Open Writing

Joe and Mary found life easier when war broke out. There was no more unemployment and Joe got his first full-time job in years. He also had an income from the Home Guard as a sergeant. Overtime was plenty and wages were good; so good that towards the end of the war, Joe finally called a halt to Mary's weekly visits to Grimstone's office to collect the patrimony which had hurt his pride for years.

He kept himself as busy as ever in his hen-pen and allotment, growing vegetables which helped considerably when eggs and other food were rationed. He and his pals also began keeping pigs to eke out their bacon ration, and it was a pig which brought Grimstone into their orbit.

The lawyer often strolled past their hen-pens on his evening constitutional by the river. It was a favourite walk for many in Keighworth, offering a breath of fresh air free from the grime and toil of the mills. It was a fine walk at any time of the year, with open views to the farmland and woods on the hillside across the river, a walk Grimstone enjoyed to take the daily grind of money-making off his mind.

As the war entered its second year, rationing began to bite, and the more it bit, the more clout Grimstone had in Keighworth as Director of Rationing Supplies. He wangled himself into many positions including Head Warden and Chief Billeting Officer. In one capacity he had to oversee the town's blackout and in the other the housing of evacuees and the military who were billeted in the town.

Fines were heavy on those having insufficient blackout in their homes. It was a costly business in the bigger houses of Utworth and Ruddledene, where some of the upper-class defaulted. But they never got to court if they could get to Grimstone first. His practice also grew in the war when
it attracted many new clients.

The upper-crustians were left off his billeting lists, when kids from slum cities being bombed to blazes were evacuated to Keighworth. They were dumped on families down the likes of Garlic Lane. Other newcomers to the town were troops held in a transit camp before being drafted abroad. The officers were billeted at Illingworth House and other great houses, but never at Grimstone's or Rosemary Nook; though Rosemary did have her fling while they were in Keighworth.

Grimstone and Clemence did their bit for the troops in other ways. They canvassed the town during War Savings Weeks, and when on duty at the railway, station as ARP warden and special constable respectively, they would stand at the barrier handing out packets of cigarettes to the boys going to the front. Grimstone always had access to a ready supply of cigarettes during the war. As rationing tightened, he had ready access to most things. He claimed he never dabbled in the black market (he was too sharp for that) but he always knew folk who did.

He was on first name terms with every butcher and grocer in town; people he wouldn't have dreamed of speaking to before the war. He cast his net out of town, too, and was in with all the farmers in the area; and that's how he came to be speaking with Joe Gibson at his hen-pen one warm summer night.

Though Grimstone had passed Joe's hen-pen for years they had never spoken; never got beyond a nod if their eyes chanced to meet. Grimstone knew Joe's wife collected her weekly dole at his office and Joe knew it, too; detested the man for it. But about the middle of 1940, not long after Joe and his cronies began keeping pigs, Grimstone suddenly began acknowledging them and became quite chatty. His walks down the river-path also became more frequent as he watched the pigs grow fatter and fatter.