still did. Even the American ones. As she’d discovered.
Pulling off her gloves, she left the front garden, making sure the gate was closed tightly, and walked down the cobblestone pathway to open the back garden gate for the children. There was no front garden left to speak of. With everyone doing their part, what had been the front garden now housed rows of vegetables. Having just been planted a short time ago, the green sprouts were tiny and hardly recognisable, but soon there would be potatoes, carrots, cauliflower, parsnips and a few other vegetables that could survive the daily rains and dreary skies of spring. It felt as if it had been years since the sun had shone bright and freely. Almost as if even the weather realised it was wartime.
‘Kathryn! Look what we have!’ Phillip said, holding something in his hand. ‘It’s sweets! Chewing gum! I have a piece for you, too.’
The youngest of the boys, Phillip ran towards her, his smile showing the opening left from losing a tooth last week. Despite her melancholy, she couldn’t help but smile.
‘Chewing gum? Who gave you that?’ Sweets of any sort were rare and the smile on all of the faces approaching the gate said Phillip wasn’t the only one with a prize.
There were nine children in total who lived with Norman and Charlotte and her. Each one as unique and adorable as the next and each an evacuee who had arrived at some point over the past two years. She’d been the first, arriving nearly three years before at the age of seventeen. Her father had delivered her himself. As an intelligence officer, Father hadn’t said if the bombing starts, he’d said when it starts, and he’d wanted her as far away from London as possible. Her mum had agreed, except for the faraway part. They’d settled for Norman’s small farm, little more than an hour outside London.
Since then scores of young people had been evacuated out of the city. And continued to be, finding a temporary and hopefully safe refuge from the war.
‘No,’ Little George said, arriving a step behind Phillip. They called him Little George because George was already here when Little George had arrived on the same evacuee train as Phillip, Patricia and Doreen. ‘A soldier gave it to us.’
A shiver raced up Kathryn’s spine. ‘A soldier?’
‘The one you met,’ Edward said.
‘Yes.’ Phillip thrust a wrapped stick of chewing gum towards her. ‘He gave me this one for you.’
‘He said his name was Sergeant Dale Johnson,’ Elizabeth said as she followed in the older boy’s wake.
Kathryn’s nerves stung. She didn’t want a name to put to the face that haunted her, and her fingers wrapped tighter around the gloves in her hand.
‘I bet he flies one of the planes we see every day,’ George said. ‘The one with the blue nose.’
‘No, he flies the one with the red nose,’ Edward disagreed. ‘I’ve seen the pilot in that one.’
‘You have not,’ George argued.
‘Have to!’ Edward said.
‘Boys,’ Kathryn said, putting a stop to their bickering. There was plenty more she’d like to say, but Elizabeth was handing over an envelope.
‘Besides the gum he gave Phillip for you, he asked me to give you this note.’ Elizabeth then asked, ‘Why didn’t you mention meeting him?’
‘Because it wasn’t worth mentioning,’ Kathryn said, taking the envelope, which burned her fingers at the thought of who’d touched it previously. ‘Go inside and have your tea, then complete your studies.’
‘We don’t have any evening studies,’ Elizabeth said. ‘The soldiers were at school all afternoon, talking to all the children about not going near any pieces of shrapnel, and if we see any, we are to report it right away. I have a letter to give to Charlotte and Norman about it.’
‘Is that what this is?’ Kathryn asked, ignoring a sense of disappointment.
‘I don’t think so,’ Elizabeth answered. ‘Sergeant Johnson asked the teacher which children lived with you and then asked if he could give me that note. That’s when he told me he’d met you.’
‘Run on in and have your tea,’ Kathryn said, turning the envelope over to see her name typed on the front.
‘Don’t you want your gum?’ Phillip asked, following the others through the open gate.
One extra piece was sure to cause a squabble, so she took it. ‘Thank you. Run inside now.’
Kathryn waited until each child passed through the front door, then she looked down at the envelope again. She didn’t want to be curious, but was. After slipping her gloves and the stick of gum in her pocket, she carefully slid a finger beneath the flap to release the seal and pulled out a single sheet of paper.
It was typed. She’d never received a typed letter before.
Dear Miss Harris,
The United States Air Force is presenting you with the enclosed payment for the loss of supplies resulting from a motor vehicle and bicycle incident on the High Wycombe Roadway during the mid-afternoon of April 27th, 1942.
She unfolded the bottom of the letter and trapped the money against the paper with her thumb while reading the rest of the letter.
If you have any questions, please contact Marilyn Miller, secretary for the United States Army Eighth Air Force South Hill Barracks.
Kathryn flipped the paper over, looking for...she wasn’t exactly sure what. Frowning, she turned it over again. The letter was signed by Marilyn Miller. Whoever that was.
Ire rippled her insides as she counted the money. It was the same amount Dale Johnson had attempted to give Norman, but had been converted into shillings and pence. American or English, she would not be keeping this money.
‘I really think you should let me drive you,’ Norman said a few minutes later while walking towards the barn beside her.
‘There’s no need to waste the petrol,’ Kathryn said. He and Charlotte were worried about the soldiers being in trouble for the mishap. She wasn’t. Her concern was more personal. Sergeant Johnson would not get his way. Not with her.
‘But after—’
‘I’ll be far more careful,’ she interrupted Norman’s response. Feeling guilty about being so discourteous, she added, ‘The letter is addressed to me, so I will to be the one to respond.’
* * *
‘Johnson,’ Sam Smith shouted from the doorway. ‘You got a visitor!’
Dale wiped his crescent wrench clean and placed it in the metal box among his other tools before tossing the rag aside and walking towards the doorway.
‘You’re getting to be awfully popular among the Janes.’ Smith wiggled both of his brush-black eyebrows. ‘The secretary this morning and now a local girl.’
Dale grinned. He’d expected a reaction from the letter
