Pack Up Your Troubles by Pam Weaver Read Free Book Online

women said their goodbyes and Pen blew a kiss to Mandy.
    As she watched her great aunt turn around in the doorway and walk painfully back indoors, Connie turned back to the job in hand. The two boxes were full, one with runner beans and the other with broad beans in the jackets as they headed towards the shop. As they took the supplies inside, Connie met the girl working there.
    Sally Burndell was a pretty girl with dark hair and full lips who made no secret of the fact that she was going to go to secretarial college later in the year and was only in the shop for a short while. Connie liked her directness. They arranged the fresh beans underneath the beans already in the boxes to make sure the older beans picked the day before were sold first. Gwen went round picking out failing fruit and vegetables and making sure the supplies were topped up. Connie fetched some fresh newspaper from the storeroom and showed Sally how to make it into bags by folding them a certain way. She also got her to fan out the paper wrapped around the fruit in the orange boxes.
    ‘Press them flat and put them in a pile,’ said Connie.
    ‘Whatever for?’ said a voice behind them.
    Connie turned to see Aunt Aggie watching them from the doorway.
    ‘They could be used as toilet paper,’ she said. ‘It’s a lot softer than newspaper. It’s a tip I picked up from the WAAF.’
    ‘Huh!’ Aunt Aggie scoffed. ‘What’s wrong with newspaper?’
    ‘I must go in and get the tea,’ said Gwen, wiping her hands on a towel.
    ‘And I’m off for the bus,’ said Aggie turning to leave. ‘Olive said I could have some beans. Not too many. There’s only me.’
    Sally wrapped a few runner beans in newspaper and handed them to her. Aunt Aggie took them without a thank you.
    ‘See you soon, Aggie,’ Gwen called.
    They watched her go.
    ‘When you’ve got a bum as big as hers,’ Sally said, ‘I guess you’d need a newspaper as big as The Times .’
    ‘Shh,’ Connie cautioned. ‘She’ll hear you.’ But she and her mother couldn’t help giggling.
    Thankfully, Aggie hadn’t heard the remark because she walked on.
    ‘Play with me, Connie,’ Mandy pleaded as Connie followed her mother outside.
    Gwen turned around. ‘No need for you to come into the house,’ she smiled. ‘I’ve made a sausage in cider casserole. All I have to do is take it out of the oven. Stay here and play with Mandy.’
    The two sisters grinned. Mandy flicked her plaits over her shoulder and before long, Connie was holding the rope and they were skipping together. Connie hadn’t done this for years. She was a bit out of breath but she hadn’t lost her touch. Pip wandered outside.
    ‘When I was little,’ she told Mandy, ‘I used to tie the rope on the down-pipe like this and when I turned it, Pip would join in.’
    As soon as she said it, and much to Connie’s delight, he joined in. Mandy clapped her hands in delight. By the time their mother called them for tea, she, Pip and Mandy had become great friends.

Three
    Teatime over, Connie tucked Mandy up in bed and after a bedtime story they sang her favourite song, ‘You Are My Sunshine’. It was a precious time for both of them and one that Connie had started when her little sister was very young. Every time she’d come home on leave, Mandy had begged her to sing it as she said goodnight. Connie crept out of Mandy’s room and had what her mother would call a cat’s lick in the bathroom and changed her clothes. She put on the pale lemon sweater and same grey pinstriped slacks she had worn in Trafalgar Square and after calling out her goodbyes, headed in the direction of Goring-by-Sea railway station. Pip invited himself along with her, sometimes running on ahead, occasionally stopping to sniff something. She watched him scenting a blade of grass, a telegraph pole and the postbox and marvelled at his carefree love of life.
    They reached the Goring crossroad and walked up Titnore Lane. All at once the dog stopped and