Tuppence To Spend Read Online Free Page A

looked down at the dishes. ‘I can’t finish this now. I’m going to go and sit down for a bit. You do the rest, Sammy, there’s a love.’
    She went into the back room and lay down in the old armchair they’d brought from the pub when they came to April Grove. She looked worn out and when she closed her eyes the lids looked blue, as if the colour was showing through. There was a small bruise on her cheek that he hadn’t noticed before and Sammy looked at it anxiously, wondering where it had come from, before covering her gently with an old blanket.
    There was some tea in the pot, left over from Dad’s when he went to work. It was a bit cool but Sammy poured some into a cup and added milk. He took it in and gave it to his mother, then went back to the scullery and looked at the scummy water in the sink.
    There were only a few cups and plates to wash, and he swished them about a bit with the dishcloth and put them on the wooden draining board. The teacloth was too wet to dry them properly and left greasy marks, but he put them in the cupboard and tipped away the water. It gurgled very slowly down the drain.
    Nora was asleep. Tibby was asleep too, on a pile of crumpled washing dumped in the other chair. Sammy lifted him off and pushed the washing aside to sitdown with the cat on his knee, watching his mother. After a while he got up and wandered outside, still holding the cat.
    The street was empty. Even Granny Kinch had gone indoors. There was no sign of Micky and all the other children must be on the train by now, on their way to the countryside.
    Sammy put his thumb in his mouth. He sat down on the doorstep, with Tibby beside him, and waited for the long day to pass.

Chapter Two
    In the village of Bridge End, Ruth Purslow had been busy all morning, baking rock cakes and making a big jug of lemonade for the new arrivals. She put them all into a shopping basket, covered them with a clean teacloth, then got ready, washing at the kitchen sink and putting on her grey frock and the green cardigan her niece Lizzie had knitted her for Christmas. It was just the colour of her eyes, she thought, looking in the mirror to brush her soft auburn hair. Over the top she put on her second-best coat and her little green hat with the pheasant’s feather in, then popped her head through the living-room door to say goodbye to her father.
    ‘I’m just going down to help with the evacuees, Dad. They’ll be arriving this afternoon.’
    He looked up from his chair by the window and nodded. ‘Evacuees.’
    ‘That’s right,’ Ruth said, pleased that he had understood the word. ‘They’re coming from Portsmouth, because of the war. I’ve made some lemonade and buns.’ She straightened the crochet blanket over his knees. ‘I shan’t be long.’
    There was a group of women already in the village hall when she reached it, laying out buns and cups of lemonade on the long trestle tables. Lizzie was near the door, talking to her friend Edna Corner. They’d grown up together, skipping down the lane to the village school and playing by the stream and, later on, dawdling by the bridge on summer evenings to flirt with the boys. Boysand girls must have met on that old bridge for hundreds of years, Ruth thought, casting her mind back to her own courting days.
    She’d met Jack there – well, she’d known him for years, of course, all the youngsters knew each other, but when you got to about fourteen or fifteen and started going down to the bridge it seemed different, somehow. Jack, who’d always been just another boy, kicking a ball about and running after girls to pull their pigtails, had suddenly become a tall young man with shy eyes and a nice smile. He was three years older than her and had got an apprenticeship at one of the shipyards in Southampton. When that finished, he’d told her, he was going to join the Merchant Navy as an engineer.
    ‘I want to see the world,’ he said, his dark eyes glowing. ‘I want to see all these