Crystal's Song Read Online Free PDF Page B

one not to surrender her virginity to him. He snuggled into his blanket while he recalled her saying, as she pushed him gently aside, “No, Billy. Not until our wedding night!”

4
    Trying to make herself a little more comfortable by wriggling on the palliasse, Senga felt as if she’d been conned. She had been assured that life in the country would be just like it was in the films. Nice people. Good food. Plenty of fresh air and rest. And she could even expect to be dancing along the yellow brick road like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz . But now, one week into her ordeal, as she saw it, evacuation was just another name for slavery! Johnny, candle in one hand, was climbing up into the hay loft and loudly asking her and Tess if they were asleep.
    “Asleep?” Senga sniffed, while trying to hold back the tears. “Sleep is what I do in class and now they think I should see a nurse or doctor to see if I’m consumptive or have sleeping sickness!”
    Tess rolled over from her palliasse beside Senga, leant over and gently stroked her hair. “There, there, bairn,” she urged, “I think I might have got a message out to Granny Kelly asking her to come and rescue us!”
    “You did?” exclaimed Johnny as he flung himself down beside his sisters. “That’s just great. How on earth did ye dae it?”
    “Well, d’you mind how Sheila Thompson’s mammy was asked to take her home on account of her having impetigo and no one willing to take her in?” Johnny and Senga both nodded. “Well, I asked her to take a letter to Granny Kelly.”
    “Where did ye get the paper?”
    “Och, Johnny, where d’ye think I got it?” Tess smirked. “Tore it out of my exercise book, didn’t I. Anyway, back to Sheila. She did promise to take the letter to Granny but she said she didn’t ken when she’d be able to get it to her.”
    “Hope it’s right away,” observed Johnny. “And look here, Tess. Did you put in the letter hoo I’ve to get up at half past five in the morning and feed the pigs and then clean out their sty afore I go to school?”
    Tess looked askance at Johnny. “No, Johnny, I didnae. Same as I didnae say Senga and I were up at the same time and I had to milk and feed the cows before going off to school and that Senga had to look after the hens.”
    “But Tess,” girned Senga, “if you didn’t tell her that and about us being made to sleep in the barn because the farmer’s wife says aw us bairns that come from Leith are lousy …” Senga hesitated as she thought of everything else she wanted to tell her Granny and then blurted out, “And also that we’re being fed worse than the pigs …”
    “Fed much worse! We’ve had nothing but porridge since we came here. Hot porridge, mind you, in the morning but freezing cold porridge for our tea,” Johnny lamented.
    “Look, all I could say in the letter was for Granny to come and rescue us and to bring the cruelty man with her.”
    “But why just that?” complained Senga.
    “Because that’s enough, especially as we’ve been told to watch what we say and not give the Germans any important information – you know, careless talk costs lives ! Besides, the idea of anybody being cruel to us will sure be enough to have Granny rushing here and then we’ll see if that blooming farmer can scare the living daylights out of her, the way he does us.”
    * * *
    Patsy was standing on a chair slapping another coat of gun-metal blue paint on the lobby walls of 6 West Cromwell Street. Nothing, not even this dishonestly acquired paint from the shipbuilding yards, seemed to deter the bugs that frequented the stair nowadays. Patsy honestly believed that this ever-increasing plague was another way of Germany attempting to sap the resilience of the folks in Leith!
    She had just bent down once more to dip her brush in the two-pound syrup tin that housed the paint when she became aware that someone was coming into the stair. “Oh, it’s yourself, Etta. Slumming?”
    Giving an