Free All The Days of My Life by Hilary Bailey Page B

it” –there were mince pies and plenty of port, games of cards and drunken songs round the piano. Ian and Jackie, the evacuees, were well pleased with the wooden soldiers and the cricket bat and stumps which had once belonged to the Twining boys. They both fell asleep on the parlour sofa at midnight as the Twinings, Mrs Twining’s mother, Twining’s brother and his wife, their children and the village postman and his wife, who had come up on bicycles for supper, all stood round the piano singing, “There’ll be blue skies over/The white cliffs of Dover/Tomorrow. Just you wait and see.”
    But earlier on, up at the Towers, in the afternoon, poor Mary had been crouching in the damp shrubbery at the foot of the lawn. She drew big, sobbing breaths and peeped through the damp leaves at the lights in the sitting room, which had just been turned on. As she watched, the curtains were drawn. She wondered if she had time to make a dash back to the house, before Tom and his cousin Charlie found her. She might, she thought, have to stay in these bushes until bedtime.
    In front of the bushes lay the second-hand tricycle, freshly painted red, which she had found under the tree this morning, with her name on a card on the handlebars. They had let her pedal it up and down the corridor and round and round the hall. It was while she was circling the hall, in a state of complete delight, that she had seen Tom and Charlie looking at her nastily through the half open door of thecloakroom. She had instantly pedalled past the foot of the big staircase which ran upstairs and back into the corridor which led to the kitchen. There she sat on the tricycle, by the kitchen range, looking very worried. When Mrs Gates asked her what was the matter she said only, “Tom and Charlie are going to hurt me.” Mrs Gates had scoffed at her but she knew that she was right. Sure enough, they had chased her out of the house in the afternoon while the adults were dozy with their lunch. Now she crouched, shaking like a robin on a cold twig, in the bushes. The tricycle, her pride and joy, lay just beyond the shrubbery, on the lawn. She could not see how to escape.
    â€œGot you,” said Charles Markham, falling on her through the sopping rhododendrons and shaking raindrops all over her. She felt his hard hands on her shoulders. Then, removing one hand he began to pinch her on the inside of her thighs and – oh – pulling down her knickers. “No, no,” she cried out. “Let me alone!”
    Now Tom was holding her flat on the ground by her shoulders as Charlie pulled her pants down to her knees. “Ooh, look, Tom-tom,” he cried in a high voice. “Look at her little bum-bum – and something else besides.”
    He had very big blue eyes, red cheeks and a mass of brown curly hair. He was eleven. Mary could hear him breathing in and out heavily.
    â€œDis-gusting,” said Tom. “That’s disgusting – quick, pull up her dirty drawers so we don’t have to look.”
    Mary, sobbing, felt consuming rage. She would kill them. She would kill them somehow – she knew she would. But Tom was holding her shoulders and Charlie had one big hand on her knee.
    â€œI like looking, though,” said Charlie, in a heavy, rude voice. “Little no-knickers evacuee. Did you like your nice little trikie, then?”
    A sweeping, surging rage filled Mary’s head. Twisting sideways she bit Tom on his serge-clad arm, sinking her teeth in like a dog, disregarding the thick, stuffy taste of the material and just imagining the white arm beneath. She pictured her toothmarks, with blood spurting out of them.
    Tom screamed. Charlie suddenly realized what was happening and let go of her knee. Mary leaped up, pulled up her knickers and picked a stick from the ground. Running away was useless, for they were faster than she was. Some inspiration made her shout, “I’m telling – I’m