Crystal's Song Read Free Page A

from her Granny who leapt across the floor and grabbed her in a tight embrace. “Gosh! Are you not a treat for sore eyes!” But then she quickly released Senga and asked, “Why are you not at school, my lass?”
    “Mammy says it’s more important for me to look after Phyllis than trying to keep up with the class. And then there’s Elsie to see to when she gets back from nursery.”
    “Aw, aw, aw, aw,” groaned Patsy, shaking her head. “Look here, lassie, you need to get an education. Surely you don’t want to be like your Daddy and no be able to read or write?”
    Senga just shrugged. She had missed so much schooling by now that there was word of her being put in the duffers’ class and she knew that was what would certainly happen – provided she wasn’t sent off to the bad girls’ school first.
    “By the way, I met your Granny Glass in the pork butcher’s queue the day and she was asking if there’d been any word yet from your Daddy?”
    Senga shook her head. Poor Granny Mary, she thought. Just like Granny Patsy, she was small in stature but she was so thin, careworn and round-shouldered that she always looked ten years older than her years. She was regularly bullied by her husband, Jack Glass, a big strapping scunner of a man. And, to add to her problems, he always stayed so long in the pub on pay night that there was very little of his pay left when he staggered out. The lack of a decent share from Jack’s earnings resulted in Granny Mary taking on any jobs she could get. She did anything: scrubbing stairs, washing, ironing and looking after bairns. And as if a bad husband, whose gas she couldn’t put in a peep, was not enough for her to be going on with, she also had one son, Billy, who was a jail-bird, and another who wasn’t quite the full shilling. And as luck would have it, the one she was so proud of, Senga’s dad, Tam, was now missing in France. Senga sighed, thinking how daft it was for Granny Mary to ask if there was any word from her dad, when she well knew he couldn’t write. It was only then she remembered that she hadn’t told Granny Patsy how the war was catching up with them and, come next Monday morning, she, Tess and Johnny were all to be evacuated.
    On hearing this, Patsy nodded thoughtfully. “Not a bad thing. Not a bad thing at all. You three being away means your mother will have to stay in at night – and you’ll get some proper schooling in reading and counting.”
    Senga just nodded before realising it was high time for her to tell Granny that Mammy had nothing to confess this Friday – or (to be truthful) nothing she would really want Father O’Riley to know about! However, before summoning up all her courage by taking deep breaths, she looked around the room and noticed the brown paper bag on the dresser. “Good,” she thought to herself. “Granny Glass has sent us a bag of Crawford’s Rich Tea broken biscuits. That’ll please Phyllis. She just loves having somebody dunk them in tea for her.”

2
    Tam Glass, his long thin bones aching in the blazing sun, was finding it hard to resign himself to his fate. Here he was, at the age of thirty-two, seated on the hard paving stones of a French village square and faced with the certainty of captivity. “How long did they say this business would last?” he asked himself. “Last year they told us it would all be over by Christmas.” He laughed bitterly. “Aye, that was just what they said in the last war, but Christmas 1914 came and went. It didn’t end till November 1918 and there were millions dead or maimed afore they declared a cease-fire!”
    “Tam!” The voice of young Eddie broke abruptly into Tam’s train of thought. “How d’you think it’ll go for us?”
    Eddie was a mere stripling of nineteen years, whom Tam had befriended from the very day they’d joined up. So close had they become that Tam now knew a great deal about Eddie, who had grown to have complete trust in the older man. Tam soon learned