Love to Everyone by Hilary McKay

Author:Hilary McKay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books

Twenty

Thanks, I knew I could ask you.

R

That was all Clarry heard from Rupert, scrawled on a postcard. Peter told her that Simon had a postcard too. It had arrived at school, said Peter, and Simon had not shown it to anyone, just tucked it in his pocket and walked away.

For a long time after that no one heard anything from Rupert. Clarry turned thirteen with, for the first time ever, no acknowledgement from Rupert at all.

“Don’t be angry with him,” said Peter, unexpectedly.

“Of course not,” said Clarry. She wrote to Rupert every week, with news of Lucy, gleaned secondhand from Vanessa or Simon, and of the grandparents in Cornwall, who, her grandmother reported, were “managing very well with an elderly gray donkey.” Without these things Clarry would have been stuck for much cheerfulness to put into her letters. There was no Cornish holiday that year, and it was a relief to Clarry when the new school term began in September. The war news was dark and there seemed nothing they could do to help. Miss Vane knitted feverishly, and when she wasn’t knitting she was busy at a Red Cross center, packing parcels to go abroad. Mrs. Morgan found a job in a munitions factory, cooking in the canteen. She still appeared occasionally however: she turned up one afternoon when Vanessa happened to be visiting.

“Oh, what bliss to see you!” exclaimed Vanessa, whom Mrs. Morgan always filled with a hilarious joy. “How are you, Mrs. M.? Are you very busy?”

“I’ll give you Mrs. M., my fine lady!” said Mrs. Morgan. “And yes, I’m busy, but in the wrong place. I’m not suited at all in that canteen. I’d rather be filling shells.”

“Perhaps you soon will be,” said Clarry comfortingly.

“I’d better be,” said Mrs. Morgan. “And if it’s not soon it will be never at all. If you ask me it’s only a matter of weeks before the whole place goes bang!”

“Then you should stay safe where you are!” said Vanessa.

“If it goes, it goes,” said Mrs. Morgan philosophically. “Canteen’s attached, so it would make no difference. Mr. Morgan’s in the thick of it, stacking and crating.”

“Poor Mr. Morgan!”

“He’s having a high old time,” said Mrs. Morgan, sniffing. “All those young women that’s there, it’s one long party for him! And how’s your blessed father, Clarry? Still full of the joys of spring?”

“He’s very well, thank you,” said Clarry cautiously. “I don’t see him often. He mostly goes out for supper. I can’t seem to cook the sort of food that he likes.”

“None of us can cook the sort of food that we like these days,” observed Mrs. Morgan severely. “And what about your own meals?”

“We have hot dinners at school,” said Clarry, “so it doesn’t matter so much about me.”

“I thought so!” said Mrs. Morgan, diving into her shopping bag. “Sausage rolls!” she added triumphantly, producing a paper-wrapped bundle. “They was left over at the canteen, being a bit darker than people like. Now don’t go wasting them! I daresay your friend gets fed at her hospital.

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