’ tail of a Spitfire.’
‘You ought to dictate me a letter to the magazine about it,’ Bobby said, smiling. ‘That’s bound to tickle our readers, if Reg isn’t too much of a prude to put it in.’ She turned her attention to Ginny. ‘Are you having a spring clean, Mrs Jessop?’
‘Bride’s prerogative,’ Ginny said, smiling back. ‘There’s pans in Andy’s cupboards that mun go back to when t’ owd queen were a lass. Besides, I like to feel we’re doing our bit for the war effort. Might as well send this stuff for salvage as have it sitting unused in cupboards.’
Andy gazed meditatively at the pile of metal.
‘You look thoughtful, Mr Jessop,’ Bobby said.
‘I were just thinking about way things have changed this last couple o’ year,’ he said soberly. ‘I’ve never had much brass to spare, Miss Bancroft, but when I’d a bob or two loose in my pocket and our Mabs read us from t’ paper that they were after donations for Boots for Bairns, I’d allus send in what I could afford, like. I remember what it were to see in winter wi’ your soles worn through to t’ ground so tha could feel muck and snow getting in. Now all papers are full of is that Spitfire Fund and others like it. Folk sending off their hard-earned brass so powers that be can build bigger, more deadly machines for men to destroy each other. And what happens to t’ bairns whose parents can’t afford shoes now, eh? They gang barefoot, I reckon. I’m not what might be called a pacifist but that don’t seem right to me. Happen tha might like to write about that in thy little paper.’
It was this stoical compassion that had first drawn Bobby to Andy Jessop, and indeed seemed to be a trait of Dalesfolk in general. They were wary and cautious, slow to warm to strangers, but they were fair-minded and, above all, they hated to witness cruelty or injustice. Outsiders might think them sluggish of brain, but Bobby knew this was not the case. It wasn’t stupidity that gave the impression of slow thinking, but rather a determination to weigh up all sides of a point before forming and offering an opinion.
‘We’d be called unpatriotic if we printed anything of that nature, I’m afraid,’ she told Andy. ‘I know what you mean though. It feels as though the war’s taken over everything. People forget that all the problems the world had before are still there, war or not. Poverty and hunger haven’t gone away, even if they’re rarely in the newspapers any more.’
‘Aye, there’s some truth in that,’ Ginny said. ‘Still, it’s right that we should do our bit, I reckon. After all, there is a war on, and now our Davy’s gone for a soldier…’
‘Your grandson?’
‘That’s right, my middle daughter’s eldest.’ She looked sombre. ‘I remember when his grandad went. The last war, I’m talking about. I didn’t know, when I said goodbye to him that day… well, let’s hope this time things will be different.’
Andy stood up to put his arm around her waist and there was silence between them for a moment. Bobby maintained a respectful silence too. She hadn’t realised Ginny Jessop’s first husband had been killed in the last war, but so many people had lost loved ones during that conflict that it was hardly a surprise.
After a little time, Ginny roused herself.
‘Well, this standing about isn’t getting much done, is it?’ she said, back to her usual briskness. ‘You sit down, Andy. I’ll bring a chair for Miss Bancroft and she can read our paper to you while you drink your tea. You’ll have brought us new one, I suppose, Miss Bancroft?’
Bobby smiled as she produced the latest number ofThe Tykefrom her handbag. ‘I never come without it.’
Chapter 7
After Bobby had finished catching up with Andy and his family, she walked back into the village, mounted the old bicycle she had left leaning against the post office wall there and pedalled in the direction of Sumner House. One advantage of the longer spring evenings was that she could make the most of her visiting time, before the darkness of the blackout set in to curtail her activities.
When she reached the cottage in the grounds where Topsy Sumner-Walsh lived with her old nanny, Maimie Hobbes, Bobby found her friend on her hands and knees in the little vegetable patch in the front garden. Topsy always had to have a project or several on the go, and her current obsession was trying to dig her way to victory by creating a kitchen garden. The problem was, Topsy had little natural aptitude as a gardener and no patience to learn. All she’d managed to grow so far was a small patch of cress, of which she was inordinately proud. Bobby had never seen such satisfaction on her friend’s face as she had when Topsy had presented her with an egg sandwich ‘avec garnir’, as she described it. Bobby had made sure she smacked her lips appreciatively after eating the meagre feast, and Topsy had looked as pleased as punch.
Bobby felt a fluttering of guilt. Her dad had come back from his ‘walk’ with Pete Dixon the day before swinging a dead rabbit from one fist, as he’d promised he would. He’d looked so proud to feel he was helping to support the family that Bobby didn’t have the heart to take him to task about it. After what had happened in the winter, when his spirits had sunk so low following the loss of his job at Butterfield’s Mill that he’d attempted to take his own life, his daughter knew how important the small contributions he was making to the household were in helping him to feel like the head of the family still – like someone who mattered. Still, she hated feeling that her meal of rabbit pie later this evening would be at the expense of stealing from her friend.
Topsy appeared to be planting some seeds, a little trowel grasped delicately in her perfect white fingers. Mrs Hobbes’s pet goose – a cantankerous and rather smug animal called Norman – was lying comfortably in a bed of green leaves, watching her.
‘You needn’t look so clever at me, you know, Norman,’ Topsy could be heard saying to him as Bobby approached. ‘I don’t suppose you could grow a marrow even if you tried. Could you, you lazy animal?’ She glanced up at Bobby. ‘Honestly, he does infuriate me. Did you ever meet such a beastly waterfowl? Such an expression of superiority as he always has. Be a darling and hold this seed packet for me, will you?’
Bobby, who was used to the speed with which her friend’s mind could jump from one topic to another, obediently crouched down to hold the packet while Topsy poked little holes in the soil with the point of her trowel. Bobby was relatively certain it wasn’t yet the season for planting marrows, but since her friend would likely be devastated on being informed her gardening efforts had all been in vain, she decided to keep quiet on the subject.
‘You didn’t bring Charlie with you,’ Topsy said in an accusatory tone. ‘And I had such news for him too. I’ve told you, Birdy, there’s really no need to be jealous about him.’
Topsy, who delighted in thinking up nicknames for her close friends, had triumphantly rechristened Bobby as Birdy to celebrate her return to Silverdale six weeks previously. She claimed the name suited Bobby’s perpetual expression of curiosity and the way she cocked her head to one side like a budgerigar listening intently for his master’s voice. Bobby wasn’t sure whether she ought to be gratified at this testament of her friend’s regard – Topsy only issued nicknames to her most intimate pals – or offended by the comparison to a budgerigar. Generally, though, the name made her smile.
‘I’m not jealous,’ Bobby said. She wasn’t sure why she bothered protesting, because Topsy was about as likely to listen to her as Norman was.
‘Of course Charlie had his little pash for me but that’s the most ancient of history. Honestly, darling, it’s up there with the Romans and the Hebrews and all that rot from school. You really don’t need to keep him from me. I would never steal a man from a girlfriend, unless she deserved it, but then if she did she wouldn’t really be a proper girlfriend at all, would she?’
‘Charlie’s at work, vaccinating on one of the farms.’ Bobby judged it best for her own sake to pick a topic of conversation from the myriad Topsy was tossing about and try to stick to it. ‘What news did you have for him? Was it about Billy Wilcox?’
