Mark Dunn - We Five

Nobody wanted Lyle Higgins. Not any of the women — mostly tarts — whom he happened to meet. Not any of his mates, who weren’t so much mates as opportunistic spongers pretending to be mates. Not the British Expeditionary Force, whose recruitment office physician said he’d seen few candidates for enlistment with so compromised a liver.

And most certainly not Jane, who had grown weary, since their father’s death, of carrying Lyle on the family dole when he could not or would not support himself (let alone his unmarried sister). The two would most surely have lost the shop, which they’d inherited from their dad, were it not for the war effort and its need for dedicated labourers — both men and women — in the aeroplane works and Royal Ordnance factories.

No, Jane didn’t want Lyle in her life at all. Yet a part of her suspected he could not help being shiftless and by all appearances bereft of any redeeming qualities whatsoever, for there seemed to be something missing from his brain from the start, and how could this be his fault? This was the charitable view that came to Jane every now and then (when she was feeling a little generous). Most days, however, she wanted to take a few of the cartridges she’d packed with gunpowder from the factory in which she worked on the outskirts of London (with her friends Maggie, Carrie, Ruth, and Molly), load them into a compatible machine-gun magazine, and then deliver them ratta-tat-tat into her brother in a way that would swiftly and conveniently end his life. Then one of the biggest worries of her life would be removed, evaporating in an effervescence of twinkling Walt Disney fairy dust.

Jane had always wanted to be a schoolteacher, but even before her father died, there wasn’t money to pay for her education. She loved children and thought she might like to work as an evacuation officer for the London County Council, which relocated East Enders (and their large broods) to less dangerous parts of the country. But before she went into the offices to interview, she had a nightmare in which, during one of her assigned excursions outside of London, her brother fell asleep with a lit fag between his fingers and burnt himself to a crisp. She would have to keep a hand in the running of the shop (and in the running of Lyle) is what she would have to do, and as luck would have it, when the window slammed shut on a position with the Council, the door to factory work swung wide open. It was her friend Ruth who made the case that We Five should assert their independence in service to their country by helping to defeat Hitler, and they could do this by making bullets and bombs.

Lyle might still some day or night fall asleep with a lit Player’s cig in hand and burn himself to a crisp, but at least now Jane could preserve what was left of her family’s reputation by saying it was a German incendiary bomb what done it.

The phone bell rang.

“Yes?”

“Jane, it’s Carrie. I’m at the call box in front of the Boots.”

“What are you doing there? It’s six fifteen. We’ll never make the factory bus in time.”

“That’s why I rang you. You should go on. Go meet Ruth at the stage so at least the two of you can catch the six-thirty. The rest of us will have to go out on the seven- thirty.”

“But you’ll lose an hour’s pay!”

“It won’t be the end of the world.”

“What’s happened? Is anything the matter?”

“I’ll tell you everything when I see you in assembly. In short: Molly’s father. Maggie’s mother. A marriage proposal. Everything hunky-dory except for Maggie, who has suddenly decided she’d rather be dead than have another soak for a father.”

Jane shook her head. “Ain’t that a bugger! And with the way things are right now… She really shouldn’t say such things.”

“Hurry along, Jane. Or you’ll miss the bus.”

Jane thought for a moment. “I’m going to wait and take the stragglers’ bus with the three of you.”

“But what about Ruth? She’ll be waiting for all of us and I haven’t another penny to put into this telephone.”

“ I’ll ring her up. Oh, sometimes I could strangle Maggie — putting herself in the way of everyone’s happiness like this.”

“Then you know all about it.”

“I know enough. And I don’t agree with any of it.”

“I should go and see if the two have come to blows. Goodbye, Jane. We’ll see you later in the morning— I hope .”

After ringing off, Jane placed the call to Ruth. However, it was Miss Mobry, the Methodist minister’s sister, who picked up the telephone. “Hallo, Miss Mobry. This is Jane Higgins. I wish to speak with Ruth.”

“Oh yes, she’s right here. Is anything wrong? Ruth was afraid that — well, last night’s air raid—”

“Oh no, Miss Mobry. It isn’t that, although a shop not too far from the emporium did take a nasty hit. Thank God no one was hurt. No, this isn’t life and death, but it’s really quite involved. I’ll have to tell you about it some other time.”

“Yes, do, my dear. And you should come to tea. Do you fancy loganberry tarts and seed cake? Who doesn’t? Ah, two old maids taking tea together. Is there anything cozier?”

Jane didn’t respond. She resented being called an old maid. First: she wasn’t one. She was only twenty-three and still eminently marriageable. And although she hadn’t any prospects at the moment, neither had any of her circle-sisters. Second: “old maid” was such a loathsome designation, especially for an unmarried woman who was not at all content with her present unaffiliated status.

Unlike her friend Ruth.

Ruth had let it be known that she did not plan to marry under any circumstance, that this was her choice, and furthermore, that she had the right to make her own choices. Jane respected Ruth, though Ruth always seemed out of step with her sisters.

“Jane?”

“Good morning, Ruth. There’s been a hitch. You’re to step out and catch the six-thirty and not wait for the rest of us. Maggie and Molly and Carrie are running quite late and won’t be able to make it.”

“What about you ?”

“I’ve decided to wait for them. ”

“Then I’ll wait as well.”

“Then we shall all be late, and how will that look?”

“It will simply look as if we’ve all been detained together. Everyone knows we come to work in a clump, Jane. We are only as punctual as our weakest link allows us to be, and I take it the weak link this morning is Maggie.”

“So you must know a little something about Maggie’s mother’s big decision.”

“ Know something? I received quite an earful from Maggie the evening we spent together in the A.R.P shelter. We shouldn’t tie up this line into the parsonage; otherwise I’d tell you all about it.”

“Maggie is being quite unfair.”

“Well, of course she is.”

“But you really should nip over to the factory bus kiosk, Ruth. ‘Save yourself!’ they always say in the movies.”

“I haven’t an overwhelming desire to wait for that bus alone.”

“Why?”

“Must I tell you now? Miss Mobry is flitting in and out of the vestibule with little bits of unnecessary business. I know it’s so she can eavesdrop on this conversation.”

“Is this something you don’t want her to know about?”

“Only that I shouldn’t wish to make her worry,” replied Ruth. “She’s a nervous bundle of nerves after the recent raids. She gets so flurried sometimes when she thinks of the Luftwaffe dropping a bomb on our factory. I fancy she thinks she’s my mother sometimes, or at the very least a doting gran or aunt. As it so happens, I’ve always been asked to call her ‘aunt.’”