19. THE PREGNANT SKIVVY

Two young women with opposing hopes

Constable Peter Plodnose had a job to do.

Charles Snootnose had gone missing and nobody seemed to know where he was. The Squire (who was only co-operative in a perfunctory sort of way, hiding behind his superior social status and the important people he knew) said he was probably holidaying with his girlfriend, and why shouldn’t he, bearing in mind who he was?

“You mean the pregnant skivvy?” asked the constable, his voice redolent with sarcasm.

“She’s no skivvy!” protested the Squire.

“She is,” said the constable as he climbed onto his bicycle and wearily pedalled off.

He huffed and puffed his way back into Swanspottle, and to the village store. He knew full well that he wasn’t as young as he’d been in his youth and had the war not come along was looking to retirement before too long. But a host of young coppers had signed up to join the forces, and he had to accept he might be expected to put in a few more years on his bicycle before he could take a rest, filling an unexpected vacuum.

“I need a tin of beans,” he said to Ursula when he had got his breath back, knowing you shouldn’t enter a shop without wanting something, and he’d bought his ounce of Vintner’s shag already that week.

“You too?” she asked.

“Me too?” he asked.

“It’s what Charles from the Manor asks for when he doesn’t really want anything but feels he ought to buy one thing to justify ringing my door bell,” smiled Ursula, “and it’s in my mind that he can stay away. He’s trouble with a capital T.”

“You’ve got him summed up good and proper, Miss Spandex,” grumbled Peter. “He’s gone missing and it’s up to me to find him. He’s had his call-up papers, and he hasn’t responded. There is a war on, you know.”

“I thought he might try a trick like that,” said Ursula, tidying her cash drawer. “I’m going to have to get my head round coupons,” she added, referring to the ration coupons that were shortly going to make sure that limited supplies of some basic foods were fairly available for all and not simply stock-piled by the rich.

“What made you think, you know, what Snootnose might be up to?” asked the policeman curiously.

“He mentioned something to me,” explained Ursula, “when I told him how disgusted I was at one of his etchings he said he knew where to lie low if the law came looking for him. And if he got called up for the war effort. He could disappear for years if he needed to. Something about relatives in Yorkshire and the wild wastelands up there.”

“Yorkshire, eh? I’ll pass that on to Brumpton office. You wouldn’t happen to know whereabouts in Yorkshire?”

Ursula shook her head. “I don’t think he mentioned anything specific and if he did I’ve forgotten. Just that he could disappear indefinitely if he needed to.”

“He might find himself with a better reason to vanish if we start looking over his shoulder,” grunted P.C Plodnose. “Have you heard anything from that young man of yours?”

It had got around that Ursula was, as the villagers put it, walking out with the young man from the solicitor’s office in Brumpton and that he had gone for training with the Royal Air Force.

“He’s got leave due this Saturday,” replied Ursula, “and he said he can’t wait to see me again. I do hope he has time to come here, though his folks will be keen to see him too.”

“He’ll come by. Who wouldn’t, with bright eyes like yours to look forward to. How are the twins settling in?”

“Oh, they’re fine. I don’t think it’s sunk in properly, that their folks are dead. They’re at school at the moment, learning about gas masks.”

“It’s a darned bad world they’ve been born into,” muttered the policeman. “Well, young lady, thanks for the word about where the Squire’s young idiot might be. I’ll pass it on.”

“What about your tin of beans?” asked Ursula, her eyes twinkling.

“Oh, that. Forget it. You were right. I just needed an excuse to lay my eyes on the sweetest face in Swanspottle.”

“Oh, you and your sweet talk!” blushed Ursula as he returned to his bicycle and the door shut behind him.

He was no sooner gone than the door opened again and Jane Smith walked in, looking about her furtively as if she was being pursued by demons.

“What’s up with you, Jane?” asked Ursula, “and my … we might be on short commons because of the war but you’ve put on a pound or two!”

“Don’t tell anyone,” whispered Jane, “I’m scared...”

“You? Why, what’s the matter?” Ursula suddenly put two and two together and reached four. “Are you in the family way?”

“Can you tell?” asked Jane, miserably.

Ursula nodded. “Sort of,” she admitted, “it’s not something you can hide. Was it Charles?”

Jane nodded again. “He drew a daft picture of me,” she whispered, “and gave me ten bob for posing for him. Then when he’d finished he showed me and I said it looks nothing like me...”

“I’ve seen it, and you’re right there,” confirmed Ursula.

“He showed you? Oh God, how awful! Showing you!”

“I wouldn’t have thought it anything to do with you if he hadn’t said,” murmured Ursula.

“He said? That’s even worse! Anyway, when he’d done, and I was in the altogether for the picture, and I didn’t like that, I can tell you, one thing led to another and before I could stop him he was … doing it to me.”

“Just the once?” asked Ursula.

She nodded. “I’m not the sort of girl to let blokes free with my body!” she declared, “I’m better than that!”

Ursula wasn’t so sure, but “I’m sure you are,” she said quietly.

“He said as if anything went wrong, like if I got caught it would be a miracle, us only doing it the once, but if I did get caught he’d see as I was all right. He’d arrange things with a nurse he knows in Brumpton, but he’s gone away. I can’t find him anywhere, I’ve looked and looked… I even saw the Squire and he laughed in my face when I told him, said it was nothing to do with a Snootnose, and I’d better not spread it about that it was or Iid be before the beak for lying. So I’ll have to see Old Ma Pumpkin instead of a proper nurse, and you know what it’s like for gals who see her.”

“They’re mostly all right,” comforted Ursula. “But might you not want to keep it?”

Jane shook her head vigorously. “I don’t want anything to do with that man or that family!” she shouted, “all I want to do is get rid of it.”

“What do your folks think?” asked Ursula.

“Them? You think I’d tell them? They’d have me put away so as nobody would hear from me again! Don’t you see what’s wrong? I’m a girl, a woman, and I’m in the family way and there’s absolutely nothing in the whole wide world that’s worse than that!”

She’s right, thought Ursula, for some reason, and I don’t know why it is, blokes can go around sowing their wild oats far and wide, but if a woman catches even one of those oats and gets caught, then she’s worse than a criminal…

“Have you thought of the Entwhistle woman on the road out towards Brumpton?” asked Ursula.

“What? Witchy Griselda?” Jane’s eyes opened wide. “Does she … help … like that?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Ursula, “but I do know she’s a real expert when it comes to herbs and stuff. Maybe she knows one that will… you know…?”

“I think I dared...” whispered Jane, “I’ll go and see her...”

“It’s an idea?” encouraged Ursula, “better than being locked away in a madhouse for the rest of your natural.”

Jane nodded, and turned to go. “Thanks, Ursula,” she said quietly, “I know I can trust you to, you know, keep it to yourself...”

“Of course I will,” acknowledged Ursula. “Just you be careful, that’s all.”

Then she was left alone in the shop.

It’s a very sod, she thought, there was me, wanting to help Greendale by having his baby in case he goes off to fight and dies and never comes back, and I failed him… and yet Jane got in the family way with a nasty posh boy she doesn’t even like, and she just wants to get rid of it as soon as she can… So she’s pregnant and would move Heaven and Earth to get rid of it while I’m not pregnant, and I really, really wish I was…

Anyway, with a bit of good fortune I’ll see him on Saturday...

© Peter Rogerson 28.07.18