Chapter 5 Lilias #2
“Of course. Why not start with this one? Look, it’s empty. The chicken must be off somewhere, eating her dinner. You can reach into her nest while she’s gone.”
David did so, very seriously and carefully, placing the egg into the basket and watching as Lilias plunged her own hand into the straw beneath a hen.
“Come on, Muriel. Let me have it.”
To Lilias, the indescribably soft warmth of the underside of a hen had always been a wonderful thing. Even as a small child, she had always loved the contrasts between the heated fluff, the smooth egg, and the prickly straw.
“What’s it like?” David wanted to know, so Lilias withdrew her hand without its prize.
“Here, see for yourself,” she invited, directing David’s hand beneath the hen, which began to squawk and wriggle, sensing a novice.
Lilias felt David’s hand freeze beneath hers, and for a moment she thought he might snatch it back, putting the egg at risk.
“It’s all right,” she reassured him. “Muriel’s not a pecker. Get hold of the egg firmly, but without squeezing it. That’s it. Well done!”
David grinned with triumph, placing the egg carefully into the basket next to the other one, and Lilias smiled with him, thinking that this was what she’d hoped for when she’d signed up to take in an evacuee.
She’d wanted to give a child some happiness in this, the most awful of times, and, in so doing, to have some greater purpose in life herself.
Ever since the death of her parents, life had been rather bleak and aimless, especially with Ruth away in London.
She’d thrown herself into her painting and local committees, but it hadn’t been quite enough to keep loneliness at bay.
Without asking, David moved along to the next nesting box and plunged his hand straight in, withdrawing it quickly when the chicken pecked his hand.
“Look out,” Lilias said, bringing her attention back to the present. “Jemima’s not as relaxed as Muriel. I tell you what, I’ll hold her up for you, shall I? While you get the egg?”
She lifted the hen, suffering its pecks while David reached for the egg.
“Does it hurt?”
She put the hen down and showed him the backs of her hands. “Only a little bit. Look, no blood.”
“Why does she peck?”
“You mean, why does Jemima peck while Muriel doesn’t?
Well, I suppose Jemima wants to be a mother hen more than Muriel does.
I’ll probably let her, next year. It’s only fair, isn’t it, old girl?
” And she stroked Jemima’s back, her mind drawn back to her own plans to have a family with Geoffrey sometime after they were married.
Before the war had come and everything had changed.
“Does it make the chickens sad when we take their eggs?” David wanted to know.
Lilias sighed. “Yes, I think so. But we have to take them, you see, because we need them to eat.” Just as they needed chickens to eat, too, but she didn’t say this.
“Mum gets sad sometimes, ’cos she wants me to have a sister.”
“Does she?”
David nodded.
“Well maybe the baby that’s coming will be a sister,” Lilias said, and David nodded again. He paused, then asked, “Do you think Muriel and Jemima know about the war?”
Lilias sighed. “No, I don’t think they know about anything very much really. Chickens only have a very tiny brain, after all.”
“Compass knows lots of things.”
“Yes, he does,” agreed Lilias. “Especially things with a smell attached to them. But he doesn’t always do what I tell him to do.”
They were silent for a while as they continued collecting the eggs together. Then suddenly David said, “I don’t want my mum to go home.”
Lilias sighed. “No, I don’t suppose you do.” She saw a tear run down his cheek.
“She says I can’t go with her.”
“Oh, David. I’m sure she wants you to. She just wants you to be safe if Hitler starts dropping his bombs on London, that’s all. And Ruth and I are very happy you’re going to be staying. We’d miss you if you left.”
David was still crying. “But Mum and Dad won’t be safe from the bombs.”
Oh, Lord. He wasn’t wrong, she thought, searching around in her mind for a distraction.
“There are shelters they can go to. I’m sure they’ll do their very best to keep from harm.
Look, I tell you what, while you’re here, how would you like to help me to train Compass?
I think you’d be a very good dog trainer. ”
“Can I?” David wiped his tears away, brightening with excitement.
“Yes, of course,” Lilias said, grinning.
It was unlikely any training would make much difference where Compass was concerned—goodness knew, she’d tried often enough to train the dog herself—but at least David would have fun trying, and it would be a good distraction from his mother’s departure.
“We’ll make a start tomorrow afternoon.”
They worked on in silence for a while, and Lilias was congratulating herself on having cheered David up a bit when she looked round and saw another large tear trickling down his cheek.
She put the egg basket down. “Oh, David. I’m so sorry you’re feeling sad.”
He sniffed, wiping the tear away with his sleeve. “I miss my dad. Mum’ll be seeing him tomorrow, an’ I won’t.”
She squatted down in front of him, holding him lightly by the arms. “Of course you miss him, David,” she said.
“The two of you sound very close. I tell you what, we’ll write to him, shall we?
We’ll tell him he can come and visit whenever he likes.
You can say you’re going to give Compass some training lessons. He’ll be very impressed.”
Symonds drove Nadine to the station the following morning.
Aware of David’s misery, Lilias filled the awkward moment of parting with chatter. “I do hope you have a good journey back to London. The trains haven’t always been reliable since the war started, have they? David will write to you every week, won’t you, David?”
Nadine’s expression was stern, but the slight quiver of her lip showed that she was keeping it that way on purpose, to avoid breaking down.
But surely she would say goodbye to David properly?
For just a moment, Lilias thought she wasn’t going to.
But at the last moment she clip-clopped over in her heels and hugged him tightly to her.
“You be a good boy, d’you hear? We’ll be back to fetch you home just as soon as ever we can. ”
David nodded, with tears running down his face, and Nadine straightened her shoulders and got into the car. Seconds later, Symonds drove off.
“Bye, Mum,” David said after it was too late for Nadine to hear anymore, and as the car disappeared up the road, he waved and waved. At the last moment, before the car went round the corner, Nadine looked over her shoulder and waved back. Then she was gone.
“Right, then,” said Lilias, reaching for David’s hand. “It’s time for Compass’s first training session. But first, let’s fortify ourselves with a rock cake, shall we? And this afternoon, we can post a letter to your dad.”
As they popped the letter in the postbox later on, Lilias had no idea whether a visit from David’s dad was either likely or possible. But she hoped so.
In the meantime, Compass and his ongoing training sessions had better pass muster as a way to distract the boy.