ELIZABETH ELGIN
Whisper on the Wind

Contents

Cover

Title Page

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‘Fifty Years from Now …’

About the Author

By the Same Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

1

‘Don’t agree with them trousers. You’re a married woman, and married women shouldn’t wear trousers.’

‘Breeches, Aunt Min, and there is a war on.’

Slowly, ponderously, Kathleen Allen gazed around the room as if looking at it for the very last time; a room she would rather not remember, truth known. An over-furnished, over-decorated, overcrowded little room.

Her eyes trailed the back of the sofa to the piano top and the photographs of her husband’s parents and Barney – Barnaby, her husband as a little boy, scowling into the camera. Barney with his bronze medal for ice-skating and Barney in khaki, grown fatter now, his toothbrush moustache tilting rakishly with the crooked, Clark Gable smile.

He wouldn’t smile when he got her letter, she frowned, wondering why she should feel so guilty about what she had done. But it wasn’t so much what she had done, she supposed, but the way in which she had done it. Sneakily, really, it had had to be, because her husband condemned out of hand any woman who joined the armed forces. He always had.

But surely Barney couldn’t object to the Land Army? Army. In that word the trouble lay. The Land Volunteers or the Farming Corps would have pacified him, but to call it the Land Army at once suggested a group of liberated women in breeches and bright green pullovers, swinging along in ranks of four, pitchforks at the ready.

‘And you’re still set on going, girl?’

‘Doesn’t seem I’ve left myself a lot of choice. I did volunteer.’

‘Yes, you did. And Barnaby won’t be pleased, but you know that, don’t you? I suppose you’ve told him?’

‘He knows.’ Well, he would when he got her letter, she amended silently. The trouble would start when she received his reply. Because trouble it would contain.

It was unfair, really, that her husband should object to her doing her bit for the war effort, but Barney could, and what was more, he would. He would object loud and long in every letter he wrote, not caring at all that the Censor would read every word.

She had written to her husband immediately the OHMS letter came; the letter that told her she had passed her medical examination and been accepted into the Women’s Land Army for the duration of hostilities. That official letter had also told her to report for service on Thursday 18 December, using the enclosed railway travel warrant, and that her uniform, which had already been posted to her in two parcels, would arrive within the course of the next few days. And that had been that. There could be no going back.

The day she had written to Barney was one she would always remember, for it was not only the day on which her calling-up papers came, nor the day on which she summoned up the courage to confess, on a sixpenny airmail letter-card, what she had done, but the day, too, on which her country declared war on the Japanese nation. The day on which, she accepted sadly, the entire world had finally been drawn into war.

But Aunt Min was right. Barney would not be pleased that his wife had joined the Land Army. Hadn’t he always made his feelings about women in uniform quite clear? Common, the lot of them and nothing more nor less than comforts for officers. Groundsheets. Why else would women doll themselves up in uniform? Plain as the nose on your face, wasn’t it?

No doubting it, Barney would not approve, but on the credit side, Barney wasn’t here to prevent it and for better or for worse she was in the Land Army for the duration; having a baby seemed just about the only thing that would free her from it. And getting pregnant when your husband was in the Army in Egypt was hardly likely to happen.

‘Where was it you said you was going?’ Minnie Jepson asked yet again. ‘In the wilds, I suppose it is?’

‘Somewhere in Yorkshire. Alderby St Mary. It’s in the North Riding, I think.’

Aunt Min stiffened. Back of beyond, that’s what. It wouldn’t have surprised her to learn it was cannibal country. To a Londoner, anything north of the river Trent was cannibal country.

‘You’ll have to watch your step, my girl. Funny lot, up there. And they talk funny, too. Whereabouts in Alderby St Mary will it be?’

‘I’m going to a house called Peacock Hey. It’s a hostel, really, and I’ll be living with other women so you needn’t worry, Aunt Min. I’ll be fine. There’ll be a Forewoman and a Warden to keep an eye on us all.’

‘Hmm. And how long will it take you to get there?’

‘I don’t know, for sure. It’ll depend on the train and if we get a good run through.’ And if they weren’t shunted into a siding to await the passing of something more important; a train carrying vital war supplies or a troop train, maybe. ‘I change at Crewe for York, then get a bus to Alderby.’

‘Then let’s hope you’ll be all right, girl,’ Minnie Jepson muttered. ‘Let’s hope they put you off at the right stop.’ After all, it would be dark tonight by tea-time. Black as pitch it would be, owls hooting and things creeping in hedgerows. ‘Can’t say I envy you with all them moors …’

‘Aunt Min, I’m not going to Wuthering Heights. Alderby isn’t in hilly country. It’s in the Vale of York. I’ve looked it up. It’s good farming country, not all windswept trees and sheep.’

She sounded far braver than she felt, for her husband’s aunt was right. To a city dweller like herself who’d never been anywhere nor seen anything, the countryside was a place of mystery and she, too, hoped she would get off the bus at the right place because in the blackout one bus stop was much the same as any other.

She shivered apprehensively. Suppose she did get off at the wrong stop? Suppose she found herself in the middle of nowhere with never a light to guide her and owls hooting like Aunt Min said and eyes watching her and –

‘I’ll be all right,’ she insisted. ‘And I’ll have to go soon. Why don’t I put the kettle on? Goodness only knows when I’ll get another cup of tea.’

Had she been stupid, she thought as she filled the kettle. Wouldn’t it have been better to have stayed here in Birmingham, where all the factories were on war work and crying out for men and women and good money there for the earning?

No, it wouldn’t. Last-minute nerves, that’s all this was. She’d felt exactly the same before her wedding. Nerves, and doubts. And hadn’t she always wanted to live in the country? Hadn’t she longed as a child in that green-painted dormitory, to sleep in a room of her own with windows wide open to the silent fields and trees? Even when she had grown up and married Barney, that little aching dream had still been with her. Suddenly she had needed to get away from Birmingham’s streets, the sirens and bombs, away from this house, too – Barney’s mother’s house – and all it reminded her of.

‘Looks as if you’re going for the duration,’ Minnie Jepson mourned, pushing past the suitcase that almost blocked the passageway. ‘What ever’ve you got in there, then?’

‘Oh, uniform, mostly.’ Kath smiled. ‘Dungarees and wellingtons and boots. My own underwear, of course. And shirts and socks, and a working jacket …’

‘Hmm. Don’t know why them blokes at the War Agriculture place didn’t think to give you some sort of training. Well, what if they tell you to milk some cows, eh? What’ll you do then?’

‘Don’t really know.’ Trust Aunt Min to put her finger right on it. ‘I suppose I’ll just have to learn, won’t I?’

‘Bein’ on a farm isn’t all collectin’ eggs and having a romp in the hay.’ She took a spoonful of tea from the caddy then shook it level before sliding it into the pot. ‘Evacuees from next door to me came home. Couldn’t stand it. Wet and smelly they said it was. Couldn’t wait to get back to London – bombs or no bombs.’

‘I’ll manage.’ Kath wrapped the knitted holder around the handle of the kettle, pouring carefully. ‘I hope you’ll be all right, Aunt Min. When I decided to join up I didn’t know you’d be coming to live here, though I’m glad you did.’

Very glad. With Aunt Min left in charge, there would be no bombed-out families taking possession of the little house in her absence, she thought gratefully. Aunt Min would keep it clean and warm, though where the old lady would go when the war was over was a problem to be shelved until the war was over. ‘I’ll try to send you something every week to help with the coal and electricity, and I’ve left my address on the mantelpiece so you’ll know where I am. If there’s a phone in the hostel I’ll let you have the number, though I don’t suppose you’ll need to ring me.’

‘Don’t suppose I shall.’ Minnie Jepson was used to managing alone. A childless widow from the last war, she had quickly learned to make ends meet and live from day to day on her pension. ‘And don’t give this house another thought once you’ve left it. I’ll soon have it to my liking, never you fear, girl.’

Housework was Minnie Jepson’s religion. Her London home had been her total joy until a direct hit from a German bomb had forced her to seek shelter with her sister in Birmingham. Indeed, it was as if Fate had intervened on her behalf, for her sister had died peacefully in her sleep not six weeks after, her nephew Barnaby Allen had been despatched to fight the war in North Africa and now young Kath was taking herself off to darkest Yorkshire. It could not have suited her better.

‘I’ll send you a letter every week, Kath, to let you know I’ve got the money all right. And I’ll see your bed is kept aired, just in case they let you home for a holiday, though I don’t suppose they will.’

She gazed unblinking at her nephew’s wife. A good-looking girl, without a doubt. Small wonder Barnaby had courted her with such ferocity and married her with such determination. Dark, almost black hair, yet eyes of blue; so blazingly blue that you couldn’t help noticing them. Thick, dark eyelashes and a nice smile. Irish, those looks were; even her name was Irish. Yet there’d been no one of her own at that hasty little wedding. Only the girl who’d stood bridesmaid for her and even she wasn’t family. Some girl, hadn’t it been, who’d worked as a parlourmaid in the house next door?

‘You can pop a saccharin in my tea,’ she murmured. ‘And give me the second cup. Can’t abide it weak.’

‘Yes, Aunt Min.’ Can’t you wait until I’m out of the house before you take it over? It is Barney’s after all and I am his wife and if anything happened to Barney it would be my house. ‘Are you going to be able to manage on just one ration book when I’m gone?’

‘I’ll be all right. Managed before I was bombed out, didn’t I?’ Of course she would manage. With Kath out of the way and the cleaning and polishing done, there’d be plenty of time to stand in the food queues. It wasn’t a bad way of passing a couple of hours – even in winter. ‘I suppose you’ll be living off the fat of the land? Them farmers’ll have plenty of milk and eggs. Don’t tell me they don’t keep a bit back for themselves.’

‘I really don’t know. But wouldn’t you keep some for yourself now and again? Wouldn’t you treat yourself to a nice fresh egg for your breakfast?’

Fresh eggs. They were a thing of the past to ordinary people. Minnie Jepson reckoned that the weekly egg on her ration book was at least a fortnight old when she got it; stood to reason, didn’t it, the way they smelled when you cracked one? Only fit for putting in a cake – if you had the butter and sugar to spare.

‘What’s a fresh egg?’ she demanded, truculently. ‘And hadn’t you better be thinking about getting yourself off? You can’t rely on a bus being there when you want one; not with a war on, you can’t. That case is going to take a bit of carrying, an’ all. Best be on your way, girl. Take it slowly.’

‘Yes. No use hanging around, I suppose.’ She wished Aunt Min wasn’t so anxious to be rid of her. ‘I’ll just slip across the yard to the lavvy and then I’ll be going.’

She wished the churning inside her would stop. She was always like this when something untoward happened. Like the morning she married Barney. She’d wanted to run away. If she hadn’t been so desperate to leave the house she’d worked in for the past six years, she would have. A skivvy, that’s all she had been. She had exchanged the drabness of the children’s home for the drabness of domestic service and only marriage to Barney had freed her from it. Or so she had thought until he’d taken her to the little house he had promised her. Trouble was, he hadn’t ever mentioned they’d be sharing it with his mother.

She had felt the same churning that day she walked through the doors of the Labour Exchange and told them she wanted to be a landgirl, surprised that she hadn’t needed her husband’s permission. The knowledge had made her feel slightly giddy, because for once she was doing something entirely because she wanted to. She was making only the second important decision in the whole of her twenty-three-and-a-bit years and she had been shaking with the enormity of it when she left the counter; when the clerk had already made an appointment for her medical and there was almost no going back.

‘Ain’t you taking Barney’s picture with you, then?’ Aunt Min took the Clark Gable photograph from the piano top and dusted it absently with her pinafore.

‘I’ve packed one already. I’ll leave that one for you.’ Kath smiled, wishing her heart hadn’t joined the turmoil inside her with loud, insistent thuds. But this was her first real adventure and being in the Land Army was the only taste of freedom she would ever have.

Oh, she was grateful to Barney. He’d given her respectability, a name. She was Kathleen Allen. She knew exactly who she was and that no one could push her around any more – unless she chose to let them. Now she was the same as anyone else. She had the same identity card, the same ration book and from today she would wear the same uniform and get the same pay as all the other landgirls in a hostel called Peacock Hey. For a woman who had never quite known who she was, that was something of an achievement. When the war was over and Barney came home, she would settle down, be a good wife and have his children. When the war was over. In two years, three years, maybe even longer now that Japan had come into it; now that it wasn’t just Hitler they had to see to but all those Japs as well. Funny little slant-eyed men who people said fought and fought and never gave in. How long would it take to beat them, she wondered, even with the Americans on our side.

‘Well then,’ she said, wondering why her voice sounded so whispery and strange. ‘I’ll just put on my hat and coat.’

A short, well-cut top coat; a round, leather-tied hat, though just how she was expected to wear it she didn’t know. She placed it comfortably on the back of her head, picked up her gas mask and said again, ‘Well then.’

Minnie Jepson walked down the passage, opened the front door then stood, arms folded, waiting.

Kath picked up her case, manoeuvring it with her knee to the doorstep. Then she put it down with a thump, placed her hands on the elder woman’s shoulders and kissed her cheek.

‘So-long, Aunt Min. Take care of yourself. I’ll write, like I promised.’

‘Ta-ra, girl. God bless.’

Kath picked up her case. She didn’t turn round – you didn’t ever look back in wartime – and she wasn’t surprised to hear the door slammed shut behind her. Even before she reached the gate.

Slowly she walked to the top of the street. The churning and thumping were even worse now and she felt strange in her uniform, especially in the breeches and knee-length socks.

‘Alderby St Mary,’ she whispered. Somewhere in the North Riding of Yorkshire and a million miles away, thank God.

The letter addressed to Rosalind Fairchild came by the second delivery on the 18th of December. It bore the words On His Majesty’s Service and she had expected it daily for the past two weeks. Sucking in her breath she opened the envelope with a swift, decisive tear, quickly scanned the single sheet of paper, then looked up, her face a blank.

‘It’s all right, Gran. They’re letting me stay at Ridings. I don’t have to be called up.’

Hester Fairchild let go her indrawn breath. She had been worried; useless to deny it. Government departments usually did the exact opposite to what was expected or hoped of them, but for once it seemed they had got it right. She was more relieved than her face showed, for war was hateful to her. War – the last one – had taken her husband and she had no wish for this one to snatch away her granddaughter.

‘I suppose it’s official, now – puts you in a reserved occupation?’

‘Seems it does. I’m exempt from call-up, it says here, but I can’t change my job without first asking them.’ She shrugged. ‘I suppose I’d better let Mat Ramsden know. At least I’m one of his problems solved.’

So now it was official. She had a reserved occupation; work considered so important that she was exempted from call-up. And farming was important. Now into the third year of the war, food was becoming alarmingly short. Already it was strictly rationed, with rumours of cuts after Christmas and farmers were left in no doubt that they must grow as much food as they could, and then some, with every acre of land used to capacity. Farms and farm-workers became important almost overnight and vital to the war effort, Mr Churchill said. Britain’s rundown farms were suddenly in the front line. For the first time since the last war ended, farmers were needed.

‘Read it.’ Roz handed over the letter.

She was glad it was all settled, that she could stay in Alderby St Mary, though not so very long ago a small, secret part of her had longed to join the armed forces. She had wanted to wear a uniform, to be seen to be doing her bit for the war, but that was before Paul; before she had gone to a dance at the aerodrome and met the tall, flaxen-haired navigator. Once she would have scoffed at the idea of love at first sight. That kind of feeling couldn’t be love, she’d have said. Instant attraction, perhaps; something sexual. But something strange had taken hold of her that night; some feeling she had not known to exist had set every small pulse in her body beating exquisitely and her mouth had gone dry as he crossed the floor towards her. He hadn’t even asked her if she wanted to dance. He’d held out his hand and smiled as if their meeting was meant to be. They had danced the floor twice round before he said, ‘Paul. Hullo.’ And she had whispered, ‘Rosalind. Roz. Hullo, yourself.’

At least she thought that was what she said, but her heart was thudding in her ears and she’d only been sure of his nearness and the absolute rightness of their being together.

Paul Rennie. Crew member of the Lancaster bomber K-King, based at the hastily constructed aerodrome not two miles away. Paul, who had flown his eighth bombing raid the night before and who would soon be on his thirteenth. Operational flight number thirteen; the dicey one, after which it would all be easy until the thirtieth, which would mark the end of the tour.

His first ‘op’ had been a swine, he’d said. He couldn’t remember a lot about that first raid over Germany save that it had been on Bremen and that the sickness in the pit of his stomach had been nothing at all to do with turbulence. But Paul was like that. He didn’t think that flying was a piece of cake; bloody stupid of him, really, ever to have volunteered for aircrew. But he was smiling as he said it and his eyes had been laughing, too. Flying Officer Paul Rennie, who lived near Bath and had a twin sister called Pippa who was a Waaf, somewhere in Lincolnshire.

She would see Paul again tomorrow at the Friday-night dance – if he wasn’t flying, that was. If this viciously cold weather continued all week; if a wind from the south didn’t banish the frost overnight.

‘Won’t be long, Gran.’ She shrugged into her coat. ‘Just going over to the farm.’

Mat would be glad they were letting her stay, just as Gran was. Even if she had never met Paul, it made sense that she should remain in Alderby, because Gran needed her and now Ridings needed her too; a need which had first arisen the day the representative from the War Agricultural Executive Committee – the man from the War Ag. they called him – had come to Ridings. That day, he had gravely and silently paced the boundaries of the parkland surrounding the house, the game-cover and all the grazing Gran rented to Mat for his beef cattle. He had made notes and calculations then said he hoped Mrs Fairchild appreciated that all these idle acres must come under the plough?

‘Technically, you see, parkland is grassland and grassland is an extravagance. It just doesn’t produce enough food to the acre. It’s wasteful, and –’ He shrugged away the remainder of the sentence. He had no need to explain or to ask. It was simply a case of going politely through the preamble. The Government needed more wheat and barley, potatoes and sugarbeet and farmers must grow them. A landowner with two hundred-odd acres of parkland doing nothing must contribute too. Or lose her land.

‘We’ll confirm it officially, Mrs Fairchild. And I think it might be reasonable to expect it to be ploughed –’ he waved an all embracing arm, ‘by the first of March, next?’

Hester Fairchild nodded apprehensively. ‘The beeches?’ she asked him, gazing stunned down the majestic tree-lined drive. ‘And the oaks? I don’t have to – surely you aren’t asking me to –’ Her lips refused to form the words have them cut down. There were more than a hundred, and to fell such magnificent trees was unthinkable.

The man from the War Ag. pursed his lips. ‘I think we can leave the trees – plough round them.’ He had acquired over two hundred acres for cultivation with less trouble than he’d expected; he was willing to leave the woman her trees. ‘I’m afraid, though, that the spinney …’ He condemned the game-cover with a nod. ‘The rough woodland must go. You’ll appreciate that?’

‘Yes. Of course.’ The mistress of Ridings agreed at once; there were no trees of importance there.

So the man from the War Ag. had thanked her, shaken her hand and wished her good-day, well satisfied. She watched him drive off in his official car wondering how she was going to be able to plough up all those acres, tear out game-cover, and cultivate and harvest crops for the war effort.

But at least it would be a means to an end, Roz considered, reluctant to leave the warmth of the kitchen. Ridings was almost a farm now, and she was a farm-worker in a reserved occupation and for that she must be grateful. She could see the war out at home, which was more than most eighteen-year-olds could even begin to hope for.

‘Oops! Sorry, Polly,’ she gasped, almost colliding with the slight, grey-haired woman who stood in the doorway. ‘Didn’t see you! Gran will tell you the news.’

‘And what in the name of goodness was all that about?’ Polly Appleby put down the brown paper carrier-bag which held polishing cloths, pinafore and slippers. ‘Rush, rush, rush, that one. Never a minute to spare. Where’s she off to now?’

‘The letter came.’

‘Oh, aye? It’s all right, then?’

‘It’s all right. They’re not going to call her up.’

‘Never thought they would.’ Polly filled the kettle and set it on the stove top. ‘Stands to reason, don’t it? I suppose she’s away to tell Jonty Ramsden?’

‘To tell Mat, actually. It’s good of Mat to help out with the ploughing and such-like. He hasn’t got the time, really, and he certainly doesn’t have the men. He’s got his own farm to run and there’s only Jonty to help him.’

‘There’s Grace. Works like a man, Grace Ramsden does. And Mat Ramsden’ll do all right out of your parkland – or so talk has it.’ She held her hands to the fire. ‘But you’ll not be interested in village talk.’

Only Polly spoke to Hester Fairchild as an equal. Polly had always been there; had been a housemaid at Ridings when Hester Fairchild came there as a bride, all those years ago.

She stooped to throw a log on the fire, sending white ash falling into the hearth, and red sparks darting up the chimney.

‘My, but that’s a frosty fire, ma’am. Be a cold ‘un tonight.’

‘The village?’ Hester took cups and saucers from the dresser. ‘What are they saying now?’

‘Well, talk has it that Mat Ramsden has asked the War Ag. for a landgirl. All Alderby knows. If he’s to go into partnership with you, they reckon he’s going to need all the help he can get.’

‘Alderby seems well informed, as usual,’ Hester observed. ‘And it won’t be a partnership, exactly. But I’m told I must plough up my parkland and grow food on it, and since my acres are next to his, it seems sensible to work them between us as best we can.

‘That’s why Roz applied for exemption. She might as well work on her own land as join the Land Army and work on someone else’s. I was beginning to think they wouldn’t allow it. It seemed such a straightforward solution that I was certain they’d tell her she had to join up, or go into munitions, or something.’

‘Hmm.’ Polly laid traycloth and cups on the silver-handled tray for, war or no war, even a cup of tea was taken in a civilized manner at Ridings. ‘And there’s talk that the War Ag. is paying farmers well for putting grazing land under the plough. Two pounds an acre subsidy, I heard tell they’d get. That’ll be more than four hundred pounds, won’t it?’

‘Four hundred and eighty.’ The information was tersely given. ‘There are two hundred and forty acres, to be exact.’ Drat the village for its nosiness and drat it again for being right for once. ‘And one landgirl won’t be enough, Mat told me. He’ll need Roz, too, and a good ploughman. Oh, there’ll be enough for the girls to do; just for them to take over the milk-round will be a load off Grace Ramsden’s mind.

‘But my land must be ploughed up, and soon. Those acres have been down to grass since ever I can remember and the sooner they’re opened up to the weather the better.’

‘I’ll grant you that, but a good ploughman is as rare as hen’s teeth these days,’ Polly brooded. Stood to reason, didn’t it? There’d been little money in farming between the wars and small use growing crops that nobody wanted to buy. Ploughs had lain rusting these last twenty years; ploughmen had abandoned their skills and gone to the towns.

‘I know that, Polly, but we’ll manage between us. We’ll have to. If that parkland isn’t under cultivation by March, the War Ag. will take it over for the duration. It’s as simple as that.’

‘But they can’t do that, ma’am. Isn’t theirs to take!’

‘They can, and they will. The War Ag. can take my land just as any government department can take anything it wants. They’d fling the Defence of the Realm Act at me and if I protested I’d be unpatriotic.’

‘And lose your land, whether or no.’

‘Exactly. So let’s hope Mat gets his ploughman and his landgirl.’

‘Aye.’ Polly settled herself in the fireside rocker, stirring her tea, gazing into the hearth. Just the one fire burning here, now, yet when she’d been a young under-housemaid here, she could have counted five fires at least burning from morning till night, and fires in the bedrooms, too. But coal was a pound a ton then, and logs for the taking from the estate. And the Master had been alive and Miss Roz’s mother a slip of a girl.

Ridings had been the place to work at the turn of the century, Polly considered. Far better than being in service at Peddlesbury, ugly old Victorian pile that it had been. Built on wool and inherited coal money and them as lived there then not real gentry, like the Fairchilds. Now Peddlesbury was an aerodrome and Ridings not the house it used to be.

But things had been different before the Master was killed. And before that fire. Twenty-four bedrooms there’d once been and three housemaids and a cook and scullery-maid and a footman. Aye, and a parlourmaid and a housekeeper as well as the outside staff.

But that was another life it seemed, and now she, Polly, lived in one of the gate lodges and came each day to ‘do’. She had been a part of a life that was long gone and because she still remembered the Master and Miss Janet, she was as much a part of Ridings as the woman who owned it and the granddaughter who would one day inherit it, and the worry of it.

‘You’re quiet all of a sudden. Penny for them?’

‘Oh, they’m worth more than a penny,’ Polly returned gravely. ‘Oh my word, yes. A lot more than that.’

‘Then I’d best not ask. But sometimes, Polly, I wonder. Have I been wise, urging this exemption on Rosalind? Often, I think she spends too much time with me. Might it not have been better if I hadn’t tried so hard to keep her here – if she’d been left free to join the forces, seen a bit of life outside Alderby St Mary?’

‘It might have been, but like you said, she just might have opted to join the Land Army and been sent to work on some other farm.’

‘I know. But what do you mean, some other farm? I don’t have a farm, Poll Appleby.’

‘You don’t? Then what would you call all those acres you’ve got to cultivate? Seems to me that whether you like it or not you’re up to the neck in farming for the duration, and so is Miss Roz. And she’s as well staying at home and looking after her inheritance as she is joining the Air Force or the Army.’

‘Inheritance? A few hundred acres of parkland and all that remains of a house? And the parkland will go back to grass when the war is over and be left idle again. Some inheritance! And it’s all I have to leave her. That, and her name,’ she whispered bitterly.

‘Now don’t get yourself upset, ma’am. I know it’s the time of year, but soon it’ll be Christmas and afore you know it there’ll be a new year to look forward to.’

The time of year. December, when everything awful happened, Hester brooded. They’d taken Martin from her in December and it had been December when Ridings caught fire, the lanes so blocked with snow that the horses pulling the fire engine made heavy going and arrived almost too late.

And did it have to be December when Janet and Toby drove up to Scotland, leaving a two-year-old child behind them at Ridings and never coming back for her?

‘Yes, Polly, it’ll soon be over. And take no notice of me. I’m just a silly old woman.’

‘Old? You? Nay, I’ll not have that.’

The Mistress was sixty-four, Polly knew that as fact. She looked nowhere near her age, with those great brown eyes and hardly a line on the whole of her face. A beautiful woman, holding back time; still waiting for her man to come home, and find her unchanged. To Polly, she was still the laughing young girl who came to Ridings all those years ago on Martin Fairchild’s arm. And she would always be a fitting mistress for Ridings, no matter how life had treated her.

Thank God for the man from the War Ag. because now Ridings would be earning its keep again – the Mistress would have a pound or two in her pocket and not have to worry about keeping body and soul together, counting every penny and every lump of coal she put on the fire. Hester Fairchild had kept her pride and reared Miss Janet’s little lass to be a credit to the place. High time she had a bit of luck. Heaven only knew she deserved some.

Sniffing, Polly placed her cup on the draining board. ‘Ah, well. Best be making a start. What’ll it be today, then? Bedrooms or bathroom and stairs?’

The sky was ice-blue, the earth hard underfoot, the grass white and crisp with hoar frost. There was no sun, but the sky shone with a strange, metallic brightness and Roz knew that tonight it would be bitterly cold again. Tonight, the bombers at Peddlesbury would remain grounded.

‘I’m back!’ she called, slamming shut the door, hurrying to the fire. ‘My, but it’s cold. No sign of a let-up. It’ll freeze hard again tonight, just see if it doesn’t. I don’t suppose there’s a cup of tea in the pot?’

There was. Almost always. Tea was rationed, so the pot was kept warm and used until the leaves inside it would take no more diluting.

‘What did Mat say?’ Hester poured boiling water into the pot. ‘Was he pleased?’

‘Mat wasn’t there. He’s gone to the Labour Exchange again to nag them some more about a farm man, and Jonty’s gone to York for spares for the tractor. Grace said he wants to make a start on our ploughing as soon as the frost lets up a bit. It’s going to be one heck of a job, you know.

‘And good news – they’re getting a landgirl very soon. She might even be there tomorrow. Grace said that since I know everybody in the village, it might be a good idea for me and the new girl to take over the milk-round.

‘So don’t worry too much, Gran love. We’ll have Ridings parkland earning its keep before so very much longer. Think I’d better pop upstairs and tell Polly about the letter …’

‘Polly knows, so don’t keep her talking!’ Hester called to the retreating back. Then her lips formed an indulgent smile, because it seemed that her granddaughter was right. Between them they would make those long-idle acres grow food and earn money. Roz didn’t have to go away and December would soon be over. There’d be another year to look forward to; another spring.

‘Thank you, Janet,’ she whispered, eyes closed, ‘for giving me this lovely child …’

Roz walked around the bed Polly was making and picked up a corner of the sheet. ‘You know about the letter, Poll?’

‘Aye. Charity begins at home.’

‘Hmm. Jonty’s making a start on Gran’s ploughing very soon and Mat’s been allocated a landgirl at last, so it’s all going to work out, isn’t it? We’ll make it by March, if the frost breaks soon. Bet it’s terrible on the Russian front. They say it’s the coldest December for nearly twenty years.’ She abandoned the bed-making to wander over to the dressing-table mirror. ‘It’s freeeeezing outside. Just look at my nose. Red as my hair, isn’t it?’ Frowning, she turned away. ‘I’m not a bit like Gran, am I, Poll? Come to think of it, I’m not really like anybody. Where do you suppose my colouring came from?’

‘Colouring? With hair like yours, you’re complaining?’

‘No. Just curious. Gran is dark and so was Grandpa. And my parents were dark-haired and dark-eyed, so who sneaked in my carrot top?’

‘Auburn.’ Carrot top, indeed!

‘Auburn, then. But where did it come from?’ Not from anyone in any of the portraits, that was certain. All the way up the stairs and on the landing and in the downstairs rooms, not one of the Fairchilds hanging there had red hair. ‘Where, will you tell me?’

‘Gracious, child, how should I know? From your father’s side, perhaps, or maybe you’m a bit of a throwback? Yes, come to think of it, there was one with red hair, I seem to remember. Her portrait got burned, though, in the fire.’

‘Yes, of course.’ Roz didn’t remember, but best not talk about the fire, especially in December, that bleakest of months. ‘I suppose it makes a change – my being green-eyed, I mean, and red-haired.’

‘Suppose it does. Wouldn’t do if we all looked alike, would it? Now are you going to give me a hand with this bed, or are you going to stand there staring into that mirror till it’s done?’

‘It isn’t going to be a barrel of laughs, Poll, my being in a reserved occupation.’ Roz straightened the fat, pink eiderdown. ‘People look at you when you’re young and not in uniform, you know. Jonty’s had all sorts slung at him.’

‘Then I’m sure I don’t know why.’ Polly sniffed. ‘Jonty is doing a good job for the war effort and so will you be. Growing food is important, or why did they make you reserved?’

‘Yes, but when you’re as young as Jonty and me, people just expect you to be in uniform. He’s taken quite a bit of stick about it. “Get some in!” someone yelled after him. “Why aren’t you in khaki, mate? A bloody conchie, are you?”, though I know he’d rather have been a pilot, or a Commando.’

‘They’d never take Jonty Ramsden for a pilot nor a Commando,’ Polly retorted, matter-of-factly. ‘When did you ever see a pilot or a Commando wearing spectacles? Jonty will survive such talk and so will you, though it’s sad people should say things like that.’

If Martin Fairchild had been in a reserved occupation in the last war, he’d have been alive today, the older woman brooded. Uniforms were all very well, were fine and smart and patriotic, but they got you killed. The Mistress wouldn’t have minded the taunts. And now it was happening again. The war to end all wars, they said that one had been, yet only twenty years on …

Sad for the young ones, really. This war was none of their making, yet it was young shoulders the burden had fallen on, Polly sighed silently, and so many of them would never see the end of it. The Master hadn’t, nor her own young man. But that war was history, now. Their war had been glorified slaughter and because of that she was glad Miss Roz was staying at home with her gran; glad she would never join the armed forces, nor wear a uniform. And if thinking that was unpatriotic, then she didn’t give a damn, Polly thought, defiantly. Roz was all the Mistress had left. It was as simple as that.

Now the daft young thing was nattering on about her hair again, and that they could do without. Mind, it came up from time to time and was dealt with by her grandmother. But Roz ought to be told, Polly scowled, picking up dustpan and brush. She’d said as much, not all that long ago.

‘Don’t you think Miss Roz is old enough to know about –’ she’d said.

‘About what?’ the Mistress had interrupted, off-hand. ‘That she’s a Fairchild? But she knows that, Polly. She’s always known it. What more is there to tell?’

What more indeed? The Mistress had probably been right. And even if she wasn’t, she had her reasons for acting as she did.

‘She’ll hear nothing from me.’

‘Of course she won’t, Poll Appleby. There’s nothing to tell,’ Hester Fairchild replied briskly. Then her face had taken on that long-ago look. ‘Polly, if suddenly I weren’t here –’

‘Oh, aye? And where, suddenly, are you going, then?’

‘You know what I mean! I’m talking about the war; about nobody being certain of anything any more, and you know it. If suddenly I weren’t here, Poll, then it would be up to you. Because you’re the only one who knows, apart from me; the only one I’d trust to tell her. But only if she really needed to know, you understand?’

‘Aye, ma’am. Only if,’ she’d said, and the matter had been dropped for all time. Or so they had thought.

Oh, drat that lass and the colour of her hair! Why did she have to go on about it? Why on earth couldn’t she leave well alone?

‘Marvellous!’ Kathleen Allen heaved her suitcase from the bus stop opposite, glad to reach the shelter of the railway station again. ‘Flipping rotten marvellous!’

To think she might now be sitting beside the fire at home, her feet snug in Aunt Min’s hand-knitted slippers, a cup of tea at her side. But she stood instead in a blacked-out, unknown city and the next bus to Alderby St Mary not due for two more hours.

But it was her own fault. She should have heeded her husband’s warning and found war work in a factory or office; anywhere but in the Land Army. Dejectedly she sat down on her suitcase. The journey to York had been a nightmare. She had missed her connection at Crewe, though she strongly suspected there had been no connection to miss, then, after giving right of way to a goods train, a troop train and a train carrying ammunition, they at last pulled out of the station almost two hours late.

You were right, Barney. I should have listened to you. And do you know something else? I’m so cold and hungry that I’d sell my soul for a cup of tea!

She wasn’t crying, she really wasn’t. It was just that it was so cold and draughty sitting here in a gloomy, grimy station that her eyes were watering, and –

‘Hi, mate! Anything the matter?’ A Waaf corporal in trousers and battle-dress top stood there, smiling. ‘Would one of these help?’ She reached into her pocket for cigarettes. ‘Go on, it’s all right.’

‘No! I shouldn’t.’ Cigarettes were hard to come by. It wasn’t fair to take other people’s, be what they called an OP smoker, ‘I’m all right, thanks. Just a smut in my eye …’

‘I know the feeling well, but it passes, it really does.’ The girl in airforce blue took two cigarettes from the packet, then struck a match. ‘You wouldn’t be looking for a lift?’

‘A lift? Oh, aren’t I just.’ Kath inhaled blissfully. ‘But I don’t suppose you’re going my way. Not to Alderby St Mary?’

‘I can do better than that.’ The corporal laughed, ‘I go right past Peacock Hey, and I’ll bet a week’s pay that’s where you’re going.’

‘But I am! I am!’

‘Then just wait till that lot have unloaded their kit.’ She jerked her head in the direction of the airmen who jumped down from the back of the truck. ‘They’re going on leave, the lucky dogs. Home for Christmas. Makes you sick, don’t it?’

‘Sick. Yes.’ Kath drew deeply on her cigarette, then held the lighted end in the cup of her hand, just as she had seen Barney do; just as the corporal did now. Come to think of it, it was the way cigarettes were always held after dark, for didn’t they say that even the minutest glow could be seen from an enemy plane, though she very much doubted it. The real reason for cupping a cigarette, she supposed, was to hide it, for smoking outdoors in uniform was forbidden. Wasn’t it wonderful that she, Kath Allen, was in uniform now and being called mate by an Air Force driver? Mate. It sent a great glow of belonging washing over her and Barney’s expected disapproval was suddenly forgotten. She was a landgirl, wasn’t she? Still cold and hungry of course, but she was going to live in the country and work on a farm. Before long she would be at Peacock Hey and with luck there’d be a sandwich and a cup of tea there, maybe even hot water for a bath.

‘Thanks.’ She smiled at the Waaf corporal. ‘Thanks a lot – mate.’

They drove carefully. The streets of York hadn’t been laid down with RAF trucks in mind, the corporal said, and there were blacked-out traffic lights which could hardly be seen.

‘Isn’t it amazing,’ Kath murmured when the city was behind them, ‘you knowing about Peacock Hey, I mean.’

‘Not really. The girls there go to the Friday-night dances at our place and sometimes, if I’m on late duty like now, I take the truck and collect them.’

‘Your place?’

‘RAF Peddlesbury. There’s a big old house on the very edge of the runway called Peddlesbury Manor; it’s the Ops Centre and the Mess, now, and some of the unmarried officers sleep there, too. I believe Peacock Hey was once owned by the manor; I think the bailiff lived there. The Peacock girls are a decent crowd. It’s your first billet, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, and I’m looking forward to it. I’ve never lived in the country, you see – come from Birmingham …’

‘Well, one thing’s certain. It’s a whole lot quieter round these parts than Birmingham – or London, where I come from. Not a lot of bombing here, but we get quite a few nuisance raids. On the whole, though, you can expect to get a good night’s sleep. Has anyone told you where you’ll be working?’

‘Haven’t a clue. Hope it isn’t a dairy farm. Couldn’t milk a cow to save my life.’

‘You’ll learn, mate.’ The girl at the wheel grinned. ‘When I joined this mob I’d never been in charge of anything more lethal than a push-bike and look at me now, driving this truck.’

Kath sat contented in the darkness of the cab, peering into the rolling blackness as if she were riding shotgun. She wished she didn’t feel so smug, so defiant almost, because at this moment she didn’t care what Barney’s next letter might bring. For just once she was doing what she wanted to do and it was heady stuff. When the war was over and Barney came home, she would be a devoted wife, keep his home clean and always have his meals ready on time. But for now, for the duration, she would enjoy every minute of being a landgirl and living in the country. If the corporal could learn to drive a truck, then Kathleen Allen could learn to milk a cow and maybe even drive a tractor. She let go a sigh of pure bliss.

‘Tired?’

‘No. Just glad I’m almost there.’ Kath smiled.

‘Not almost. This is it.’ Gently they came to a stop. ‘Careful how you get down.’

‘This is the hostel?’

‘Across the road, beside that clump of trees. Mind how you go. See you around.’ The engine started with a roar.

‘See you. And thanks a lot, mate!’

The front gate of Peacock Hey had been painted white and the stones, too, that lined the path to the front door. Kath walked carefully, feeling for the doorstep with the toe of her shoe. She couldn’t find a bellpush, so knocked loudly instead, waiting apprehensively.

From inside came the swish of a curtain being pulled, then the door opened wide.

‘Where on earth have you been, girl? We expected you before supper. It’s Kathleen Allen, isn’t it?’

‘That’s me. Sorry I’m late. The –’

‘Oh, away with your bother.’ The tall, slender woman drew the blackout curtain over the door again then switched on the light. ‘Trains bad, I suppose?’

‘Awful. I got a lift, though, from York.’ She looked around at the linoleum-covered floor and stairs, at the row of coat pegs and the letterboard beside the telephone. It reminded her of the orphanage, yet her welcome here had been warm, and there was a vase of yellow and bronze chrysanthemums in the stair alcove. The flowers comforted her, assured her it would be all right. She had a theory about houses – they liked you or they didn’t. Either way it showed, and Peacock Hey liked her.

‘I don’t suppose there’d be a cup of tea?’ she asked, nervously.

‘There would, lassie, but let’s get your case upstairs, then you can come down to the kitchen and have a bite. Cook lives locally and she’s away home, but she left you something and I’ve been keeping it hot in the bottom of the oven.

‘Afraid you’re in the attic – oh, I’m Flora Lyle by the way. I’m your Forewoman.’ She held out her hand and her grip was warm and firm. ‘I hope you don’t mind being shoved up here? It’s cold in winter and hot in summer, but it’ll only be until someone leaves and there’s bedspace for you in one of the rooms. We shouldn’t really use the attics – fire-bomb risk, you know, but I don’t suppose there’ll be any, and there’s sand and water up there, just in case. And you will have a room to yourself,’ she added, as if by way of compensation. ‘It’s just that we’re so crowded …’

‘It looks just fine to me.’ Kath set down her case and gazed around the small, low-ceilinged room, saw a black-painted iron bed, mattress rolled, blankets folded, a window hung with blackout curtains in the gable-end wall. Stark, it was, like the orphanage; bare like her room had been in service.

‘Your cupboard is outside on the landing, I’m afraid.’

‘It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t.’ A chest of drawers stood beneath the sloping ceiling, a chair beside the bed. ‘It’s fine, truly.’

Kath didn’t mind being in the attic. She had slept in an attic the whole of her years in domestic service and shared it, what was more, with a maid who snored. A room to herself was an unknown luxury, far removed from the long, green dormitory she once slept in with nineteen others. Even married to Barney she had shared, not only with him which was to be expected, but with his mother next door, for she’d been sure the old lady lay awake nights, ears strained for every whisper and every creak of their marital bedsprings. Yes, an attic – a room to herself would be bliss and she wouldn’t care if they left her there until it was all over, and Barney came home.

Barney? Oh, lordy! If only he could see her now.

‘I don’t suppose you know where I’ll be going to work?’ Kath hung her coat and gas mask on the door peg.

‘I do. You’re going to Ramsden’s farm, at the far end of Alderby village. You’re urgently needed, it seems. They want you there in the morning. Now, lassie, do you want to unpack first, or would you rather eat?’

‘Eat – please!’ Kath followed her amiable Forewoman to the warmth of the kitchen, sighing as the plate was set before her.

She would remember this day for ever, she really would. Thursday, 18th December 1941; the day on which her new life began. It had taken a long, long time, but now she was here in the country and it was near-unbelievable and undeniably wonderful.

‘Thanks,’ she whispered huskily. ‘Thanks a lot …’

2

There was no denying that bicycles figured importantly in Kathleen Allen’s life. They always had, as far back as she could remember, starting with the orphanage and the little tricycles that were the only memory worth keeping from those days of grudging charity. The bright red three-wheeler with the noisy bell was her favourite and she had pedalled around and around the asphalted yard on this gaudy friend who shared her secret dreams; dreams in which she was not an orphan but a real little girl whose mother dressed her in a buttercup-sprigged cotton dress with knickers to match and whose father gave her rides on the crossbar of his bicycle and boasted, ‘Our Kathleen’s doing well at school.’ Our. That lovely, belonging little word.

When her in-service days began, there had been her first proud possession, something entirely her own, paid for at three shillings and sixpence a month, for a whole year. A second-hand bicycle, black-painted, with a bag on the back and a basket at the front.

‘Lizzie,’ she whispered, remembering. ‘Old Tin Lizzie.’

She had ridden Tin Lizzie on her afternoons off and on summer evenings when she finished work. She was cycling in the country the day she and Barney met. Had it not been for a flat tyre, the lorry driver would never have jumped from his cab and offered his help.

‘Oh dear, chucks. Know how to mend it?’

She shook her head, knowing only that the cost of repair would take a large bite from the one pound ten shillings she received on the last day of each month.

So the driver put the bicycle on the back of his lorry and drove to the Birmingham town house in which she worked, offering to remove the wheel and repair the puncture in his own backyard. To her shame she had refused, for where was the guarantee she would ever see her wheel again?

But she saw Barnaby Allen again that very next evening when he knocked loudly on the front door – the front door, mind you – saying he was the bicycle repair man. The parlourmaid pointed in the direction of the area steps, reminding him tartly that the kitchen door was the one upon which to knock when doing business with a housemaid.

Barney. His cheekiness had made her laugh and the dedication with which he courted her had been quite bewildering. And now, at six o’clock in the morning she was cycling into her new, exciting life, wishing she knew where Alderby St Mary was, let alone Matthew Ramsden’s farm.

She stopped, listening, eyes peering into a darkness that came back at her in dense, rolling waves. ‘Alderby’s about a mile down the lane,’ Flora had told her at the hostel. ‘Keep straight on and you can’t miss it. Watch out for the Air Force boys, though. Drive those trucks like fiends some of them do …’

She set off again cautiously; you had to take care in the blackout. Swollen noses, bruises and shattered spectacles had become a joke, almost. ‘Jumped out and hit you, did it?’ Unexpected obstacles had a lot to answer for, especially lamp-posts.

Ahead, the first pale streaks of daybreak coloured the sky, tipping the clouds with yellow, all at once giving shape to houses and trees and the tower of a church. This must be the place, sitting at the end of the longest, darkest, slowest mile she had ever pedalled. Surely she would find someone soon, who could tell her where to find Matthew Ramsden’s farm.

She stood still again and listened, breath indrawn. That was something else about the blackout. You couldn’t see, so you listened. Surprising how another sense took over. Someone was there and not too far away, either. She pulled in her breath once more, heard the slow, rhythmic grating of cartwheels and the clop of hooves somewhere to her right. ‘Hullo?’ she called eagerly. ‘Hullo, there!’

‘Over here! Watch out for the horse-trough!’ A pinpoint of light made circles in the darkness and she walked carefully in the direction of the voice. A pony and trap came into focus; milk bottles clinked.

‘Hullo?’ she said again.

‘Here I am.’ A woman’s voice. ‘Looking for someone?’

‘Goodness! Am I glad to meet you.’ Kath’s laugh was high with relief. ‘I’m looking for Ridings Home Farm. Is this Alderby St Mary?’

‘It is. Just hang on till I check that I haven’t missed anybody.’ A spot of torchlight shone on the pages of a book, lighting a young face and a fall of auburn hair. ‘That’s it, then. Just the school milk to drop off, and Polly’s, then I’m finished. I’m Roz Fairchild, by the way. I work at Ridings.’ A hand reached out.

‘Kathleen Allen. Kath.’ She grasped the hand firmly, ‘I’m pleased to meet you.’ She really was.

‘Not as glad as Mat Ramsden’s going to be to meet you. He’s desperate for help. Hope you’re his new landgirl?’

‘That’s me, though I’ve only just joined. It’ll be my first farm and I’m a bit nervous.’

‘Then don’t be, because I’m new to it, too. This is my first day – my first official day. We’ll muddle through between us.’

‘I can’t milk, Roz.’ Worrying about those cows again, dammit.

‘Neither can I, but it’s machine milking at Mat’s so it won’t be too bad. Jonty will show us how. Let’s be making tracks, eh? I’m just about frozen.’ The weather wasn’t letting up, thank heaven. There’d be no ploughing but there wouldn’t be any flying, either. Paul would make it to the dance tonight. ‘Grace is sure to have the kettle on. C’mon, Daisy. Hup, girl.’

The little pony set off with a toss of its head that set the harness jingling.

Daisy, Kath smiled; Roz and Daisy. Two friends, and she was on her way to hot tea and a welcome.

Happiness flushed her cheeks. She wouldn’t spoil one minute of this day by worrying about what Barney’s letter would bring. There was a war on and a woman whose husband was away at war must learn to think for herself, make decisions she would once never dreamed of making. No, Kath decided, suddenly headily defiant, she wouldn’t worry – well, not until Barney came home.

She smiled with pure pleasure and fell in behind the milk-float that would lead her to the farm. New friends and tea. What more could a girl – a landgirl – want on this most special morning?

They came upon Ridings unexpectedly, rounding the broad sweep of lane to see it there ahead of them. It was one of the nice things about the old house, Roz always thought. Now, the fast-lightening sky silhouetted it sharply, sending a glow like candlelight through the empty stone windows, gentling the jagged, broken shell.

‘What’s that old ruin? An abbey?’ Kath gasped.

‘That’s Ridings,’ Roz laughed, ‘or what’s left of it. I live there.’ She always enjoyed telling people she lived in a ruin.

‘Oh, goodness, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean …’ Her embarrassment was short-lived, for Roz was smiling. ‘I mean – it’s an unusual name, isn’t it?’

‘Ridings? I suppose it is. It’s because half of it is in the North Riding and half of it’s in the West Riding. The boundary line runs right through the estate. And it isn’t all a ruin. There’s a bit more to it than that. It was built in the shape of a T, you see, and the top of the T was completely destroyed, but the stem, the bit at the back, survived. That’s the part we live in.’

She called the pony to a halt. She loved this aspect of the old house; always from this spot she sent up a thank you that it hadn’t been entirely gutted that December day, twenty-four years ago.

‘It must have been one heck of a place,’ Kath breathed. ‘And just look at those gates …’

The entrance to Ridings had been built with pride. Sweeping stone gateposts were topped by finely chiselled greyhounds and on either side of them the gate lodges stood splendidly ornate. Kath gazed at the intricately patterned gates and the garish morning light that filtered through the delicate ironwork.

‘The height of three men and as old as the house itself.’ Roz smiled, though the name of the craftsman who created them had never been known. ‘I’m glad you like them. Mind, we live in fear that someone’s going to take them away before very much longer.’

She hoped the gates would escape the scrap metal hunters; men who came with the blessing of the Government and removed gates and railings without so much as a by-your-leave, carting them off to be melted down for the war effort. Only field gates were safe, and unpatriotic though it was to harbour such thoughts, Roz was glad that so far Ridings’ gates had not been found.

‘Who did it?’ Kath demanded. ‘Cromwell?’

‘No. This one we can’t blame on him, though the Fairchilds were Royalists, I believe. It was a fire; a wiring fault. Funny, really, that it survived for nearly four hundred years with candles and oil lamps and then my grandfather decided that electricity would be safer.’

‘How big was it?’ Much bigger, surely, than the orphanage.

‘Quite a size – over twenty bedrooms, but I never saw it the way it was. There are pictures, though, and photographs, and I sometimes think the fire was meant to be because Gran and me couldn’t have kept it going; not a place that size.’

‘It’s yours? You own it?’

‘It’s Gran’s. Before my father died – he was an architect – he had the ruins tidied up, sort of. The fire destroyed the roof so everything had to be pulled down for safety, except the outer walls. Then Gran had creepers and climbing roses planted against them and in summer it looks really beautiful. It’s mellowed, I suppose.’

‘And was much left, at the back?’

‘Too much, I’m afraid. It’s murder keeping it warm in winter. The part that survived was once the kitchen block and servants’ quarters and my father drew up the plans when Gran had it done over. You’ll see it, when you meet her.

‘But let’s get Daisy watered and fed, then we can thaw ourselves out at Grace’s fire, and cadge a cup of tea.’

Roz looked at the young woman beside her, seeing her clearly for the first time, amazed by her beauty. There was no mistaking it, even in a face pinched with cold and tied round with a head-scarf. Deep, blue-grey eyes, thick-lashed, and a full, sensuous mouth.

‘Is your boyfriend in the forces, Kathleen?’

‘My husband is. Barney.’ Her lips moved into a brief smile. ‘He’s in North Africa – a driver in the Service Corps. And call me Kath, will you? I’m used to Kath. What about you?’ Too young to be married. Seventeen, perhaps?

‘Not married, but I’ve got a boyfriend. I’m seeing him tonight. There’s a – Damn!’ She reached for a bottle of milk. ‘I forgot Polly at the lodge! Won’t be a minute. Just follow Daisy, will you? She knows her way home. I’ll catch you up.’

Kath turned to watch the girl who ran swiftly back to the gates. A little older than seventeen, she conceded, but in love for the first time if shining eyes were anything to go by. Amazing how important people were in wartime; how easily you got to know them. Before the war you didn’t ask such personal questions; you kept yourself to yourself and respected the other person’s right to privacy. Yet now it was necessary to make friends quickly, because one thing no one had a lot of was time. For some, there wasn’t even a tomorrow. Young as she was, Roz could already have learned that, poor kid.

But tomorrow was a long way off when today had only just begun. Lovely, lovely today. Her first day in the country where she had always longed to be.

‘Sorry, Barney,’ she whispered, ‘but you owe me this one.’

Smiling, she set off after the little pony.

‘There now, that’ll be Roz. I thought she’d forgotten us.’ Polly Appleby glanced up from the porridge pan at the clink of the milk bottle on the back-door step. ‘Bring it in, Arnie, there’s a good lad.’

She watched the boy dart away. He would expect the top of the milk on his porridge and she would give it to him; after all a growing lad needed a good breakfast inside him. Arnie ate every last scrap of food she set before him with silent dedication and no I-don’t-like-this and I-don’t-like-thats. His appreciation of food made cooking a joy, even with rationing the way it was. He’d been like that right from the start, come to think of it; a small, hungry seven-year-old, scrawny and unwashed, the last of the bunch.

They had started, that day the evacuees arrived in Alderby, at the far end of the village and house by house the pretty little girls and the clean, tidy boys had been picked out and taken in. Since she was the last call on the list, Polly accepted, it stood to reason she had been given what was left; an evacuee called Arnold Bagley whose clothes didn’t fit and who’d scowled at her something alarming.

‘I’m afraid,’ said the WVS lady who accompanied the billeting officer, ‘that he’s all we have to offer, but there is an allowance of five shillings a week …’

Polly had squirmed inside at the injustice of it and her heart warmed to the unwanted boy who stood on her doorstep, his possessions in a carrier-bag, a label pinned to his jacket.

‘Just what I wanted,’ she said briskly. ‘Come you in, lad, and let’s get you sorted out.’

She’d have wanted him with or without the five shillings. Arnold Bagley was a challenge, a child to be cleaned and fed and put snugly to sleep in the little back bedroom. And cleaning and feeding he received, for there had been scarcely a pick of flesh on the young bones.

She recalled that first meal. Rabbit pie and rice pudding for afters. He’d eaten it as if it were the first food he’d seen all week, then looked with longing at the pudding dish and asked to be allowed to scrape it clean.

‘There was another lady with Roz, Aunty Poll. I saw her.’ Arnie took his place at the table again, sitting with spoon erect, waiting. ‘She was pushing a bike and she had trousers on.’

‘There now, that’ll be the landgirl. Mat Ramsden’ll be relieved she’s come, even though the lass won’t know a cow from a bull. Come on, then. Get on with that porridge whilst I make your toast.’

She smiled fondly. The lad was a credit to her, everybody said so. He’d filled out and was three inches taller than when she got him and his two top teeth had grown in straight as a die.

She’d had her anxious moments, though, clothing that ever-growing, ever-hungry frame, but with the help of jumble sales and hand-me-downs she had managed. Arnie was the centre of her lonely life and just let his feckless mother try to take him back to Hull. Just let her try!

She turned the bread on the fork and held it to the fire. There’d be something fresh to talk about this morning when she went up to the house. Pity the frost hadn’t broken in the night. The Mistress was letting that ploughing business get out of all proportion and no use telling her it would get done in the Lord’s good time, though it always, had and it always would be. They’d manage, somehow.

‘Jam on it, or marmalade?’ she said to Arnie.

‘It looks,’ Grace Ramsden pulled aside the kitchen blackout, ‘as if our landgirl has arrived.’ She nodded in the direction of the dairy where Roz and a strange young woman unloaded the milk-float. ‘And making herself useful already. The post has come, by the way. On the table.’ She pulled out the fire-damper and set the kettle to boil. Roz had managed the milk-round all right, it seemed. But then, the lass knew the village, didn’t she; lived in it since she was a bairn of two, bless her. ‘Ready for a bit of breakfast, then?’

She broke eggs into a pan, a contented woman, a rare woman, even, who recognized happiness the moment it came upon her, not like some who saw it only when it was past, and lost. These moments were happy ones, to be lived and remembered. Just this morning when she shook Jonty awake, she had felt such a blaze of happiness to see him there that she had thanked God yet again for letting her keep her son, then sent up another prayer for all the sons who had gone to war and the mothers who had waved them bravely on their way.

Jonty had been their only child, she frowned, basting egg-yolks with spitting bacon fat. She and Mat had never been blessed with a daughter, but now she was to have girls around the place at last; two young lasses to help on the farm and be in and out of her kitchen all day, she shouldn’t wonder. Just to think of it gave her pleasure.

‘Fried bread?’ she demanded of her husband who didn’t look up from the letter he was reading.

Fried bread for Jonty, too, when he’d seen to the cows, and the lasses would soon be in for tea and toast, huffing and puffing with cold and warming their hands at her fire.

Daylight had been late coming this morning. Farming was hard enough in winter without the blackout making it worse, Grace considered, but soon the shortest day would be past them. Winter would be half-way gone and the days would begin to lengthen; there’d be the first snowdrop beneath the holly hedge where they always found it and spring just around the corner.

She gave an involuntary shudder. Something, no mistaking it, had just walked over her grave. Or maybe it was only her silly self being so contented with her own little world that Someone up there was sending down a warning.

Grace Ramsden lifted her eyes, offering a silent apology, assuring Him she really did count her blessings and would count them harder, if need be.

‘Fried bread, I asked you,’ she murmured, ‘and you take not a bit of notice. What’s so interesting in that letter, then?’

‘It’s the farm man. They’ve got us one. He can plough, too, it seems.’

‘There you are, then! Problem solved, so why the long face, you daft old brush?’

‘Why?’ Mat handed over the envelope. ‘Read this. Go on – read it.’

‘Oh, my word.’ Grace frowned when she had read the letter, then read it again. ‘This is going to put the cat among the pigeons, all right. Mrs Fairchild isn’t going to like this at all. And who’s to be the one to break it to her, will you tell me?’

‘Mrs Fairchild’s land has got to be ploughed and worked for the duration, lass, so she don’t have much of a choice,’ Mat retorted, tight-lipped. ‘Nor do we, come to that. Complain and all they’ll do is tell us there’s a war on.’

‘Then if you want my opinion,’ Grace laid the letter on the table, ‘that lot at the War Ag. are dafter than I thought.’

Trouble, that letter was going to bring; nothing but trouble and heartache.

Polly saw the black and white bird as it slipped sleekly into the holly bush, and crossed her fingers.

‘Drat you, bird,’ she hissed.

She didn’t like magpies; to see one so early in the day and flying away from a frosty sun, she liked still less. Devil’s bird; bringer of ill luck. One for sorrow …

Taking a deep breath she hurried past the bush. Nor did she uncross her fingers until she opened the back door at Ridings.

‘Well now, you’ll have heard about the landgirl?’ She hung up her coat, hoping the Mistress had not, wanting to be first with the news.

‘I’ve heard.’ Hester Fairchild set the teapot to warm. ‘It’s the other business I find so hard to accept.’ Her face was pale, her mouth tight-set. ‘How could they, Polly? How dare they?’

‘Dare they what?’ Polly was mystified. She had hoped to have a chat about the landgirl this morning; discover her name and age and if she looked like shaping-up to farm work. ‘What’s happening, then, that I don’t know about?’

‘I told Mat; told him to ring the War Ag. at once. But no, they said, there hadn’t been a mistake and he’d be arriving on the first of January. Mat says we’ve little choice in the matter. If we refuse to take him, Ridings will go to the bottom of the list and the man can use a horse-plough, they said.’

‘So where’s the bother? Seems Mat’s got what he wanted and he’ll be able to make a start on those acres of yours. I’d have thought that things were bucking up a bit and you could’ve looked forward to the new year with a bit of hope; aye, and money to come once that grassland of yours has been seen to,’ Polly reasoned, ever practical.

‘Seen to by an Italian, because that’s what we’ve been offered.’ Her voice shook with anger. ‘That’s what my husband gave his life for, Polly; to have his land worked by a man who fought with the Germans.’

‘Nay, surely not …’

‘A Fascist, I tell you! We’re so short of manpower that we’re having to make prisoners of war work. But I don’t want one here. Didn’t Italy declare war on us after Dunkirk; stab us in the back? He’ll be every bit as bad as a German!’

Why must they do this to her, to a woman who had hated all things German with a bitter intensity since the December day the telegram came. From that day on she had never trusted them and she had been right, because now they were at war with us again. And Italy fighting with them.

But thank God that no one at Ridings need speak to the man when he came, for there must be no fraternization, the War Ag. had told Mat. The man would be brought to the farm each morning from the camp at Helpsley and taken back there by a prison guard. He’d be trusted not to try to escape and anyway, who could hope to escape from an island?

Don’t worry, they had said on the phone. One or two farmers had already taken Italian prisoners and it was working out all right. Worry? It would be worry enough just to have the man on her land; on Martin’s land.

Yet did she have a choice when the first of March would be on her before she’d hardly had time to think? All the lonely years she had struggled to keep Ridings land intact, yet now it would be given to others to farm if she refused the help of a prisoner of war. But to have such a one walking Martin’s acres was too much. The world had gone completely mad.

‘Tea,’ said Polly briefly, setting down the tray with agitated hands. She knew the Mistress almost as well as she knew herself; knew the pent-up emotions that had found no relief with the passing of time, that writhed and festered inside her, still. Pity the poor woman couldn’t have given way to her feelings as she, Polly, had done. The day they told her about Tom’s death she had walked and walked, hugging herself tightly, weeping until there were no more tears inside her. In Flanders, her young man had been killed, the spring after the Master was taken.

But Mrs Fairchild’s sort didn’t weep and rage at life. The gentry hid their feelings because that was what they’d been brought up to do. Pity she’d had to stifle all that grief and bitterness, because hating got you nowhere. Thank the Lord that what happened that December day hadn’t affected young Roz, she thought gratefully, for the lass was as happy as the day was long. Which was just as well, all things considered, for it would be her and not the Mistress who’d have to work with the prisoner.

‘Wonder what Roz is up to on her first day as a farm-worker?’ she offered cautiously, but her effort was wasted, for she got no reply. Not that she’d expected one, but it had been worth a try.

If only, she sighed inside her, Mrs Fairchild didn’t take on so about Ridings. If only she would accept that none of this was any of her doing, that there was no price to be paid for what happened all those years ago. But she blamed herself and always would, the proud, foolish woman.

‘Damn that magpie,’ she muttered. ‘Damn the evil creature!’

Washing milk bottles and placing them in the sterilizer required little in the way of concentration and allowed for chatter. It must also, Kath decided, be the warmest job on the farm this bleak, winter morning.

‘There now.’ Roz smiled. ‘Just the milk churns to scald and the floor to mop …’

‘You know so much about it,’ Kath sighed, ‘and I don’t know anything at all. I’m a dead loss.’

‘You’ll soon learn – get used to the routine and the seasons. It’s the seasons that govern farming. I don’t really know a lot; it’s just that I seem to have been in and out of Home Farm since ever I can remember. It grows on you, I suppose. It was only yesterday they told me officially that I could stay on and work here. I’d half expected to be called up, you know. What’s it like, Kath, leaving home and living in a hostel?’

‘It’s going to be great. The Forewoman is fine and the Warden, too. They were really concerned because there was nowhere for me to sleep but the attic. And I didn’t mind at all. I hope they leave me there. It’s the first time I’ve ever had a room to myself – can’t get over the novelty …’

‘You’re from a big family, I suppose,’ Roz demanded, enviously.

‘Yes, you might say that.’ Her laugh was genuine. ‘As a matter of fact I was brought up in an orphanage.’

Best get it over with; let everyone know, right from the start. You knew where you stood, then, with people.

‘Oh, Kath, I’m sorry – well, sorry if it was awful, I mean. I didn’t mean to pry.’

‘It’s all right.’ She laughed again at the sight of the bright red face. ‘And I don’t really know if it was awful – I’ve never known anything else, you see. I was left outside a police station when I was two weeks old. That much I do know because there was a piece of paper pinned to my blanket with Kathleen written on it and my date of birth. They gave me that paper and the blanket when I left the orphanage and they’d already given me the surname Sykes after the policeman who found me, but I’m Kathleen Allen, now. That name is really mine.’

‘Then that makes two of us,’ Roz hastened, eager to make amends, ‘because I’m an orphan, too. My parents were killed in a car crash in Scotland, though what possessed them to leave me with Gran and go careering off just days before Christmas, I’ll never know.

‘It’s just about now that it happened. Gran hates this month. All the awful things have happened in December. And I’m sorry if I seemed rude, but I didn’t know –’

‘Of course you didn’t and I don’t mind about it any more. Can’t change things, can you, though sometimes I wish I knew who I really am and if my name is O’Malley or Rafferty or Finnegan.’

‘Why Irish names?’

‘Because that’s what I think I am. Kathleen – it’s an Irish name, isn’t it? And Barney’s aunt says my colouring is Irish.’

‘Then I wish I had it,’ Roz sighed. ‘This red hair is no end of a nuisance. Poll Appleby says I’m a throwback.’ She laughed out loud. ‘Quite an act we’re going to be – an orphan and a throwback, wouldn’t you say?’

Kath laughed with her. In spite of her accent, Roz seemed not to mind about the orphanage and her not being wanted, because not being wanted was the worst part of the whole thing. She could still weep, if she let herself, for that two-week-old baby; still felt grateful to Barney for giving her an identity. ‘That’s the floor finished,’ she said. ‘Now what?’

‘Well, the leftover milk is put in the churns for the milk-lorry to collect. Jonty usually does that, but I suppose we’ll be doing it now. I’ll ask him.’

‘I like your boyfriend,’ Kath confided. ‘Lovely and tall, isn’t he? Doesn’t look like a farmer, though. More the studious type, but I suppose that’s because of his glasses. D’you know, when he took them off he looked really handsome.’

‘Jonty? You’re talking about Jonty?’ Roz squeaked. ‘He isn’t my boyfriend! Whatever gave you that idea?’

‘Sorry! Must have got it wrong. I thought, you see, that –’ That when a man looked at a girl the way he looked at Roz, his eyes gentle and loving, following every move she made, his face lighting up the minute he walked into the room and saw her there … ‘that – well, I got it wrong, I suppose.’

‘You certainly did! My boyfriend is called Paul. He’s aircrew, over at Peddlesbury. I’m seeing him tonight. You’ll be coming, won’t you, to the dance? But Jonty – well, he – he’s Jonty. He’s been there as long as I can remember. More like a brother, really, and you don’t fall in love with your brother, now do you?’

You don’t, Kath agreed silently; of course you don’t. But he isn’t your brother, Roz, and he is in love with you; deeply in love, and you don’t know it, she wanted to cry. Instead she said, ‘Don’t think I’ll be coming to the dance. Most of the girls at the hostel are going, but I want to get properly settled in, and wash my hair tonight. I’ll be there next time, though.’

It was strange that a married woman could go to dances now without her husband – provided she went with a crowd and came home with a crowd. ‘What do we do now?’ she asked.

‘Don’t really know. This is my first day here, too, but we’ll be all right once Mat decides what to do with us. Think we’d better pop over and ask. Leave your gum-boots at the door, by the way. Grace doesn’t allow them in the kitchen. And Kath – I’m glad you’re here.’

‘Me, too.’

She was. And happy to be living in the country, even though it was winter and unbearably cold. There was such a feeling of rightness about being here, of belonging, that she felt sure she had been born of country stock. She saw nothing of the drabness of dead, cold earth nor of winter-bare trees, only the beauty of skeletal oaks and beeches, stark against a grey velvet sky. This morning, the early light had gilded everything it touched so that all around her had looked like a picture in a shop window.

She wasn’t just happy and glad and sure, now, that she had been right to become a landgirl – there was something else, too; something she couldn’t define or even begin to understand. Yet it was there, churning inside her like the day she had volunteered, and yesterday, when the front door banged behind her and she had known there was no going back. Now it was there again, only stronger than ever before; a feeling of joy waiting to explode; a certainty that one day, just around a corner, something wonderful awaited her. It made her feel glad and afraid and happy and guilty.

She swallowed hard and kicked off her gum-boots. Guilty? Whatever could there be to feel guilty about?

‘Wait!’ she called urgently. ‘Wait for me, Roz!’

Huddled into her coat, Roz waited at the door of the gymnasium in which the dances were held. Already the music had started, but she always slipped away as the local girls and the landgirls from Peacock Hey climbed down from the RAF truck and filed through the heavily-curtained doors. No use their meeting inside when the need to hold each other and kiss away the time between was so urgent. Always, the first to arrive would wait in the darkness and tonight it was she, Roz, who stood unmoving, ears straining against the music for a whispered, ‘Roz? You there, darling?’

She dug her hands deeper into the pockets of her coat, calling back the night of their meeting, marvelling at the intensity of their love. She had never thought it could be like this; never imagined that loving this deeply could have so changed her life.

When she was very small and her prayers had been said, she would whisper, ‘And please let me marry a prince, God, so Granny and me can live at Ridings for ever.’ And later, when she understood how large bills could be and how very little money they had she would yearn, Wouldn’t it be lovely to fall in love with someone rich; someone who would care for Ridings as we do …

But all that changed the night she and Paul met. Even the old house and the need to hold on to it would come a poor second, had she been asked to choose between it and Paul.

Now she was in love; deeply and for ever in love as Gran had been and most times her happiness was shining and golden. There were the bad bits, she admitted, when the squadron took to the air over Peddlesbury and she was sick with anxiety until they were back and the phone rang and a voice whispered, ‘Hi! I love you.’ She never minded so brief a message; not when it really meant he was safely home, and that soon they would meet.

But what would happen now with the morning milk-round to be done and she no longer able to wait beside the phone to snatch it up immediately it began to ring, Roz worried. She couldn’t ask Gran to take a message because Gran didn’t know about Paul, and to wait for a call at the phone box in the village during the milk-round wouldn’t work, even with Kath to help, because she never knew when he would be back. She determined to talk to Paul about it. There had to be some other way he could let her know he was all right.

She heard his footfall on the gravel – that was something else about being in love, knowing the way your man walked, even in the blackout. She coughed and he called, ‘Roz? Sweetheart?’ All at once everything was all right again and they were touching and kissing and oh, dear, sweet Heaven, how she loved him.

‘I missed you,’ she whispered.

‘Two days?’ His laugh was indulgent.

‘Two hours,’ she murmured, ‘is too long. They’re getting worse, Paul, the bits between.’

Practically all she did between their meetings was fervently wish away the hours and days until they were together again.

‘Why can’t we be married, Paul?’

‘Because I’m flying and you aren’t twenty-one.’

‘That’s no excuse, and you know it. And it isn’t what I meant. You know what I’m trying to say.’

‘Sssssh.’ He tilted her chin, searching with his mouth for hers, but she jerked her head aside.

‘No, darling! I won’t be shushed! It’s getting unbearable, the way I want you!’

‘And you think I don’t want you? Haven’t you thought it might be every bit as bad for me? When I’m flying I’m thinking, “Christ, I was mad to get into this mob. Suppose we don’t make it back? Suppose I never see her again …”’

‘Then why, darling, when we love each other so much?’

‘Because it wouldn’t be fair to you. What kind of a mess would you be in if something went wrong, then I didn’t get back?’

‘If you didn’t come back, don’t you think it’s all the more reason for us to have loved – really loved?’

‘Roz, sweetheart. You might get pregnant and I might be killed.’

‘Don’t!’ She stiffened in his arms, sudden fear taking her. ‘Don’t ever say that word again – not ever! I love you, Paul Rennie. I want to be with you always. Fifty years from now, I want to be with you!’

‘I’m sorry.’ His voice was low with regret.

‘And I’m sorry, too, so let’s not talk about it any more – well, not tonight.’ She pressed close again, touching his chin, his cheek, the tip of his nose with little teasing kisses. ‘Only I do love you so. And I want you. Nothing will change that.’

‘And I love you. I’ve always loved you. And I want you, too.’

He unbuttoned his greatcoat then wrapped her into it, pulling her even closer. Their lips met and both knew the need to belong and both silently accepted its inevitability.

Roz stood contented against him. She didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. They would be lovers. The time would come and they would each recognize the moment. If she got pregnant and if she were left alone, then she would manage somehow. Women usually did. Only never to have belonged, even briefly, would be unbearable.

Presently she stirred in his arms. ‘Let’s go into the dance,’ she whispered.

3 1942

A crescent moon lay pale in the sky; the early morning air was sharp. Another year, a new, exciting beginning. Kath pedalled briskly, more sure of the road now, thinking back to the happiest Christmas she had ever known.

It had started with the same too-early call, for even on Christmas Day farm animals must be fed and watered, the cows milked, and she had done the morning round with Roz, touched to find greetings cards and small gifts left beside empty bottles.

When they had finished the dairy work and put out dishes of milk for the seven farm cats, they gathered in Grace’s kitchen to drink a toast to victory in carefully-hoarded dandelion wine and wished each other a happy Christmas.

‘No more work today,’ Mat had smiled, over his glass. ‘Off home, the pair of you.’

It was sad, Kath thought, that Barney’s letter should be there when she got back to Peacock Hey a little before noon, and even though she had been expecting it for days, she wished it could have waited until tomorrow or have arrived a day earlier, for nothing at all should be allowed to spoil the joy of this special Christmas. This day above all others she wanted to think kindly of her husband, not shrink from his disapproval; wanted to laugh a lot and eat Christmas dinner with the landgirls who were drifting back to the hostel in ones and twos, the remainder of the day their own. Carefully she slit open the envelope, steeling herself against her husband’s anger.

The letter from North Africa confirmed her worst fears. Barney’s reply was crisp with dissent, accusing her of deceit when she must have known all along that no married woman could be made to do war work away from her home. It was open condemnation; it hurt her deeply.

Selfish, that’s what you are, Kath. The minute I’m gone you’re parading around in uniform making an exhibition of yourself and against my wishes, too …

She swallowed hard, anger rising briefly inside her. She was not parading anywhere and if getting up at half-past five to deliver milk on a pitch-black winter morning was making an exhibition of herself then yes, she supposed she was.

Well, Kath, you’ve made your bed so you’ll have to lie on it. It’s too late now for regrets. You’re stuck with it for the duration, so don’t come crying to me, Barney warned, when you realize you’d best have stayed at home.

She took a deep, calming breath then pushed the letter into the pocket of her jacket, acknowledging that perhaps Barney could be right, that maybe she had been just a little deceitful. When dinner was over, she would sit down at once and tell him how sorry she was; not sorry for joining, she could never be that, but for not asking him first. Then she would tell him about Alderby and Roz and little Daisy; about Mat and Grace and the tractor she was learning to drive. He’d be pleased to hear about the Post Office bank account she had opened and into which every penny of her Army allowance was being paid.

She would not, she determined, tell him about Jonty yet awhile, for young men who did not answer their country’s call made Barnaby Allen’s hackles rise. Nor would she tell him, ever, about the prisoner of war soon to arrive at Home Farm. Barney held all things Teutonic in contempt and it would do nothing for his peace of mind to learn that his wife might soon be working alongside the Germans’ closest ally.

Lastly, she would tell him that she loved him and missed him and thought about him a lot, for no matter what a letter contained or what it omitted to mention, the loving and the missing was an essential part of every letter to every serviceman overseas.

Now that letter was on its way and the new year nearly six hours old. Surely Barney would come to understand that this was the first real freedom she had ever known – might ever know – and that she must be allowed to make the most of every single day. Soon, her loving letters would reassure him, let him know how deeply she cared.

‘A happy new year, Barney,’ she whispered. ‘Take care.’

‘Happy new year!’ Roz was loading milk-crates on to the trap when Kath arrived at Home Farm. ‘Up early, aren’t you? Don’t tell me you haven’t been to bed.’

‘No such luck. No parties for me last night; Paul was flying. Make you sick, wouldn’t it, flying ops on New Year’s Eve and not one of them back yet. Lord knows where they’ve been all this time. Even if it was Berlin, they should have been back before now.’

‘They will be,’ Kath consoled. ‘It’s early, yet.’ And dark, and almost two hours still to go before the blackout could be lifted. ‘He’ll be all right, I know it. You’ll see him tonight.’

‘Yes I will. I know I will. Look, Kath – can I ask you something a bit personal?’

‘Try me.’

‘Well, were you a – a virgin when you married Barney?’ The words came in a tumble of embarrassment. ‘What I’m trying to say is –’

‘Was I a virgin when we married or had we been lovers?’ Kath looked at the downcast eyes, the pink spots on the young girl’s cheeks. How naïve she was, how painfully unworldly. ‘Well, since you ask, no, we didn’t make love. Mind, we got into a few heavy clinches from time to time, but one of us managed to count up to ten in time.’ One of us. Always me. ‘But it was very different, you see, when we were courting.’ They could talk about tomorrow because then there had been a tomorrow; lovers weren’t snatched apart and homes broken up, children left fatherless. Once, there had been all the time in the world. ‘But what brought all this on?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. There isn’t an awful lot going for it these days, is there – being a virgin, I mean. I wish I weren’t. Does that make me sound like a tart, Kath?’

‘No. In fact I think it must be awful for you, loving Paul so much. Why is it,’ she demanded, ‘that we’re old enough to go to war but not old enough to get married till we’re twenty-one? Crazy, isn’t it? You’re worrying about Paul, aren’t you?’

‘Yes. I always do. I’d have thought they’d have started getting back long before this.’

‘They’re a bit late, that’s all – a headwind, maybe. Well, they can’t all be –’ She stopped, biting back the word missing. ‘What I’m trying to say is –’

‘Ssssh. Quiet!’ Ears straining, Roz gazed into a sky still inky dark. ‘There’s one of them now, I’m sure it is!’

It was several seconds before Kath could hear the faint tired drone of aircraft engines but then, she considered, she wasn’t waiting for the man she loved to come back from a raid over Germany; wouldn’t keep tally as each one thrashed overhead and circled the aerodrome, asking for permission to land, waiting for the runway lights to be turned on.

‘How many went? Did you count them?’

‘Yes.’ Roz always counted. ‘Eleven last night.’

‘Fine. Then we’ll count them in, shall we?’ Kath opened the delivery book. ‘Any cancellations?’

‘None. Ivy Cottage would like an extra pint, if we’ve got one to spare, that’s all.’ She glanced up again, relief in her voice. ‘It’s them, all right, and that’s the first. I wonder where they’ve been till now?’

‘He’ll tell you tonight.’ Kath smiled. ‘By the way, I don’t suppose you’d remembered that it’s today the Italian is coming?’

‘Could I forget? Gran’s still going on about it.’

‘I wonder what he’ll be like.’

‘Oh, short, fat and greasy, according to Gran, and every bit as bad as a German.’ Roz shrugged, only half listening.

‘I always thought Italians were tall, dark and romantic.’

‘I couldn’t care less what he’s like. All I want is for him to keep out of Gran’s way and help out with the ploughing. Oh, come on. Let’s make a start.’

She glanced up sharply as the first of the homecoming Lancasters roared in low over Alderby. She didn’t speak, but already the words ‘Ten to go’, had formed in her mind and ‘Please God, ten more. Please.’

Kath was leading Daisy into her loose box when the truck stopped at the farm gate. Arms folded, she stood to watch.

The man who jumped out at a sharp command from the guard was tall and young and fairer than she would have thought.

‘Come on, you! Chop chop, there! We haven’t got all day!’

The guard was the smaller of the two and a great deal older but he carried a rifle on his shoulder, so size and age didn’t count for a lot, Kath reasoned. Perhaps his animosity sprang from a still-remembered Dunkirk or a bomb-shattered home. You couldn’t blame him, she supposed, for throwing his weight about a bit.

‘The prisoner’s here.’ She closed the dairy door against the cold. ‘A guard has just taken him inside.’

‘Damn!’ Roz set down a crate of bottles with a rattle. ‘I was hoping he wouldn’t arrive. Gran swears she’ll have rid of him just as soon as Mat can find someone else and she will, nothing’s more certain, once the ploughing is done.’

‘Is it possible to hate someone so much?’

‘Gran can.’ Roz ran to the door, wrenching it open, her eyes sliding left and right. ‘Listen! There it is. That’s eleven back! Now what do you suppose kept them?’

‘Does it matter?’ Kath flinched as the massive black shape thundered low over the farm. ‘They’re all home.’

‘Yes,’ Roz sighed, eyes closed. ‘Don’t ever fall for aircrew.’

‘I won’t be falling for anyone. I’m married – remember?’

‘You know what I mean. Look, I’ll scald the churns this morning; you feed the cats, will you?’

Suddenly it was a wonderful day. All at once, at the count of eleven, the cold grey morning was bright with magic. Paul had completed his thirteenth op; the dicey one was behind him. Now surely it would be all right until the last one; until the thirtieth. And tonight they would meet. Perhaps they would dance, perhaps they would walk in the darkness, hands clasped, thighs touching, just glad to be together. Tonight, they might even be lovers.

She closed her eyes, sending silent thanks to the god who had brought eleven crews safely back, knowing that tomorrow or the next day she would once more be counting the bombers out and willing them home again; living through a fresh anguish.

But tonight she and Paul would be together. Tonight was as sure as anything could be in this mad, uncertain world, and tomorrow, and all the uncertain tomorrows, were a million years away.

At eleven o’clock, when they began to wonder if tea-break had been forgotten, Grace called them in to the warmth of the kitchen.

‘Sorry it’s late. I’ve been over to Ridings with drinkings for the men and I stayed to watch. Jonty’s made a start with the tractor and Mat and the prisoner are trying out Duke, and the hand-plough. It’s good to see Duke working. I’m glad we didn’t get rid of him.’ She smiled.

Few farmers had kept their horses once tractors came within their means, but Mat Ramsden loved horses and the great grey Shire was a joy to him.

‘Tractors don’t need feeding and mucking-out,’ some had scoffed.

‘Aye, I’ll grant you that, but my Shire runs on hay which isn’t rationed like tractor fuel is and it don’t have to be brought here, neither, in a convoy. And what’s more,’ he’d grinned, ‘you don’t get manure from tractors!’

Duke weighed a ton, almost, and his hooves were the size of a dinner plate. Such creatures were living miracles, Mat declared; tractors were cold, smelly contraptions and bother or not, the Shire horse had stayed.

‘I’m glad they’ve made a start.’ Roz watched the saccharin tablet rise fizzing to the top of her cup. ‘That ploughing business was really getting Gran down. Will it be finished on time, Grace?’

‘It will.’ The reply was quietly confident. ‘My, but it was grand to see that land getting turned over, coming to life after all those years.’

She had stood there, jug in hand, watching the plough bite deep into the sward; watched it rise green then fall dark and soft as a wave falls on the shore. She had smiled to see the seagulls wheeling overhead then settling in the wake of the plough, grabbing hungrily for grubs. Yes indeed, those long-idle acres were stirring themselves at last.

‘Is the prisoner going to be any help?’ Roz ventured.

‘That he is. He’s framing-up nicely. Him and Duke were turning over some good straight furrows.’

‘How far must a man walk,’ Kath asked, ‘just to plough a single acre? And how does he get such straight furrows?’

‘He walks miles and miles, that’s a fact,’ Grace acknowledged, ‘and he keeps straight by fixing his eyes on something ahead and not losing his concentration.

‘By the way, Roz, Jonty said I was to wish you a happy new year. Said he’s hardly set eyes on you since Christmas morning. He wanted to know what you were doing and I said you’d made a start cleaning the eggs.’

‘And I suppose he said you were to remind me to be careful?’

Eggshells were fragile, to be cleaned with care when the packers who called to collect them were entitled to deduct a penny for every mark on every egg.

‘Well, he did wonder how many you’d broken.’ Grace laughed. ‘Said he supposed it would be scrambled eggs for breakfast tomorrow. Only teasing, mind. You know Jonty …’

She knew him, Roz frowned, or thought she had until Kath had assumed he was her boyfriend. Surely Jonty wasn’t in love with her. He mustn’t be.

‘Teasing? We haven’t had a single accident, have we, Kath?’

‘Not yet.’ Just what was Roz thinking about, Kath brooded, gazing at the suddenly-red cheeks. Jonty was in love with her. Why hadn’t she seen it when it was obvious to everyone else? And did Jonty know about Paul: was he content to wait for the madness to burn itself out – for madness it surely was – and be there when she needed a shoulder to cry on? ‘Come on,’ she said more sharply than she had intended. ‘Let’s get back to those eggs, Roz. There is a war on, you know.’

Kath sat beside the kitchen fire, toasting her stockinged toes, eating the sandwiches the hostel cook had packed for her. She was always hungry these days; food had never tasted so good nor sleep come so easily.

‘Soup, Kath?’ Grace Ramsden stirred the iron pan that hung above the coals.

‘Can you spare it?’ Food was rationed and she should have refused. ‘Just a drop, maybe.’

‘Of course I can spare it.’ Grace took a pint mug from the mantel-shelf. ‘Only vegetables and lentils and barley in it – bits of this and bits of that. Drink it up, lass, and welcome. Whilst you’re waiting for it to cool, can you take some outside?’

‘To the prisoner, Grace?’ Mat’s head jerked up from his plate. ‘He’s brought his rations with him, the guard said, and there’s to be no –’

‘I mind what the guard said. No fraternization. And how are we all to work with a man and not speak to him, will you tell me? This is my kitchen, Mat Ramsden. That lad sitting out there has done a fair morning’s work on our land and Kath is going to take him a mug of soup!’ She stopped, breathless and red-cheeked, ladle brandished, glaring at each in turn. ‘Have I made myself clear?’

‘You have, Grace love. You have,’ Mat said quietly, though the laughter in his eyes belied the gravity in his voice. ‘We’ll not tell the guard.’

‘Good!’ Grace filled the mug to the brim. ‘Glad we’ve got that little matter settled!’

He loves her, Kath marvelled. He teases her, indulges her and his eyes follow her just as Jonty’s eyes follow Roz. After all the years, they’re still in love, she thought as she carried the steaming mug across the yard. Carefully she skirted a patch of ice, wondering if she and Barney would be as much in love after their silver wedding, confident that they would.

The prisoner sat on an upturned box, his back against the straw stack. He looked up at her approach, then laid aside the bread he was eating and rose to his feet.

Kath stood awkwardly, taking in the height of him, the smile he tried to suppress.

‘Hullo. Mrs Ramsden sends soup,’ she said slowly, offering the mug. ‘For you.’

‘The signora is kind. I thank her. It smell good.’

‘You speak English?’ Kath laughed her relief.

‘Si. I learn it in school for five years. I speak it a lot, since I am prisoner.’

‘That’s good.’ She looked into the young, frost-pinched face. He was tall and painfully thin, his eyes large and brown. ‘I’m Kathleen Allen.’ She wondered if she should offer her hand, and decided against it.

‘Kathleen. Katarina.’ He repeated her name slowly. ‘And I am Marco Roselli. If it is allowed, you will please to call me Marco?’

‘Marco. Yes. Well then, I’ll let you get on with it,’ Kath hesitated, stepping backward, ‘whilst it’s hot …’

‘Si, Katarina. And thank you.’

‘He’s –’ no, not nice. We were at war with Italy, so he couldn’t be nice. But he was ordinary, she supposed; like Jonty, really. And not stupid, either, as newspaper cartoons showed Italians to be. ‘He’s little different from us. He said thank you, that the soup smelled good,’ Kath supplied, sitting down again, picking up her own mug. ‘He seems all right.’

‘He is,’ Jonty said firmly. ‘We had quite a talk this morning. His people are farmers in the Italian Tyrol – there might be a bit of Austrian in him. He’d hoped to go to university, but the war stopped it. There’s nothing much wrong with him – and he can handle a horse.’

‘Aye. He can’t help being in the war any more than you can help not being in it, son,’ Grace said softly. ‘It’s the way things are and he’ll be treated decently till he gives us cause not to. What’s his name?’

‘Marco,’ Jonty supplied.

‘That’s all right, then. Well, we can’t keep calling him the prisoner, or the Italian, can we?’ Grace looked appealingly at her husband. Their own son was safe at home; the young man outside had a mother, too.

‘Just as you say, love.’ Mat nodded. ‘And Jonty’s right; he knows about horses.’ A man who knew about horses would be fairly treated at Home Farm. ‘We’d best get back to it whilst the daylight lasts. You ready, son?’

‘I hope,’ Grace remarked when she and Kath were alone, ‘that Mrs Fairchild comes to accept Marco. You’d have thought she’d have been there to see the first few furrows turned over, but not her; not if she has to take help from the other side. It’s sad, her being so bitter, but then, she’s had more than her fair share of trouble.’

‘Trouble? In what way?’

‘Losing her man in the last war was the start of it, then having the fire so soon after. And her daughter and son-in-law getting killed in a car accident.’

‘Her son-in-law?’ Kath frowned. ‘Then why is Roz called Fairchild?’

‘It’s a long story. There was only one child, you see – Janet, Roz’s mother. There should have been a son to carry on the name but Mrs Fairchild lost him; a stillbirth, six months on, when Miss Janet was about three. Took it badly, poor soul. And after that, there were no more children. A lot of us wondered why there hadn’t been another, but Poll Appleby squashed the gossip once and for all. There was a woman in the village who happened to say that it was certain Mrs Fairchild would soon conceive again like often happened after a miscarriage, and Poll told her off good and proper; told her to watch her tongue and never, ever, say anything like that again, and especially in front of the Mistress, not if she knew what was good for her.

‘Then the war came – the first one – and the Master was taken,’ Grace brooded. ‘They said it was a sniper’s bullet, same as took Poll’s man. Not long after came the fire, and her under-insured, then Miss Janet and her husband were killed, and there was a young bairn to be brought up.

‘But proud, that woman is. Living from hand to mouth sometimes, yet always fretting about that dratted house as if all her trouble had been of her own making.’

Grace poured a kettle of water into the sink, tutting indignantly, shaking her head.

‘I’ll dry the dishes for you. Might as well, whilst I’m waiting for Roz to get back. But why,’ Kath persisted, ‘is she called Fairchild? Did her gran change it back, or something?’

‘Not exactly. Roz’s mother – Janet Fairchild as was – married a Londoner called Toby Jarvis, and he agreed to keep the name. Fairchild-Jarvis, Roz is really called, though Roz will always be a Fairchild while her gran lives and breathes, her being the last of the line, so to speak.

‘Still, there’s one blessing to come out of this war. At least that old ruin will be giving something back now. All those good acres barren for so long. But Mat and Jonty – aye, and Marco, too, will have them down to potatoes and sugarbeet afore very much longer, and wheat and barley the year after, and – careful, here’s Roz, now. Do you think the two of you could take the fodder to the cattle in the far field – hay, and chopped swedes? Take the small tractor, if you’d like.’

The tractor. Kath’s eyes gleamed. Her driving was getting better every day. She’d soon be good enough, Jonty said, to drive it on the road. Now that would be something to tell Barney!

Oh, why was life so good? How dare she be so contented, so happy, almost, when men were at war? What would her husband say if he could read her thoughts? Then her chin lifted defiantly.

Sorry, Barney, but there’s a war on here, too. We’re getting bombed and we’re cold and short of coal and next month the sugar ration is going to be cut. So I’m doing my bit the best way I know how and you’ll have to accept it. Sorry, my dear …

Hester Fairchild switched off the kitchen light before opening the back door. ‘Jonty! Come in. Roz won’t be long.’ She pulled over the blackout curtain, switching on the light again. ‘She’s upstairs, getting ready.’

‘Mother said you might be able to use a little extra.’ He placed a bottle of milk on the table. ‘We’re a few pints in hand, whilst the school’s on holiday.’

Hester was grateful, and said so. Even in the country the milk shortage was beginning to be felt and most agreed that the sooner it was placed on official ration, the better.

‘I haven’t come for Roz.’ Jonty glanced down disparagingly at his working clothes. ‘I think she must be going dancing tonight.’ With someone else. She usually was, and he couldn’t blame her. Most girls would rather be seen out with men in uniform. Tonight, probably, Roz would be meeting one of the Peddlesbury airmen. Most of the village girls dated airmen now. ‘Why I really came was to tell you we’ve started the ploughing, though likely you’ll know.’

‘Yes, and I’m relieved it’s under way. Will it be finished in time?’

‘I think so, but the War Ag. isn’t going to quibble over a few days. Why don’t you come over tomorrow and take a look at it?’

Sooner or later she must come face to face with Marco Roselli; best she got it over with.

‘And watch him, Jonty, strutting over Martin’s land?’

‘He doesn’t strut, Mrs Fairchild.’ The reply was firm, yet without offence. ‘He’s called Marco and he’s my age – a good man with a horse-plough, too.’

‘He was fighting for them; with them.’

She fixed him with a stare, leaving him in no doubt that further conversation about the prisoner was at an end.

‘I’m sorry you feel as you do, Mrs Fairchild.’ His voice held a hint of the fatigue he felt. ‘Think I’d best be off. One of the heifers was a bit restless when I looked in on her; she’s due to drop her calf any time.’ A first-calving it would be, that could be tricky. Best he shouldn’t be too long away.

‘Goodnight then, Jonty. I hope you won’t be up all night. Thank you for coming, and for the milk.’ Her voice was more gentle, apologetic almost.

‘’Night. Tell Roz to have a good time.’

A good time! Hands in pockets he kicked out at the tussocky grass of the orchard. Roz had no time for civilians, now. No one had. Even in York, where a different assistant had served him when he called for the tractor spares, he’d come up against the antagonism. Foolishly he’d remarked on it to the middle-aged woman who stood behind the counter.

‘What do you mean, where is she?’ The reply was acid-sharp. ‘She’s gone to join the Air Force, that’s what. They’re calling-up women, now – or hadn’t you noticed, young man?’

Yes, he damn-well had noticed! He noticed it all the time and if he’d had any choice at all in the matter, he’d have joined the Air Force, too.

He hoped Roz didn’t get too deeply involved. Rumour had it that Peddlesbury had lost three bombers in as many weeks. Roz never did things by half. When she fell in love it would be deeply and completely and her grief would be terrible – if she’d fallen for one of the aircrew – if one night he didn’t come back.

There had been a lessening of Luftwaffe raids over England, he brooded, yet Bomber Command had doubled its raids over Germany. Stood to reason there’d be heavy losses.

Take care, Roz – don’t get hurt, love.

Roz swept into Ridings kitchen like a small whirlwind, scooped up her coat then placed a kiss on her grandmother’s cheek. ‘Bye. Got to rush. Don’t wait up for me,’ and was gone before Hester could even begin to warn her not to be too late back.

She made for the gap in the hedge, walking carefully through the orchard to the small, straight lane that led to the Black Horse inn at the top end of Alderby village. She and Paul often met at the back of the pub, though never inside it; she had no wish for her grandmother to learn about him by way of village gossip. Truth known, she admitted reluctantly, she wanted to keep their affair a secret for as long as she could, knowing as she did that this was not the time to take Paul home or even admit she was ‘going out with aircrew’ as Alderby gossip succinctly put it.

It was best, she was sure, that for just a little while longer their love should remain their own, if only to save herself from Gran’s gentle reminders of her lack of years and the folly of loving too deeply in time of war.

He was waiting beside the back entrance. She was able to pick him out in the faint glow from a starry sky and loving him as she did, the tallness of him, the slimness of his build, his very outline was as familiar to her as her own right hand.

‘Paul!’ She went straight to his arms, closing her eyes, lifting her face to his. ‘I’ve missed you.’ She always said that, but she did miss him. An hour apart was a day, and a day without him dragged into an agonized eternity. ‘Kiss me,’ she demanded.

His mouth came down hard on her own and the fierceness of it startled her.

‘Darling, what is it?’

‘Nothing. Everything.’ His voice was rough. ‘God, I love you. You know that, don’t you, Roz?’

‘I know,’ she whispered, her lips on his. ‘I know, Paul. But something is wrong. What happened last night? Let’s walk, shall we?’ She linked her arm in his, guiding him toward the lane. ‘Tell me.’

‘Sorry, darling. It’s – it’s Jock.’

Jock Ferguson, air-gunner. The tail-end Charlie who flew with Paul.

‘Where did you go last night?’

‘Stuttgart. It should have been a milk run, a piece of cake, but they were waiting for us: fighters, flack, the lot. We went in with the first wave and that’s why we got away with it, but the second wave really copped it.’

‘And Jock?’ Her mouth was dry. Paul’s tension was hers now.

‘A searchlight picked us up and Jock yelled over the intercom that there was a fighter on to us. Then he said something like, “Christ! It’s jammed. The bloody thing’s jammed!” Then nothing.’

‘Yes?’ She squeezed his hand tightly.

‘Skip told me to go to the tail and find out what was up – see if I could sort it.’

‘Jock was hurt?’ She pulled him to her, holding him tightly, feeling the jerking of his shoulders and the bitter dragging out of each word.

‘The turret was smashed – a great, gaping hole and Jock – hell, Roz, his face was – he was – Jock’s dead.’

‘Ssssh.’ She covered his mouth with her own, stilling his anger and grief. ‘I love you. I love you, Paul.’ It was all she could think of to say.

‘His gun must’ve jammed. He certainly didn’t fire it. He wasn’t eighteen, Roz. Not till next week. We were planning a booze-up for him. A kid, that’s all he was. A kid on his thirteenth op. It makes you want to jack it all in. He hadn’t lived, poor sod.’

‘I’m sorry, darling. I’m sorry.’ Not yet eighteen. Younger, even, than herself. ‘His mother?’ It was important to think of her, too.

‘She’s a widow, I believe, but they’ll give her a pension, I shouldn’t wonder. And they’ll have sent her a telegram by now then follow it up with the usual letter – full of platitudes it’ll be, and bloody cant. They’ve already packed his kit and stripped his bed. In a couple of days’ time there’ll be someone else in it and hoo-bloody-ray for Jock Ferguson.’

‘Was there a lot of damage?’

‘The rear turret’s gone for a burton; they’ll have to fit a new one, that’s for sure. Don’t know what other damage there was. We were last crew home and how Skip managed to get the thing down I’ll never know. We were all frozen. The heating was shot-up and the wind was coming in through – through where Jock was. We just climbed out and walked away from it when we realized we’d made it and left them to get Jock out. The CO was there, but he never said a word; had the sense to keep his mouth shut, thank God. They put rum in our tea, at debriefing – a lot of it, but it did nothing for me. Couldn’t sleep afterwards. Just kept seeing that turret. I’m a coward, Roz. I threw up, when we got out.’

‘No, Paul! You’re not a coward! Night after night over Germany; of course you threw up. What do they think you’re all made of – stone?’

‘That’s it. Stone. That’s what they’d like.’

‘Well, you’re not. You’re all of you flesh and blood. You should go to sick bay tonight and ask for something to help you sleep –’

‘Sick bay? Oh, no. One word, just one whimper, and that’ll be it. Rennie’s cracking up. Rennie’s got a yellow streak. LMF, that’s what his trouble is …’

‘Stop it! I won’t listen! You’re not a coward and you’re not lacking moral fibre!’

‘You try telling that to those bastards. You try telling them that for every steel-nerved hero in Bomber Command, there are ordinary blokes like me and Jock; blokes who are afraid sometimes, and afraid to admit they’re afraid.

‘Try telling the big brass that, Roz. They’d strip us of our rank. We’d be erks again. They’d send us some place where we couldn’t contaminate decent airmen and they’d stamp LMF on our papers. In bloody red ink!’

‘You’re shaking, Paul. You’re cold.’

She wanted to hold him, comfort him; tell him to give it time. She needed him to know that she loved him no less for admitting fear; needed him to realize that she understood the terror of take-off, of sitting dry-mouthed till that overloaded, overfuelled Lancaster was safely airborne.

She remembered that eleventh aircraft. It had been Paul’s, though she hadn’t known it, hadn’t realized they’d been fighting for height and praying the undercarriage hydraulics were all right, knowing that below them, down there in the smug safeness of the control tower, they’d already ordered out the crash crew, the fire engine and the ambulances.

‘Come with me, Paul?’ She saw the haystack ahead. Not that it looked like a stack – just a darker mass, the size of a small cottage. But only this morning she and Kath had cut hay from it to carry out to the far field and she had been happy and relieved because all the Peddlesbury bombers were back. Why hadn’t she felt Paul’s fear? Why hadn’t she been with that eleventh bomber every second of the time it took to land? Why hadn’t she known he’d been in need of her love? ‘We can shelter behind the stack – it’ll be warmer, out of the wind …’

She was coaxing him, speaking to him softly as she would speak to a child awakened from a nightmare. But a child could weep away its fears in its mother’s arms; a man could not. Paul could not, dare not weep. Paul could only live each day as it came, and count each one a bonus. For him and for all those like him, tomorrow was a brash, brave word, never to be spoken.

‘This way, Paul. Can you see all right?’ This way, my darling. Let me share the fear. Let me hold you and love you. Don’t shut me out.

Kath wrapped her pyjamas around the hot-water bottle then slipped it into her bed, wondering where the next one would come from should this one spring a leak. What would happen, she frowned, if the Japanese armies overran the latex-producing countries in the Far East as easily as they had taken Hong Kong? They wouldn’t, of course, but suppose they did? There’d be no more hot-water bottles nor tyres for lorries. And what about teats for babies’ bottles? But best she shouldn’t think about it – well, not too much. Leave tomorrow to take care of itself. She wondered if Barney had got her letter yet, and if it had made him happier about her being a landgirl. She hoped so. She didn’t want to cause him a single moment of worry when she was so happy. Because she was happy. To be happy in time of war was wrong, but there it was. Just to be here, in this attic, in this bedroom all her own was bliss enough. Already she had put her mark on it. A jar filled with holly stood on the window ledge, her picture of Barney stood atop the chest of drawers, her dressing gown hung on the door peg and her slippers – slippers Aunt Min had knitted from scraps of wool – stood beneath the chair at her bedside.

And at Home Farm things couldn’t have gone better, she sighed. She could almost drive the small tractor and could harness Daisy into the shafts of the milk-float. She could even muck-out the cow shed now without wrinkling her nose.

She wondered about threshing day. Mat had ordered the team, Grace said only this morning, and it would be arriving at Home Farm any day now. Threshing days, Grace told her, were very important, with everyone turning-to and giving a hand, and extra workers to be fed. Wheat, barley and oats were desperately needed; every bushel they had would be sold.

She switched off the light then opened the blackout curtains, gazing out into a sky bright with stars. Tonight had been quiet. No bombers had taken off from Peddlesbury. Somewhere out there in the darkness, Roz and Paul would be together.

Dear, sweet Roz. They had known each other little more than two weeks, yet she understood her so well, Kath sighed, opening the window, breathing in air so cold that it snapped at her nostrils and made her cough. But soon the days would begin to draw out, nights become less cold. Soon it would be spring and there would be daffodils and lilacs, the first rosebud, and –

The cry was sudden, fearsome and high-pitched. It cleared her mind of all thoughts save that somewhere, not very far off, an animal screamed into the night; a wild shrieking, blood-curdling in its intensity. Was some creature trapped and if it was, how was she to find it? Not a rabbit in a snare; something so small and weak couldn’t give out so terrible a cry. But what, and where?

Hurriedly she closed the window and with feet that scarcely touched the stairs, ran down to the kitchen.

‘Flora! Did you hear it? An animal in pain; such screaming! Come to the door. Listen!’

‘Pain?’ Flora Lyle laid down her pen and pushed back her chair.

‘Oh, yes. Quite near, it seems. Maybe it’s been caught in a trap. We’ve got to find it.’

‘And then what could we do?’

‘We’d let it go. It was awful. Listen. Please listen?’

She flung open the door and stood, ears straining, and it came again, that frenzied cry.

‘There, now! You heard it, too?’

‘Aye. I heard it.’ The Forewoman took Kath’s arm, pushing her back, closing the door. ‘I heard it fine. And yon creature’s no’ in pain, lassie; no’ in pain at all. It’s a vixen.’

‘A what?’

‘A she-fox; a female in season. She wants to mate, Kath. She’s no’ in any trap. Leave her be. There’ll be every dog-fox within miles have heard her. January’s the month for – well, for foxes and vixens.’

‘You’re sure?’ Kath’s cheeks flamed red. ‘But it was such a terrible sound.’

‘I’m sure. Vixens take their pleasures terrible serious, you see.’

‘Oh, my goodness! Don’t tell the other girls?’ Kath gasped. ‘They’d laugh their heads off, wouldn’t they?’

‘I’ll no’ tell,’ the Forewoman said solemnly, though her eyes shone with mischief and she struggled against laughter. ‘The countryside’s a peculiar place, Kath.’

Just a vixen, she thought as she climbed the narrow stairs to her attic. Who ever would have thought it? A vixen, wanting a mate. And such a noise, too. Then her face broke into one of her rare, wide smiles.

‘Oh, but you’ve got a lot to learn, Kath Allen,’ she whispered; ‘an awful lot.’

But it was as Aunt Min had said. The countryside wasn’t all romps in the hay and collecting eggs.

She laughed out loud. ‘Oh, get yourself undressed and into bed, you silly woman!’ In pain, indeed!

Jonty opened the cow-shed door and called softly to the heifer in the stall nearby.

‘Cush, pet. Cush, lass …’

Gently he stroked her flank and she turned her head, regarding him with wide, bewildered eyes.

‘All right, girl. All right …’

She was coming along fine, he nodded. She’d have her calf with ease, though the unaccustomed pain was making her restless.

‘Cush, cush,’ he soothed.

Oh, yes. She would drop her calf instinctively and with more dignity than ever the human animal could muster. Her pain, though, her real pain, would start tomorrow when they took her first-born calf away from her.

‘Sorry,’ he murmured. ‘Sorry, lass …’

They sank into the hay on the sheltered side of the stack, pressing deep into it, shoulders touching, hands clasped.

For a long time they were content to be so, taking in the calm after a storm of fear and outrage.

‘I love you, Paul Rennie.’ Roz lifted his hand, touching the palm with her lips. ‘Where ever you are, whatever you are doing; never forget it, not even for a minute.’

‘I’m sorry, my darling.’ His voice was still rough with emotion and remembered terror. ‘I shouldn’t have told you. It was wrong of me.’

‘It wasn’t, and you should have. From now on, you must always tell me.’

‘So where’s your shining-bright hero, now?’ The despair in his voice thrust into her like a knife.

‘You were never my shining-bright hero, Paul; just the man I loved – love – will always love. And I wish you could be an erk again. I wish they’d take you off flying and send you to some place where they’d never even seen a bomber.

‘I wouldn’t care. Not if I didn’t see you again till it was all over, I wouldn’t. It’s you I want, not some cracked-up hero. I want you with me always. And they could stamp LMF right in the middle of your forehead if I thought there could be a future for us together.’

She reached up and pulled his head to her own, closing her eyes, parting her lips for his kiss. As he kissed her, she lifted the hand she had touched with her lips and placed it beneath her blouse to rest on her warm, wanting breast.

‘Love me?’ she murmured, drawing him closer. ‘Please love me?’ Her body strained nearer and she felt the first stirrings of his need, heard the sharp indrawing of his breath. ‘Remember this morning, Paul? Remember Jock, who’d never lived? I haven’t lived either, and I want you …’

He said no, that they shouldn’t. They’d be sorry, he said, after. But his protests held no substance against the force of her need and she kissed away the last of his doubts.

‘I’ll never be sorry.’ She slipped open the buttons of her blouse, closing her eyes as his lips touched the hollow at her throat then slid, searching, to her breasts. ‘Never in a million years …’

Their first loving was a sweet, surprised discovering, a setting free, a soaring delight. It was tender and caring; a coupling without pain or passion. They lay side by side afterwards, breathing unevenly, glad of the darkness.

‘There are a lot of stars up there.’ She was the first to speak. ‘And a moon.’

‘It’s a new one; a wishing moon.’

Presently she said, ‘Was it the first time, Paul?’

‘Yes.’

‘For me, too. I love you.’

Her love would keep him safe. Now it would always be a part of him. It would wrap him round and keep him from harm, where ever he was, however far.

‘Roz – I shouldn’t have said what I did. Everybody’s afraid, some time or other. It was Jock, you see …’

‘I know, my love. Nothing will hurt you again.’

‘God, but I love you so.’ He gathered her to him, his cheek on her hair. ‘I’ll always love you.’

The hay smelled sweet of a summer past and a summer yet to come.

She had given him back the courage he had feared lost, and he was a man again.

And he was hers, now, for all time.

4

It was not until the last of the milk had been delivered, the last empty bottle collected, that Roz said:

‘He’s flying again.’ The words came reluctantly, angrily. ‘After what happened two nights ago, Paul was on ops again last night.’

‘But I thought – didn’t you say their plane was a write-off? And surely they can’t fly without a gunner?’

‘They didn’t need to. Jock’s replacement arrived yesterday morning. As soon as Paul told me, I got a nasty feeling inside.’ And cold, frightening fingers tracing the length of her backbone. ‘Oh, K-King isn’t airworthy; they’ve already removed the engines and wings to make it easier to move. Then they’ll put the whole lot on a transporter and send it back to the factory that made it. It’ll be like a new plane when they’ve finished with it and nobody will ever know that Jock –’

‘Hush, now.’ Kath pulled on the reins, calling the pony to a stop. ‘You mustn’t get upset again. You said yourself that Paul is over his thirteenth op; the unlucky one’s behind him. He’ll be back, all right. Bet everything’s gone just fine. It’s nearly light; we’ll be hearing them soon.’

‘No. They didn’t leave till midnight. It’ll be an hour yet, at least. Unless it’s been France or the Low Countries, which I doubt.’ She shivered then dug her hands into her pockets, hunching into the upturned collar of her coat, holding herself tight against her anger. ‘I thought he’d be all right; when they came back all shot-up I thought at least they’d be given some kind of a break from flying. But no. A crew goes on leave so Paul’s lot take over their plane. Hell, but I’d like a few of those desk-wallahs to have a go. Just one sticky op so they’d know what it’s like. It was inhuman, sending them out again so soon after what happened.’

‘Steady on, Roz. Maybe they had a reason. You know what they say about falling off a horse – that you should get straight back up again? Perhaps that’s why they did it – so they won’t lose their nerve.’

‘Ha!’ Roz clicked her tongue and the pony walked on. ‘And as if that isn’t bad enough, he’s going on leave as soon as they’ve been to debriefing and I won’t see him before he goes, though he’s promised to ring me. Every night, he said, if he can manage to get through.’

‘Then what are you worrying about? Everything’s going to be fine. I heard them go last night, but I didn’t count. How many went?’

‘Nine. I stood at the window. It was a good sky; quite a bit of cloud-cover for them. Oh, Kath. I get sick, just to think about him …’

‘I know, love. I know. Do you want to take Polly’s milk, or shall I?’ Change the subject. Talk about anything but flying. ‘And tell me – why doesn’t the other gate lodge get milk from us? Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen them.’

‘You wouldn’t. She keeps herself to herself. Doesn’t drink cow’s milk – she has her own goat. Bombed out in that first big raid on Manchester, I believe. She’s an artist – does illustrations for advertising, or something. Gran was glad to let her have the lodge. It had been empty for ages.’

‘She’s alone?’

‘Yes, but that isn’t unusual these days.’

‘Suppose not.’ Keep at it. Just don’t let her talk about Paul. ‘What’s she called?’

‘Don’t know, but Arnie calls her the Manchester lady.’

‘Arnie.’ Kath smiled. ‘He’s a great kid.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Polly’s going to miss him when the war’s over.’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s been –’ Kath stopped. She was getting nowhere. ‘Listen, Roz. Paul will be all right and you can’t go on like this, every time he’s flying. Worrying isn’t going to help him – unless there’s something else?’

‘What do you mean?’ Roz jerked out of her apathy. ‘Paul’s flying. Two nights ago they lost their gunner, then crash landed – isn’t that enough? And isn’t the prospect of not seeing him for ten days more than enough?’ she demanded.

So something else was bothering her. She’d been sure of it. All day yesterday Roz had hardly said a word and there had been a tenseness about her, a strangeness.

‘Roz. Are you and –’ None of her business, but somebody had to talk to her about it. ‘Are you and Paul lovers?’ There. She’d said it. She turned her head away, not wanting to see the truth of it in the young girl’s face; turned away from the anger she knew was to come.

‘What the hell has it got to do with you, Kath Allen? Mind your own business – right?’

‘Right!’

They walked in silence along Ridings drive, between the rows of shiny-black, dripping trees. They had almost reached Home Farm when Roz said:

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. I know you were only trying to help. Kath – you can’t get pregnant, can you; not the first time?’

‘They say not, but I wouldn’t bank on it.’ Oh, the silly young thing; so innocent it just wasn’t true. She took a deep breath, trying hard to keep her voice even. ‘But best you don’t take chances, Roz, next time. Maybe when Paul comes back off leave you should have a talk with him about it? They tell men about things like that, I believe, in the Forces. He’ll see that nothing happens.’

‘Yes, I will. I must. Only at the time it seemed so – so right.’

‘I know. And nobody’s blaming you. It had to happen, I suppose, sooner or later. But be careful, Roz.’

Kath sent a jet of water bouncing over the cow-shed floor. ‘Cheer up, Roz. They’re all nine safely back. Aren’t you relieved that Paul has really broken his jinx, now?’

‘Of course I am. I was thinking that he’ll probably be on his way to the station by now. Wish I could have seen him, just for a second; even a wave as they drove past. I’d have settled for that. Wish he’d asked me to go home with him, though. I want so much to meet his family. Paul said his sister was trying to get some leave to be with him. They haven’t seen each other for a year. It must be hard for them, being apart. She and Paul are twins – did I tell you?’

‘You didn’t, but at least for the next ten days you can stop counting bombers; that should make a change.’

‘Yes, but it’s going to be a very long ten days, though heaven knows they deserve a break. And he’ll phone, if he can get through.’

‘Then you’ll just have to learn to live from phone-call to phone-call, won’t you?’ Kath rolled up the hosepipe and hung it on the wall. ‘But it wouldn’t be you, would it, without something to worry about?’

‘Sorry.’ Roz smiled briefly. ‘I do go on and on about me and Paul, don’t I? I’m selfish. I should spare a thought for you. Poor Kath. You don’t know when you’ll see Barney again; all you’ve got to look forward to is letters.’

Look forward? My, but that was a laugh, when recently she had come to almost dread the arrival of Barney’s next letter. But soon he would receive the one she wrote to him on Christmas Day; a letter full of love and reassurance. She had hoped he would come to realize that many a soldier serving overseas had left behind a wife in the armed forces, and was proud of her, too. She wished that Barney could come to be proud of a wife who was doing everything she could for the war effort; everything she could to help bring him safely home. And she wished with all her heart he would begin to understand, and to trust her.

‘Letters? Can’t say I’m looking forward, exactly, to the next one. Barney’s still mad at me for joining up. And he makes me feel guilty about what I’ve done because I know I shouldn’t be so happy. Wars aren’t meant to be happy, are they?’

‘I suppose not. And I don’t know why I’m going on about Paul asking me home with him. Can you imagine what Gran would say if I told her I was going off with a man she’s never even heard of – even if Mat would give me the time off. Why is my life in such a mess?’

‘Come on.’ Kath grinned. ‘You wouldn’t change one bit of it, and you know it. And if we don’t get this mucking-out finished we’ll miss drinkings. Y’know, I’m looking forward to the threshing on Monday, aren’t you?’

‘Not really.’ Roz frowned. ‘It’s a back-breaking, dirty job; I’ve had some. I helped out last time. Everybody turns-to; every farm hereabouts who can spare a man sends him along.

‘Grace has the time of her life, though she won’t admit it. How she’ll provide food for everyone who comes I don’t know, with rationing the way it is. But she will. She always does. Look, that’s Grace at the kitchen window, holding up a mug. Come on – looks as if we’re going to be lucky!’

Happy? Kath thought, washing her hands at the stand-pipe, drying them ponderously. Yes, she was happy. Indeed, she had never thought such happiness possible and it seemed wrong that Barney could not, would not, understand her need for this one, wonderful experience; wouldn’t give her his blessing and be proud of her. But he never would. She was certain of it, now.

‘Hang on, Roz! Wait for me!’

‘It isn’t fair, Aunt Poll, me having to go back to school the very day the threshing machine’s coming to the farm. I’ll miss it all, and I wanted to help.’

‘Well, you can’t. School’s more important than threshing day and anyway, you’re too young to help. The law says you’ve got to be fourteen.’

‘But I’m big enough.’ Arnie’s bottom lip trembled.

‘Aye, I’ll grant you that.’ A fine, strong lad he’d grown into. ‘But not old enough, so you’d best eat up your toast and be off with you. You’ve got to learn all you can if you’re to get that scholarship.’

A place at the grammar school; Polly wanted it for him more than she cared to admit. Arnie was a bright boy, his teacher said. Given to carelessness sometimes, though that was understandable in the young, and too eager to be out of the schoolroom and away into the fields. But bright, for all that. If he’d only take more pride in his handwriting and not cover his page with ink blots and smudges, then yes, he stood a very good chance of winning a scholarship.

He’d look grand in that uniform with the striped tie and the green cap, Polly thought proudly, though where she’d find the clothing coupons and money for such finery she wished someone would tell her. But she would manage. She always had.

‘Eat your toast, lad,’ she murmured, ‘and don’t be so free with that jam. That pot has to last us all month, remember.’

‘Yes, Aunt Poll.’ He eyed a strawberry sitting temptingly near the top of the jar and decided to leave it there for tomorrow. ‘I bet you’ll be helping with the threshing. I bet you’ll be able to get a good look at that engine.’ Nobody told grown-ups what to do. He couldn’t wait to be a grown-up.

‘No, I won’t. Doubt if I’ll see it at all, noisy, dirty old thing. I’ll be helping Mrs Ramsden feed all those people, though how she’ll find rations enough for seven extra is a mystery to me.’ Grace Ramsden was proud of Home Farm’s reputation as a good eating place, in spite of food rationing. Like as not there’d be rabbit pie and rice pudding; good farmhouse standbys. Rumours had been flying, since the Japanese came into the war. No more rice, people said, and if their armies got as far as India, no more tea. Now the rice, Polly considered, folk could do without if they had to, but tea was altogether another thing. ‘And anyway, who’s to say for sure that the team’ll be coming today? Mat will have to wait his turn. There’s a war on, lad, don’t forget.’

‘I know, Aunt Poll.’ People said there’s a war on all the time these days, as if a war was something terrible. Wars weren’t all that bad, Arnie considered. They’d be a whole lot of fun if it wasn’t for people getting killed. It would be awful when it was all over and he had to go home. He liked being with Aunt Poll, having regular meals and regular bath-nights, and living in the country was a whole lot better than living in Hull.

He liked Aunt Poll a lot; she was better, he had to admit, than his mother. Not that he was being unkind to his real mother; it was just that he had to try very hard, these days, to remember what she looked like.

‘Do you think,’ he frowned, taking his balaclava from the fire guard where it had been set to warm, ‘that Mam’s forgotten where I am?’

‘Now you know she hasn’t. Didn’t she send you a card at Christmas with a ten-shilling note inside it? Of course she hasn’t forgotten you.’

No indeed, though she wished she had, Polly mourned silently. What was more, an action like that gave rise to suspicion, especially when such generosity had previously been noticeable by its absence.

But at least Mrs Bagley’s visits had ceased after that first year, for now she was on war work; on nights, mostly, though night-work could cover many occupations, Polly brooded, especially when a woman bleached her hair with peroxide and plucked her eyebrows, somehow managing to get bright red nail varnish and lipstick when most other women hadn’t seen such things in the shops for months. My word, yes. There was night-work and night-work.

Arnie pulled on his knitted helmet and its matching gloves. He’d been delighted to open the soft, well-wrapped parcel on Christmas morning. He wouldn’t mind betting that when he got to school this morning, he’d be the only boy with a khaki balaclava and gloves; khaki, like the soldiers wore.

He called ‘So-long, Aunt Poll,’ then ran out quickly before she could attempt to kiss him; kissing was for girls. Whistling joyfully he squinted up at the Lancaster bomber that flew in low to land at RAF Peddles-bury.

Smashing, those Lancasters were. Great, frightening things, with four roaring engines and two guns and bomb-doors that opened at the press of a button. He wouldn’t mind flying a Lancaster. Pity he was only nine and a bit, though with luck the war would last long enough for him to be seventeen-and-a-half. He crossed his fingers, frowning. Grown-ups got all the fun.

Climbing the garden fence he made for the long, straight drive and the beeches and oaks that stood either side of it like unmoving, unspeaking sentries. This morning he was taking the ‘field’ way to school, cutting behind Ridings and the pasture at the back of Home Farm, to pick up the lane that led to the pub and the school nearby. This morning’s journey was longer and wetter underfoot and usually taken in spring and summer only, but Arnie felt cheated to be missing the dirt and din of a threshing day and was determined at least to see the monstrous, huffing, puffing engine; to close his eyes with delight as it clattered and clanked past him, making the most wonderful, hideous noises.

Instead, he saw Hester Fairchild. She was standing very still, gazing at the ploughed earth around her and she looked up, startled, as he approached.

‘Arnie! Hullo! Taking the long way to school this morning?’

He gave her a beam of delight. He liked Mrs Fairchild; not because Aunt Poll liked her but because Mrs Fairchild liked small boys. She was always pleased, really pleased, to see him. And she didn’t look at him as if he were a nuisance nor speak to him in the silly voice grown-ups used when they spoke to children.

‘I’ve come this way to see if the threshing team has got here. Are you going to see it, too?’

‘No, Arnie. I came to look at the ploughing – to see how they’re getting on.’ She had come, truth known, because she knew the ploughs would be idle today; because Mat and Jonty and the Italian would be busy all day in the stackyard and she wouldn’t have to acknowledge a man she would rather were anywhere than on her land. ‘Shall we walk together as far as the house?’

‘All right.’ Arnie liked Ridings, too; liked it because it was big and full of echoes and hollow noises. He liked the big, painted pictures on the walls; pictures of people with serious faces, dressed in old-fashioned clothes and whose eyes followed him as he walked past them.

He dug his hands into his trouser pockets and matched his step to that of his grown-up friend.

‘Did you know,’ he confided, ‘there’s a boy in the village whose dad is abroad in the Army and yesterday the postman brought him a big box of oranges, all the way from Cairo. Twenty-four, there were. Can you imagine having twenty-four oranges, all at once?’

‘I can’t, Arnie. I really can’t.’ Not for a long time had anyone been able to buy oranges – except perhaps one at a time and after queueing for it at the village shop. Nor could children like Arnie remember the joy of peeling a banana, for that particular fruit had disappeared completely at the very beginning of the war. ‘Twenty-four oranges, the lucky boy! Never mind, Arnie. Perhaps someone will send you oranges from abroad one day.’

‘Nah. Not me. Haven’t got a dad, see? Well, I have, but not an official one. Stands to reason, dunnit, when I’m called Bagley and Mam says me dad’s called Kellygodrottim. Glad I haven’t got a name like that. Think how they’d laugh at school if I was called Arnold William Kellygodrottim.’ He’d do without the oranges, thanks all the same.

‘Just think!’ Hester’s voice trembled on the edge of laughter. What a joy of a child this was. Small wonder Polly adored him. ‘But I’m afraid you won’t see the threshing team. The driver won’t set out with such a big machine until it’s properly light. It’ll be another half hour before it gets here.’

She reached the orchard gate then turned to watch him walk away, raising her hand to match his wave, thinking how cruel life could be when an unwanted, carelessly-conceived love child like Arnie could grow up so straight and strong and delightful.

And I couldn’t give you a boy, Martin; couldn’t give a living son to Ridings. Nor, when our babe died, could I try again.

I’m sorry, my love. Forgive me. I didn’t know. Believe me, I didn’t know …

The threshing team clanked into the yard on great, grinding, cast-iron wheels, spewing out coal-smoke, throwing mud in all directions.

‘Good grief,’ Kath gasped.

‘First time you’ve seen one?’ Jonty smiled.

It was. She stood still and wide-eyed, thinking so strange a contraption could only have come from an age that had known Stephenson’s Rocket. It was almost a steam-roller, yet with the look of an ancient steam train about it and it pulled a brightly painted contrivance behind it.

‘That’s the thresher,’ Jonty supplied, following her gaze. ‘They’ll back it up to the stack and the sheaves will be thrown down into it, into the drum.’

‘Y-yes.’ Kath frowned. ‘Does it work on electricity?’

‘Nothing quite so convenient.’ Jonty shrugged. ‘Look – see that big wheel on the engine beside the driver’s seat? It’s that wheel that connects by a belt to the thresher; and, roughly, is what drives it. And without blinding you with science,’ he laughed, ‘the straw comes out at one end, the wheat at the other and the chaff – the wheat husks, that is – drop down below it.’ He smiled again and his eyes, thick-lashed and blue, crinkled mischievously. ‘Got that?’

‘Yes. Well, I think so.’ My, but he was handsome. ‘You’ll let me down lightly, Jonty?’

‘I will. If you aren’t afraid of heights you can go on top of the stack with Marco. He’ll be feeding the sheaves down into the drum; you can keep them coming to him – okay?’

It wasn’t. All at once she was apprehensive, but she said she’d do her best – and thought how foolish she had been to worry about milking a cow, when, had she known about traction engines and threshing machines that day she volunteered for the Land Army, she’d have taken to her heels and run a mile!

‘We’ll be making a start soon, Kath. They’ve only to fix the belt, and then we’ll be away.’

‘What will Roz be doing?’

‘She’ll be seeing to the filling, most likely. There’s hooks at the back end of the thresher, for holding the wheat-sacks. Roz will watch them and tie them when they’re full; there’ll be a couple of big strong lads to hump them away.

‘Last time we threshed, Roz was on the chaff.’ Jonty grinned. ‘It’s a dirty job. The poor love was black all over by the end of the day. She didn’t speak to me for ages after.’

Kath laughed with him, biting back the words she longed to say; that if he truly cared for Roz, if he acknowledged what his eyes showed so plainly, then he would wait a while; be there if one day she should need him and the comfort of his safe, broad shoulders. She didn’t say them, though, because there was really no need, and anyway, it was no business of hers. But oh, if a man smiled at me the way Jonty smiled at Roz; if his eyes loved me the way his eyes loved her, Kath yearned, I’d be putty in his hands. If, she thought, dismissing such stupid thoughts, she were heart-whole and fancy-free. And not married to Barney, of course.

The thresher was belted-up to the traction engine, the drum rotated noisily. Beside it in the stackyard stood two carts; one for straw, the other to carry away the fat, full sacks of wheat. Roz stood to the rear, a pile of hessian sacks at her side and she waved to Kath who looked giddily down from the top of the stack.

‘Be careful,’ Marco warned. ‘Straw can be slippy. Be careful how you step.’

‘I will.’ Of course she would. ‘Tell me again? I just throw the wheat sheaves over to you and –’

‘That is so. And I shall cut the binding-twine, then throw them down, like so.’ Gravely, he mimed the operation. ‘It is nothing for worry. I show you how.’

The air was frosty and filled with scents of coal-smoke and dusty straw. Kath smiled at Flora Lyle who had come to help, and taken up her position beside Roz.

‘All right?’ Flora mouthed, and Kath lifted her hand in a reassuring wave.

‘Right!’ the engineer called. ‘Here she goes!’

Marco spat on his hands, rubbed them together, then lifted the first sheaf. Kath took a deep breath. This was better than working in a factory or on munitions. This was where she had always wanted to be; what she had always wanted to do.

She spat on her hands as Marco had done. This was it, then!

She was glad when eleven o’clock came for her arms ached and her mouth was dry with dust; already she had stripped off her pullover and unfastened the top button of her shirt. For the last thirty minutes she had been unable to think of anything but a glass of cool, clear water and the sight of Grace and Polly carrying jugs and a tray of mugs was more than welcome.

‘Slack off!’ came the cry. ‘Drinking time!’

‘Come.’ Marco held the ladder steady, indicating to Kath to climb down first.

‘Water, anybody?’ Grace called and Kath answered with a grateful ‘Please,’ closing her eyes, drinking deeply.

‘All right?’ Roz walked over, followed by Flora who carried mugs of tea.

‘Just about.’ Kath laughed.

‘You’ll be stiff in the morning,’ Flora warned. ‘A good hot bath is what we’ll all need tonight.’

‘Mmm.’ Kath nodded to Marco who stood a little apart, unsure amongst strangers. ‘Those sheaves get heavy, after a time. Marco works like a machine. It was hard going, keeping up with him.’

Not that she was complaining; far from it. She was part of a team; she was with friends. She belonged here. It felt right, and she never wanted to leave.

They settled into an easy rhythm again. Marco worked steadily, pausing only to mop his forehead or to glance briefly in Kath’s direction and smile encouragement. The height of the stack had already fallen by two feet and in time, by mid-afternoon perhaps, when the stack was lower still, the grain elevator would be pushed alongside and the sheaves fed on to it and carried up to the drum, just as people were carried up a moving staircase.

But that would not be yet, Kath knew, already hoping it would not be too long before they stopped to eat and could troop, aching and hungry, into Grace’s kitchen.

She looked briefly down. To her left, Roz and Flora tended the corn sacks and to her right, straw was being forked into a cart. She smiled across at Marco and in that instant she felt and saw a fat, black rat, its body soft against her ankle.

‘Aaaagh! No!’ She jumped back, startled, kicking out wildly at the straw beneath her feet. Then she let go a cry harsh with terror for the sheaves were shifting beneath her. She was falling!

She opened her mouth to cry out, but no sound came. She grabbed blindly at the straw, grasping it tightly, halting her fall only a little. The mass beneath her was still moving; she was rigid with panic and fear.

‘Kat!’ A hand caught her wrist with a grip of steel and the sliding and slipping stopped. ‘Your hand! Give to me your other hand!’

She lifted her arm slowly, felt his fingers grasp hers. The beater drum flailed and crashed below her, the belt slapped and snaked on and if she fell on it – oh, God! Why didn’t they stop the thing?

‘Hang on to her.’ It was Jonty’s voice, above her. ‘I’ve got you, Marco. Don’t let her go!’

‘Is all right, Kat.’ Marco’s voice was gentle and calm. ‘Be still. Not to struggle.’

Her body had turned to stone; her mouth was dry with terror. Hands tugged at her shirt. They were pulling her back.

‘Relax, Kath,’ Jonty called softly. ‘We’ve got you. Try not to struggle.’

The straw scratched her face and arms as inch by inch they dragged her back to them. The scream of the belt changed to a soft hum, then stopped; the drum juddered to a halt. Hands grasped the seat of her dungarees. With one grunting, groaning heave she was up and over, landing on top of the stack in a sprawl of arms and legs. For what seemed forever she lay there, shoulders heaving, trying to stop the jerking of her limbs.

‘Is all right, Katarina.’ Marco gathered her to him, holding her tightly, stroking her hair. ‘Is all over now.’

She clung to him and the sobs came; great, tearing sobs of relief. ‘Marco, oh, Marco …’

‘Here now, stop that noise! Come on, lassie; blow your nose!’ Flora was there, holding out a handkerchief. ‘What was it? What made you fall?’

‘A rat. There, at my feet!’

‘A rat, Katarina? A little frightened rat?’ Marco chided.

‘I thought it would crawl up my leg.’

‘Help her down,’ Jonty said gently. ‘I’ll take over up here with Marco.’

‘No! She stays.’ Flora’s voice was sharp. ‘If she doesn’t, she’ll never go on a stack again. Snap out of it, Kath! On your feet!’

‘I can’t. The rats. I’m sorry, but –’

‘We fix it, yes?’ Marco took two pieces of the discarded twine. ‘We fix those rats good. Stand up, Kat.’

Unsteadily she got to her feet, watching bewildered as Marco tied round the bottoms of her dungaree legs. ‘Is okay, now. No rats in trousers.’

He was smiling. Everybody was smiling. Kath sniffed loudly and pulled the back of her hand across her eyes.

‘I’m all right, now,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll stay.’

Grace Ramsden’s midday kitchen was warm and steamy, rich with the scents of cooking; a place of safeness and normality after the terror of the stackyard.

‘Feeling better now, lass?’ Grace asked as Kath hung her jacket on the door peg.

‘Fine, thanks. My word,’ she smiled shakily, ‘but I caused a bit of an upset, didn’t I? Marco caught me, you know; just grabbed my wrist. And Jonty was on top of that stack in a flash; held on to Marco’s belt with one hand and hung on to the roof beam with the other. Between them – oh, let’s just say I was lucky. I still don’t like to think what might have happened.’

‘Might have, but didn’t,’ Grace retorted, ‘so sit yourself down and let’s hear no more about it.’

‘But it was so stupid,’ Kath persisted. ‘And all because of a rat.’

‘I’m scared stiff of earwigs,’ Grace confided. ‘So away with your bother and find yourself somewhere to sit.’

Farms were not duty-bound to feed their workers on threshing days, but Home Farm had a reputation for good food, generously served, and even though now she was reduced to providing less than she would have liked, Grace Ramsden still saw to it that no one went without in her kitchen.

The stackyard workers arranged themselves around the table on chairs and benches, all of them hungry and glad of the break.

‘Sorry, Grace, but I don’t much feel like food.’ The familiar churning was inside Kath still, and if anyone else said one more word about it, even in fun, she would break down and weep again, she really would.

‘Then how about taking Marco his dinner? I’ll give him yours as well, shall I?’

‘You could do worse.’ Kath shrugged. ‘He did the work of two men this morning.’ Apart from saving her life, and holding her comfortingly afterwards, not telling her, either, that she was a silly woman who had no place on a farm if she went berserk at the sight of a rat. ‘Is this it?’ She picked up the tin tray.

‘Aye. Hurry along before it gets cold, there’s a good lass.’

Marco was sitting where he always sat and she settled the tray on his knees.

‘Here you are. It’s rabbit pie.’ She sat down beside him, chin on hands. ‘I want to thank you for saving my life, because you did, you know. I could have fallen into that machine and –’ She stopped, remembering the flailing, crashing thresher.

‘No. I would not have let you. You are not to think about it.’

‘But I must. I can’t forget what you did.’

‘Jonty was there. He help, also.’

‘Yes, and I shall thank him, too.’ She made a small, appealing gesture with her hands. ‘What can I say?’

‘Say you are no longer afraid of rats.’ He smiled.

‘Oh, no, I couldn’t. They’ll always frighten me, I think. But at least I know now how to stop them running up my trouser legs.’ She smiled, and the smile came more easily. ‘Well, I’d best be going, I suppose.’ She rose to her feet, then bending quickly, taking his face in her hands, she gently kissed his cheek. ‘Thanks, Marco …’

She turned then, and ran; back to Grace’s kitchen and the men and women who sat at her table. Pulling out the empty chair beside Roz she said, ‘All of a sudden I’m hungry. I don’t suppose there’s any of that pie left?’

Roz kicked off her wellingtons, called ‘Sorry I’m late!’ then kissed her grandmother’s cheek.

‘It’s almost dark. Did you manage to finish?’

‘We did. All over and done with till next year. God! I’m filthy! There wouldn’t be any hot water to spare, Gran? My hair’s thick with dust and I’ve got chaff down my shirt and it’s itching like mad. I need a bath.’

‘I thought you might; towels are on the fireguard. I held back supper till you came in. How did it go, darling?’

‘Fine. Well – up to a point, that is. Kath took a tumble over the side of the stack. She’s okay, but still a bit shaken. Marco grabbed her, just in time.’

‘The Italian?’

‘Yes, Gran. Marco. If it hadn’t been for him, there could’ve been a nasty accident.’

‘When am I going to meet your friend?’ The conversation took an abrupt about-turn. Not that she was not relieved, Hester acknowledged silently, that something awful hadn’t happened to the poor young woman, but it could not be discussed at Ridings if the credit must go to an Italian. ‘She seems nice. Ask her to tea sometime, and show her the house. You said she was interested to see it.’

‘Okay. Sunday’s her day off, same as mine. Maybe she’d like that.’

‘All settled, then. Perhaps Grace could spare me a couple of eggs for sandwiches,’ Hester murmured, ‘and there’s a little of the Christmas cake left.’ An almost fatless, almost fruitless, almost sugarless Christmas cake, she sighed, remembering the take-six-eggs-and-one-pound-of-butter recipe of pre-war days. ‘I’ll look forward to meeting her. Now upstairs with you. Supper’s at six sharp, so don’t lie there wallowing.’

‘All right now, Kath?’ asked Flora as they pedalled back to Peacock Hey. ‘Sorry I had to be a bit sharp this morning.’

‘I’m fine – you were right to make me stay up there. And one thing I’ve learned – not to go threshing again without tying my trouser bottoms. Did I make an awful fool of myself?’ she asked, frowning.

‘No more than I’d have made if it had happened to me. But farms are notorious places for accidents, Kath, so try to forget it. And we’d better get a move on, or there’ll be no hot water left.’

A letter was waiting at the hostel; Kath had sensed there would be one. It bore the Censor’s stamp and the handwriting on the envelope was Barney’s. She could have done without a letter from North Africa, she thought petulantly. Today of all days she needed Barney’s disapproval like she needed a rat up her trouser leg!

Lips set tightly, she returned it to the letter-rack. Right now she needed a hot bath more than anything else in the world. The letter must wait until after supper.

‘Ready for your supper?’ Grace asked of her son who sat in the fireside rocker.

The departure of the threshing team had not signalled the end of Jonty’s day; there had still been cows to feed and milk. Now he was so weary that if the house took a direct hit, he doubted he could get out of the chair.

‘Can you keep it warm till I’ve had a bath?’

‘I can. Kath offered to stay on and help with the milking, mind, but your dad sent her back with the Forewoman. She was badly shaken this morning, though she tried not to make a fuss. I like that girl, but just when I think I’ve got the measure of her and start treating her like I treat young Roz, then a barrier comes down, if you see what I mean?’

‘Sorry, Mum, no. Kath seems ordinary and normal to me, and for a towny she’s fitted in fine. What do you mean – a barrier?’

‘I don’t know; not exactly. But I’m right, I’m sure I am. Woman’s instinct, you could call it.’ Of course Jonty hadn’t sensed it; what man would? ‘And get yourself off your behind, lad. You’ll feel all the better when you’ve washed that muck off you.’ Oh, yes. It took a woman to know a woman. ‘And don’t forget to rinse out the bath when you’ve finished!’ she called as he slowly climbed the stairs.

There was something, Grace insisted, but she couldn’t pry – even in wartime, when people had grown kinder and closer, she couldn’t. Poor lass. Even in that hostel amongst all those girls, she’d still be alone, she wouldn’t mind betting; still holding back that last little bit of herself that no one would be allowed to see, or know.

‘Take care, Kath,’ she whispered, wondering how she was feeling and what she was doing. ‘Take care, lass.’

Kathleen Allen sat beside the common-room fire, a notepad on her knee. Only when she had bathed and eaten her supper had she returned to the letter-rack to pick out the blue air-mail envelope. And she had guessed right; Barney was still angry with her, though when he wrote he had not received the Christmas Day letter she hoped would make things right between them. Things would be better, when he did. When he read of her love; when he realized how she missed him and worried for his safety then perhaps he’d be the Barney she had cared for, and married. It stood to reason, she supposed, that a man should feel resentment when he was parted from all he cared for most.

She looked down at the pad.

Dearest Barney,

Tonight, when I got back to the hostel, your letter was waiting for me. It is very cold here, the skies are grey and darkness comes early. I tried to imagine you sitting there writing to me, with the sun beating down and you trying to keep cool.

She had not mentioned his annoyance in her letter, nor apologized again. By now, surely, he must be prepared to forgive and forget?

Today at Home Farm we all worked very hard, threshing the last of the wheat. Everyone who could be spared came along to lend a hand and we finished just a little before dusk.

She would not tell him about the rat, nor about what happened to her. It might only cause him to worry – or prompt him to say he’d told her so. To tell him was impossible, anyway, because he still didn’t know about Jonty who should have been in the Army, and she could never tell him about Marco.

Tomorrow things will be less hectic and Roz and I will be back to normal again. Roz isn’t very happy, at the moment. Her boyfriend has gone home on leave and she misses him, as I miss you, Barney.

Yes, she did miss him, but not with the tearing ache with which Roz missed Paul. Her eyes misted over. Roz and Paul had no secrets yet she, Kath, must measure every word she wrote to her husband and it was wrong, for he was all she had in the world. He had married her knowing what she was, and given her his name. And having that name, one which was really hers, was more important to her than ever she would admit.

Yet how could she tell him? How would he react if ever he was to discover that an Italian – a man who was his enemy – had today almost certainly saved her life? And how could she argue that it had been Marco who was there when she needed help; when she needed comfort?

‘Marco is your enemy, too,’ whispered her conscience. ‘His country is at war with your country.’

‘Think,’ demanded the voice of her reason, ‘that if Barney and Marco had faced each other in North Africa and each had carried a gun …’

She shivered with distaste. It was all so wrong. Wars were wrong. If women governed the world there’d be an end to war. Women would say, ‘No more sons; we will conceive no more children if every score of years you send them to war!’

She clucked angrily. She was being stupid, her with her grand thoughts. Women would never be anything but women. It was the way it was; the way it always would be unless – or until – women stood together and demanded to be as good as men. They’d done it before, hadn’t they; had chained themselves to railings and gone to prison, died even. And because of that, a woman could vote and need never tell her husband how she voted. Now women were at war, really at war. They wore the uniforms her husband detested and tried not to be afraid. They weren’t comforts for officers!

Barney was wrong. He had no right to such opinions and she could not go through life being grateful to him for making her his wife; for marrying a woman who’d been reared in an orphanage and knew neither who she was nor what she was.

She was Kath. She was like Grace and Roz and Flora. She could no more help being abandoned than Marco could help being born Italian. Heavens above, Roz hadn’t so much as raised an eyebrow when she’d found the courage to tell her. Roz hadn’t cared, so why was she so prickly about it? She could no more help being unwanted than Jonty could help being in a reserved occupation, or Paul being an airman. Barney had no right to be so angry when all she was doing was trying to help win the war.

All? But hadn’t this war given her the opportunity to do what she most wanted? Couldn’t she have helped win the war in a factory, in a shop, or by becoming a nurse? All right. So she’d wanted to be a landgirl and live in the country. Was it so wrong? Was every landgirl in Peacock Hey as racked with guilt as she was?

Defiance blazed briefly through her and she looked at the unfinished letter on her knee. Supposing she were to have a brainstorm? Just supposing she were to go completely mad and write, ‘Today, at threshing, I could have been killed. I slipped and fell and an Italian caught me and held me, and a young man who isn’t in the Army helped him save my life. And afterwards, Barney, I thanked that Italian, and I kissed him.’

Shame flushed her cheeks. Shaking her head as if to remove all such thoughts from it she wrote, I miss you, Barney. I want this war to be over so we can be together again. Take care of yourself, and come home safely.

Come home to me quickly, Barney, before I take leave of my senses.

5

‘You can say what you like, it’s getting a lot lighter now, in the mornings,’ Kath remarked, her eyes fixed on the bird that hovered over the churchyard. ‘Is that a kestrel?’

‘It is. Out hunting for breakfast; mice or voles, a rat, if it’s lucky.’

They ate rats? ‘Y’know, I think I like kestrels.’

‘Thought you might.’ Roz paused, then said hesitantly, ‘Kath – remember the other day we were talking about – well –’

‘About being careful? Not getting pregnant?’

‘Yes. And I’m not.’ Her cheeks flushed crimson. ‘Pregnant, I mean. Thought you’d be glad to know.’

‘I’m glad if you are,’ Kath said softly.

‘What do you think?’ There was relief in her voice. ‘Just think, Kath, in less than three days Paul will be back. I’m an idiot, aren’t I, wishing my life away? I miss him, though.’ They were walking past the little church, eyes still on the bird of prey. ‘My parents are there, in the churchyard.’

‘And your grandfather – the one who died in the last war – is he there, too?’

‘No. He never came home. He’s with all the other soldiers who died there, but Gran has never been to France to see his grave as some wives have. She had a stone put up here for him. I suppose she likes to think he’s here in Alderby with all the other Fairchilds.’

‘That’s sad.’ Kath frowned. ‘I think I’d want to go, if I could, to see where he is. It might have comforted her, if she had.’

‘She doesn’t want to be comforted. That’s why she still hates Germans. She finds more comfort doing that.’

They left the little graveyard behind them, with its moss-covered headstones, its yew trees and the railed-off corner where all the Fairchilds lay. Roz did not agree with those railings; even as a small child she had demanded to know why it should be so.

‘Because they’re Fairchilds.’

‘Poor things. Aren’t they lonely, cut off from the others?’

‘I don’t think so.’ And Gran had said she would understand when she was older, but she hadn’t. She still didn’t.

‘I’m sorry for your gran.’ Kath sighed, it’s a long time ago now. Wouldn’t you think she’d have got over it a little?’

‘You would, but she hasn’t. I told her about what Marco did, but she just cut the conversation dead; refused to listen. I suppose we should hate Marco, too, come to think of it.’

‘We should, but I can’t; not now. He didn’t have to put himself at risk for me, but he did. He didn’t hate me, did he?’

‘Nope. It’s a funny old world. By the way, Gran says I’m to ask you to Sunday tea – if you can call egg sandwiches tea, that is. She’d like to meet you and I can show you paintings and photographs of Ridings as it used to be, if you’re interested.’

‘Interested? I’d love to come.’ Kath blushed with pleasure. ‘I’ll have to wear my uniform, though. I haven’t any civvy clothes with me. Will she mind?’

‘Of course she won’t. Apart from hating Germans – and Italians now, of course – and fussing over Ridings as if it’s something special, Gran’s quite normal and rather a love, most of the time. I’ll tell her you’ll come. Will half-past two suit you, then we can have a walk around the ruins while it’s still light.’

‘Any time at all.’ Kath beamed, picking up a milk-crate. Afternoon tea at the big house. Now fancy that.

‘I’m getting sick of waiting for it to be summer.’ Arnie Bagley scraped his porridge bowl thoroughly and noisily. ‘When is it going to be sunny again?’

‘Soon, lad. Soon.’ Polly longed for warmer days, too. ‘Winter’s more than half over. Afore very much longer we’ll be able to have Sunday tea in the daylight, then we’ll know for sure that spring isn’t far away.’

Sunday tea in Yorkshire was always taken at five o’clock, just as Sunday dinner was taken at one. They were habits a body didn’t break, Polly considered – well, not around these parts – and it was generally accepted that on the second Sunday in February the days would have drawn out sufficiently to enable tea to be eaten in ‘the light’. High tea, that was. A knife and fork tea, though heaven only knew how a body was to manage with the weekly sugar ration cut to half a pound. And in February, the Government was to cut fats by an ounce – lard, margarine and butter, too, which would put paid to saving up a little for a cake. No more home-made cakes now, and shop cakes so hard to come by that you could queue for half an hour and still not get one.

‘Toast?’ she demanded, forking a slice of bread, holding it to the coals.

And as if that were not enough, what about those Japs invading Burma? So what about the tea ration now? Not that she was at all sure that Burma had tea plantations, but those Japanese soldiers had taken a step nearer to India – which did.

But before very long there would be American soldiers in Britain which would be a help, she acknowledged, us having been on our own since Dunkirk. It had made a difference in the last war, though they hadn’t got themselves over in time to save Mr Fairchild, nor Tom.

‘Spring starts on the twentieth of March, doesn’t it, Aunt Poll?’

‘Spring starts when it thinks it will; when there’s no more flowers on that winter jasmine,’ she said, nodding to the window and the creeper, bright with yellow flowers, that grew around it. ‘You can’t say winter’s really gone till the last of those little flowers have fallen, so think on. That’s the day spring starts. Nature don’t have a calendar. And there’s Kath at the door with the milk. Fetch it in, lad, afore those pesky little blue tits start pecking at the top.’

‘It was Roz left it, not Kath.’

‘And how do you know that, then?’

‘’Cos she was whistling. Kath doesn’t whistle. Suppose Roz is happy because her boyfriend –’ He stopped, not at all sure he’d meant to say so much.

‘Because her what? Roz hasn’t got a boyfriend – well, maybe Jonty, perhaps.’

‘Jonty? Nah. Roz’s boyfriend is an airman,’ Arnie supplied scornfully, throwing caution through the window. ‘Her young man’s a navigator. And I saw him in the back of the RAF truck that takes the airmen to York when they go on leave. Roz’ll be whistling ’cos he’ll be coming back, soon.’

‘Away with your romancing, Arnie Bagley. Roz hasn’t got a young man.’ Except Jonty, maybe, and she didn’t seem as sweet on him as he was on her, come to think of it. ‘And you’re not to go saying things like that. Mrs Fairchild wouldn’t be pleased if she heard you.’

‘But it’s true!’ He coloured hotly. He wasn’t telling lies. ‘I saw them. Kissing. I’ve seen them ever so many times – well, twice. But they were kissing each other, both times.’

‘Now see here, young man; even if you did see Roz and some airman, you’re to keep quiet about it or you’ll land the lass in trouble with her gran. Roz isn’t old enough to have boyfriends – not yet.’

‘But she’s ever so old, Aunt Poll.’

‘You let Mrs Fairchild be the judge of that. You mind your own business and get on with your breakfast.’

Arnie bit savagely into his toast. He’d have thought Aunt Poll would’ve been interested to know about Roz and the navigator from the aerodrome. He wished now he hadn’t told her.

Polly pursed her lips, wondering how much truth there was in Arnie’s revelations and how much was the product of his over-active imagination. My word, but Roz had kept the young man dark – if young man there was. Talk went around the village pretty sharpish; surely, if there’d been gossip she’d have heard it, sooner or later. All there was to do in Alderby, most times, was gossip. But there was no smoke without fire. Kissing, were they?

‘Beats me how you get to know so much, lad,’ she muttered. ‘Seeing’s one thing; blabbing it all over the village is another.’

‘I haven’t blabbed! You’re the only one I’ve told!’

‘Then let’s see to it that it stays that way, shall we?’

Until she’d had time to think about it, that was. Until she’d got to the bottom of it and got the facts right. Only then could she warn the Mistress. Warn Mrs Fairchild? But maybe that wouldn’t be a good idea at all. Maybe it would do a lot more good if she were to have a quiet word with young Roz?

Oh, drat Arnie and that inquisitive little nose of his! Drat the lad, though of course he just might be right. After all, Roz was nineteen, or would be, come April. Happen who the lass kissed was nobody’s business but her own.

‘And will you go and bring that milk in,’ she said testily. ‘Like I told you!’

Kath leaned her bicycle against the kitchen wall and pulled the bell-handle on Ridings’ back door. She had thought, for one mad moment to walk boldly up the front door steps and lift the heavy iron knocker, but she remembered her days as a housemaid, and her courage left her.

‘Come in.’ Roz smiled, taking in the bright green pullover, the collar and tie, the shiny black shoes. ‘You do look smart.’

‘I was thinking much the same about you.’ She had been quick to notice the pleated grey skirt, the pale green blouse. ‘It’s the first time I’ve seen you in real clothes.’

‘We’re in the little sitting-room, this afternoon. Gran said it could do with an airing, but it’s really in your honour.’ Roz nodded vaguely down the passageway. ‘I’ve been chopping logs for the fire all morning.’

Little remained of the original house, yet the surviving rooms and passages retained the spaciousness of a larger, grander place which the stone-flagged floors and uneven walls did nothing to dispel.

‘This house must have been really something,’ she murmured, the servant in her taking in the brass door-handles, the hard-to-clean leaded window panes, bellied with age.

‘I suppose it was, but what’s left suits us all right.’ Roz opened a white-painted door. ‘Gran, here’s Kathleen Allen.’

‘My dear, how kind of you to come.’ Hester Fairchild’s pleasure was genuine, her handshake firm. ‘You look chilled. Come to the fire, and warm yourself. You can look at our old ruin later.’

She stooped to place a log on the fire then sank back cosily into the well-cushioned chair. ‘Such a luxury these days, Mrs Allen – fires, I mean. And will you allow an old lady to call you Kathleen?’

‘Oh please, I’d like that. And you’re not old. I got quite a surprise, in fact. I’d expected – well, a grandmother, you see.’ Her cheeks flushed crimson. ‘Sorry. I – I meant –’

‘Don’t be sorry. Don’t spoil it. I’m not too old to enjoy a compliment. But tell me about yourself. I’m quite a busybody, given the chance.’

‘There isn’t a lot to tell.’ Kath looked around the small, snug room. Every piece of furniture was oddly matched, yet so right. A pair of brocade-seated chairs – Sheraton, were they, like those in the Birmingham town house? – a sofa with a faded, delphinium-patterned cover, china bowls of dried lavender flowers, a hand-embroidered footstool. Things passed down; old things, loved things, safe things. ‘I like being a landgirl. It’s the first big thing that’s happened to me – apart from Barney, that is.’

‘Your husband? Roz tells me he’s abroad in the Army. You’ll miss him.’

‘Yes, I do.’

The log began to crackle and flame, shining the brass fender, splashing the walls with fireglow. There were generations of Fairchilds in this room; Roz was lucky, knowing so precisely who she was.

‘Have you heard from him lately?’

‘Last Monday. Sometimes I don’t get a letter for weeks then six arrive, all at once. It’s like Christmas, then.’ Was like Christmas.

‘Christmas.’ Hester nodded, her eyes suddenly sad.

‘Why don’t we go out?’ Roz had recognized that faraway look. ‘Think we might have our walk while it’s still light – or take a look at the house if you’d like, and meet the rest of the Fairchilds. They’re a rum lot! Would you mind, Gran, if we did?’

‘Not a bit. Off you go. I shall sit here by the fire and listen to the wireless.’

‘Now don’t forget – you must be careful not to mention the prisoner,’ Roz whispered when they had closed the door behind them. ‘Nor Paul.’

‘I’ll remember.’

‘Right! I shall now bore you silly with the Fairchilds.’ With a flourish of her arm Roz indicated the stairs. ‘This is really the second-best staircase, by the way. The posh one was destroyed in the fire. And these lot,’ she nodded to the chain-hung portraits, ‘are all they managed to salvage of my forebears. Meet the folks!’

‘This is all so lovely,’ Kath said softly. ‘Far nicer than I’d have thought. I can understand your Gran wanting to hang on to it; and to think I called it an old ruin. But you love it, too, don’t you?’

‘Yes, of course, but I wouldn’t go on about it like Gran does. I like the outside best – the old walls and the empty windows; so stark, somehow, yet so beautiful in summer.’ When the climbing roses were flowering, the honeysuckle and the clematis. ‘And if you could just see it, Kath, when the moon is full and it shinés through those great, empty windows – now that really is something. That’s when I love it most, I think – when it’s all sad, sort of, as if it’s remembering. But let’s have a quick look around here, then we’ll go out and I’ll show you what I mean.’

‘So what do you think?’ Roz demanded, as Kath saw for herself the strange beauty of a once-great house.

‘It’s amazing,’ she whispered, asking herself how the sight of rose-brick walls and stone-mullioned windows could be so disturbing, so poignant.

‘All this lot should have been demolished, really, after the fire but Gran wouldn’t hear of it. So my father left just the walls – an outline, I suppose, of what it had once been.’

‘I’m glad he did.’ Kath gazed fascinated at the forlorn beauty, wondering at its melancholy, and the waste. ‘Those windows are like empty eyes, but I don’t know if they’re looking forward or looking back.’

It was then, exactly, that it happened; when Roz, looking up, saw the predator like a great black bird, low in the sky.

‘Kath! Look! God, it’s one of theirs!’

Hands clasped they ran, crouching, for the shelter of the walls, heard the scream of the diving bomber and the terrible roar of exploding bombs.

‘It’s Peddlesbury,’ Roz gasped. ‘A hit-and-run!’ No time for a warning; no time for the wailing, undulating air-raid siren. A lone bomber had slipped in, unseen and unmarked. ‘Run, Kath. Run!’

Hester was standing in the kitchen yard, her face pale and anxious.

‘You’re all right! What was it?’

‘A sneak raid on Peddlesbury,’ Roz choked, breathless from running. ‘Another one. Come inside, Gran.’

‘Oughtn’t we to go down to the cellars?’

‘No. Think it’s all over now. Short and sharp. Hope it isn’t like last time.’ Last time there had been many killed and injured. ‘Are you all right, Kath?’

‘I think so, thanks.’ Just that it had brought back the airraids on Birmingham she had thought forgotten; reminded her of wailing sirens and fearful, waiting silences; of listening, breath indrawn, for the menacing drone of aircraft engines and the sick-making, tearing sound of exploding bombs. And afterwards, leaving the shelter to breathe in the stench of destruction; a mixing of dust, fire and water-doused timbers. Sometimes, too, the stench of death. ‘I’m fine. I don’t suppose it’ll come back – will it?’

‘Shouldn’t think so. That sort just come in low under radar cover, then get out as fast as they can. That one’ll be over the North Sea by now.’

‘Yes. Of course.’ Kath was thinking about Peacock Hey and how very close it stood to the aerodrome. Most of the girls would be there; today was their day off, too. She was glad that she was here, at Ridings, and felt guilty because she was glad.

‘I think,’ said Hester Fairchild firmly, ‘that after that we could all do with a cup of tea.’

Jonty came, smiling apologetically, as they were finishing tea.

‘Thought I’d better come over – just to make sure you’re all right,’ he said, his eyes concerned.

‘Jonathan, how kind. Have you time for a cup of tea?’ Hester smiled. ‘And we’re fine. Have you heard anything about it?’

‘Not a lot.’ He declined the tea. ‘Dad heard in the village that two of the bombs hit Peddlesbury and the other fell in a field.’

‘So they’re all right at Peacock Hey?’

‘I’m almost sure so. One bomb fell near Nab Wood, well away from the hostel and the two that hit Peddlesbury got the runway. By the way, Kath, I’ll ride back with you if you let me know what time you’ll be leaving.’

‘I’ll be all right. It’s good of you, Jonty, and thoughtful, but I’ve been in a few air-raids, remember? I’ll manage, thanks.’

‘He’s such a nice young man,’ Hester remarked when Jonty had left. ‘So kind; so hard-working.’

‘Yes, he is, Mrs Fairchild. I owe him my life; him and –’ She stopped, remembering Roz’s warning. ‘I – I think he’s handsome, too,’ she said, wildly. ‘I – I mean –’

‘I know exactly what you mean.’ Hester smiled obliquely at her granddaughter. ‘Though Roz doesn’t think so, do you, darling? Roz, I’m afraid, just pooh-poohs me when I tell her I think he’s very fond of her.’

‘Gran, for goodness’ sake!’ Roz pouted. ‘I like Jonty; I like him a lot, but I refuse to fall in love with him just because you like him and think he’d be good for Ridings.’ She rose from the table, pushing back the chair noisily. ‘Excuse me, please. Must fill up the teapot.’

‘Jonathan,’ Kath said hurriedly, wanting to atone for being the unwitting cause of Hester’s hurt glances and the flush in Roz’s cheeks. ‘I didn’t realize that was his real name.’

‘His Sunday name.’ Hester smiled, serene again. ‘And forgive Roz her quick temper; we blame it on that red hair …’

In the kitchen, Roz already regretted her outburst. She’d almost said that she was in love with someone else, though she’d bitten on her tongue in time. She must learn to be more careful.

Darling Paul, I miss you so, need you so, though she had to be glad he wasn’t at the aerodrome when the bombs fell. And she hoped with all her heart that the bombs really had fallen on the runway, like Jonty said; hoped they’d fallen slap bang in the middle of it and made two great craters that would take days and days to repair. She longed for him to phone her. Perhaps tonight he would get through.

The call for which Roz had so desperately prayed came as Kath was preparing to leave; just as she shrugged into her jacket and put on her hat Roz ran to answer its ring, pointedly closing the door behind her.

‘I’ve enjoyed this afternoon such a lot, Mrs Fairchild – bombs and all.’ Kath smiled. ‘Thank you for letting me see your home. It’s – it’s just lovely.’

‘You must come again – often. Don’t wait to be asked, Kathleen. I like having young people about the place. Come for Roz’s birthday and stay the night, if the Warden will let you. She’d like that, I know.’

‘Your gran has asked me to stay the night for your birthday – in April, isn’t it?’ Kath said to Roz who had offered to walk as far as the gate lodges with her, and to call in on Polly to make sure she was all right. ‘I didn’t know what to say because you’ll probably be out somewhere with Paul. That was him on the phone, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes. He won’t be ringing again; I’m seeing him on Tuesday night, fingers crossed.’

‘Look, Roz, I know it’s none of my business, but I think you should tell your gran about him. How you get away with it beats me. How do you manage to meet him so often without her knowing?’

‘I tell a lot of lies, I’m afraid. I have to, Kath. I know what she’d say, you see. She’d stop me seeing him.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure. I know her better than you do. When you bring up someone else’s child, you’re just that bit extra careful. Gran’s always been like that, where I’m concerned. She’s been mother and father and guardian angel to me. She won’t ever change.’

‘Try her?’ Kath urged. ‘Just try her?’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘Promise?’

‘I said I would, Kath. Were you very frightened when the bombs dropped?’

‘Scared witless, for a couple of minutes.’ Okay, Roz. Change the subject, if that’s the way you want it. But it isn’t going to go away. ‘It’s times like that I wish I’d been born a man.’

‘Why, for heaven’s sake? Men can be afraid, too; they just can’t show it, that’s all,’ Roz countered hotly.

‘I know, love; I know.’ My, but she’d been jumpy today. Missing Paul, of course. ‘Don’t get me wrong. I know men get afraid. I shouldn’t have said what I did.’

‘And I shouldn’t have been so snappy, but it’s awful, sometimes. Gran, I mean. She really would like me to marry someone who’d be good for Ridings and right now Jonty fits the bill, poor love. I wish she wouldn’t go on about it.’

‘She’s only thinking about you, Roz. She’s brought you up and you can’t blame her for wanting to see you happily married. I wish I’d had someone like her, when I was growing up.

‘And that’s something else, you know. Does your grandmother know about me – really know, I mean? Does she know I was an unwanted child; that I grew up on charity, in an orphanage? Would I have been so welcome, if she’d known?’

‘What do you mean, if she’d known? She does know. I told her ages ago. I know she can be a bit funny sometimes, but your being brought up in an orphanage wouldn’t worry her at all. She’d say it wasn’t how you started out, but what you’d made of yourself that mattered.

‘But you’ve got a real chip on your shoulder about that place, haven’t you, Kath? You’d think orphanages were dens of iniquity, or something. What you’re really so miffed about is your mother having left you. That’s really your bête noire, isn’t it?’

‘My what?’

‘Your black beast, pet hate – your bugbear; just like Gran and her Germans.’

‘I suppose it is. And it wasn’t all that bad at the orphanage. It was just that I didn’t really belong to anybody.’

‘Well, you do now. You belong to Barney and to everyone at Home Farm and to me and Gran – right?’

‘Right.’ Kath smiled. ‘Sorry if I got a bit hot round the collar. I meant well and I’m still not going to take back one word about your telling your Gran. Just think about it, will you? She’s a lovely person; she might understand more than you think.’

‘I know. You could be right.’ Roz pushed open the gates then placed a kiss on Kath’s cheek. ‘It’s good to have someone to talk to and I’ll think about what you’ve said. Goodnight, Kath. Go carefully.’

Roz wouldn’t think about it, Kath brooded as she rode along Peddlesbury Lane. She’d go on meeting Paul and telling lies about it, nothing would change; except if anything were to happen, that was. And if it did, when it did, how was she to tell her grandmother, then?

‘Oh, you silly, muddle-headed girl, why do I worry so about you?’ she demanded of the darkness around her. ‘Just why, will you tell me?’

Alderby St Mary buzzed with bomb-talk. It ranged from the total destruction of RAF Peddlesbury, to ‘a lot of fuss about nothing; only one Jerry plane and all three bombs missed!’

Polly Appleby alone was in possession of the facts for she had got them from Home Farm’s landgirl when she left the milk. Peddlesbury had been hit; two bombs on the runway but, apart from a lot of broken window panes, no one hurt. And Kath should know, since Peacock Hey was nearer to the aerodrome than Alderby.

Polly said as much to Hester Fairchild. ‘Could have been a whole lot worse,’ she said, fastening her pinafore. ‘Kath knows all about bombing, poor lass; thought she’d be safe in the country, I shouldn’t wonder. But it only goes to show that nobody’s safe these days from them dratted bombers.’

‘It was only a hit-and-run,’ Hester observed mildly, ‘and this time no one was hurt. We should be thankful for small mercies. Did you know that Kathleen came to tea yesterday? A nice girl. She’ll be good for Roz. Roz needs more young company than she’s getting.’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Polly frowned, filling the kettle, setting it to boil. Roz was getting more company than her grandmother supposed. Polly had thought a lot about what Arnie told her, first deciding that it was nothing at all to do with anyone, then wavering, because Roz had been gently reared and happen it would do no harm if someone were to have a word with the lass. Just a gentle reminder about – things.

At that point she had shut out such thoughts at once. Even though it was a known fact that blood ran hotter in times of war, it wasn’t for Polly Appleby to sit in judgement on anybody’s morals. And who was to say that young Roz’s morals were in need of judging? She was surprised, therefore, to hear herself say, ‘The lass doesn’t do so badly for young company.’ She bit hard on her tongue. ‘Well, she goes to the dances with the rest of the village and –’

Her cheeks were burning, she knew it. Mrs Fairchild was looking at her in that way, and if she wasn’t careful the cat would be out of the bag.

‘And, Poll?’

‘And nowt, ma’am,’ came the too-sharp, too-ready reply.

‘What do you know that I don’t – that you think I don’t know?’

Polly turned, arms folded defensively across her middle. She had said too much.

‘Gossip,’ she said truculently. ‘Nowt but gossip, ma’am.’

‘About whom?’

‘I don’t like, ma’am. You know me. I don’t tittle-tattle about what’s none of my business.’

‘Poll, something’s troubling you and I know it’s nothing to do with Arnie.’

‘No. Not Arnie.’ Drat the woman and her probing.

‘Then let’s sit down and drink our tea and have a talk about it.’

‘There’s nowt worth the telling.’

‘Oh, but there is! You and I have known each other a long time and you only call me ma’am when you’re cross or worried. Will you pour, Poll?’

Sighing deeply, Polly did as she was asked. There was no escaping it now. Mrs Fairchild was a deep one and she’d not rest till she knew every last word of it.

‘It was nowt nor summat, really, and to tell the truth it wasn’t village talk, though if Arnie knows about it happen the village knows about it, an’ all. And I suppose it’s best coming from me; best you don’t hear it second-hand.

‘It’s Roz, you see. Arnie said he’d seen her with an airman from Peddlesbury. Twice. And that’s all I know, ’cept that Arnie said the airman had gone on leave.’

‘Then Arnie might well be right,’ Hester said softly, ‘because for the past week Roz hasn’t been out at all, nights. It fits, I’m afraid. It all adds up. I’ve thought for quite some time that she’s been meeting someone, and now I know.’

‘Not for sure, you don’t. Not for sure, ma’am, save that Roz might’ve met the same young man twice and perhaps danced with him a time or two. But you knew about the dances.’

‘Of course I knew. All Alderby goes to the Friday dances. It’s the other nights we’re talking about, Poll.’

‘Then you’d best tackle her about it.’

‘How, will you tell me? Do I blunder in like an idiot, demand to know who she’s been with and what she’s doing?’

‘You could, though I doubt it’d get you very far. Stubborn, that one can be and we both know it. But how you’re going to do it without causing an upset, I don’t know. You’re the one who’s good at things like that; you’ll have to find a way. The lass needs to be told. She’s got to know about such things, how easy they can happen and where they can lead. She’s your lass, and it’s up to you to tell her about – well, things.’

‘But she’s a country-bred girl, Poll. She knows about things.’

‘She knows about animals and wild creatures; happen it’s high time she knew it’s much the same for folk.’

‘Tch!’ Hester clucked. ‘I wish we’d never brought the subject up.’

‘Oh, aye? Wish we’d stuck our heads in the sand and hoped it would go away, then?’

‘No. You’re right,’ Hester whispered, fidgeting with the chain at her neck. ‘It won’t go away. Roz is meeting someone and I know she doesn’t tell me the truth about where she is. That’s the worrying part of it; the untruths. I’ve asked where she’s going and when she’ll be in but she never gives a straight answer. I know my own granddaughter and when she’s lying to me. For all that, though, I can’t risk asking her outright – and being told more lies for my pains. That, I just couldn’t take.

‘So I shall leave it for the time being and hope she’ll tell me. And maybe it isn’t all that serious. Maybe she’ll have a lot of boyfriends before she meets the right one. Perhaps then she’ll tell me about him, and bring him home to meet me.’

‘You’re taking it very calmly I must say.’ Polly sniffed.

‘What other way is there? Now tell me, what did young Arnie make of the bombing, yesterday?’

Arnie? They were talking about Arnie, now? The matter of Roz was closed.

‘Arnie? Oh, the young monkey enjoyed it. ’Twas all I could do to stop him racing off to see if he could find any pieces of shrapnel. You know what lads are like.’ She rose stiffly to her feet. ‘Ah, well. Think I’ll get the boiler going for the washing, then I’ll give the little sitting-room a bit of a going-over.’

She said it sadly, because things were out in the open, now. The problem was far from being solved, but at least it had been given an airing. It was a question of wait and see, and all because of the Mistress and her stiff-necked pride.

But waiting would do no good at all, because Roz was heading for trouble and heartache; Polly knew it, and she didn’t like it. Not one little bit!

6

The Peddlesbury raid was over and forgotten and a five-minute wonder, folk said, though they’d been shocked at the suddenness of it, with no time for the alert to be sounded. Nasty, how that Heinkel had managed to sneak in, but count your blessings, they said; no one hurt, this time. And the damage to the runway could easily be repaired, though not too quickly, Kath hoped, since Roz had said it was more the pity that all three bombs hadn’t dropped there, and made a proper job of it.

Today Roz was happy. Tomorrow Paul would return from leave and her world would be perfect – until the runway was seen to, that was, and the Lancasters able to take off again.

She must, Kath decided, include Paul in her Sunday prayers. Kath prayed often – a habit, really. Prayers all the time at the orphanage and obligatory church attendance during her in-service years – and in her own time, too. But her prayers held substance now, because she had someone of her own to spend them on: Barney and Roz and everyone at Home Farm. And Paul, too.

Funny how almost everyone went to church these days. It had taken a war to fill the churches, for now almost everyone had someone to commend to divine keeping; everyone had urgent need to beg the Almighty to choose between them and us, and let our side win.

She still regretted not being married in church. To Kath, a church wedding was more permanent somehow, but their small wedding-party would have seemed out of place in such a great loftiness. Only she and Barney there had been, and Barney’s reluctant mother and Sylvia who worked at the house next door, and Barney’s witness. The Registrar too, of course. Short and businesslike, their joining; a lonely wedding, really. Lonely, but legal.

But this was not a day to think too much on what might have been; this was a rare day that hinted of spring to come. This day was warm from the touch of a wind from the south and a sky so blue it could have been stolen from April. A weather-breeder Mat said it was, and not to be trusted.

Kath held her face to the sun, walking carefully with the near-full jug held between gloved hands.

‘Pop over with Marco’s drinkings, there’s a good lass,’ Grace had asked. ‘What with Jonty away to the farrier’s and Mat wasting his time at the War Ag. and Roz seeing to the calves –’ Best keep Roz and Marco apart as much as possible, Grace had long ago decided; best not upset the Mistress more than need be. ‘He’s working at the game-cover; take along a mug for yourself and have five minutes in the sun. Lord knows, it’ll likely be snowing tomorrow.’

The prisoner was working alone, cutting down the smaller, spindly trees in the little wood, dragging them clear with the tractor, stacking them against the time they could be chopped into logs and laid to dry for next winter’s burning.

‘Marco! How’s it coming along?’

‘I think we finish, on time. This scrub makes trouble, but we manage okay.’

‘Jonty said you’d drag the tree roots out with the tractor.’

‘Si. We fix a chain.’ Smiling, he took the mug she had filled for him. ‘You stay, Kat?’

‘For five minutes.’ She settled herself beside him. ‘Jonty’s taken Duke to the smithy to be shod. I asked him if he’d bring back one of the old shoes for me – for a souvenir, and for luck. In this country a horseshoe brings luck, you see.’

‘In my country, also. But this morning you smile, Kat. You have had a letter?’

‘No. Not for a week. I think I’m smiling because it’s such a lovely day.’

‘And tomorrow, maybe, a letter come and you smile some more.’

‘Well – at the moment I’m afraid I’m not looking forward to letters. I’m afraid that I – well, I deceived my husband, and –’

‘Deceive him? You have a lover?’

‘No! Nothing like that!’ Why had she started this conversation?

‘You tell him lies, then?’

‘Not even lies. I’m just not, I suppose, telling him the truth.’

‘There is a difference?’

‘There’s a difference, Marco.’ She had said too much; talked about things that should be private between man and wife, talked about them what was more to one who was an enemy. ‘Five minutes, Grace said. I’d better go. Bring the jug back later, will you?’

‘No, Kat. Wait!’ He took her hand and she didn’t know whether to snatch it away, or leave it. ‘You must tell me why you do not speak the whole truth. If you have sadness it is best you talk about it.’

‘All right, then.’ She took a deep, defiant breath. ‘When I write to my husband it isn’t what I write but what I don’t write. I don’t tell him things because he’d be annoyed with me. I haven’t told him about you, yet. I can’t, because he doesn’t like –’

She pulled in her breath sharply, wincing at her stupidity, closing her eyes tightly as if to block out the words.

‘He does not like Italians and I am Italian, and working here?’

‘Something like that.’

‘And?’ he prompted softly, his eyes on hers.

‘And I can’t tell him that Jonty isn’t in the forces; that a man so young is still a civilian. He thinks all young men should be called up.’

‘Your husband is a strange man, Kat.’

‘No! That isn’t true. It’s just that he feels strongly about things. And I’ve upset him, too, because I joined the Land Army without asking him. He doesn’t like to see women in uniform. Well, you wouldn’t like it either, would you?’

‘If I had a wife and she went to work in the fields for her country, I would be proud of her. Your man spends much time being angry. It is not good.’

‘No,’ she whispered, eyes downcast.

‘It is not good that he makes you sad; not good he does not trust you, though that is to be understood. He is jealous, you see, because his wife is beautiful and he fears other men will admire her.’

‘I’m not beautiful! I’m – oh, we shouldn’t be talking like this!’

‘No, we should not. This morning, you see, I have a letter from home. My mother is much sad. She writes that my cousin Toni is missing. Toni is a soldier, fighting in the desert. My aunt fears he is dead.’

‘Marco, I’m so sorry. Wars are wrong, and cruel!’ And that was a strange thing to come out with, wasn’t it, to one who was her sworn enemy. But what else was there to say – that they should have stayed out of the war, not thrown in their lot with the Germans nor invaded Abyssinia, either. But young men like Toni and Barney and Paul and Marco didn’t start the wars – only fought them. ‘I’m truly sorry,’ she whispered, ‘and especially for your aunt. My worries are nothing compared to hers.’

‘Si. Is called making a big hill from a little hill, yes?’

‘A mountain out of a molehill,’ she said, smiling gently. ‘And you will forget what I told you? It’ll work out. I know it will.’

He watched her walk away; watched her until she was out of sight.

‘If you were my wife, Katarina,’ he said softly, ‘I would treat you good. If you belonged to me –’

He shrugged and refilled his mug. She did not belong to him; she never would. She was a married English woman and he was Italian. They were enemies. It was as simple as that.

Roz whistled loudly and cheerfully.

‘Grace says you’ve had your tea, Kath, so can you give me a hand in the milking parlour? I’ve fed the calves and filled the trough in the foldyard. There’s only the mucking-out to do, then Mat might let us give the men a hand this afternoon. It’s such a lovely day to be outdoors.’

‘Marco could do with some help. He’s there alone. Will Jonty be long away?’

‘No. The smithy’s only half a mile the other side of the village. He’ll be back by dinnertime. Oh, Kath, this day is dragging so.’

‘When are you meeting Paul?’

‘Tomorrow night. God! I’ve missed him. I’m grateful he’s been away from flying, but it hurts like hell when he isn’t near me. Why isn’t it nineteen forty-four?’

‘Is that when the war’s going to end?’

‘Wish I knew. It’s Leap Year I’m talking about. That’s when I’ll propose to Paul, and he won’t be able to refuse me.’

‘Idiot! In nineteen forty-four you’ll be twenty-one, and no one can stop you marrying him. Which date in April is it?’

‘The twenty-fourth. St Mark’s Eve – or so Polly says.’

‘And does that make it special?’

‘Not really. It’s just that on St Mark’s Eve – oh, it’s a long story! I’ll tell you some other time. Let’s get the milking parlour brushed out and then we’ll have done a fair morning’s work for King and Country. Let’s work like mad, Kath, then tomorrow will come sooner. And just think – they’re saying it’ll be a week at least before they can use the runway again.’

‘Wonder why they’ve never thought to take off over the grass,’ Kath reasoned, ever practical, if they really had to, that is.’

‘Couldn’t be done, especially now with the ground so soft and wet. Those Lancasters weigh a lot. Bombed-up and with a full fuel load on they’d get bogged down if they tried it. Oh no, Kath. Paul’s off flying for another week, thank heaven, and if I’m being unpatriotic, then hard luck!’

Whistling, she picked up brush and shovel and Kath watched her go, eyes sad.

She’s so happy. Don’t let her get hurt. Please, God, look after Paul and Barney. And all husbands and sweethearts and sons.

Poor God. His ears must be ringing with prayers.

‘Roz. I think I’ve just done something stupid. It – it’s about Marco.’

‘Oh, yes. And what has Signor So-So been up to, then?’

‘That wasn’t kind, Roz, and he hasn’t done anything. It was me; something I said that I shouldn’t have.’

‘Like Italians go home?’

‘All right – if you don’t want to listen –’

‘I do. Tell me.’

‘Well – it was just that we got to talking about letters – and by the way, he’s had bad news from home about his cousin. Anyway, I mentioned that Barney got upset about women in uniform and young men who didn’t join up …’

‘Like Jonty?’

‘Yes. I haven’t told Barney about Jonty, you see, and if I told him about Marco, Lord knows what would happen. And as for telling him about what happened on threshing day – well –’

‘You’re afraid of him, aren’t you; you’re scared to tell him in case he gets upset, and nothing must upset Barney, must it? Queen Victoria’s been gone a long time, y’know. You should stand up to him.’

‘Roz, no! You’ve got it all wrong. Barney is good and kind – it’s just that he has strong views about certain things.’ She laid aside her brush and took a cigarette packet from the pocket of her dungarees. ‘Oh, let’s have a smoke! Go on, I can spare it. The WVS ladies came to the hostel last night and they let me have ten. No, it’s just that I want him to be proud of me for joining up, that’s all. I wanted to be a landgirl so much.’ Sighing, she struck a match.

‘And so he should be proud of you. But your trouble, Kath Allen, is that you think you owe Barney something for marrying you – but you don’t need me to tell you that, do you? And d’you know what I think you should do? I think you should take a long, smug look in a mirror, then tell that Barney of yours to grow up.’

‘Roz!’ Oh my goodness, hadn’t Marco said much the same thing?

‘I mean it, Kath. You could have married any man you wanted but you settled for someone like Barney. When are you going to accept that what happened when you were a baby wasn’t any of your fault? And that’s something else. You said you’d go to the Friday-night dances at Peddlesbury, and you haven’t been. Wouldn’t Barney like that, either?’

‘I honestly don’t know. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I feel it isn’t right for a married woman to go to dances without her husband; not right for me, that is. Yet there are married girls at the hostel who go and nobody bothers about it.’

‘So why don’t you come on Friday and meet Paul? You’d enjoy yourself, and a good night out with the girls might stop you feeling so guilty about nothing, or maybe,’ she grinned, ‘with a bit of luck it just might give you something to feel guilty about.’

‘You’re wicked, Roz Fairchild, and I’ll go to that dance, just to show you!’

‘Great. You’ll have a smashing time. The band’s really good and there’s loads of partners.’

‘You’ve persuaded me. I do like dancing and I miss not going. And as long as I’m wearing my wedding ring, I suppose it’ll –’

‘Oh, wear the thing through your nose if it’ll make you feel any happier, but come! Promise you will?’

‘Promise.’

‘And you don’t have to tell Barney, you know.’

‘The way he’s acting now,’ Kath tilted her chin defiantly, ‘I don’t think I will.’

‘Great! A bit of sense at last! But let’s get on with it. Leaning on shovels isn’t going to get this war won.’

Kath did not reply. She was thinking about the dance, wishing she’d thought to bring just one nice dress with her, and her dancing shoes. She could, of course, send stamps to Aunt Min and ask her to post them, but Aunt Min might want to know why she needed her gold slippers, and that would never do.

‘I think,’ she murmured, ‘that when I’m due for some time off, I’ll look out a few civvy clothes to bring back with me.’

Sneakily, of course. So Aunt Min wouldn’t know.

They were walking through the orchard when Kath saw the little white flower. It stood small and frail beneath the holly hedge.

‘Roz! A snowdrop. Isn’t it beautiful?’

‘It is, and a sure sign that winter’s on the way out. Think I’ll take it in for Gran – cheer her up.’ She bent to pick it carefully. ‘She’s been a bit quiet these last few days. I’ll put it in an egg cup in the kitchen window. Come in and say hullo. She’d like that.’

‘It was good of Mr Ramsden to let us help the men this afternoon, wasn’t it?’ Kath kicked off her boots at Ridings’ back door.

‘It was. He’s a lovely man.’

‘An older edition of Jonty, I suppose. They say,’ Kath murmured obliquely, ‘that when a man chooses a wife he should take a long, hard look at her mother, because that’s how his bride might look in about twenty-five years.’

‘Ah, but I don’t intend marrying Jonty, so it doesn’t apply, does it?’ Roz filled a blue and white egg cup with water. ‘And where is everybody? We could make off with the sugar ration and they’d be none the wiser. Still, can’t wait.’ She placed the little flower on the window sill. ‘Polly’ll think the little people have left it.’

Polly Appleby thought no such thing. They were only half way across Ridings’ cobbled yard when a cry of rage made them turn to see a blue and white egg cup being deposited on the doorstep.

‘Who was it, then?’ Polly pointed to the flower. ‘Who brought that thing into the house?’

‘But, Poll, it’s only a little snowdrop.’ Roz laughed.

‘Aye. One snowdrop. I thought you’d have had more sense, Roz Fairchild. Asking for trouble, that’s what. And the times I’ve told you!’

‘It was a surprise,’ Kath insisted, wondering at Polly’s dismay. ‘To cheer up Mrs Fairchild.’

‘Cheer her up? She can do with cheering up when you invite death into the house!’

‘Oh Lord, I’d forgotten,’ Roz whispered. ‘I really had, Poll. I’m sorry, I truly am.’

‘And so you ought to be.’

‘I’ll go and find another. Two would make it all right, wouldn’t it?’

‘Find as many as you will. The damage is done now, you foolish girl. Oh, be off with you. I’ll get rid of it. And next time just think on, will you? Your gran has enough to worry over without you adding to it.’

Indignantly Polly slammed the door; white-faced, Roz whispered, ‘How could I have been so stupid?’

‘But what did we do?’ Kath demanded. ‘A little flower; a pretty little flower and Polly gets herself all het up.’

‘A snowdrop – one snowdrop on its own – is bad luck brought into the house. Poll even goes so far as to say it’s a death sign, but she’s so superstitious you wouldn’t believe it.’

‘Well, I don’t believe it,’ Kath countered hotly. ‘I never heard of such a thing. One tiny flower, that’s all it was.’

‘I know. One. You can bring in two snowdrops, you can bring in a bunch, but one – never. I should have remembered.’

‘I’m surprised at you, I really am,’ Kath chided. ‘Of course a flower can’t bring death. I don’t believe it.’

‘Nor should I, but Gran does. The last time it happened my parents were killed before the year was out.’

‘And your grandfather?’

‘I don’t know about then. I only know I should have thought. But Polly believes what she calls the signs. Like the St Mark’s Eve thing. She swears that’s true, as well.’

‘St Mark’s Eve? You were going to tell me, weren’t you?’ Kath reminded.

‘Oh, forget it,’ Roz snapped. ‘It’s nonsense. Superstition, that’s all. For heaven’s sake, let’s get down to the men before the sun goes in. Let’s breathe in some clean, no-nonsense fresh air.’

‘But you’ve got me curious. I want to know.’

‘Later, I said,’ Roz ground. ‘We’ve had enough superstition for one day. Just leave it, okay? Lord, how I want Paul.’

How she wanted him, needed him. Needed his arms around her and his lips against her cheek telling her it was all right, that one small flower could harm no one.

‘Paul!’ she gasped, horrified. ‘It could be Paul!’

‘It could not be Paul; it will not be Paul. I helped you pick it, Roz, and I helped you put it in water and I’m not one bit afraid. Be reasonable, girl. Say the Lord’s prayer, or something. Say something holy and that’ll be the end of it. Go on. Do as I say, and it’ll be all right.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I’m absolutely sure. Nothing’s stronger than Our Father …’

Closing her eyes, Roz did as she was told. Of course Kath was right and Polly was a silly, superstitious woman. One little flower? One pretty little flower?

‘Who was that?’ Hester Fairchild demanded, closing the kitchen door behind her, holding her hands to the fire. ‘Who were you talking to, Poll?’

‘Only Roz and Kath,’ she replied without looking up. ‘On their way to the game-cover. Just called, in passing.’

‘The game-cover. Why on earth do we call it that? There’s been no game in it since Martin died.’

‘There’s been partridge and a few wild pheasants and rabbits, too, though they’ll be gone, now. The girls are fetching some wood, so go easy on the coal; there’s bad weather ahead of us and you don’t want to face it with an empty coalhouse, now do you?’

The mistress of Ridings did not, and though she had resented the tearing out of the game-cover she knew full well that next winter there would be logs enough to warm the whole house. It would be something to look forward to, with coal so hard to come by.

‘They should ration coal,’ she murmured, frowning. ‘Ration it officially, that is, then we’d all know where we stood.’

‘Happen they should, at that.’ Polly was still upset about the snowdrop but she had managed to throw it away and wash out the egg cup before Hester came downstairs. ‘Happen they will. And I’ve seen to the water like Roz asked me. It’s in the white bucket outside.’

‘Water?’

‘Rainwater,’ Poll supplied. ‘From the backyard tub. She wants to wash her hair tonight.’

‘I see.’ So tonight would be the last of her granddaughter’s evenings at home. Tomorrow, it seemed, the airman would be back from leave and the untruths and prevarications would start all over again.

She walked to the window that overlooked the orchard and gazed at the yellow carpet of aconites and the pale green sheen that covered the hedge bottoms; the green that promised snowdrops soon to flower.

Once – last year, even – the sight would have given her happiness, but not any longer. To see the first stirrings of spring left an emptiness inside her because now it meant only another year to be endured. She was, Hester admitted, getting tired. Her love of living had ended with Martin’s death, but there had been a daughter to rear and a granddaughter, too; a granddaughter who had changed overnight, almost, from child to woman.

‘I’m lonely, Poll,’ she whispered. ‘Suddenly I’m so very lonely.’

‘Nay, ma’am, you’re weary. We all are. Sick and tired of this war and us never winning anything. There’s nothing the matter with any of us that some good news and a day free from worrying wouldn’t put right, and that’s a fact. So let’s make ourselves a pot of tea and be blowed to the rationing! Go on, ma’am. Put that old kettle on to boil, won’t you?’

‘Have you ever once wondered,’ Hester smiled, ‘what would happen if suddenly there was no tea?’

‘That I have. Many a time. And I came to the conclusion that if our tea ration dried up we’d just have to throw up our hands and give in.’

‘But we won’t, Poll?’

‘We won’t, Mrs Fairchild, ma’am. We won’t.’

Tuesday, beautiful Tuesday and only five minutes more until he came. Five long, lovely minutes, then he’d be here.

Roz waited, hands in pockets, coat collar upturned. Today was cold, yesterday’s little April forgotten. But the days were lengthening. Soon they would have to find some other place to meet. Soon, it would no longer be possible to wait, hidden by darkness, until she heard his footstep, his whistle.

Today she had seen catkins; not yet fat and fluffy and golden with pollen but her heart had beaten more quickly at the sight of them nevertheless. Today, everything was beautiful and precious, touched with their love; the gentle-eyed calves, fat little Daisy, the rooks, lazy wings flapping on the wind, and the daffodil tips, pushing out of the cold, wet earth.

She heard his footstep, then saw him as he turned into the yard. The sight of him set her pulses racing and she ran, not caring who might see them, into his arms, closing her eyes against the sweet, silly tears that sprang to them, lifting her face for his kiss.

‘Darling, I’ve missed you so.’ His voice was deep, husky with love.

‘Hey!’ She pulled away from him. ‘That’s what I always say!’ She reached for his lips with her own, wishing she didn’t feel so dizzy, so giddily happy. ‘I love you, love you, and I’ve missed you, too.’

‘I’m mad, aren’t I?’ His laugh was deep, and indulgent. ‘Why did I go? Why did you let me?’

‘Because I’m mad, too. Did you tell your parents about us?’

‘No, Roz. Mum would have gone into a dither about it and Dad would have given me a lecture on why a fighting man shouldn’t get serious about girls till the war’s over. I told Pippa, though. She was glad for us, though she gave me a stern, sisterly warning.’

‘It’s all right. I’m not pregnant. I told you so, when you rang.’ She was glad Paul’s sister knew about them; that someone knew they’d been lovers. ‘And did I tell you I love you?’

‘You did, but say it again. Don’t ever stop saying it, Roz.’

‘I won’t. Not ever. Fifty years from now I’ll still be telling you.’

He held her tightly. Fifty years from now. She said it often, tilting at Fate, defying it to part them. Fifty years, my lovely love? Fifty weeks, fifty days he’d be grateful for. He closed his eyes, resting his cheek on her hair, grateful to a war that had brought them together, hating a war that could snatch them apart without a goodbye.

‘I want you, Roz.’

‘I want you, too. I can’t think about anything else but wanting you.’ ‘Where shall we go?’

‘To the haystack, again.’ Every day for the last week she and Kath had cut deep into that stack, carrying hay to the cows wintering in the foldyard. Soon, it would all be gone, but soon it would be summer and the earth warm beneath them, freezing rain and biting winds forgotten. Soon, they would have no need of it.

They walked, not speaking now, fingers entwined, thighs touching, pausing only to kiss. Now fear was forgotten, caution flung to the sky. Need was all they knew and all else mattered little. The world was them, and only them; only this moment was real.

They sank into the hay and he unbuttoned his greatcoat, wrapped her to him inside it.

‘Do you know something?’ she whispered, her lips on his. ‘Last time, when I got home, there was hay on the back of my coat. I saw it when I took it off and I thought, “Oh, my God!”’

‘I’ll brush you down this time.’

‘Mmm.’ He unfastened her coat and blouse, reached gently to slip the hook of her bra. She wanted him to kiss her until she was desperate with need for him; wanted this night never to end. She didn’t care. She wouldn’t care if the whole of Alderby knew. She wanted them to know.

‘I love you,’ she whispered, as he took her.

It was late when they left the shelter of the haystack. The wind had scattered the clouds and a half moon glinted down on them. Suddenly he said, ‘There was a buzz, when we got back, that our replacement came.’ They must talk, now, of real things, of the world they lived in. ‘It’s brand new, I believe. A woman ferry-pilot flew it up from the makers, they told us, and they diverted her to Linforth – told her to land it there. We’ll have to go over and pick it up, I suppose, when the runway’s in use again. Imagine – a woman, all alone in a plane that size?’

There would be no death on the new Lancaster bomber. A clean slate, another rear-gunner.

‘You won’t be collecting it yet,’ she whispered confidently.

‘No. Not for about a week. Two great holes in the runway to be seen to. We can meet every night.’

Every night, for a week. Seven tomorrows, sweet and safe. She didn’t care about the replacement. It was ten miles away, at another aerodrome. The whole world was ten miles away.

‘I don’t want you to leave me,’ he said as they stood close together at the orchard gate.

‘I don’t want to. I want you to stay with me all night. Could we make it, do you think – a night together?’

‘I can manage it, sweetheart, but what about you?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll talk to Kath about it. Kath can get sleeping-out passes so I could say I was with her. She’ll help me, I know she will.’

‘York? We could hide ourselves in York.’

‘Anywhere. Anywhere they’ll let us be together.’

‘You’re sure?’ He cupped her face in his hands, touching her mouth gently, kissing away her doubts, if doubts she had.

‘I’m sure.’ She had never been so sure of anything in the whole of her life – except perhaps of how much she loved him. ‘Let’s try to make it soon, Paul; as soon as we can?’

There were sixteen more operations to fly; fifteen, and the last one. It had to be soon.

Kath stood in the darkness at the attic window, Barney’s letter clenched in her hand. The reply to her Christmas Day letter, the one she had filled with love and concern, had come.

Well Kath, no need for me to say I’m still hurt by your behaviour but I hope you will give me no more cause for complaint. It is very hot here, sand everywhere. I would give a lot for a pint of good English bitter, pulled of course, in an English pub.

I’m glad you are looking to the future and saving all the Army allowance. More than a hundred pounds a year. Not bad, eh? I can see I shall have that car I’ve always wanted when I get back.

No more cause for complaint? Well, thanks, Barney!

Hot, is it? Well, it’s so damn cold here you wouldn’t believe it. Some of the girls at the hostel were picking sprouts today. You should have seen their hands, Barney. Blue and swollen, numb with frost. I’ll send you some frozen sprouts, shall I, to cool you down?

That car you’ve always wanted? But when rugs and curtains and wallpaper are back in the shops again, I’d thought my savings could be spent on things for our home and some nice easy chairs.

She stuffed the letter into the pocket of her coat, breathing hard in her dismay. Chin on hand, she gazed into the night.

The stillness was touched with moonglow, but it did nothing to soothe her. She pulled her coat to her, shivering not with cold but with an unexplained apprehension.

Was it that strange, just-around-the-corner feeling, the certainty that something was about to happen or was she ashamed, still, of confiding in a stranger in a way no married woman should talk to any man – except her husband. But Marco was her friend, had saved her life, though saving her life should not have made him the keeper of her conscience. What, then, was this feeling of malcontent? Was she, for the first time, finding fault with her marriage or could it be that she missed not her husband, but being a wife?

Quickly she closed the window, drawing the blackout curtains, walking slowly across the room, hand outstretched, seeking the light switch.

Being a wife? She did not miss Barney that way. She never could, never would, for making love with Barney had been nothing more than an embarrassed giving, a closing of her ears to the rhythmic drumming of the bedsprings and closing her eyes to shut out the woman who listened on the other side of the partition wall.

She had known little about making love, save what she had heard whispered by kitchenmaids, so she had expected little from her wedding night. A duty, that’s what being a wife was; something necessary to compensate for her marital status and for the making of the children she wanted and which Barney said they would have one day.

She snapped on the light, blinking in the sudden brightness, then throwing off her coat she undressed quickly and slithered into the pyjamas she had wrapped around her hot-water bottle.

It had been a lot more fun when they were courting, when Barney’s kisses excited her. But even then she had been able to tell him ‘No!’ she thought miserably. And the kissing and cuddling had come to an end on their wedding night. From that night on he had merely taken her, grunting into a darkness for which she had been grateful.

Then why, suddenly, did she feel this way? Did she feel cheated or was this emotion one of envy? Was she jealous of Roz out there in Paul’s arms? Did she, Kathleen Allen, want to snatch at love as Roz did; snatch carelessly, knowing only the need to belong? And why didn’t she ache for Barney as Roz ached for Paul? Was gratitude a poor substitute for love, or did it outlast passion? She folded her clothes with deliberate care, angry with herself for harbouring such thoughts, shocked she could even think them.

Take a long, smug look in a mirror. You could have married any man you wanted …

Mouth set tightly she walked past the wall mirror and taking her husband’s photograph from the chest of drawers she held it to her.

I’m sorry. Lord only knows what nonsense is in my head or where it came from. It’s this war, Barney; this terrible war …

She shrugged into her dressing gown, hugging it around her. There would be a bedtime pot of tea on the kitchen table, and bread and jam. A cup of tea was what she needed, and a comforting jam sandwich.

I didn’t mean to find fault with you, Barney. And I’m sorry I said those things to Marco – but you don’t know Marco Roselli, do you?

Oh, damn, damn, damn! She wasn’t going to that dance on Friday, even if she’d promised she would. Asking for trouble, it would be, with herself in this silly mood.

A pretty dress and gold dancing slippers, indeed! Oh, my word no!

For the first time since that mid-December morning, they delivered milk in daylight.

‘Paul all right?’ Kath asked. ‘Had a good leave, did he?’

‘Great. His sister managed to get home, too. Kath, I want you to help me – need you to help me.’

‘What’s the matter?’ Kath glanced up sharply from the delivery book.

‘Nothing’s the matter. We’re going to York for the night, and I’ll need an alibi.’

‘Roz! Good grief!’ Her cheeks flushed pink. ‘All night?’

‘All night. I don’t know how to fix it at home, though. What do I tell Gran?’

‘You tell me!’ Kath gasped. ‘Now see here, there’s no way I’m going to help you, but I won’t snitch on you, either. You work it out for yourself, then tell me about it. If I’ve got to tell lies, I might as well tell the same lies as you.’

‘Oh, don’t go all prissy on me. I thought you’d understand,’ Roz pouted.

‘I do understand, only I’ll not be a party to deceit; not deceiving your gran, that is. What did you have in mind?’ she asked grudgingly.

‘I thought I could say I was with you; that you’d got a sleeping-out pass and we were going to the last-house flicks.’

‘So we’d be too late to catch the last bus back and have to stay the night?’

‘Something like that. Or we could be going to a dance, maybe? The girls at the hostel sometimes go to a big dance in York, don’t they?’

‘I believe they do – a couple of times a year – but they organize transport to bring them back when it’s over.’

‘Damn!’ It wouldn’t be easy, Roz brooded; she’d never thought it would, but somehow she would make it happen, even if she waited until April to do it.

‘We might have to hold it back till my birthday. I don’t want to, but it might be our only chance.’

‘But wouldn’t you want to have your birthday at Ridings?’

‘Don’t see why. I suppose we’ll push the boat out for my twenty-first and have a good do, then – it’ll depend on the way things are. But I don’t think Gran would worry over much if I said one or two of us were making a night of it, on the twenty-fourth.

‘By the way, have you heard if Gone with the Wind has come up north, yet? I’m longing to see it. It’s been on in London for over a year. They get all the fun in London.’

‘Yes, Roz, and a lot of the bombs.’

‘What’s the matter? You are going to help me, aren’t you?’ Roz demanded.

‘I said I would, and I will. I won’t connive, though.’

‘Because you happen to be wearing your moody hat, this morning? Is that it?’

‘Moody?’ Kath snapped. ‘Who’s moody?’ Roz could be a bit much sometimes!

‘You are. You’re not still worrying about Marco, are you – about what you said to him? Marco’s all right. I like him. I just hope Gran won’t want Mat to get rid of him once the ploughing’s finished.’

‘But she couldn’t do that!’ Not after the way Marco had worked, and on Ridings land, too.

‘She could, she would and she probably will. I’d bet on it.’

‘But that wouldn’t be fair, Roz.’ Surely she wouldn’t do anything as underhanded as that? Marco had fitted in well – he even spoke good English. ‘Surely she wouldn’t be so petty?’

‘All right, all right! Don’t look so pained, Kath. I’m on your side.’

‘Pained? On my side? What on earth do you mean?’

‘I mean that I think you like him. You always stick up for him.’

‘Of course I like him. I like Jonty and Mr Ramsden, too. Don’t try to read meanings into things that aren’t there. That’s how gossip starts.’

‘My, but we’re prickly, this morning. Got a headache?’

‘No, I haven’t. You can be so infuriating, Roz Fairchild. You’re so darned smug and happy that you make me want to – to weep!’

And the worst of it was, she thought dejectedly, Roz was right. Something was irritating her. Last night she had carried her thoughts to bed with her and lain awake, brooding on them and the selfish letter Barney had written.

‘It’s Barney, then,’ Roz pronounced. ‘He’s written you another snotty letter. If I were you –’

‘Well, you’re not me, so you can –’ Oh, it wasn’t any use. ‘You’re right, Roz. Not a nasty letter, but not a nice one. And selfish, too.’

‘Well, I’ve told you what to do, haven’t I? Stick up for yourself.’

Roz pushed wide the creaking lodge gates then picked up Polly’s milk. ‘I told you ages ago,’ she called smugly, over her shoulder.

Oh, Roz; moody and counting bombers you take some living with, Kath directed her thoughts at the jaunty back that disappeared behind Polly’s woodshed. But happy and cheerfully planning a night in York with Paul, you’re impossible!

And dammit, Kath decided, all at once having a try at sticking up for herself, she would go to the Friday-night dance, and more would be the pity if she didn’t bring herself to go the whole hog, and flirt like mad.

‘Y’know,’ she murmured, watching her friend close the gates behind the milk-float, ‘I think I will write to Aunt Min and ask her to send me a nice dress.’ And her gold dancing shoes!

Kath Allen could drive a tractor, harness a pony and milk a cow – by machine, anyway – and she had almost learned to cope with rats, too. So if she wanted to go to a dance with the rest of the girls, then go she would! And for two pins she’d write and tell Barney about it. After all, she might just as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.

‘Come on, Daisy.’ She clicked her tongue crisply. ‘Let’s get you home, old girl.’

7

She had enjoyed the Friday-night dance more than she should have, Kath admitted reluctantly, thinking of Skip with whom she’d danced almost every dance.

‘You’re looking very pleased with yourself, Mrs Allen,’ Roz teased, rolling a milk churn to be filled.

‘I was thinking about last night …’

‘I said you’d enjoy it, didn’t I? Thought you’d get on with Skip. He’s nice. I’m glad he’s Paul’s pilot. They don’t come any safer.’

Safe. That was exactly how she had felt, Kath thought, but in a different way. Two marrieds together, and Skip talking about his wife back home and the baby they expected in June. Easy together, they had been.

‘I’m glad I met him – and Paul, too.’ She knew now why Roz was so deeply in love. Paul Rennie was head-turning handsome, no two ways about it, and equally besotted. They had danced in a world of their own, the two of them; so right together, so young, so very beautiful. The kind of beauty, Kath thought sadly, that made the gods jealous.

‘Had you ever thought, Roz, how much time it would save,’ she murmured, directing her attention to the task in hand, ‘if we used waxed cartons for the milk – it would cut out hours of bottle washing.’ She frowned, arranging milk bottles in the sterilizer.

‘I know. Mat did think about it though I imagine he’s glad now that he didn’t get rid of the bottles. Think how difficult it is to get paper; cartons will be hard to come by. They say the paper situation is really serious, and getting worse.’

Paper was certainly in very short supply. Thin, four-page newspapers; little if any wrapping paper in shops – even food shops. It had become common practice to take along your own dish when buying fish and chips and newspaper to carry it home in.

‘Roz – I’ve just thought! It’s ages since I had any fish and chips.’

Fried fish and chips had never been placed on official ration – people said that no government could ever be that stupid, not even the one we were stuck with for the duration that didn’t seem able to win one battle or give out one piece of news worth listening to. Even they weren’t so stupid as to ration fish and chips. It was to the chip shop that a housewife turned when her meat ration was used up and she hadn’t been lucky in the sausage queue nor the offal queue, hadn’t been able to get even the smallest piece of off-the-ration suet to make into a pastry top for a vegetable pie. Queues at chip shops were half-an-hour long and worth every minute of the wait.

There’s a chip shop in Helpsley; we’ll bike over there when the nights get lighter, if you’d like.’

Kath would like, she said. And wouldn’t it be bliss to eat them with her fingers, the only way to eat fish and chips; well-salted, with vinegar oozing through the newspaper wrapping.

‘It’s a date, then. But how on earth did we get on to the subject of fish and chips? I was talking about the dance, and how well you and Skip got on together.’

And I, Roz, was talking about milk in cartons.’

‘Okay. Point taken. But you’ll come again next week, won’t you – if they’re not flying, that is.’

‘I might.’ Might? She’d be there all right and in a pretty dress, too, if Aunt Min didn’t turn funny. ‘It’s a long time since I had so much fun – oh, Roz, look.’

They ran to the door, surprised by the suddenness of the snow. It fell in shilling-sized flakes and was so fast-falling they could hardly see across the yard to the kitchen door.

‘Might have known it – Polly said the weather was too good to last.’

‘More winter to come, you mean?’

‘Right. There’s always a grain of truth in Polly’s prophecies. Sometimes she frightens me.’

‘For goodness’ sake, it’s only a spot of snow.’

It was not a spot of snow. Indeed, it looked like being the heaviest fall of winter, with everything covered white, even as they watched.

‘It’ll put paid to the ploughing if it carries on like this,’ Roz said gloomily. ‘My, but it’s coming down thick …’

Polly Appleby saw the first of the snowflakes and ran to the washing line to gather in the shirts.

Drat the snow. Just when she was beginning to think the bite had gone out of winter, with snowdrops flowering and the buds on the wild daffodils beginning to swell. Now she would have to dry the shirts indoors which was never as satisfactory.

Shirt washing was another of Polly’s sidelines and it was her habit, each and every Saturday, to collect six white shirts from the bay-windowed house standing back from Alderby Green. They were boiled, starched and ironed and delivered, carefully folded, at about three in the afternoon each Wednesday following.

The shirts, a clean one for each day of the working week, were worn by Mr Murgatroyd, a solicitor’s clerk who travelled by train to his work in York. Each and every Wednesday afternoon his wife would nod her thanks and hand Polly the two half-crowns placed in readiness on the window sill and murmur that she would see her again on Saturday, all being well.

She was particular about her husband’s shirts. At less than a shilling a garment she considered she was getting the best of the bargain and to show her appreciation it was her custom to allow Polly first pick of the jumble-sale pile each spring and autumn.

They were good quality shirts, Polly considered, arranging them on the clothes horse to finish drying. It was a fortunate man, she grudgingly acknowledged, whose wife had had the foresight to buy a dozen white shirts one week before the announcement of clothes rationing. It made a body wonder if solicitors’ clerks knew things that lesser folk did not, though good luck to them, if they did. Polly believed in live and let live. Five shillings a week and a good sort through Mrs M’s jumble suited her nicely, and when drying outdoors was possible again six shirts would be little trouble. And happen the dratted snow would be gone by morning.

The snow was not gone by morning. It had continued to fall throughout most of the night and high as the hedgetops it had drifted, with Kath and twenty more landgirls cut off at Peacock Hey, waiting for the snow-plough to reach them.

Jonty had done the milk-round by tractor that morning, for the depth of it had proved too much for Daisy. The snow had frozen into nasty ruts, making farm work ten times more difficult, with the milk cows slithering and sliding in the icy foldyard and beef cattle huddled in the shelter of the hedge, waiting for hay that would be a long time coming.

‘What price working on a farm, now.’ Roz grinned, for frozen snow meant frozen runways and she was not complaining.

‘I suppose Paul couldn’t get out, last night?’ Kath asked. ‘The weather, I mean. We were ages this morning, waiting till the snow-plough got through to us.’

‘He didn’t. It was bad at Peddlesbury, too. He managed to phone me, though. I was lucky – Gran was upstairs when he rang. It’s all wrong, you know, this grabbing at phones and looking over my shoulder. And it’s just as bad for Paul, having to keep it from his parents. I sometimes wonder what would happen if I got pregnant and we had to get married.’

‘Don’t, Roz! What ever you do, don’t get pregnant. You said you’d talk to Paul about it; you promised you would.’

‘And I did, and it’s all right. But supposing something did happen? They’d die of shock. It’s crazy. I’m old enough to get called up and Paul’s old enough to fight, yet still we’ve got to act like it’s wrong for us to be in love.’

‘I know. It isn’t a lot of fun being young these days. But be careful, Roz. You said the Alderby folk could be funny – think of the gossip and what it would do to your gran.’

‘I will, I do, so stop your worrying. We’re not entirely stupid. We both know the way it is for us, that my getting pregnant isn’t on. I want Paul’s babies but not yet; not in this mad world. I wouldn’t be Skip’s wife for anything – wondering when she’ll see him again, if she’ll see him again; wondering if she’ll have to face life without him. Don’t worry, Kath. And for goodness’ sake let’s talk about something else – and not the weather, either. There’s been enough weather-talk since this snow came to last us for the duration. And don’t ask about York, because the more I think about it the more I think we’ll never be able to make it, not even for a night.’

‘Then let’s talk about tinned peaches, all thick with syrup and smothered in cream, and chocolate biscuits and big, thick steaks with onions fried in butter and boxes and boxes of chocolates. Let’s remember when we could buy silk stockings and all the clothes we wanted without coupons, and lipsticks and scent? Where did all the lovely scent go?’

‘Yes, and what about ice-cream? Think about strawberry ice-cream, Kath. Remember when the man came round, ringing his bell, and big cornets for a penny?’

Remember-when was a game, a nostalgic wallowing, a calling back of things almost forgotten.

‘And banana sandwiches, all crunchy with sugar and bread thick with butter – white bread …’

‘Oh, Kath, how long is this war going to last? How long, will you tell me?’

The snow that lay grey and frozen for almost a week gave way to a warm wind that thawed it overnight. Almost at once Peddlesbury’s bombers were airborne again and the ploughing of Ridings’ acres was resumed.

They cut the last furrow on the fourth day of March, three days late yet still a jump ahead of the man from the War Ag. who had not yet come to inspect it.

Mat Ramsden was pleased and relieved. Between them the young men had ploughed close on six acres a day and for more than eight weeks, too. They’d done a grand job. He said as much to Hester Fairchild and she had acknowledged the fact and said she was grateful.

‘So what now, Mat?’

‘So now we get the harrow over it to break up the clods, aye, and some good manure on it, too. Still plenty to be done yet,’ he’d stressed.

‘So you intend keeping the prisoner? There’s no chance of finding a local man – well, they’re so lazy, the Italians …’

‘Not this one, ma’am. He’s worked like a good ’un. Wouldn’t find better, nor cheaper,’ he added in final mitigation.

‘Potatoes, you said, and sugarbeet?’ She knew when enough was enough; she could wait. ‘The War Ag. pay a subsidy on potatoes, didn’t you say?’

‘They do. It’ll nicely cover the cost of the seed. Those old acres of yours’ll be paying you back, come Michaelmas.’ Mat smiled as he took his leave. ‘It’ll be right grand to see things growing again at Ridings.’

‘I hope you won’t make it difficult for the prisoner, Gran, now that the ploughing’s finished,’ Roz said later, careful not to use his name.

‘Difficult? Has anything been said then, at Home Farm?’

‘Not that I’ve heard, but I do know Mat wants to keep him.’

‘I still say they’re lazy,’ Hester sniffed. ‘Used to siestas, no doubt.’

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