He glanced at her. ‘I never knew you felt that way about it.’
‘Nor did I, until I thought about it just now. Will you stay at home? For me? We don’t have many nights left to be cosy by the fireside all together.’
‘If it means that much to you, I suppose I can bear the disapproving frowns of our respective father figures. Perhaps I might even convince them I’m husband material after all, playing records and smoking with the real men while the womenfolk darn our socks. Your dad doesn’t know you’ve been out with me today, I suppose?’
‘No, he’s gone fishing with Pete Dixon. He’d blow up if he knew about the shepherd’s hut.’
‘I won’t tell if you don’t.’ He squinted as they descended the track to Moorside Farm. ‘Hullo. What’s going on down there?’
Outside the farmhouse, there appeared to be strange things afoot. Piles and piles of back numbers ofThe Tykestood out in the rain on a table, half-covered by an inadequately weighted tarpaulin that was flapping about in the wind. A little piano with the legs removed, a baby’s cot and an old tin bathtub lay about looking sorry for themselves.
‘Could Mary be spring cleaning?’ Bobby suggested as they approached the odd collection of bric-a-brac. ‘Maybe this is all to go for salvage.’
‘My brother would have her guts for garters if she gave away his precious magazines for scrap.’ Charlie shifted the tarpaulin so it covered the piles of magazines, protecting them from the drizzle. ‘And I doubt she’d ever part with Nancy’s cot.’
‘Then why is this stuff out here getting wet?’
The door to the farmhouse opened and Mary herself appeared, more junk in her arms. She looked flustered as she dumped it with the rest, and faintly guilty.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It’s only you two. I thought Reg might be home. He’s driven the car over to the printer’s in Settle.’
‘What’s going on, Mary?’ Bobby asked. ‘Why is all this stuff out here?’
‘I’ve been clearing out the attic.’
‘You managed to get all this down from the attic by yourself?’ Charlie said. ‘You ought to have waited until I was back.’
Mary avoided his gaze. ‘No time for that. It had to be sorted out this afternoon.’
‘You’re looking decidedly furtive, you know, Mother. Are you trying to smuggle Reggie’s stash of magazines away while he’s out? Because if so, I’d like to make myself scarce before the ensuing explosion.’
‘I’ll find somewhere else for them. The attic’s needed for other purposes.’
‘What other purposes?’ Bobby asked. ‘Are you moving me and Reg up there?’ It was Mary’s favourite complaint: the fact that her parlour had been almost entirely taken over to beThe Tyke’s unofficial office.
‘No.There’s an old mattress in there I’m making up.’
‘Have you got visitors coming?’
‘You might say that.’ She sighed. ‘Reg is going to play heck when he finds out. Still, it’s too late now.’ She flashed Bobby a defiant look, as if daring a challenge. ‘Besides, what would have happened to them if I hadn’t, I should like to know?’
‘To whom?’ Charlie asked. ‘You’re not making any sense, Mary.’
‘Well, it happened this way. I dropped in on Ida to talk about the arrangements for Sunday – Billy’s funeral – and on my way back through the village… oh, come and look for yourselves. They’re in the kitchen.’
Charlie looked as bewildered as Bobby felt. He gave her a ‘your guess is as good as mine’ shrug as they followed Mary into the house. She led the pair of them into the kitchen.
In there were two small, pale, red-headed girls, standing in their slips by the fire next to a rack of clothes. Both had the sallow complexion that came from spending too much time out of the sunlight, and bags under their eyes from lack of sleep. The younger child was cautiously stroking Winnie, one of Reg’s huge but placid wolfhounds, who was curled up with her brother Barney in front of the blaze.
‘They were soaked through,’ Mary said, shaking her head. ‘I had to get them out of their wet things right away before they caught their deaths. Being made to stand out in the rain like they’re at a butcher’s market while half the village prodded and poked at them! Disgusting, I call it.’
Charlie glanced at a pile of suitcases and gas mask boxes dumped in one corner of the room. A couple of large labels threaded on string sat on top. ‘They’re evacuees?’
‘From London. The Docklands, where I’m told the worst of the bombing is. Poor things, they were the last ones left. Too little and scrawny for domestic work, I suppose, so no one would take them in.’ Mary shot him a look of challenge. ‘Well, I couldn’t just leave them there, could I? We have enough space with some shuffling, so I volunteered us as a host family for them.’
Bobby shot a worried look at Charlie before dropping to her knees to talk to the girls. They looked terrified – not so much by where they were, she suspected, but by what they’d seen before they arrived there. Charlie was right; there was a haunted look in their eyes that reminded Bobby powerfully of her father when he awoke from one of his nightmares about the trenches. No child should look like that.
‘What are your names, my loves?’ she asked gently.
