‘Florence Parry, Miss,’ whispered the elder girl. She was softly spoken, with the nasal accent of London’s East End. ‘My little sister’s Jessica… Jessie.’
The younger girl smiled shyly but didn’t show any inclination to speak.
‘Well, it’s a great honour to meet you, Florence and Jessica Parry. Charles Atherton, at your service.’ Charlie bent down and held out his hand to Jessica with a manly frankness that was quite comical, and the child let out an involuntary laugh that for a moment made her look like a normal, happy little girl instead of the fearful ghost created by nearly eight months of constant bombing. After hesitating a moment, she shook his hand.
‘Now then, I’ll bet I can use my mind-reading powers to find out how old you both are,’ he said when he’d shaken Florence’s hand too.
Florence giggled. ‘You can’t read minds.’
‘Can’t I indeed? Then how do I know you’re thinking about how good an aniseed ball would taste right at this moment?’
‘No I weren’t.’
‘Oh, well. Then you won’t want one of these,’ Charlie said airily, taking the now rather sticky paper bag from his trouser pocket.
‘I was thinking that,’ Jessie piped up, clearly an intelligent child who had already worked out on which side her bread was buttered. Charlie smiled and held out the bag for both girls to take a sweet.
‘Now. Your ages.’ He put his fingers to his temples and adopted a comical expression of earnest concentration. ‘Florence Parry… Florence Parry… could that be the Florence Parry who’s ten years old? And her little sister Jessica, seven years and eight months this May?’
Jessica’s eyes widened, and she turned to her sister with an expression of wonder. ‘Florrie, he can really do it!’
‘How’d you know how old we are, Mr Atherton?’ asked the more sceptical older child.
‘I’m a close personal friend of Father Christmas. Don’t worry, I know you’ve both been good this year – at least, so far.’
Bobby smiled. The children’s birthdates were written on the labels they must have been wearing when Mary brought them home, sitting there on top of their cases right where Charlie could see them, but it was a good trick all the same. While Charlie was amusing the girls, who had started chatting to him now like old friends, she took Mary aside for a talk.
‘He’s surprisingly good with them, isn’t he?’ Mary said with a fond glance at Charlie. ‘I don’t think you need be worried on that score, Bobby.’
‘Never mind about Charlie.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I take it Reg doesn’t know you were planning to take in some evacuees.’
‘Of course he doesn’t. He’d say we didn’t have the room, what with that damned magazine taking up every spare corner of the house. But the poor little bodies have to live somewhere, don’t they? It’s high time we did our bit for the war, same as everyone else.’ She sighed. ‘There’ll be fireworks when he gets home though.’
‘He might send them away again.’
‘Send bairns away when they’ve no home to go back to? He’d do nothing so cruel – not my Reg. He’s too good a man.’ Mary glanced at the children. ‘Still, I’ll have a job of work to convince the stubborn old goat it was a good idea. I’d appreciate some support from you and Charlie.’
Bobby turned to look at Charlie, who was making the girls laugh as he told them a story about one of his regular patients – a mischievous cocker spaniel called Bruno who was forever getting into scrapes – complete with impressions of the foolish beast chasing its own tail around the surgery. ‘You can count on us.’
‘Thank you. I knew I could.’
‘Are you sure we’ll be able to talk him round though? Reg is… set in his ways. There’s his leg too – you know how grumpy he can get when it’s giving him pain. I can’t imagine how he’ll cope with two small children in the house.’
‘He’ll cope. He was a father once, don’t forget – a fonder one than you might imagine, knowing him now. Besides, it will do him good to be reminded that the whole world doesn’t revolve around Reginald Atherton and that magazine of his.’ Mary looked at the two evacuees laughing with Charlie and smiled. ‘It’ll certainly be something to have bairns around the place. It’s a long time since we heard the laughter of children at Moorside.’
Chapter 11
It was an hour later when the three of them heard Reg’s battered black Wolseley pulling up outside the farmhouse. Mary had finished furnishing the attic for the two evacuees, and Florence and Jessica were now upstairs in their new room in dry clothes and with a mug of hot milk each. The adults had tried to keep from them their fear of a scene when the man of the house arrived home, but the Parry girls were quick-witted little things and seemed to have picked up on the general air of anxiety. They had readily agreed to go and play in the attic until Mary summoned them down for their evening meal.
Most of the clutter from outside had been rehomed – Bobby and Charlie had dragged the little piano to Cow House Cottage, Nancy’s old cradle was in the kitchen, and the back numbers ofThe Tykehad been piled up in any corner of the house currently unoccupied. There were still a couple of chairs and a woodworm-infested table out there, however. Mary had asked Charlie to break them up for firewood just as soon as they’d explained things to Reg.
Charlie peeped through the net curtains to watch his brother getting out of the car.
‘How does he look, Charlie?’ Mary asked nervously. ‘Is he scowling?’
‘No, he’s whistling. He must have had a useful meeting with the printer.’
‘If he’s in a good mood, that ought to help,’ Bobby said.
