Bia's War by Joanna Larum Page A

some stick for it when you were a kid.’
    ‘My full name is Abia, but I’ve
always been called Bia. Nobody ever forgets my name, Sammy. Once
seen, always remembered!’
    “So, I left the house and Peter
and I finished delivering the orders. Annie was pleased when we got
home and I told her about taking Hannah on. She knew Sammy and had
known his wife, Sarah, before her death.
    ‘She had too many children, poor
Sarah. I think she had fourteen, or something very close to that
number.’
    ‘Fourteen!’ I choked. I couldn’t
believe my ears. ‘Are you sure, because Sammy only talked about the
three girls at home and two boys who enlisted, like William. That’s
only five.’
    ‘I think that was half of what
was wrong with Sarah. A lot of her children died young.’ Annie
said. ‘Sarah had her heart broken so many times when they died,
that it finally killed her. Only one of them died at birth, I
think, the rest caught one of the childhood diseases and I think
one of them was burned to death in a fire.’
    ‘Oh my God. That poor woman! It
was no wonder she died young.’
    “I tried to imagine what it
would be like to lose Simon through an illness or, God forbid, an
accident and I couldn’t do it. My heart went out to Sammy’s wife
and to Sammy. He was still living with all his losses and still
managing to smile! My opinion of him rose even higher.
    ‘Did you say Hannah is working
for the pig butcher?’ Annie cut through my thoughts. ‘I hope he’s
not going to cause you any more trouble if he finds out that she’s
now working for you.’
    “I had told Annie about Dennison
making a pass at me and then being so rude and brutal when I had
refused him. I had to admit that the thought of him causing trouble
had crossed my mind when Peter and I were walking home, but I had
decided to ignore it. Dennison might not be bothered about losing a
shop girl and surely he must have an apprentice butcher working
with him. There were lots of young girls looking for work at that
time, so he would be able to replace Hannah fairly easily. I didn’t
suppose for one moment that he was as choosy as I was about staff,
so a replacement wouldn’t be hard to find. That was where I made
one of the biggest mistakes of my life.”
    “But why, Nana?” Victoria asked.
“Surely even someone as nasty as Dennison wouldn’t do anything bad
because one of his staff had left him and gone to work for you.
That’s a bit over-the-top, isn’t it?”
    “Oh yes. It would be an
over-reaction, certainly, but I didn’t allow for Dennison’s state
of mind at the time. There again, I didn’t know much about him,
other than that he didn’t like having his advances turned down and
that he turned nasty when rebuffed. I don’t think anyone else would
have acted any differently from me, given the same insight into his
character. It’s something I’ve considered deeply ever since,
though. If I hadn’t employed Hannah, would life have turned out the
same? I just don’t know. When I consider what else happened, I
think it probably would have taken the same course. All I did was
exacerbate it.”
    “Exacerbate what, Nana?”
Victoria was beginning to feel she was losing track of the story at
this stage, as though she had missed an important point.
    “No, I’m getting side-tracked
again.” Nana shook herself mentally. “I’ve got to tell this in its
proper order or it will all get too confusing for anyone to
understand. Where was I? That’s right, Hannah. That was how I got
my third member of staff and Hannah turned out to be every bit as
capable as her father had said. On top of that, she had a really
sunny nature and she would set about tasks with a light heart,
singing hymns as she worked. The old biddies who came in the shop
liked her to serve them and she had a way with her that could turn
any sour face into a smile, so she made life a joy.”
    “Some nights, Sammy would
collect her at closing time and he would turn his hand to any