ELIZABETH ELGIN
Where Bluebells Chime

Dedication

To

my husband George

and to

my daughters Jane and Gillian.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Family Tree

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About the Author

By the Same Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Family Tree

1

June 1940

She saw Keth’s letter when the alarm jangled her awake at half-past seven and reached for it, sighing contentment, turning the envelope over to read ‘Open on 20 June’ written across the flap. It must have arrived yesterday, or the day before and Mam had hidden it away then tiptoed into her room last night to prop it against the clock.

She gazed at the colourful American stamp and the air-mail sticker so she might stretch out the seconds before opening it, then frowned to read the postmark. Washington DC instead of Lexington as it almost always was. Why Washington? Quickly, she slit open the envelope.

My darling,

Happy birthday. Close your eyes and know I am thinking of you and wanting you and needing to touch and hold you.

I miss you so much. It should not have been like this. A week ago, I sat my last exam and I know I shall get a good degree. Now I should be packing my cases, heading for New York and a passage home, but nothing is simple any longer. The Atlantic is forbidden, now, to people like me, but I will find a way to be with you.

Since France capitulated I have thought of little else but getting home. Please, darling, take care of yourself and try to keep out of harm’s way. The papers here talk about England being invaded but I can’t believe it can happen – not when I am not there to take care of you and Mum.

There must be a way for us to be together and I will find it. I know you want me to stay in Kentucky, but that is not possible when I need you so desperately and love you so much.

Always remember you are mine.

Keth.

She closed her eyes tightly, trying to smile away the tears that threatened because if she were to weep on her birthday then she would weep all year, Mam said.

‘The summer of ’forty I’ll be back,’ Keth promised, when they parted, but he could not, must not come home.

Today she was twenty and next year, when she came of age, was to have been her wedding day – well, not quite on her birthday, it being a Friday and Friday an unlucky day for weddings. That was why she had ringed round the day after; ringed it on every calendar in the house.

June 21 1941. At All Souls’, Holdenby, by the Reverend Nathan Sutton. Keth Purvis to Daisy Julia Dwerryhouse.

She had read the announcement of their wedding so often in her dreamings. Daisy Purvis. Mrs Keth Purvis. She had promised never to write her married name – not before the wedding that was. As unlucky as a Friday marrying, Mam said, so she had never done it. But it hadn’t stopped her saying it secretly and softly. Daisy Julia Purvis. It made a sound like a love song, like nightingales singing, like the sighing hush of silence before two lovers kiss.

The summer of ’forty. It had been her watchword; words to wear like a talisman, to say over and over when she missed him and wanted him unbearably.

Yet now the summer of ’forty had come and there should have been a letter telling her that soon he’d be sailing from New York, and would she be at Southampton – or Tilbury or Liverpool, perhaps – to meet him when he docked?

Sometimes it had been like that, but sometimes in her dreamings Keth had surprised her, had been waiting where Rowangarth Lane branched off into Brattocks Wood and the footpath that ran through the trees to Keeper’s Cottage; standing there in grey flannel trousers and a white shirt, just as he had been two years ago.

The summer of ’thirty-eight, it had been – their daisychain summer – yet now that longed-for summer of ’forty had arrived and Keth was still in Kentucky. It was where, truth known, she wanted him to stay.

Don’t come home, Keth. Stay in America where you’ll be safe.

America wasn’t at war. America was safety and young men living their lives without fear of call-up; young men knowing they could make plans, go to university, get jobs, stay alive. So she didn’t really want that letter saying he was coming home because if he did, They, the faceless ones, would take him. There had been no heady, patriotic rush to volunteer as there was in Dada’s war. This time, They had already put their mark on every fit young man of twenty-one and dubbed them the militia. Conscripts, really. Six weeks in barracks; forty-odd days in which to accept the discipline of life in the armed forces, to march like automatons in foot-blistering boots; learn to salute Authority and acknowledge that henceforth and for the duration of hostilities, each was no more than a surname and a number. Then away to active service, and some of them killed already.

Stay, Keth. She sent her thoughts winging high and far. I’d rather wait four years, if four years it takes, than have you no more than a name on a gravestone in some foreign cemetery.

She heard the creaking of the stairs and laid her lips briefly to the letter in her hand. Then she swung her feet to the floor. Mam was coming to wish her a happy birthday. Daisy forced her lips into a smile …

When Daisy said goodbye to Reuben Pickering that night, he stood at his almshouse door, waiting to wave to her as she reached the corner. She always turned for one last wave and every time she did she wondered if she would see him again. You never knew what might happen in wartime, and besides, Reuben was frail and old; very old. Over ninety, Mam said, though she would never tell how many years over ninety. You didn’t remind people, especially Uncle Reuben, about their age, she admonished when Daisy once asked. So Daisy always tried, now, to treat the retired gamekeeper as if every time she saw him would be the very last and to be especially kind to him, not just for the sake of her conscience, but because she loved him very much.

Reuben was a part of her life, had always been there – a part of Mam’s life, too. A sort of father, really, because Mam had never had one – or not that she remembered. That was why today in her dinner hour, Daisy had stood in a queue outside a sweet shop and when she reached the counter, had chosen humbugs because they were Reuben’s favourite, though she would have to tell him she was sorry there had been no tobacco queue, but that she would try to get him some tomorrow.

Tobacco and cigarettes were even harder to come by now than humbugs. But yesterday she hadn’t looked for queues during her dinner hour. Yesterday she had –

Daisy blinked her eyes as she stepped from the mellow evening sunlight and into the green-cool dimness of Brattocks Wood, breathing in the damp, mossy scent of it to calm herself, because whenever she thought of what she had done yesterday in her dinner hour, her heart started to bump – especially when she realized that before so very much longer she would have to tell her parents about it. She had almost decided it must be tonight, though it would be awful, telling them on her birthday.

Then she salved her conscience almost at once by remembering that Sunday was to be her official birthday, with Aunt Julia calling for Reuben and bringing him to Keeper’s in her car and the two of them staying for a birthday tea. It was good of Aunt Julia, come to think of it, since petrol was rationed now, and no one got half enough.

But yesterday had started badly. She had awakened and thought that this day next year should have been her wedding day and it wouldn’t be, now, because of the bloody awful war. She had known with dreadful certainty it would not. Keth would not be home, now, though she knew she should be glad he was in America and out of harm’s way. There was no way, now, of crossing the Atlantic unless you were a merchant seaman, sailing square-packed in convoys or unless you were in the Air Force and could fly across in a warplane.

Civilians could no longer buy a sailing ticket or a seat on a flying-boat, because all transatlantic liners were troopships, now, and flying-boats had been commandeered by the Air Force and painted in the dull colours of camouflage to be a part of Coastal Command. Besides, the Atlantic was a dangerous place to be, packed with German submarines and battleships sailing where they wanted, doing exactly as they pleased because Britain was still licking its wounds after Dunkirk and could do little to stop them.

An aircraft flew low overhead, crashing into her thoughts. She could not see it through the denseness of the branches above her but she knew it was one of the bombers from the aerodrome at Holdenby Moor. There were two squadrons there now and last night they had flown over Germany again, dropping their bombs – an act of defiance, really, when everything was in such a mess and everyone worrying about the invasion. But when it came people would make a fight of it, though in France they hadn’t been given much of a chance. Hitler’s armies had just marched on and on …

But we had the Channel – the English Channel – and Hitler had to cross it first. And we had a navy, still, to help stop them, so perhaps it would be all right. Maybe the Germans wouldn’t come.

Daisy looked down at her watch. Mam wouldn’t be home from the canteen yet, nor Dada from his meeting. She squinted up at the sun dappling through the trees. Soon, when it reached the cupola of Rowangarth stable block it would start slowly to set. Blackout tonight would be at eleven o’clock and remain until daylight came about five tomorrow morning.

The blackout, Daisy frowned, was the strangest thing about the war, especially in winter when it began at teatime and lasted until long past breakfast time, next day. Last winter had been bleak and cold and very dark, and the blackout had taken a lot of getting used to. Stepping out into it, even from a dimly lit room, was like stepping into sudden blindness. So you stood there, if you had any sense, and gave yourself up the the blackness, eyes blinking until shapes could be picked out against the skyline. Shapes – outlines of buildings, that was, and trees – and especially in towns you stood still until your eyes could make out not only shapes but the white bands painted on gateposts and lampposts and telegraph poles and corners of buildings; unless you wanted a bloody nose or a black eye, of course, from walking into things you couldn’t see. ‘Bumped into a lamppost, did you?’ people would grin, with no sympathy at all for bruises or shattered spectacles.

But there would be virtually no blackout tonight because it was June and would hardly get dark because of that extra, unnatural hour of double summertime. She must remember to think about June evenings when the drear of November was with them.

Drew, her half-brother, had joined the Royal Navy. His last letter had been from signal school where he was learning to read morse. And when he had, he’d be sent to a ship and only heaven knew where he would end up.

Once, Daisy sighed, there had been six of them: herself and Drew and Keth and Tatiana, with Bas and Kitty over from Kentucky each summer and every Christmas. Her Sutton Clan, Aunt Julia called them.

They had been golden summers and sparkling Christmases in that other life, yet now Bas and Kitty could no longer visit, and Keth was staying with them because he had gone to university in America with Bas. And with Drew gone there was only her and Tatty left to remember how it had once been; how very precious.

Tatty was eighteen now, beautiful, and fun to know. She wanted to do war work, but her Grandmother Petrovska, who never ceased to remind anyone who would listen that she was White Russian and a countess, had forbidden it absolutely.

Poor Tatiana. And poor Daisy, who’d better be getting home to Keeper’s Cottage to tell her parents her secret. And when she told them, Mam would burst into floods of tears and Dada would shout and play merry hell so that Mam would have to tell him to watch that temper of his before it got him into trouble. And when Mam said that, Daisy would know that the worst was over and that Mam at least was on her side.

But oh, why had she done it – especially now?

Julia Sutton offered the letter to her mother, smiling indulgently. ‘I’m to thank you, Drew says, for the soap and chocolate, but he says you mustn’t bother now they’re rationed – but read it for yourself …’

‘No, dear.’ Helen Sutton placed a cushion behind her head, then closed her eyes. ‘My glasses are upstairs. Read it to me.’

‘We-e-ll – he says to thank you for the things you sent but you’re not to do it again because they can get quite a lot at the NAAFI in barracks. Soap, razor blades and cigarettes, too.’

‘Oh, I do hope he hasn’t started smoking.’

‘I hope so, too,’ Julia sighed. ‘It’s murder when you haven’t got one.’

Cigarettes were in short supply to civilians. Shops doled them out now five at a time – if you were lucky enough to be there, that was, when a cigarette queue started.

Julia smoked; a habit begun when she was nursing in the last war. She had carried cigarettes in her apron pocket, lighting one, placing it between the lips of a wounded soldier. And then came the day when she too needed them. Cigarettes soothed, filled empty spaces in hollow stomachs, became a habit she could not break.

‘And he says that when they aren’t in the classroom they are cleaning the heads – I think he means the lavatories – and polishing brass and the floors, too. It’s a stupid way to fight a war, Mother, if you want my opinion!’

‘Maybe so.’ Helen Sutton stirred restlessly. Talk of war upset her; talk of Drew being in that war was even worse. ‘But I’d rather he polished floors for ever than went to sea.’

‘He’ll be safer at sea than he’d be if he were flying one of those bombers from Holdenby Moor. Will Stubbs said they lost three last night.’ Such a terrible waste of young lives. ‘Anyway, once Drew has finished his course he’ll get leave, he thinks, before they find a ship to send him to. I suppose things are in a bit of a mess still, after Dunkirk.’

‘I don’t know why they took him if they don’t know what to do with him,’ Helen fretted.

‘They will, in time,’ Julia soothed. ‘We’ve got to sort ourselves out, don’t forget.’ And who could forget Dunkirk?

But her mother was growing old. It had to be faced. Before war came – before another war came – Helen Sutton had looked younger than her years, but now Julia worried about her. She seemed so frail lately; hadn’t eaten properly since Drew left three months ago. It was as if that Sunday last September when they knew they were at war again had turned her world upside down and she was still floundering.

‘He’ll be all right, won’t he, Julia?’

‘He’ll be all right, dearest. I feel it, know it. Drew will come home to us.’

‘Yes, he will. And I’ll write to him, tomorrow – too tired tonight. Do you think you could ring for Mary, ask for my milk?’

‘I’ll get it myself,’ Julia smiled. ‘Mary is, well, busy, these days.’

Lately, Mary Strong was most likely to be found in the grooms’ quarters above the stables. After almost twenty years of courtship, Will Stubbs had at last been pinned down. A day had been set for the wedding, the banns already called once at All Souls’.

‘I tell you, Will, I’ll wait no longer,’ Mary had stormed. ‘I’m the laughing stock of Holdenby, the way I’ve let you blow hot and blow cold. Well, those Nazis are coming and when they do, I want a wedding ring on my finger – is that understood?’

Will had understood. If the Germans did invade, he might as well be married as single. It would matter little. When the Nazis came – and Will had deduced they well might – they’d all be thrown into concentration camps anyway. Best do as Mary ordered and wed her.

‘I never thought she’d get Will Stubbs down the aisle,’ Julia smiled as she closed the door behind her.

Tilda was sleeping in the chair – in Mrs Shaw’s chair – when Julia poked her head round the kitchen door and she jumped, gave a little snort, then blinked her eyes open.

‘Sorry to disturb you – I’ve come for Mother’s milk.’

‘All ready.’ Tilda was instantly awake.

On the kitchen table lay a small silver tray on which stood the pretty china saucer her ladyship was fond of and the glass from which she drank her nightly milk and honey. Beside it was an iron saucepan, a milk jug and honey jar and spoon. Tilda Tewk was nothing if not methodical, now she had taken over Mrs Shaw’s position as Rowangarth’s cook.

‘I’ll just pop a pan on the gas, Miss Julia. Be ready in a tick.’

‘Thanks, Tilda.’ Julia sat down on the chair opposite to wait. ‘I called on Mrs Shaw, today. She seems to have settled in nicely, though she’s sad, she said, that she had to wait for Percy Catchpole to die before she could get an almshouse to retire into.’

‘There’s been a lot of changes, Miss Julia, amongst the old folk. Think it was the war coming that has to answer for it. Seemed as if they just couldn’t face another. But I couldn’t help noticing, ma’am, that there was a letter from Sir Andrew by the late post. How is he then, and when will us see him?’

‘Drew is fine, and looking forward to his first leave,’ Julia smiled. ‘I’ll tell him you asked.’

‘You do that. And tell him when he comes home as Tilda’ll see he’s well looked after. He’ll not be eating overwell, now that he’s a sailor.’ Food rationing or not, young Sir Andrew would have nothing but the best when he came on leave and there’d be his favourite iced buns and cherry scones, just like Mrs Shaw used to make. Tilda Tewk had glacé cherries secreted away for just such an occasion – aye, and more sugar than anyone in this house knew about! The last war had taught her a lot about squirrelling away and this war, when it came, had not caught her napping! ‘Now here’s her ladyship’s glass, though you’d only to ring and I’d have answered.’ There was little to do now at Rowangarth, even though Mary was so taken up with her wedding and Miss Clitherow, the housekeeper, away to Scotland to the funeral of a relative. ‘And when do you expect the Reverend, Miss Julia?’

‘Late, I shouldn’t wonder. A parishioner, you know – the Sacrament.’

‘Ah,’ Tilda nodded. Flixby Farm, it would be. The old man had been badly for months.

‘Go to bed. I’ll wait up,’ Julia offered.

‘Nay, miss, there’s no hurry. Mary’s still out so it’ll be no bother and any road, I promised Miss Clitherow before she went that I’d check the blackout.’

‘Have you heard from her, Tilda?’

‘Only once, to let us know she’d got there – eventually. A terrible journey, by all accounts. Two hours late arriving, and no toilet on the train.’

‘That’s the war for you,’ Julia sighed, wondering if anything would ever be the same again and refusing, stubbornly, even so much as to think about the threat of invasion.

Tom Dwerryhouse sat in the rocker in the darkening kitchen, reluctant to draw the thick blackout curtains, needing to suck on his pipe, sort things out in his mind.

Nothing short of a fiasco, that meeting had been, with no one knowing rightly what to do. The formation of the Local Defence Volunteers it was supposed to be; civilians who were willing to stand and fight if the Germans came. And come they would, Tom frowned, since there seemed nowhere else for them to go except Russia, and they’d signed a pact with Russia not to fight each other.

Strange, when you thought about it – Fascists and Communists, ganging up together. The two didn’t mix, any fool knew that. But happen they’d only agreed the non-aggression pact because each was scared of the other. And long may it remain so. A bit of healthy mistrust was just what Hitler could do with – the need to look over his shoulder at the Russians – wonder if they would stab him in the back.

But Stalin was nowt to do with us. What was more important was getting some kind of order into the Volunteers. There had been all manner of opinions put forward and no one agreeing until in the end the Reverend had suggested he contact the Army in York and ask them to send someone over to talk to the men.

Then the Reverend had been called away to Flixby Farm and that had more or less been that. A right rabble they were – no uniforms, no rifles. Those men who owned shotguns had brought them, but the cowman from Home Farm had arrived with a hay fork over his shoulder, which was all he could muster, and hay forks – shotguns, even – weren’t going to be a lot of use against tanks and trained soldiers. Hitler would pee himself laughing if he knew, and be over on the next tide!

Tom gazed into his tobacco jar, wondering if he could indulge himself with a fill. He had shared his last ounce with Reuben and only the Lord knew when he could get more.

And soon beer would be in short supply, the landlord at the Coach and Horses in Creesby had been heard to prophesy gloomily. On account of sugar being rationed, that was. No option, really, when the breweries had had their sugar cut, an’ all.

But beer was the least of Tom Dwerryhouse’s worries. What really bothered him was all the talk of invasion. People spoke about it in a kind of subdued panic, as if it couldn’t really happen. Not to the British.

But things were bad: the French overrun and British soldiers snatched off Dunkirk beaches reeling with the shock of it. It was all on account of that Maginot Line, Tom considered gravely. Smug, the French had been. No one would ever breach their defences; not this war.

But they hadn’t reckoned with Hitler’s cunning in invading the Low Countries. Never a shot fired in anger, because his armies had just marched round the end of the invincible Maginot Line and had been in Paris before the French could say Jack Robinson. Only Hitler could have thought of pulling a fast one like that and getting away with it. A genius was he, or mad as they come?

Tom reached again for his tobacco. He needed a fill. Things were writhing inside him that only a pipe could soothe. It wasn’t just the invasion and taking care of Alice and Daisy and Polly, if it happened; it was that Local Defence lot in the village. He had left Keeper’s Cottage expecting to join it and be treated with the respect due to an ex-soldier, but all they’d done was witter amongst themselves, tie on their Local Defence Volunteer armbands and agree to meet another night. And there was nothing like an armband for scaring the wits out of a German Panzer Division!

‘That you, love?’ He half turned as the back door opened and shut.

‘It’s me, Dada. Mam not home, yet?’

‘No, lass. She rang up from the village, summat about getting the loan of a tea urn. Be about half an hour, she said.’

‘I’d better see to the blackout, then. Won’t take me long, then I’ll put the kettle on.’

Daisy had expected both her parents to be home; had got herself in the mood to come out with it, straight and to the point. That Mam still wasn’t back had thrown her.

She pulled the curtain over the front door then walked upstairs, drawing the thick black curtains over each window. She should have asked Dada, she brooded, how long ago Mam had phoned. She was getting more and more nervous. If Mam wasn’t soon home, she’d have to blurt her news out to Dada and she didn’t want to do that.

Mind, she was glad they had a telephone at last. They wouldn’t have got one if it hadn’t been for the coming of the Land Army, and them taking over Rowangarth bothy. Aunt Julia had been glad for the land girls to have the place because since the apprentices who lived there had been called up into the militia it had stood empty, and Polly living there alone, rattling round like a pea in a tin can.

The Land Army people had had so many requests from the local farmers for land girls to help out, and Rowangarth bothy would be ideal quarters for a dozen women. A warden would be installed to run the place and a cook, too. Aunt Julia had said they could have it for the duration with pleasure if they would consider Mrs Polly Purvis as warden or cook. Mrs Purvis had given stirling service, Aunt Julia stressed, looking after the garden apprentices, and would be ideally suited to either position.

So Keth’s mother was offered the cooking, and accepted gladly, especially when they’d mentioned how much wages she would be paid, as well as her bed and keep. And the GPO came to put the phone in.

That was when the engineer had asked Dada, Daisy recalled, why he didn’t get a phone at Keeper’s Cottage whilst they were in the area.

‘There’ll be a shortage of telephones before so very much longer, and that’s a fact,’ the GPO man said. ‘Soon you’ll not be able to get one for love nor money. The military’ll have taken the lot!’

Daisy could have hugged Dada when he said yes and now a shiny black telephone stood importantly in the front passage at Keeper’s Cottage.

For the first week, Mam had jumped a foot in the air every time it rang because Aunt Julia was tickled pink that Keeper’s was on the phone at last and rang every morning for a chat. And she, Daisy, so often sat on the bottom step of the stairs, gazing at it, willing it to ring so that when she lifted it and whispered ‘Holdenby 195’, Keth would be on the other end, calling from Kentucky and he’d say –

But Keth couldn’t call and she couldn’t call Keth, not even if she didn’t mind giving up a whole week’s wages just to talk to him for three minutes, because civilians weren’t allowed to ring America now. The under-sea cable was needed for more important things by the Government and the armed forces. Indeed, civilians were having a bad time all round, Daisy brooded. Asked not to travel on public transport unless their journey was really necessary; their food rationed, clothes so expensive in the shops that few could afford them, and no face cream nor powder nor lipstick to be had – even a shortage of razor blades, would you believe? But that was as nothing compared to what was soon to come, she thought as she pulled down the kitchen blind, drew together the blackout curtains then pulled across the bright, rose-printed curtains to cover them, because not for anything was she looking at those dreary black things night after night, Mam said.

‘Shall I make a drink of tea, Dada?’ Daisy switched on the light.

‘Best not, sweetheart. Wait till your mam gets back.’

Since tea was rationed six months ago, the caddy on the mantelshelf was strictly under Alice’s supervision.

‘Dada?’ Daisy sat down in the chair opposite. ‘There’s something –’ She stopped, biting on the words.

‘Aye, lass?’ Her father did not shift his gaze from the empty fireplace and it gave her the chance she needed to call a halt to what she had been about to say.

‘I – well, I know it’s stupid to ask, but can you tell me,’ she rushed on blindly, warming to her words, ‘what will happen to my money if the Germans invade us? Will I get it?’

‘Well, if you wait another year till you’re one-and-twenty, you’ll know, won’t you? Not long to go now, so I wouldn’t worry over much. But if you really want my opinion, that inheritance of yours is going to be the least of our worries if the Germans do get here. So let’s wait and see, shall us?’

Daisy’s inheritance. Money held in trust by solicitors in Winchester. Only a year to go and then it would be hers to claim, Tom brooded – if the Germans didn’t come, that was; if all of them lived another year.

‘Silly of me to ask.’ And silly to have almost blurted out what she had done yesterday, during her dinner hour. ‘You’re right, Dada. Either way now, it doesn’t matter.’

And it didn’t, when Drew was in the Navy and Keth was in Kentucky not able to get home, and people having to sleep in air-raid shelters and already such terrible losses by all the armed forces. When you thought about that, Daisy Dwerryhouse’s fortune was immoral, almost.

It came as a relief to hear the opening of the back door and her mother calling, ‘Only me …’

Then Mam, opening the kitchen door, hanging her coat on the peg behind it, patting her hair as she always did, popping a kiss on the top of Dada’s head like always.

‘Sorry I’m late, but I’d the offer of the use of a grand tea urn for the canteen. And talking of tea, set the tray, Daisy, there’s a love.’

She sat down in her chair, pulling off her shoes, wiggling her toes.

Then, as she put on her slippers Daisy said, ‘Mam, Dada, before we do anything – please – there’s something I’ve got to tell you …’

2

‘Tell us?’ Tom gazed into the empty fireplace, puffing on his pipe, reluctant to look at his daughter. ‘Important, is it?’ Which was a daft thing to ask when the tingling behind his nose told him it was. Loving his only child as he did, he knew her like the back of his own right hand.

‘Anything to do with the shop?’ Alice frowned.

‘Yes – and no. I don’t like working there, you know.’

‘But whyever not, lass?’ Tom shifted his eyes to the agitated face. ‘You’ve just had a rise without even asking for it.’

‘Never mind the rise – it’s still awful.’ Daisy looked down at her hands.

‘Oh, come now! Morris and Page is a lovely shop, and the assistants well-spoken and obliging. All the best people go there and it’s beautiful inside.’ Twice since her daughter went to work there, curiosity got the better of Alice and she had ventured in, treading carefully on the thick carpet, sniffing in the scent of opulence. She bought a tablet of lavender soap on the first occasion and a remnant of blue silk on the second. Paid far too much for both she’d reckoned, but the extravagance had been worth it if only to see what a nice place Daisy worked in.

‘I’ll grant you that, Mam. The shop is very nice, but once you are in the counting house where I work, there are no carpets – only lino on the floor. And we are crowded into one room with not enough windows in it. And as for those ladylike assistants – well, they’ve got Yorkshire accents like most folk. A lot of them put the posh on because it’s expected of them. And obliging? Well, they get commission on what they sell and they need it, too, because their wages are worse than mine!’

‘So what’s been happening? Something me and your dada wouldn’t like, is it?’

‘Something happened, Mam, but nothing that need worry anyone but me. Yesterday morning, if you must know. There was this customer came to the outside office, complaining that we’d overcharged her. She gets things on credit, then pays at the end of the month when the accounts are sent out. Anyway, yesterday morning she said she hadn’t had half the things on her bill, so I had to sort it out. She was really snotty; treated me like dirt when I showed her the sales dockets with her signature on them.’

‘But accounts are nothing to do with you, love. You’re a typist.’

‘I know, Mam, but the girl who should have seen to it is having time off because her young man is on leave from the Army, so there was only me to do it.’

‘So you told this customer where to get off, eh?’ Tom knew that flash-fire temper; knew it because she had inherited it from him.

‘As a matter of fact, I didn’t. I just glared back at her and she said I was stupid and she’d write to the manager about me, the stuck-up bitch!’

‘Now there’s no need for language!’ Alice snapped. ‘But if you didn’t answer back nor lose your temper, what’s all the fuss about?’

‘Oh, I did lose my temper, but I didn’t let that one see it. When she’d slammed off, I realized it was my dinner break, so I got out as fast as I could. She got me mad when there are so many awful things happening and all she could find to worry about was her pesky account!’

‘But you cooled down a bit in your dinner break?’

‘Well, that’s just it, you see.’ Daisy swallowed hard. No getting away from it, now. ‘I ate my sandwiches on a bench in the bus station, then I walked into the Labour Exchange and asked them for a form. And I filled it in. I’m changing my job. I’m not kowtowing any longer to the likes of that woman.’

‘And would you mind telling your mam and me just what that form you filled in was all about?’ The tingling behind Tom’s nose was still there. That little madam standing defiant on the hearth rug had done something stupid, he knew it. ‘You’re not going to work on munitions, are you?’

‘Oh, Daisy! Not munitions? Mary Strong went on munitions in the last war and went as yellow as saffron!’

‘Nothing like that, Mam, and anyway, they’ll probably not take me. You’ve got to have an uncle who’s a peer of the realm and a godfather who’s an admiral and your mam’s got to have danced with the Prince of Wales when she was a deb – or so they say.’

‘So what was it about?’

‘About the Navy. Drew has joined and I’m joining, too, if they’ll take me. The women’s navy, that is. The Wrens.’

‘You – are – what?’

‘I’m joining up.’

‘Oh, but you’re not! We could be invaded at any time! Just what do you think me and Mam would do if you were miles and miles away? You’ve got to stay here, safe at home!’

‘No! Drew is miles and miles away. Drew’s at Devonport – so what’s so special about me?’ Daisy challenged.

‘The fact that you’re still not of age, for one thing, and I don’t remember giving my permission for you to join anything,’ Tom flung, suddenly triumphant.

‘Oh but you did, Dada. Your signature was on the bottom of the form. I wrote it there for you!’

‘Why, you – you –’ His face took on an ugly red. ‘Don’t think you can –’

‘Tom! Stop it! Just take a deep breath, won’t you? Calm down, for goodness’ sake. That temper of yours is going to get you into trouble one day, just see if it doesn’t!’

‘I won’t have a bit of a lass forging my name!’ His voice was low; too low.

‘Well, she’s done it and I’m very annoyed about it. You’ll never again write your father’s name, do you hear me, Daisy?’

‘I won’t, Mam. And I’ve got to have a medical first, and they say there’s a waiting list to get in, so by the time they get around to me the invasion will have happened, if it’s going to. And I’m truly sorry, Mam, and oh – Dada …’

She threw her arms round her father’s neck and because he loved her unbearably he gathered her to him and stroked her hair and made little hushing sounds, just as he had always done when she was unhappy.

‘I’m a fool, aren’t I? I shouldn’t have done it but everything’s in such a mess. Drew has gone, and Bas and Kitty are in America, and Keth’s with them and –’ The tears came, then; great, jerking sobs from the deeps of her despair. ‘I miss Keth so much. The summer of ’forty he said he’d be home – this very summer – but he won’t be; he can’t be! I want to see him, but I want him to stay in America, too! Can’t you understand what it’s like? Mam was my age when you and she said goodbye in your war, then she went to France to be near you! Try to understand how it is for me and Keth.’

‘I do, lass. I do. And happen it’ll be like you said. By the time you get into the Navy, we’ll all know where we stand, one way or the other.’ He took a handkerchief from his pocket, offering it, his expression tender with the love he felt for her. ‘So dry your eyes, our Daisy. Mam and me didn’t want there to be another war, and now there’s nothing we can do about it except to keep our chins up and carry on as best we can. Now how about a smile?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Daisy sniffed. ‘I really am. And I love you both very much and I don’t know why I filled that form in for the Wrens – I honestly don’t!’

‘Oh yes you do, Daisy Dwerryhouse!’ The tension had left Alice now. ‘You did exactly as I did. You listened to your heart instead of to your head. There must be a daft streak somewhere in us Dwerryhouse women. Now for goodness’ sake, let’s have that drink of tea.’ She flinched as a bomber flew over the house, the noise of its engines drowning out speech. ‘My, but that one was low!’

‘Aye. Loaded, they’ll be. It must take a bit of doing, getting one of those things off the ground,’ Tom frowned. ‘Going bombing again I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘Again. And they’re bits of lads, some of them. There was an air-gunner in the canteen a couple of nights ago; told me he was eighteen. Eighteen! Now I ask you, what age is that?’

‘Two years younger than me, Mam,’ Daisy whispered.

‘So it is, love.’ She raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘And there’s another of them off over, an’ all. Well – God go with them,’ she whispered, her eyes all at once too bright, ‘and bring them all safely back.’

She turned her back so Tom and Daisy should not see her tears. Drew gone and now Daisy worrying to go and oh, damn the war! Damn and blast it!

Julia Sutton was crossing the hall as her husband, Nathan, came through the front door.

‘You’re late.’ She lifted her face for his kiss. ‘How were things at Flixby?’

‘The old man was sleeping when I left. He’ll slip away gently. Ewart Pryce gave him an injection so he isn’t in pain.’

‘Ah, well – there’ll be two more. Hear of one, hear of three, isn’t that what they say? Want a drink?’

‘Please. Have we any Scotch?’

‘Enough. But can anyone tell me why things we took for granted seem just to have disappeared? The distilleries haven’t suddenly been taken over, have they? The cigarette factories haven’t closed down?’

Only that morning she had stood twenty minutes in a queue for five – five, would you believe? – cigarettes. She had been so desperate for one she’d had difficulty not lighting up in the street there and then!

‘Shortage of materials, shortage of labour. Tobacco has to be brought here by sea, just like most of our food. The farmers are going to have to produce more, though they can’t grow sugar nor tea …’

Nor petrol, Julia thought. All her June petrol coupons used, and more than a week to go before she could get any more. Only a thimbleful left in the tank.

‘I’ll have to start riding my bike,’ she said, out of the blue. ‘Do me good, I suppose …’

‘It would. And you could tell yourself you were helping the war effort, saving petrol.’

‘I wouldn’t be saving anything, just eking out my ration. Thank goodness I drive a baby Austin. Your pa’s Rolls would guzzle up a month’s ration in two days!’

‘Pa put the Rolls in mothballs ages ago, and you know it. His eyes are getting worse, though he won’t admit it. He’s going to have to give up driving before so very much longer.’

‘But he’d be virtually marooned at Pendenys without a car,’ Julia protested. ‘He’ll just have to get a pony and trap. Mother had one in the last war; got quite good at it.’

‘And you, I seem to remember, were always to be seen biking furiously along the lanes,’ he smiled fondly.

‘Mm. Me and Alice both. We used to ride in the dark in winter – we had to. It was the only way to get to Denniston when we were –’

She stopped abruptly, her cheeks pinking. When she and Alice had been probationer nurses, she’d been going to say; when she’d been married to Andrew, that was, and desperate to get to France to be near him.

‘A long time ago, darling.’ Nathan accepted the glass she offered. ‘Woman – you’ve drowned my whisky!’

‘Sorry – only way to make it go further.’ She settled herself on the floor at his feet, leaning her back against his chair. ‘How old is the man who’s dying?’

‘Seventy-six next …’

‘It’ll be a long pull, then, when he goes.’ Seventy-five slow, sombre peals on the death bell; one for each year of his life.

‘No. No more passing bells. There was a letter from the Diocese office this morning. Bell ropes are to be tied up as a precaution. And we’ll have to stop the church clock striking, too. No more bells nor chimes – only for the invasion, if it comes.’

‘You mean not for anything?’ Church bells and the chiming of the church clock were a part of their lives.

‘Only if the invasion comes. The military will tell us when to ring them. As a warning, you see – to let people know …’

‘Then let’s hope we never hear them till it’s all over and we’ve won!’ What a chiming of bells there’d be then! When we won. There were some old miseries, Julia frowned, who said it would go on far longer than the last one did, especially as there seemed to be no stopping Hitler. ‘Will it last four years, Nathan? Is Drew going to be away all that time?’ The best years of his life, away from Rowangarth?

‘Barring miracles, Julia, I think he might. There’s even talk of women being directed into war work soon – compulsory, so they say. They might even send young women, if they aren’t married, into the armed forces.’

‘Send them, Nathan? But they can’t! Oh, my Lord! Tom Dwerryhouse’ll go berserk if they call Daisy up!’

‘But, sweetheart, there’s a lot of young women in the Forces already.’

‘Yes – but they are volunteers, there because they want to be or because they feel they should be. But the powers that be can’t take young girls from their parents and put them into uniform, dammit! And some of them are so innocent they don’t know how babies get there – or get out!’

‘They can, Julia. They can do anything they want if they think it’s justified. It’s done under the new law – the Defence of the Realm Act. They’re using it, now that Italy has declared war on us, to round up people here they think might have Italian connections or sympathies. They’ll intern them, just as they did to Germans living here when war broke out.’

‘And serve them right, too,’ Julia snorted. ‘Italy declaring war on us when we were on our knees, almost, after Dunkirk! Kicking us when we were down, that’s what! Mussolini is a pig! And I think I’ll have a whisky, too, and a cigarette. I need them!’

‘Yes. I think you’d better,’ Nathan said; said it softly and strangely so that Julia turned sharply.

‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘Have you some more miserable news for me?’

‘Depends on how you look at it, I suppose. It’s why I was so late tonight. I called in on Pa. It’s been on the cards for some time; this morning it was definite. They want Pendenys Place …’

‘Taking it, you mean? Commandeering it – lock, stock and barrel?’

‘Under the Defence of the Realm Act, they told Pa. But only Pendenys. The stock and the barrels Pa has a month to shift out. They’re letting him have the tower wing – what’s left of it, that is – to store all the stuff in. He’s getting a removal firm from Creesby to do it for him, then he’s got to hand the place over. They’re taking the stable block and the garages, too – even the kitchen garden.’

‘But what do they want Pendenys for – a hospital?’ Julia downed her drink almost at a gulp, so agitated was she. ‘What on earth can they do with it?’

‘I don’t know anything except that They want it, so there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Pa isn’t all that much bothered – or won’t be once the place has been emptied and everything locked up safely. He’s going to Anna, to look after her and Tatiana at Denniston, he says.’

‘But Anna’s got Karl to look after her! Your pa should come here to Rowangarth.’

‘Where you and Aunt Helen have me to look after you. And Denniston House isn’t far away – you above all should know that.’

‘Mm. About ten minutes by bike,’ Julia agreed.

Nathan drained his glass, setting it on the table at his side. ‘Pa seems to think Pendenys might be used for the Air Force – maybe for offices or accommodation for Holdenby Moor. It isn’t far from the aerodrome, when you think about it. But I’m not so sure. All the visits were made by army people and they seemed more concerned with its seclusion and how easily it could be made secure.’

‘For something hush-hush, you mean?’

‘Maybe for a bolt hole for high-ups in the Government or the Civil Service if the invasion happens.’

‘Or maybe for exiled foreign royals – perhaps even for our own, if they start bombing London.’

‘Lord knows,’ Nathan shrugged.

‘And He’ll not tell us,’ Julia pointed out irreverently and not at all like the wife of the vicar of All Souls’. ‘Hell, but I hate this war! They’ve taken Drew and we’re waiting here for Hitler to make up his mind when he’s coming! What are we to do, darling – and don’t say, “Pray, then leave it in God’s hands.” The Germans will be praying, too, and it looks as if it’s them God is listening to at the moment! No platitudes, Nathan Sutton, or I’ll thump you!’

‘All right – then how if we both have another Scotch? Just a small one …’

Julia gazed at her empty glass, then turned to smile at her husband.

‘You know something, Vicar – that’s a very good idea. And what the heck? We can only drink it once!’

She held out her hand for his glass, then walked to the table on which the near-empty decanter stood, frowning as she tilted it.

The Army – or whoever – was welcome to Pendenys, great ugly, ostentatious place that it was. Only Aunt Clemmy and her precious Elliot had liked it and they were both dead and buried.

Then she permitted herself a small, mischievous smile just to think of Aunt Clemmy’s ghost, weeping and wailing at the front entrance, cursing the dreadful, common people who had dared to take her beloved Pendenys Place.

But what on earth did they want it for?

3

Each evening when she got home from work, Daisy expected the letter to have arrived. It would be small, she supposed, the envelope manila-coloured with ‘On His Majesty’s Service’ printed across the top. And inside would be a tersely-worded message, telling her where and when to attend for her medical examination.

It was so long coming, though, that she began to think her application had been lost or ignored – or that the Women’s Royal Naval Service had such a long list of twenty-year-old shorthand typists that they weren’t all that much bothered about Daisy Dwerryhouse.

She began not to care, even to be glad, and only to scan the mantelpiece for Keth’s pale blue air-mail envelopes as she opened the kitchen door.

Since war started, Keth’s letters rarely came singly. Almost a week without one, then three or more would arrive, giving her news of the Kentucky Suttons and messages from Bas and Kitty, but mostly telling her he missed her and loved and wanted her. There were no more Washington postmarks and she ceased to wonder why he had been there.

She read his letters over and over, arranging them in date order. There were a great many; more than three hundred, packed tightly into shoe boxes in the bottom of her wardrobe and easily to hand because if things got worse and Holdenby was bombed, they were the first things she would grab and take down to the cellar with her.

Tonight, there had been a letter from Drew.

… all at once it began to make sense, fall into place. I realized, the other afternoon, that I could sort the dits and the das into letters and figures – actually read them.

Daisy frowned. Dots and dashes, did he mean?

Even so, I found it hard to believe when they told me I had passed out. I am now a telegraphist and will be going back to barracks soon for drafting.

Don’t write back, Daiz, because there is a strong buzz we will be given leave. I’ll try to give you a ring if it is likely to happen, though there is always a queue at the phone box and delays getting through. Don’t be surprised if I just arrive without warning …

Drew coming on leave – but when? She felt so lonely and alone that tomorrow wouldn’t be soon enough. There seemed nothing, now, to life but working, wondering, worrying – and wanting. Wanting Keth, that was; wanting him here to touch and kiss and make love to her; wanting him to stay in Kentucky so They, the faceless ones, should not take him into the Army.

She ought to be ashamed, really. Compared to some, her life hadn’t changed overmuch. This far, Keth was out of harm’s way, Keeper’s Cottage had not been bombed, the evening air was heavy with the scent of newly cut hay and Rowangarth was still there, its sagging old roof just visible over the treetops to remind her that some things endured.

It was sad, for all that, that France had finally given in, been forced to sign a surrender in the same railway carriage in which Germany signed the Armistice at the end of the last war – Dada’s war. How humiliating for the French; how Hitler must have gloated.

And now, fresh fears. German soldiers had occupied Guernsey and Jersey, and those islands almost a part of Britain. It sent fear screaming through her just to think about it.

Only one thing was certain, Daisy admitted as sudden, silly tears filled her eyes. England – Great Britain – stood alone now, backs to the wall. This cockeyed little island was going to have to take whatever the Nazis threw at it, or give in. And since Mr Churchill had said we would never surrender, it seemed we were in for a bad time. A shiver of pure melancholy ran through her. How brave would she be when – if – it happened?

Keth, I need you so …

Mary Strong gave a final loving rub to the silver punchbowl she was polishing, then wrapped it in black tissue paper, wondering if Will was right and her ladyship really was going to hide away the silver and valuables – just in case.

If she were given a pound note for every time she had cleaned that bowl over the years, Mary sighed, she could buy the most beautiful bridal gown in York and still have a tidy pile left over.

Mind, she would still work as parlourmaid for Lady Helen when she and Will were wed. Once, it was demeaning for a married woman to work, unless she were a widow and had little choice. But war had come again and married women without encumbrances were expected to work.

Yet what concerned Rowangarth’s parlourmaid more immediately was what to wear to her wedding four weeks hence. She was the first to admit she was past bridal white and anyway, a once-only dress was an extravagance she didn’t subscribe to.

Now if Alice could be persuaded to make her something pretty yet sensible, she pondered, and she could find a nice matching hat, her problem would be solved.

‘I’ll ask Alice,’ she said to Tilda, ‘to make my dress – for the wedding, I mean …’

‘I’d concentrate, if I were you,’ Tilda frowned, ‘on getting Miss Clitherow’s sitting room seen to. She’s back tomorrow and you could write your name on the top of that table of hers. I’ve no time, Mary, what with the bottling to see to and the raspberry jam to make!’

‘Oh? And where did Tilda Tewk get sugar for jam, then?’

‘Never you mind!’ It wasn’t only silver could be hidden away! There were twenty two-pound bags of sugar, an’ all, and Hitler, if he came, could draw her teeth one by one before she’d tell them where so much as a grain was hidden. ‘And don’t forget, herself’ll be on the night train and back here before noon!’

‘Aye.’ Mary wasn’t likely to forget. It had been grand with the housekeeper away and just her and Tilda to see to things. ‘She’s been gone so long I thought we’d seen the back of her, but I’ll give her room a going-over in the morning.

‘Now would you favour blue for a wedding dress, Tilda, and a matching hat? And do you think Mr Catchpole would make me up a few flowers? Not a bouquet – not without a veil – maybe a little posy, though.’ Miss Julia had worn blue and carried white orchids – at her first wedding, that was, to the doctor, Andrew MacMalcolm.

She lapsed again into daydreams and Tilda, who was nothing if not practical, knew better than to interrupt them. But she’d be glad when Miss Clitherow got herself back; when Mary and Will were safely wed and when – and may God forgive her for such thoughts – Hitler had made up his mind about the invasion. Maybe then, things could get back to normal – or as normal as they ever could be with a war on.

Tilda sighed, remembering the last one, then turned her thoughts to the evening meal ahead. She supposed it would be rabbit. Again.

‘Do you think, dear,’ Helen Sutton asked of her daughter at breakfast, ‘that either Will or Catchpole could be persuaded to look after a few hens?’ Eggs were rationed now, and sometimes to only one each person a week. ‘Surely we could keep them on household scraps and gleanings of wheat and barley?’

‘We could ask. Polly Purvis has six Rhode Island Reds at the bothy. She says they are laying well – a couple of dozen eggs a week. She gives the land girls a boiled egg apiece every Sunday for breakfast and keeps what’s left for cooking. But perhaps we should ask Will? Catchpole has more than enough on his plate. He can just about manage the kitchen garden on his own, but he’s not going to have the time to grow flowers.’

Growing flowers was unpatriotic, the Government pronounced. ‘Dig for Victory!’ the posters demanded, with people being urged to plant cabbages, leeks and peas instead of flowers.

‘In the last war we ploughed up the lawns and grew potatoes,’ Helen murmured. Beautiful camomile lawns were turned under the plough, but they had been hungry then. Maybe before this one was over they would be hungry again. It was a distinct possibility when so many ships carrying food were being sunk every day by U-boats.

‘I’ll have a think about the hens, but first I think we should seriously consider getting some help for Catchpole.’

‘But how, Julia? They don’t consider gardening to be a reserved occupation.’ They had taken the garden apprentices into the militia and a waste of six years of training when you considered that two of them were in the infantry and one consigned to an army cookhouse.

‘No, but growing food is important and with a bit of help our kitchen garden could supply no end of vegetables and soft fruit. Anyway, I’m going to try.’

‘But where are we to find another gardener?’

‘You’ll see.’ It was such a mad idea, Julia supposed, she just might bring it off. ‘Tell you later,’ she smiled mysteriously. ‘And that was the postman, if I’m not mistaken. Bet you anything you like there’ll be a letter.’

From Drew, of course. No other letters mattered.

Daisy sat on the gate, waiting for Tatiana. It was where they usually met; halfway between Keeper’s Cottage and Denniston House, where Tatiana lived with her mother, Anna, with Karl, the big, black-bearded Cossack, to watch over them; was where, soon, Tatiana’s grandfather would be living when he handed over Pendenys Place to the Government.

Daisy hoped Rowangarth would escape. It would be awful having the military there, especially if they wanted Keeper’s Cottage, too.

But They could do anything they wanted now, and no one’s house – or car or boat, even – was safe if They decided they had greater need of it. For the war effort, of course. Mind, Mam thought it was a good thing about Pendenys and that Mr Edward would be better off living at Denniston. ‘All on his own in that great pile of slate and stone, like living in a cathedral.’

Daisy jumped off the gate as Tatiana arrived, red-faced from pedalling.

‘I am sick, sick, sick of old people,’ she announced dramatically, leaning her cycle against the hedge. ‘It was awful at Cheyne Walk!’

‘Well, you’re back home now,’ Daisy offered mildly because she was used to her friend’s fiery outbursts. Probably something to do with her being half-Russian.

‘Yes, thank God! Grandmother Petrovska was her usual awful self and Uncle Igor was rushing around making sure they weren’t going to be interned.’

‘But they won’t be. We aren’t at war with the Russians.’

‘Not yet, but we will be, Grandmother says. And don’t call them Russians, Daisy. They are Communists, not real Russians. They’ve made a pact with Hitler, you know.’

Daisy did know. Dada hadn’t been able to understand it. Communists and Fascists should be natural enemies, he’d said.

‘So what was so awful about staying with your grandma?’ Daisy demanded.

‘Oh, it was Grandmother, I suppose, being stubborn.’ Tatiana took a deep breath, sighing it out dramatically, leaning her elbows on the gate, gazing out over the field of ripening wheat. ‘Mother wants her to pack up and leave London – stay at Denniston for the duration. She thinks London will be heavily bombed soon. Stands to sense, doesn’t it? Hitler’s got to knock out London before he invades.’

‘We-e-ll, yes …’ It made sense, Daisy was bound to agree, running her tongue round lips gone suddenly dry.

‘And all the ports, too, Uncle Igor said.’

The ports, too, and Drew was near Plymouth.

‘So it was better, Mother said, for Grandmother to move out. Apart from the two aerodromes, there isn’t a lot around Holdenby for the Luftwaffe to waste its bombs on.’

‘So when is she coming?’ Daisy had met the autocratic Countess Petrovska and felt sorry for Tatty.

‘Oh, she isn’t. Refused point-blank. She said if she left Cheyne Walk, They would take it because there’d be no one living in it.

‘“I hef lorst my beautiful house in St Petersburg and my estate at Peterhof to the rabble. I vill not give up this one, too,”’ Tatiana mimicked. ‘And I suppose you can’t blame her. Drew said he’d hate it if the Communists had taken Rowangarth.’

‘But there aren’t any Communists here.’

‘No, but They might commandeer it, like Pendenys.’

‘For goodness’ sake, Tatty, don’t be so miserable!’

‘I can’t help it. It’s my Russian soul.’

‘Don’t be daft! You’re as English as I am.’

‘Half-English. I speak the mother tongue, don’t forget.’

‘Y-yes.’ Daisy was forced to admit it. Tatiana Sutton spoke the politely correct Russian learned from her mother but she was fluent, too, in the dialect spoken by Karl, a Georgian by birth. Tatiana, when provoked, had the advantage of being able to let fly a string of Russian swear words – learned from Karl – and get away with it. ‘But tell me – how was London?’

‘Poor old place – it seemed a bit bewildered. Barrage balloons in all the parks and sandbags everywhere. And it’s so completely dark now at nights. The shops haven’t a lot to sell. Mother didn’t buy a thing except a lipstick, and she had to stand in a queue for half an hour to get it. And there are uniforms everywhere. Such gorgeous men, and all of them going to war.’ She sighed loudly and with regret. Such a waste when she, Tatiana Sutton, hadn’t even been kissed yet – leastways, not with passion. ‘It makes you want to join up, doesn’t it?’

‘I suppose so. As a matter of fact,’ Daisy took a deep breath, ‘I have joined up.’

‘Wha-a-t? You mean you’ll be leaving, too? But, Daisy, you can’t! Drew’s gone, and Kitty and Bas can’t visit any more, and Keth’s stuck in America! If you go, there’ll be only me left out of the entire Clan!’

‘I know, and I’m sorry I did it. But don’t worry overmuch. They haven’t even acknowledged my application yet, and not a word about my medical. I could be months and months waiting.’

‘So what are you joining?’ Tatiana was piqued.

‘The Wrens, if they’ll have me. It’s got to be, you see, because of Drew. I hate working in that shop and I thought that if anything I could do would shorten the war by just one week, then I should do it. I want Keth home – but not till the war is over.’

‘Then that does it! If you can volunteer, so can I! I think I might go for the ATS. Well, the Suttons have always joined the Army, haven’t they?’

‘Until Drew – yes. But you can’t, Tatty! Have you thought about what your grandma would say?’

‘Oh, bugger Grandmother Petrovska!’ Tatiana could swear in English, too. ‘I’m sick of her and her everlasting black! Imagine – she’s still in mourning for Czar Nicholas and him dead more than twenty years!’

‘But it won’t be a bed of roses. Don’t expect it to be fun – in the Forces, I mean.’

‘Anything would be better than having Grandmother living at Denniston, because London will get bombed and she will have to leave.’

‘But your mother wouldn’t let you. You’re not twenty-one yet.’

‘Neither are you. Did your father give his permission? My mother will say I can, anyway.’

‘She won’t, and you know it. Dada didn’t sign for me to go. I sort of did it for him. He hit the roof!’

‘Then I shall sign Mother’s name. Aleksandrina Anastasia Petrovska Sutton. I know exactly how she does it.’

‘Oh, don’t let’s talk about the war! I’m afraid, really, about the invasion.’

‘So am I. They might treat us like they treated the Poles. And Grandmother wouldn’t help. She’d shout at them, if they came – all sorts of insults. We’d end up against the wall, being shot!’

‘Don’t say things like that, please. Let’s talk about Drew. Aunt Julia says he might be home on leave soon.’

‘He might?’ Tatiana brightened visibly. ‘There’d be half the Clan together again.’

‘Mm. And I could ask him for a few tips about the Wrens – what to say, I mean, if they ask me what I want to do.’

‘So they won’t put you in the cookhouse, you mean?’

‘Sort of. And in the Navy they call it the galley.’

‘Whatever,’ Tatiana shrugged. ‘But they do that, you know. If you can cook, then they’d put you in an office and if you can type –’

‘Which I can.’

‘Exactly. They’d probably put you on a barrage balloon, or something. They do it on purpose.’

‘It wouldn’t be that. I think the Air Force looks after all the barrage balloons. But I stood in a queue in Woolworth’s, yesterday, and guess what?’ She was anxious not to talk about the war any more. ‘I got a jar of cold cream.’

‘Lucky dog! Tell you what – let’s go back to Denniston and have a root through Mother’s make-up. She’s out do-gooding for the war effort. She won’t be back till late.’

‘Could we? What if she caught us?’

‘She won’t. Come on!’ An aircraft flew low overhead and Tatiana squinted up into the sky. ‘Ooh, just look at that! It’s a Whitley.’ Tatiana was good at recognizing aircraft. ‘They’ve got some at Holdenby Moor to replace the old Hampdens. And don’t you just love those aircrew boys? Aren’t they marvellous? I could fall head over heels for every one of them!’

‘No you couldn’t, Tatty. They’re very young – most of them not old enough to get married. And they get killed – all the time. But no more war talk – please.’

‘Oh, dear. Whatever next?’ Helen Sutton looked up from the evening paper she was reading as her daughter came into the room. ‘Our allies, Julia, yet we’ve sunk the best part of the French fleet. They were anchored somewhere in North Africa and our navy just turned their guns on them. Sank them, and more than a thousand killed. Well, I hope,’ she breathed, tight-lipped, ‘that Drew will never be called on to do anything so awful!’

‘You’re right. It is awful. But did we have any choice, Mother? We couldn’t let Hitler get his hands on those ships.’

‘But the French captains wouldn’t have let that happen. A lot of their ships have already sailed into British ports – and the French fought alongside us last time, remember.’

‘I know – but there’s another war on now and we can’t afford to use kid gloves, these days – not when we’re up against it, like now. But I think I might have some good news for you. You know I said I wanted to get help for Jack Catchpole? Well, I just might be lucky. I think we’re getting a land girl.’

‘But I thought land girls worked on farms.’

‘They work on the land, whether it’s farmland or Rowangarth kitchen garden. They’re there to help grow food and we could send no end of stuff to the Creesby shops. And a land girl could look after some hens for us. I went to the bothy – well, they call it a hostel, now – and I was lucky. Both the warden and the forewoman were in, and both of them thought Rowangarth could qualify. They were very nice and told me who to contact to get things going. We might have one before the month is out. Couldn’t be in better time, either, for the soft fruit.’

‘But how will Catchpole take it? He wouldn’t be getting an experienced gardener, would he? I believe some land girls come from towns and can’t milk a cow, even.’

‘But we haven’t got any cows. Anyway – can you milk a cow, Mother?’

‘No. But I could learn if I had to, I suppose …’

‘There’s your answer then. She’ll do just fine with Catchpole watching her. I’ve asked him, by the way, and he says as long as she doesn’t mind getting her hands dirty and is willing to learn and doesn’t give cheek, he said he would at least give it a try. So it’s fingers crossed. I think they’ll give us one. After all, we didn’t make a fuss when they asked us to let them have the bothy, and we supplied them with a cook, don’t forget.’

‘If we’d said no, they’d have taken it, for all that.’

‘But we didn’t say no. We co-operated and did all we could to help, so they owe us a land girl.’

‘I suppose so …’ Helen Sutton was not entirely convinced, but Julia would never change, would always rush in without too much thought.

‘By the way,’ Helen called after her daughter’s retreating back, ‘Nathan wants to see you about something. He’s in the library.’

And they could but try, she acknowledged as the door banged noisily shut. Yet for all that, she hoped that the young lady, if ever she arrived, didn’t come complete with bright red lipstick and painted nails to match. Catchpole wouldn’t like that at all.

The telephone rang shrilly and she heard Julia crossing the hall to answer it. She knew it was good news, even before the door flew open and a flushed and smiling Julia announced, ‘Drew’s coming on leave! Next Thursday, for ten days, he said!’ She gathered her mother into her arms, hugging her fiercely. ‘Isn’t it wonderful? Must just tell Nathan, then I’ll give Alice a ring!’

She was gone in a flurry of delight before Helen could even ask when her grandson would be arriving and if he wanted meeting at Holdenby station.

Then she smiled and picked up the framed photograph of a young sailor from the table beside her chair. His hair was cut much too short, but he smiled back at her exactly as Drew had always done.

Drew. Sir Andrew Sutton, really – Giles and Alice’s son. Coming home on Thursday; home to Rowangarth.

But Thursday was all of five days away – a hundred and twenty long, slow hours away. However was she to endure them?

4

Never in her life had Agnes Clitherow been so glad to see Rowangarth. A feeling of homecoming wrapped around her and almost made her regret what she and her cousin Margaret had decided, but she shook such thoughts from her head, picked up her cases and walked, straight-backed as ever, to the kitchen door. As Rowangarth’s housekeeper she had a right to enter by the front, but to do so would necessitate the ringing of the doorbell and that, at half-past six in the morning, was simply not done.

‘Miss Clitherow!’ Tilda gasped at the sight of the dishevelled lady who leaned against the door jamb. ‘Oh, come in, do!’ She guided her to a chair, all the while clucking and soothing as the occasion seemed clearly to demand, then set the kettle to boil on the gas stove. ‘A good strong cup is what you need. Been travelling all night, have you?’

‘Oh, Tilda!’ She had indeed made the overnight journey, which from Oban to Glasgow had passed without too much discomfort. But from Glasgow to York! ‘Never take the night train!’

Packed to overflowing it had been with soldiers with respirators and kitbags, airmen with kitbags and respirators and a great many sailors with the added encumbrance of rolled and lashed hammocks and all of them sleeping and snoring not only where they ought to have been, but in corners, corridors and anywhere space was to be found.

‘We were held up at Newcastle for almost an hour and if it hadn’t been for an ATS girl, I don’t know what I’d have done – you know what I mean …?’

No need to go into intimate detail, but the resourceful young lady had left the train, marched up to the engine driver and loudly threatened, ‘Now listen ’ere, mate! If you start your bleedin’ engine before me and this lady have found somewhere to have a widdle, I’ll burst yer!’ To which the driver replied that it looked as if they’d have time to sit there for the rest of the night and make their Wills if they were so minded, before he got the green light to move.

So embarrassing it had been and surely obvious to everyone awake that they were about to search the blacked-out railway station for the ladies’ room!

‘But wasn’t there a lavvy on the train?’ Tilda quickly sized up the cause of the upset.

‘There were several, and all of them filled with luggage.’ If she could have reached one, that was. They’d had the greatest difficulty getting off the train and they had struggled and pushed their way back to their compartment only to find their seats occupied by two burly sergeants who gazed at the ATS girl’s single stripe and told her where she could go. Pulling rank, Miss Clitherow later discovered it was called, and bleedin’ sergeants were always doing it!

‘And the train was dirty and blacked out.’ Except for the odd blue light bulb, that was, and if she never set foot on a train again for the entire duration of hostilities, it wouldn’t bother her one iota. And that, she supposed was something of a contradiction in view of the decision she had made.

‘Never you mind, Miss Clitherow, dear. Just take off your hat and wash your hands, then I’ll pour you a cup.’ Tilda had never seen the housekeeper so distraught, not in all her thirty-odd years at Rowangarth. ‘And then I’d get a bath, if I were you, and pop straight into bed.’

‘Oh, no!’ A bath maybe, but she must see her ladyship as soon as maybe, thank her for the time off, then explain the position fully, a thought which brought tears to her eyes and Tilda to place a comforting arm around her shoulders – a liberty she would once never have dreamed of taking – and tell her that she was home and safe now, and must never go away again. Which immediately caused the tears to flow faster and for Miss Clitherow to murmur, amid gasps, ‘Tilda! Please don’t say that!’

The tears came again when she and her ladyship were comfortably seated in the small parlour, windows wide to the July afternoon. It was her ladyship’s fault, the housekeeper reluctantly admitted, her being so genuinely pleased to see her back from her bereavement.

‘We have missed you, Miss Clitherow,’ Helen smiled. ‘It’s so good to see you again. Julia tells me your journey was very uncomfortable, but never mind – you are home now.’

‘Oh dear, Lady Helen, but I’m not you see. Well, not for so very much longer.’

And she had gone on to explain how her cousin Margaret – the elder sister of Elizabeth, whose funeral Miss Clitherow had gone to attend – had begged her, almost, to leave domestic service and spend her remaining years close to kin amid the beautiful – and safe – hills and lochs of Scotland. ‘It’s time for you to retire, stop working for the gentry, Agnes, my dear. And it’s so peaceful and quiet, here.’

Her cousin was right, of course. Apart from the blackout, there was little sign of the war in the tiny village between Oban and Connel. Just sight of the ferry from Achnacroish to Oban and the odd merchant ship making for the Sound of Mull. Certainly there were no aircraft armed with bombs and bullets, their wings heavy with fuel, struggling to take off. The bombers from RAF Holdenby Moor worried Agnes Clitherow. She flinched when they roared overhead, awoke with a start when, in the early hours of the morning, they returned from raids over Germany.

‘We are safer here on the west coast. If the invasion comes it will be from the south or the east,’ Margaret had urged and she was right without a doubt. Hitler’s divisions occupied France, Belgium and the Netherlands, had ports and aerodromes there in plenty. ‘Mark my words, Agnes, Hitler will not do the obvious. They are waiting for him to invade the south coast of England but in my opinion he’ll land in Yorkshire or Northumberland. He’s a sly one!’

‘Not for so very much longer?’ Helen’s words cut into the housekeeper’s troubled thoughts. ‘You aren’t ill, Miss Clitherow?’

‘No, milady, but I am getting older, and my cousin has offered me my own room. It’s so peaceful there in Scotland, and safe somehow.’

‘And you don’t feel safe here at Rowangarth?’ Helen Sutton knew how much her housekeeper disliked having the aerodrome so near. ‘You really want to go, Miss Clitherow? Are you and I to part after so long?’

‘Needs must, Lady Helen. You know how old I am and I’m mindful of the fact that there would always have been shelter for me here. But I’m of a mind to end my days with Margaret in Scotland. It’s why I’m giving notice now, and hoping it will be convenient for me to go in four weeks’ time.’

‘Miss Clitherow, you may leave as soon as you wish, but it will grieve me to see you go. I shall miss you greatly. Rowangarth will miss you.’

‘Oh, milady …’ Tears trembled on Agnes Clitherow’s voice.

‘Now don’t upset yourself,’ Helen soothed. ‘Scotland isn’t the other end of the world. We’ll all keep in touch. But promise me one thing? You know I wish you well in your retirement, but just if things don’t work out, I want you to know that you have only to ring me. There is room and to spare for you always here at Rowangarth. You’d never be too proud to admit that you missed us more than you thought, now would you?’

‘No. I wouldn’t,’ she sniffed. ‘This house has been like a home to me and where else would I turn, if trouble came? And like you say, Rowangarth is only a telephone call away. But if you’ll pardon me, milady – things to be done, you see …’ And if she didn’t get out of this dear little room she would break down and weep – a thing she had never done before – well, not in front of her ladyship, that was. ‘Perhaps if we could talk later? It has been distressing for me, telling you.’

‘And for me, too, learning I am to lose a splendid housekeeper and a dear friend. But if your mind is truly made up, then I promise not to try to persuade you to stay.’

‘Thank you. Thank you for everything, milady,’ the housekeeper choked as, for the first time in all her years with Lady Helen, she made a hasty, undignified exit.

Helen watched her go, heard the quiet closing of the door and the slow, sad steps along the passage outside, walking away from her.

But everything and everyone she had known and loved seemed to be leaving her now, she thought sadly. Soon there would be no one left. No one at all.

Jack Catchpole, son of the late Percy, and head – and since war started the only – gardener at Rowangarth, was not at all sure about the land girl Miss Julia had said would be coming. To help in the kitchen garden, she said, since they must grow all the food they could. Vegetables and fruits in season would help the war effort and Rowangarth, therefore, was entitled to apply for help from the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries – the Ag and Fish, most people called it.

What had surprised Catchpole, however, was that as in most things, Miss Julia had had her way in no time at all and now he must prepare himself for a female invasion of his domain.

He sucked on his empty pipe, contemplating the horrors of it. For one thing, she wouldn’t know a weed from a seedling and for another, she wouldn’t want to get her hands dirty nor break her fingernails which without a doubt would be long and painted bright red. And she would be late every morning, an’ all, and make up all kinds of female excuses when she wanted time off to meet her young man or have her hair permanently waved. In short, she was not welcome.

It came as a great surprise, therefore, and something of a shock to see a young woman, smartly dressed in Land Army uniform, advancing upon him just as the kettle on the potting shed hob was coming to the boil and he had emptied his twist of tea leaves and sugar into the little brown teapot he had used for years and years. He watched her, saying not a word until she stood before him, eyes wide.

‘Are you the head gardener?’ she asked.

‘Aye.’ His eyes did not waver.

‘I think you’re expecting me, sir. I’m your land girl and I’m willing to learn …’ She let go her breath in a little nervous huff.

‘Aye.’ Catchpole stuffed his pipe into the pocket of his shirt. ‘Well, the first thing you learn in my garden is not to call me sir. My name is Jack Catchpole – Mister Catchpole to you. And what might your name be?’

‘Grace Mary Fielding, Mr Catchpole, but people call me Gracie. Gracie Fielding – Gracie Fields, see? Well, when you come from Rochdale, what else?’

‘What else indeed?’ Catchpole liked Gracie Fields and her happy, brash voice. Made him laugh, Our Gracie did. ‘So, young Gracie Fielding, what made you choose market gardening in general and Rowangarth in particular?’

‘Oh, I didn’t, Mr Catchpole – choose either, I mean. I just got sick of streets and mills and joined the Land Army so I could be in the country – and do my bit, of course. And it was the Land Army chose to send me here.’

‘Mills, eh? Cotton mills?’

‘Mm. All the women in our family worked in the mills, but Mam said she wanted better for me. “Gracie isn’t going in t’mill,” she said and she worked extra hours to send me to the Grammar School.’

‘So you got yourself a better job – kept away from the looms, then?’

‘A better job – yes,’ she grinned, ‘but at the mill, as a wages clerk. Would make Dickie Hatburn’s cat laugh, wouldn’t it?’

‘And who might Dickie Hatburn be?’

‘Dunno, but he must have had a cat, that’s for sure.’ She threw back her head and laughed and her teeth were white and even. Her eyes laughed, too.

‘Do you like cats, Gracie Fielding?’

‘Not as much as dogs.’

‘Then that’s the second thing you learn in my garden. Cats is not welcome. When you see one you chase it, don’t forget. Cats wait till you’ve made a nice soft tilth and sown your seeds careful, like, in nice straight rows, then they’ve the cheek to think you’ve done it specially for them. Soon as your back is turned, they’re scratching about among your little seeds and you know what they leave behind them?’

‘Oh I do, Mr Catchpole, and I’ll chase them.’

‘And dogs, too. Dogs’re not welcome in my garden either, unless accompanied by a responsible adult and secure on the end of a lead.’

‘I’m learning,’ Gracie smiled.

‘Then rule number three. At a quarter past ten exactly, I mash a pot of tea. Most days there’s a fire in the big potting shed if we can find wood, and it’s going to be one of your jobs to see that I get my tea on time.’

‘Ten fifteen exactly.’

Catchpole took out his pocket watch, then glanced in the direction of the potting shed.

‘Water’ll just about be on the boil. Tea’s in the pot. Reckon it might run to two. You’ll find an extra mug on the top shelf beside the bottle marked poison.’

Gracie entered the dark shed. It smelled of earth and bone meal and smoke from the crackling wood fire in the little iron grate. On the hob a kettle was just beginning to puff steam.

She searched the top shelf to find a blue enamelled mug, rinsed it in the rainwater butt outside the door, then shook it dry. She liked Mr Catchpole and the smell of his big shed; liked his garden with its high, red-brick walls with fruit trees growing up them and she liked the straight, weed-free paths and their little clipped hedges.

‘I’m glad I’m here,’ she smiled, handing him the bigger mug, settling herself beside him. ‘It’ll be better than working on a farm, shovelling manure.’

‘And what makes you think you won’t be shovelling manoor here?’ He jabbed the stem of his pipe in the general direction of a large, steaming heap in a distant corner of the garden. ‘That manoor came here this March and there it’ll stay till it’s good and black and rotted down and smells as sweet as a nut. And then, I shouldn’t be at all surprised, you’ll shovel it into a barrow and you’ll spread it down the potato rows and anywhere else I think fit for it to go. It’ll be the land girl’s job.’

‘Rule number four,’ she said gravely. ‘Manure.’

‘That’s it. And then, when we’ve used up that heap – next spring, that’ll be – us plants marrows there. Alus. Marrows is greedy feeders and they like growing where a manoor heap has wintered. Ground full of goodness, see. There’s a great call, these days, for marrows for stuffing.’

‘Stuffing,’ Gracie echoed, never having eaten a stuffed marrow and making a mental note never to eat one in future.

Catchpole supped appreciatively. The lass could mash tea and she had a happy face and could take a bit of teasing.

He glanced at her outfit, taking in the khaki knee-stockings, the shirt and green tie; the short, smart jacket and the hat, tipped to the back of her bright yellow curls.

‘Hope you don’t intend coming to work all dressed up like that,’ he remarked, eager to find just one fault.

‘Bless you, luv, no! I’m wearing my walking-out togs just to make an impression. Tomorrow, I’ll be wearing my dungarees and a cool shirt – and my good thick boots!’

Catchpole nodded, mollified, drained his mug then placed it on the ground at his feet.

‘You got a young man, then?’

‘One or two, Mr Catchpole, but none of them serious. Well, it’s best not when there’s a war on. Don’t think I’d like having someone I cared about very much away at the war.’

‘Ar.’ The lass had sense. ‘Still, can’t sit here all morning nattering. Work to be done. Us’ve got to dig for victory, or so the Government tells us.’

Gaudy posters everywhere urged it. ‘Dig for Victory!’ they exhorted. Britain needed food, so lawns must be dug up and cabbages and potatoes planted instead. Those without gardens were offered allotments; flowerbeds in parks were planted with peas and beans and lettuces. Any grassy stretch came under the plough and this year, where children once played and dogs had been walked, wheat and oats and barley were already turning from green to gold, soon to be harvested.

Dig for victory! Every spadeful of earth turned over, every potato picked, was a second in time off the duration of the war, and Britain dug furiously.

‘Then can’t I stay, Mr Catchpole – start work right away?’

‘You could, if you wasn’t all togged up like that.’

‘Then why don’t I go back to the hostel and change into my dungarees? And I can pick up my sandwiches whilst I’m about it. And Mr Catchpole – why is our hostel called a bothy?’

Questions, questions! ‘A bothy,’ he sighed, ‘is a place where apprentice lads lived. Young gardeners, stable lads and the like. Every big house has a bothy, only once, in the old days, they were filled. Mrs Purvis looked after them all.’

‘Mrs Purvis who’s our cook?’

‘That same lady. When the garden apprentices were taken into the militia, she had nothing to do. Lucky for her you land girls came along.’

‘She’s nice. She’s been asking us, now the apples are ripening, to try to get her some windfalls, then she’ll make us an apple pie for Sunday dinner. She’s a good cook.’

‘Well, you’m welcome to any windfalls you can gather here. There’s a few about, over by the far wall. Now off with you, lass! I’ll be over yonder when you get back, hoeing the sprouts. You know what sprouts are?’

‘Course I do – but I’ve never seen them growing.’

‘Well, from now on and for the duration, Gracie Fielding, you’m going to learn how to grow ’em – aye, and peas and beans and potatoes and more besides.’

‘Suits me, Mr Catchpole.’

He watched her go. Happen he just might make something of the lass from Rochdale. She had a nice smile and a ready laugh and he’d especially looked at her fingernails, which were short cut and unpainted.

‘Us’ll see how you shape up, Gracie Fielding,’ he murmured to her retreating back and surprised himself by noticing she had a nice, neat little bottom.

He chuckled mischievously, wondering how long it would be before the lads at the aerodrome were wolf-whistling his land girl.

Picking up the mugs, he rinsed them in the water butt and returned them to the shelf beside the bottle marked poison. Then he took the teapot and emptied the leaves on the compost heap, making a mental note to instruct Gracie about compost heaps and their value in the order of things.

He reckoned the lass would be a quick learner and was very surprised to find himself looking forward to her return.

‘I see they’re making the Duke of Windsor governor of the Bahamas,’ Helen Sutton murmured over the top of the morning paper.

‘Best place for him,’ Julia grunted without looking up from her plate. ‘Hope he takes her with him. Shouldn’t wonder if Mr Churchill isn’t behind the move. The man’ll be out of harm’s way there. Tell me something important.’

‘We-e-ll, it says here that there have been air raids on Swansea and Falmouth, and convoys in the Channel have been attacked. And more raids on Clydeside and the south.’

‘Looks as if we are being softened up for the invasion,’ Julia shrugged.

‘Don’t say that, please.’ Helen Sutton laid down her newspaper. ‘Drew is in the south, don’t forget.’

‘Drew is just fine. I’d know inside me if he wasn’t.’ Julia picked up the paper, shaking it open. Newspapers were easily read these days. Sometimes containing no more than eight pages, they were quickly scanned. ‘Well! Here’s something you missed. That dratted Lord Haw-Haw! Last night, it says, he broadcast a final appeal to reason to the British, urging them to make peace with Germany. The cheek of the ruddy man!’

‘I saw it, Julia. I didn’t think it worth comment. And you know I have forbidden anyone in this house to tune in to him.’

‘But people do, you know. They reckon he’s a good laugh.’

‘Oh, no! Some of the things he says are remarkably true, or so they say. He doesn’t amuse me!’

An Englishman – no one could be quite certain of his identity – broadcast regularly from Germany. He had an arrogant, nasal voice that some likened to the braying of an ass. So Lord Haw-Haw he had become, and almost as much a part of listening in to the wireless as Tommy Handley or Henry Hall, and though no one at all admitted to having heard him, he was, nevertheless, regularly reported in the newspapers. Completely as a joke, of course!

‘Well, we don’t want peace with Hitler – not on his terms, anyway. Oh, wouldn’t he just love rubbing our noses in it? We’ll manage, Mother. He knows what he can do with his offer of peace as far as I’m concerned. And here’s another bit you missed. The Government says that no more cars are to be manufactured – not for civilians, that is.’

‘Civilians must make sacrifices,’ Helen sniffed. She disliked cars, refusing to learn to drive. You couldn’t blame her, Julia thought, when Pa had killed himself in a motor on the Brighton road, trying to reach sixty miles an hour.

‘Oh, and something else,’ she smiled, folding the paper. ‘Alice told me last night. The LDV boys have been given uniforms at last and they’re to be called the Home Guard. They’re to have shoulder flashes to sew on, and tin hats, too, just as if they were soldiers. They’ve made Tom a corporal. I think he’s quite chuffed about it. All he wants now is for them to be issued with rifles, then they’ll be ready for the Jerries. If they come, of course.’

‘And do you think they will, Julia? Honestly?’

‘Every night I pray they won’t but truly, Mother, where else is Hitler to go now? America is too far away; Russia is an unknown quantity and anyway, even Hitler wouldn’t be fool enough to take on such a big country. They’ve already taken the Channel Islands – it’s likely we’ll be next. Yet Nathan says he feels that we won’t be invaded. Apart from his faith in God, he says he just knows inside him we’ll be all right. So let’s not worry too much, uh? Every day is a bonus, so chin up, dearest. We’ll manage.’

‘Well, Nathan did tell me that according to the so-called experts, Hitler will hold back until some time about mid-September. Conditions would be better then, and the tides just right.’

‘Well, there you are! We’ll be good and ready for him come September. Let’s not think about it any more for a while.’

She looked up as the door opened and a smiling Mary brought in the morning post.

‘The Reverend is back from early church, Miss Julia, and there’s a letter from Sir Andrew.’

Eagerly Helen reached for it, tearing it open. It occupied just half a sheet and was soon read.

She passed it to her daughter then smiling happily she said, ‘He’s just confirming what he told us on the phone, Mary. Drew’s leave is definitely on. He says his divvy has okayed his application. What is a divvy, Julia?’

‘His divisional officer, I think, but who cares as long as he’s coming!’

Drew home! Her son – Alice’s son – coming on leave. So go to hell, Hitler! We don’t want your peace, at any price!

5

Gracie gazed around her, cheese sandwich poised. Only her second day at Rowangarth, yet it seemed as though she had always worked here; as if that other life of streets and mill hooters and wage packets had never been – except for Mam and Dad, that was, and Grandad.

The air seemed to shimmer golden, dancing with butterflies. She had never before seen so many; not all at one time. To her right, rooks cawed and flapped over the distant trees. Busy getting their second broods out of the nest, Mr Catchpole told her; told her, too, how special that rookery was to Lady Sutton and how, if ever those big, black birds left to nest in some other place, sorrow and tragedy would come to the Garth Suttons, or so legend had it.

‘Who are the Garth Suttons?’ Idly, she flicked breadcrumbs from her overalls.

‘Why, you’m working for them. There’s two Sutton families hereabouts, see. Those as lives here at Rowangarth – them’s the Garth Suttons – and there’s the Suttons at Pendenys Place as folks call the Place Suttons. And there’s Mrs Anna Sutton of Denniston House. Her’s a widow and an offshoot of the Place Suttons. Now, the Garth Suttons have the breeding and the title; the Place Suttons,’ he added, right eyebrow raised, ‘have the brass. Mr Nathan, as is married to Miss Julia, was a Place Sutton but he’s a decent gentleman, like his father …’

Gracie nodded, anxious not to interrupt, because people who lived in big houses – though she had come into contact with very few – intrigued her. Sometimes, on a day trip on the chara, she had passed such houses, all dignified and aloof, and wondered who lived in them and how many servants they had or if they ate off gold plates. And then her Lancashire practicality had taken over and she had tried to work out why they needed so many rooms and whoever found time to clean all the windows.

‘Tell me some more, Mr Catchpole …’

‘Not a lot to tell. I served out my apprenticeship at Pendenys. Wouldn’t have done for me to do it here, not with my dad being head gardener. But I was glad to finish my time and to come to Rowangarth as under-gardener. A right martinet that Mrs Clementina Sutton at Pendenys Place was. Had her servants bobbing and curtsying all the time. Not like our Lady Helen, who don’t hold with it.

‘Mrs Clementina’s father was a self-made millionaire and her his only child, so she copped for the lot.’ His eyes took on a remembering look. ‘By heck, lass, there’s things I could tell you about that one. Married Mr Edward Sutton, who was born here at Rowangarth. A case of brass marrying breeding, but it didn’t ever make a lady of her. An ironmaster’s daughter, that’s what, and she never changed. Silk purses from sows’ ears, tha knows …’

He bit savagely into a sandwich. At midday, Jack Catchpole was in the habit of eating a good, sustaining meal with his feet under his kitchen table, but today he had been fobbed off with sandwiches, and all on account of those Spitfires. Derisively he investigated the contents of the sandwich.

‘A man’s expected to dig for victory on fish paste?’ he snorted.

‘Mrs Catchpole not very well, then?’

‘Nay. Nowt like that. She’s busy collecting aluminium; her and Alice Dwerryhouse and Miss Julia got it all organized.’

‘The Government, you mean – wanting people’s pans to melt down for planes?’

‘That’s it. Got a right pile already in one of the stables at Rowangarth. Folks is chucking out pans like there’s no tomorrow. But I suppose we need fighters. Us lost a lot at Dunkirk, tha knows.’

Gracie knew. She had wept with pride when the soldiers were snatched off the beaches. It had been around that time, in a heady haze of patriotism, she had joined the Land Army.

‘Any road,’ Catchpole was eager to return to the ins and outs of the Suttons, ‘young Sir Andrew comes on leave soon, we hope, from the Navy. He’ll be down here for sure, having a look at the gardens. He’s real fond of the orchid house – but I’ll tell you later about her ladyship’s special orchids, the white ones. Very sentimental about the white ones, she is.’

‘So when he comes here, what do I call him?’ Gracie had never met a gentleman of title before.

‘Why, you gives him his rank as is due to him. “Good morning, Sir Andrew,” you’ll say, then like as not he’ll ask you to call him Drew as folk who’ve known him since he was a babbie alus do. Mind, when he came of age, some started to call him Sir Andrew – but more as a politeness. The lad hasn’t changed, though. He’s a credit to her as had him, and her as reared him. But we haven’t all day to sit here nattering.’ He threw the remainder of his sandwiches to hopefully waiting sparrows. ‘There’s a war on and we’ve got to get them potatoes and marrows ready for when the market man calls – and a score cabbages he wants, an’ all.’

‘But you’ll tell me some more, tomorrow – about the Suttons?’ Gracie begged. ‘About the one who had him and the one who brought him up, I mean.’ That small snippet had intrigued her. ‘Did Sir Andrew have a nanny?’

‘No, he didn’t. But that’s another story. For tomorrow,’ Catchpole chuckled. He could get to like this lass. Happen, if he and Lily had had bairns of their own, one of them might have been like young Gracie. ‘So on your feet, lass. Let’s get digging up them potatoes – for victory!’

Though when that victory would come, he thought mournfully, only the good Lord knew – and He wasn’t telling!

The first sight of Rowangarth had always been special to Drew Sutton. To walk the long slow curve of a drive lined with beeches and oaks and all at once to come upon the old house always aroused an ache of tenderness in him. But this afternoon it was particularly special and achy because he hadn’t seen it for six months and only now he realized how much he had missed it.

Mullioned windows still shone a welcome; the roof still sagged and the rose-red bricks were still smothered in blowsy Bourbon roses and clematis.

God – don’t let me die and lose it. The heart-thumping ache turned to panic inside him. Let me live through this war.

‘Stupid clot!’ he hissed. It wasn’t down to God. It was like the old Chiefie in signal school said: you just had to accept that there was a time to be born and a time to die. And you died when – if – your number came up. So best not worry overmuch about it, Chiefie said comfortably, because worrying only wasted the time you had left.

Good old Chiefie. He’d teach them the morse code if it was the last bloody thing he did, he said at the start of their training. And taught them he had, Drew grinned. DWRX805 Telegraphist Sutton A. he was now, and seven shillings a week extra at pay parade because of it.

He pulled back his shoulders and set off at a quick pace. They always said that the longest part of any journey was the last mile home and now there was only a hundred yards to go. A hundred strides, and he was there!

He should have known someone would be waiting and watching because all at once the doors were thrown open and his mother was calling, waving, running to meet him. And Grandmother standing at the top of the steps with Nathan and Tilda and Mary.

‘Drew!’ Mother and son held each other tightly.

‘Hullo, dearest …’ It was all he could say because all at once there was nothing to say – nothing that mattered.

He gathered his grandmother gently in his arms, kissing her softly, whispering, ‘Missed you, Gran.’ And the words were hard to say so he clasped Nathan’s hand tightly then kissed Mary and Tilda. And Mary blushed hotly and Tilda closed her eyes and smiled broadly. Then it all came right and all at once everything was happiness and homecoming.

‘Hecky!’ Tilda shrieked, and rushed off in a tizzy.

‘She’s got cherry scones in the oven,’ Mary supplied, which made everyone laugh because special days at Rowangarth had always been cherry-scone days ever since anyone could remember.

‘It’s good to be home,’ Drew laughed because suddenly it seemed as if he had never been away.

‘I’ve just noticed,’ Julia frowned. ‘Where is your hat?’

‘Cap, Mother.’

‘Well, where is it – and your kit?’

‘I left everything at the lodge.’ Hammock, kitbag, respirator, greatcoat. In his eagerness to see Rowangarth he could carry them no further. ‘I hitched a lift from Holdenby station. There was a tractor passing with a trailer behind it. People always give lifts to uniforms. He dropped me off right at the gate lodge. I’ll borrow a wheelbarrow from Catchpole later, and collect my stuff.’

‘But you should have phoned from York. I’d have picked you up.’

‘There was a queue for the phone boxes and you know how long it takes to get through these days. Anyway, what about your petrol coupons?’

‘Blow the petrol!’ Drew was home. Nothing else mattered.

‘Shall we all have tea?’ Helen smiled. ‘And will someone tell me – where did Cook find glacé cherries for the scones?’

Such things – dried fruit for cakes, too – had disappeared completely since war came, she had thought. People were even hoarding the last of their prunes now, to chop finely into pieces and hope they would pass for currants.

‘I think, Mother, she has some squirrelled away in a screw-top jar – for special occasions.’

‘Good old Tilda,’ Drew laughed.

A cherry-scone tea in the conservatory. All at once, his war was a million miles away.

Later, when Drew had collected his kit and returned the wheelbarrow to its proper place, Julia took her son’s cap and regarded it, eyebrows raised.

‘HMS, Drew? HMS what?’

‘Barracks is known as HMS Drake, Mother, but we can’t use a ship’s name now. It would tell the enemy which warships are in port, for one thing.’

‘So you’ll only ever have HMS on your cap?’ Julia felt mildly cheated.

‘Afraid so – for the duration. That’s why all the signposts have been removed. We don’t want to let paratroopers know exactly where they have dropped, now do we?’ He was careful to make light of it, to smile as he said it, because most people thought that the invasion, if it came, would be airborne – after a softening-up of bombing, that was. ‘But don’t worry. The south coast, if you could see it, is thick with ack-ack guns and barrage balloons, and there are a lot of fighter stations all along the coast and around London. You’d be surprised the way we’ve got ourselves organized so quickly after Dunkirk,’ he supplied with the authority of one who had seen almost six months’ service in the armed forces.

‘So do you think there’ll be an invasion, Drew?’ Julia was eager for any small word of comfort.

‘Not until I’ve had my leave,’ he grinned. ‘I specially stipulated not until Drew Sutton had had his ten days …’

‘They say it won’t be yet. More like September-ish, when the tides are right,’ Julia pressed, refusing to make light of it.

‘I heard that, too. The old hands in barracks seem to think so. And by then we’ll be ready for them. They’ve got to cross the Channel, remember.’

‘They could fly men across it, Drew.’

‘They could, but only in isolated pockets. They’d soon be mopped up.’

‘By the Home Guard!’ Julia’s apprehension returned. ‘But the Holdenby lot haven’t been given rifles yet!’

‘Mother! We’ve got an army, too. We got the best part of it out of France, don’t forget.’ It came as a shock to him to realize how worried the civilian population had become. ‘Now tell me – where is that nurse who went to France? The Germans didn’t frighten you and Lady then!’

‘Alice and I didn’t go to France to fight. We went to nurse the wounded. And you’ll have to pop over to Keeper’s – let her know you’ve arrived. Daisy won’t be home from work yet, but Alice will be expecting you.’ Julia reached up to place his cap jauntily on the back of his head. ‘There, now you look very smart. Dinner’s at seven, so don’t be too long.’

Drew shifted his cap to the more orthodox position, low on his forehead, then saluted his mother smartly. Determinedly, Julia pushed her fears from her thoughts. She would not spoil her son’s leave by worrying about what Hitler would do next. She had longed to see Drew since the day he’d left home, and the invasion could wait – until September!

Drew stood at the gate of Keeper’s Cottage, gave a low, slow whistle then called, ‘Hullo, there! The fleet’s in!’

Alice dropped the log basket she was carrying across the yard, spinning round in amazement.

‘Drew! It is you!’ In no time she was in his arms, tears brimming. Then she pushed him away from her, dabbing her eyes with the corner of her pinafore, reaching up to cup his face in gentle hands. ‘You’ve grown, I swear it – and you’re thinner,’ she accused.

‘Tilda will soon feed me up,’ he laughed, kissing her fondly. ‘And don’t cry – please don’t cry.’

‘I’m not crying,’ she sniffed, shaping her lips into a smile, ‘but it seems no time at all since you were a little thing, gazing up at me, saying, “Hullo, lady …”’

‘And I’ve called you Lady ever since, haven’t I?’

‘That you have, love, and you’ve grown up into a – a man to be proud of.’

She never called him son. From the day he’d been born, almost, he had been Julia’s; had belonged to Rowangarth, his inheritance.

‘And you, Lady, are very special to me. You’ll keep sending letters, you and Daisy? They’re very important to sailors.’

‘We’ll keep them coming,’ she smiled, in charge of her emotions again. ‘Daisy won’t be in for an hour yet, and Tom’s out setting up snares. Catches as many rabbits as he can. They’re like gold dust now. Everybody’s after them – rabbits not being on the ration. Are you coming in?’

‘Later. I’ve got to do the rounds first. Orders from Mother. But I’ll call later on, when Daisy is home.’

‘Tomorrow’s her half-day off. You’ll have a lot to talk about, the pair of you. The silly young madam’s gone and – but she’ll tell you herself.’ She reached on tiptoe to kiss him again. ‘You’re so like Giles, you know. You get more like him every day.’

She lifted her hand, a blessing almost, as he turned at the gate to smile a goodbye.

So very like Giles Sutton, her first husband, that it made her believe there really was a God in heaven. There had to be, or Drew would have looked like the man who fathered him – and that would have been nothing short of a tragedy.

She lifted her eyes to the late-afternoon sky. ‘Thanks, at least, for that …’ she whispered.

‘No more uniform, no more war, for nine days.’ Drew pulled a stem of grass, then nibbled on the soft white end. ‘Duty done, Daiz. Mother insisted I visit Reuben, Mrs Shaw and Jinny Dobb – by which time the entire village would have seen me in my uniform. I think she’s rather proud of me, but it’s good to get into civvie clothes again.’

He gazed lazily into the dapple of leaves and sunlight above him. Hands behind her head, Daisy lay beside him in the wild garden.

‘Remember, Drew, when we were kids? We used to lie here, all six of us, in the long grass, just talking – sometimes not even talking.’ Just glad to be together, she supposed.

‘The Clan. And now there’s only you and me.’

‘And Tatty, don’t forget. She’ll be along later. She’s gone to Creesby to get her hair trimmed. She’ll come, though, now she knows you’re home.’

‘The whole Riding knows I’m home,’ Drew sighed contentedly. ‘It’s as if I’ve never been away – well, it seems like it, lying here. Wish Keth and Kitty and Bas could suddenly appear – oh, Daiz! I’m sorry!’

‘Don’t be. And you don’t wish it half as much as I do. But I’m feeling good today. Four letters came this morning – two of them from Washington. Keth’s got a job there, but not one word about what he’s doing. I miss him, Drew. Half of me wants him home; the other half wants him to stay safe in America so they can’t call him up. And that’s an awful thing to say, isn’t it, when you’ve been called up for six months, almost?’

‘Do you think he’ll manage to get back home? It’s a pretty dicey crossing from America these days, and difficult for civilians to get a permit to sail, I believe. Between you and me, Daiz, we’re losing more shipping in the Atlantic than the Government tells us about. And there’s no chance at all of him flying over.’

‘I know. There’s nothing I can do about it, I suppose. If he manages to get back – well fine. If he doesn’t, at least I won’t have to go through what Mam and Aunt Julia went through in their war – and, oh! I shouldn’t have said that, either – not when you’re already fighting, Drew. I’m sorry.’

‘’S all right, Daiz. And I’m not fighting – not just yet. When my leave is over, though, I think I’ll get a ship pretty quickly.’ He closed his eyes, breathing slowly, deeply; smiling contentment. ‘But right now, I’m enjoying being here and I’m not going to think of going back till next Saturday.’

‘Next Saturday is Mary’s wedding. You’ll miss it. She’ll be ever so disappointed.’

‘Yes, she said so. But we’d better not talk about weddings, had we?’

‘Best not. And next year, when I’m twenty-one, don’t even think of mentioning weddings. That’s when we’d have been getting married. Expect I’ll weep all day. On the other hand, though, I might not.’ She sat up, arms clasped round her knees, then turning to face him she whispered, ‘I might not be here, you see. I volunteered, three weeks ago, for the Wrens.’

‘You did – what?’

‘Signed up. I thought – what the heck! Drew’s in the Navy so that’ll do for me. I was fed up …’

‘Fed up? We call that chocker in the Navy.’

‘Okay – so I’m learning. I was chocker with that shop so I went in my dinner hour and did it. And I signed Dada’s name, too. I had to because I’m still a minor. He hit the roof, Drew. In the end, Mam gave us both a telling-off and it has sort of died down now because I haven’t heard another word from them.’

‘Not even about your medical?’

‘Nope. But I heard they were pretty choosy. Maybe I won’t hear any more.’

‘I think you will. There were two Wrens on my training course and they were smashing. And the Wrens who work in barracks are okay, too. You’ll look great in the uniform, Daiz. One of the blokes in our mess saw your photograph and his eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Where did you find a bit of crackling like that, Sutton?” he asked me, and I told him under a gooseberry bush – that you were my sister. I’ll tell him you’re joining the Wrens,’ he grinned. ‘It’ll make his day!’

‘Then you’d better tell him I’m engaged, too – and, Drew, can we walk? I’ve got something else to tell you.’

‘Which necessitates walking?’

‘Yes – oh, no! But it’s going to take a bit of explaining after so long, you see. And I hope you won’t think I’ve been sneaky and secretive about it, but nobody knows – well, only Mam and Dada and Aunt Julia. And Keth, of course.’

‘I’m curious. Where shall we go?’

‘Into Brattocks the back way, then down to the elms. I want the rooks to hear it, too.’

‘You believe all that nonsense about telling things to the rooks, do you?’

‘Mam does! Anyway, I want to tell them!’

‘Fine by me.’ He held out his hand and she took it, smiling up at him, glad he was her brother – her half-brother.

‘We-e-ll – it started when we lived in Hampshire. Do you remember Hampshire, Drew?’

‘Of course I do! I loved it when Mother and I came to stay with you. I thought it was great, having you and Keth to play with. Do you remember when they told us we were related, you and me? You threw the mother of all tantrums and ran out.’

‘Don’t remind me! But I was jealous, you see, when they told us Mam had once been married to your father. Funny, isn’t it, that Mam was once Lady Alice Sutton?’

‘Don’t see why, considering she married Sir Giles Sutton and they had me.’

‘’S’pose not. Does having a title bother you, Drew? Do the other sailors rag you about it – you being on the lower decks, I mean?’

‘The blokes in the Mess don’t know about it. I took good care not to tell them. I’m Telegraphist Sutton and that’s the way I want it.’

‘But hadn’t you considered a commission? You’d be a good officer.’

‘No better than a lot of others, Daiz, and anyway, I like it where I am. I’ve been with a decent crowd of blokes, training. I’m sorry we’ll all be split up, but that’s war for you – and here we are at the elms, so you’d better tell me what’s bothering you because something is.’

‘Not bothering me, exactly, but it’s something I want you to know and like I said, I wasn’t being deceitful, not telling you. I almost told you ages ago, when I told Keth, but he was so shocked by it, I decided not to …’

‘Daisy! Tell!’

‘All right.’ She settled herself on the grass, her back to the elm tree bole, arms behind her as if she were embracing it, connecting herself and her words to it and to the rooks that nested in it. It was the way she always did it. ‘Remember when Keth’s father and Mr Hillier were drowned?’ She took a deep, calming breath. ‘And that Mr Hillier left Windrush Hall to the miners as a convalescent home – because he’d been a boy down the pit before he got so rich?’

Drew nodded, careful not to interrupt because she was finding it difficult, he knew.

‘Well, he left everyone who worked for him a hundred pounds, the rest of his money to be invested for the upkeep of the home.’

‘I knew that, Daiz …’

‘Yes, but what you don’t know is that the money he left me wasn’t a hundred pounds. Oh, I thought it was. I felt rich; thought I could spend it on bikes and toys, but Mam thought otherwise. But what I didn’t know, Drew, and they didn’t tell me for ages afterwards –’ She turned to face him, one hand on the tree-trunk, still. ‘They waited till I’d got a bit more sense, knew how not to blab about it at school. That hundred pounds I thought I’d been left was more. Much more.’

‘How much more?’ he asked warily.

‘Mr Hillier left me ten thousand pounds!’

The words came out in a rush and it seemed like an age before Drew hissed, ‘Ten thousand pounds?’

‘Yes.’ She swallowed loudly. ‘I couldn’t take it in, not so much money, so Dada said it would be better if I thought about it in terms of things; said that if I imagined a road of newly-built houses; nice houses with bathrooms, mind, – twenty of them – then that’s what my money would buy.’

‘That much money would buy Rowangarth and the stable block and the lodges and all the parkland. You’re richer than me, Daiz.’

‘I’m not richer than you, Drew. Rowangarth and the farms and all Holdenby village are worth more than ten thousand.’

‘Not a lot more, because it’s entailed. I’ve got to pass it on. And houses aren’t what you’d call security in wartime. Hitler is bombing them or setting them on fire with incendiaries and you can’t insure houses and things against enemy action – did you know that? I reckon if you’ve got your money in the bank then you’re laughing.’

‘If Hitler doesn’t come before I get it. Because it won’t be mine till next June. The solicitor in Winchester and Sir Maxwell Something-or-other and Dada are Trustees and they’ll only let me have bits of my money for special, necessary things like education or if I got very ill and there were doctor’s bills that Dada couldn’t pay. They’ve been very mean with it this far.’

‘For your own good, I suppose.’

‘I accept that, but I’d have liked to get some of it to help Keth through university when he didn’t get a scholarship to Leeds, but I’d more sense than to ask.’ She shrugged because she had never thought of all that money as hers, really. It had just been something there, uneasily in the background. Until now, that was. The ten years since they’d told her about it suddenly seemed to have flown by.

‘Well, Keth got through university all right, as it happens. And I’m glad about the money, Daiz – or I will be when it’s sunk in. Suppose Keth’s had time to get used to it, now?’

‘I think he has, though he never mentions it. When I told him he said that he wanted to be the breadwinner – buy things for me and not the other way round. It was a bit awkward I can tell you, so in the end we decided our children should have the bulk of it – good schools and perhaps ponies if they wanted them. The rest, Keth said, should be invested for their future. If we ever have kids, that is.’

Her voice began to tremble and her eyes filled with tears. Such very blue eyes, Drew thought, fishing for his handkerchief.

‘Stop it, Daiz. Of course you’ll have children.’

‘Then how, will you tell me, with the flaming Atlantic between us? Have them by air mail, will we?’

‘Oh you don’t half go on about things. You’re almost as bad as Kitty when it comes to being a drama queen.’

Thoughts of Kitty led to thoughts of Bas and again to Keth who was with them still in Kentucky – or was it Washington now? But she blinked hard on her tears and blew her nose loudly. Then she took a deep, calming breath and tilted her chin ominously.

‘All right then, Drew Sutton – drama queen, am I? Well how about this, then? That money is in the bank, sort of. They invested it for me and on my birthday they always send Dada a statement about it. By the time I’m twenty-one, there’ll be more than fifteen thousand!’

‘Fifteen! Good grief! No wonder you wanted to tell the rooks about it!’

She stared at the grass at their feet, saying nothing, which only went to show, Drew thought, that Daisy too realized what a responsibility so much money was and hoping fervently that it wouldn’t make trouble between herself and Keth.

‘Tell you what,’ he smiled, getting to his feet, holding out a hand to her, ‘let’s go over to Denniston – see if Tatty’s back from Creesby yet.’

After what he’d been told, it was all he could think of to say.

6

‘I suppose, Sir Andrew, you’ve nobbut come to see my land girl,’ Catchpole chuckled.

‘As a matter of fact, it was the tea I came for. Knew you’d have the kettle on just about now. But if it’s served by a pretty popsy, then so much the better.’ Laughing, Drew held out a hand. ‘Good to see you again, Jack.’

‘And you, young Drew. Welcome home. And who told you our Gracie was pretty, then?’

‘Polly Purvis. Daisy and I went to see her last night.’

‘Ar. And how’s that lad of Polly’s? Heard he’d got a job over in America. Planning on stopping there, is he?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine. Polly seems to think Keth is agitating to get home, though she hopes, really, that he stays there. You can’t blame her. The last war didn’t do Keth’s father any favours.’

‘Keth’ll happen be wanting to get back to Daisy, though how he’ll manage it with all those U-boats about, I don’t know. But there’s nowt so queer as folk. If that’s what Keth wants, then good luck to the lad. But here’s tea, and here’s our new lady gardener.’

‘Good morning, Sir Andrew.’ Gracie stood hesitantly, a mug in either hand. ‘I saw you arrive – I’ve poured one for you, too.’

‘Hullo, Gracie.’ Drew rose to his feet. ‘Let me help you.’

‘Careful. These enamelled mugs are very hot.’

‘Don’t I know it. We use them in barracks.’ His gaze took in her thick yellow curls, held captive in a bright green snood, her shirt unbuttoned to show a long, slim neck. She didn’t wear make-up either and had a wide, ready smile. ‘Pull up a box,’ he invited.

‘If you’re sure that’s all right?’ Her eyes asked permission of the head gardener.

‘Course it is, lass. Us don’t stand on ceremony here. So tell us, Drew, how is the Navy treating you?’

‘No complaints so far, but it’s good to be home and –’

‘And you’d rather forget being a sailor, eh?’

‘Until I have to go back,’ Drew nodded. ‘It’s good to get out of uniform and not to have to do everything at the double, though when I get a ship things will be a bit less hectic, they tell me.’

‘So what do you plan doing with yourself, then?’

‘Daisy and I might go into Creesby – see a flick tonight. But no plans at all, really. I got up late this morning. I awoke at six as usual and it was marvellous not having someone yelling, “Wakey-wakey! On yer feet! Lash up and stow!” I felt peculiar in a bed, first night home. I’ve got used to sleeping in a hammock. They’re quite comfortable.’

‘But don’t you ever fall out of them?’ Gracie frowned. ‘And what’s lash up and – and –’

‘Stow. You roll up your hammock into a big sausage, then stow it in the hammock racks, all tidy. There’s two ways of doing things in barracks: Chiefie’s way, or the wrong way. You soon learn which,’ he grinned.

‘Do you like dancing, Sir Andrew?’

‘Yes, I do! Is there a dance on?’

‘At the aerodrome tomorrow night. There’s an invitation from the sergeants’ mess at Holdenby Moor pinned on the noticeboard at the hostel. They send a transport to the crossroads, the girls told me. All HM forces welcome, though it’s ladies they want most – for partners, I suppose. A lot of the girls go in dresses so Daisy could come too, if she said she was a land girl.’

‘And Tatty, my cousin – could she come? She’s mad about the Air Force.’

‘Don’t see why not.’

‘Then I hope you’ll have a few dances with me, Gracie. I need practice.’

‘That’s a promise. But don’t forget to wear your uniform or you’ll not get in. The transport leaves at half-past seven. If you aren’t there, then I’ll know you can’t make it.’

‘We’ll be there!’ Well, he and Daisy, though probably Aunt Anna wouldn’t let Tatty go. And that would be a pity, because Tatty was fun now. He’d forgotten how pretty she was until they’d met yesterday. ‘And before I forget, Jack, Mother is coming to see you – something about keeping a few hens, she said.’

‘Hens! Me? Nay, Drew. Hens in my garden wouldn’t do at all!’ Hens would be bothersome, like cats. Just think of the damage they could do if they got out. They’d be scratching and picking everywhere.

‘She’s very keen to have some. Where do you suggest they should go then?’

‘Don’t know, and that’s for sure.’ Anywhere, but in his garden!

‘I like hens. Before Grandad came to live with us – he came when Gran died – he used to keep hens in his back garden,’ Gracie offered. ‘Well, bantams, actually. Pretty little things. Laid ever such tiny eggs. Mind, he had to keep an eye on them. Bantams are flyers – always trying to get out – but if you were to get some like Mrs Purvis has at the hostel, they wouldn’t be a lot of trouble. Hers are Rhode Island Reds. They’re very placid – not like bantams or Leghorns.’

‘For a town lass you seem to know quite a bit about hens, Gracie Fielding.’

‘Not all that much, Mr Catchpole, but I like them and if Mrs Sutton wants some hens of her own, I’d like to look after them for her. You have to give up your egg ration, though. You take your ration book to the Food Office and they cancel your egg coupons and give you chits to buy hen meal instead. It’s by far the better way. You get a lot more eggs and they’re lovely and fresh. You save all the scraps and potato peelings and such like, then boil them up and mix them with the meal. Hens lay well on it.’

‘Then I reckon you and Mrs Sutton should have a word about it, lass. You’m welcome to her hens.’

‘Would you mind, Gracie?’

‘Not a bit, Sir Andrew.’

‘Good. Well, that’s tomorrow night settled, and the hens,’ he smiled. ‘And, Gracie, please call me Drew. Most people do.’

Catchpole drained his mug, observing the couple and saying not a word. Seemed it wasn’t only the lads from Holdenby Moor who’d be taking a fancy to his land girl. Young Drew seemed smitten an’ all. And he must remember, if Miss Julia ever did get her dratted hens, to ask Gracie to keep the droppings for him when she cleaned out their coop. Hen muck made good manure; brought tomatoes along a treat.

He sucked on his pipe. Happen a few Rhode Island Reds mightn’t be such a bad idea after all. As long as they were well away from his garden, that was!

‘Do let her go, Aunt Anna,’ Drew urged. ‘There’ll be a transport laid on to get us there and I’ll take good care of her. Tatiana does so want to come.’

‘I’m sure you would take care of her, but a dance at the aerodrome …?’

‘Dada says I can go if Drew’s there,’ Daisy offered. ‘It’s all very proper. There won’t be any rowdiness. The aircrew boys are very nice.’

‘But it would be all blacked out and goodness knows what might happen,’ Anna murmured, feeling guilty for even thinking what could take place should her daughter be enticed from the dance floor to heaven only knew where.

‘But everywhere is blacked out, Mother! And I know what you are thinking,’ Tatiana flung. ‘You think I’ll get up to mischief, don’t you, necking round the back of the hangars with some bloke who’s after what he can get?’

‘Tatiana – do not speak like that! I thought no such thing!’ Anna’s cheeks flushed pink. ‘It’s just that feelings run high when there’s a war on and –’

‘Don’t worry. Tatty wouldn’t be able to leave the dance. There’ll be a guard on the door, most likely,’ Drew hastened. ‘The Air Force couldn’t allow people the freedom of the aerodrome, if only for security reasons. Tatty will be fine with Daisy and me.’ And girls of eighteen weren’t so naïve as Aunt Anna tried to make out, he thought, though he was careful not to say so. ‘I’d see her back home.’

‘Mother, please? You know how I love dancing!’

Anna gazed down at her feet, knowing just how high feelings could run. Desperately in love with Elliot Sutton she had been at eighteen; besotted by him, desperate for his glance, his touch, his mouth on hers. But Elliot had been dead these many years and she had not shed a tear at his graveside. Nor since.

‘Very well. You may go, since Drew will be with you. But you must not stay out late, remember.’

‘We can’t, Mrs Sutton,’ Daisy was quick to point out. ‘Gracie has to be back in the hostel by eleven.’

‘And I won’t be creeping out of the dance, don’t worry. I wouldn’t even have thought of such a thing if you hadn’t put the idea into my head!’ Tatiana flung, angry to be so humiliated before Daisy and Drew.

‘Now listen to me, young lady!’ Anna was becoming angry. ‘If you continue to be impudent you’ll not only not go to the dance, but you’ll be gated for the remainder of Drew’s leave. I mean it!’

‘Mother, you couldn’t! You wouldn’t!’ Tatiana wailed, her eyes filling with tears.

‘I could, but I won’t. I said you might go and you shall. That you don’t do anything foolish is surely not too much to ask?’

‘It isn’t!’ Tatiana flung her arms around her mother. ‘And I will be good!’ She was smiling now, tears forgotten, because she could twist her mother round her little finger – had always been able to. She gave a skip of delight, then grasped Daisy’s hand, pulling her towards the stairs.

‘Let’s go through my wardrobe,’ she demanded when her bedroom door was firmly closed. ‘I just love those aircrew boys and I’ll die if no one asks me to dance!’

‘They will. You’re very pretty, Tatty. Just like Anne Rutherford. And I think,’ Daisy took an emerald-green dress from the rail, ‘that you should wear this one. Green really suits you. And I’d wear the gold dancing pumps with it.’

The green it would be and oh! Tatiana sighed inside her, she couldn’t wait for tomorrow night. Just her luck, she thought, suddenly sober, if most of the aircrews were flying. She crossed her fingers and wished for the thickest, heaviest pea-souper there was, because only fog could ground the bombers.

And wasn’t she the stupid one? Pea-soupers, in July?

The RAF transport, driven by a Waaf corporal, came to a stop at the entrance to the sergeants’ mess.

‘Okay, you lot! Out you get!’ She let down the tail-flap with a clatter. ‘And mind how you go.’

Drew jumped down first, glad to be out of the gloomy interior of the canvas-covered truck. He was the only man there and had been met with wolf-whistles from the land girls when he’d arrived with Tatiana and Daisy at the crossroads.

‘Shut up, you lot!’ Gracie had stepped out of the huddle of waiting women. ‘This is Drew Sutton and he’s on leave, so give over being so stupid. Anyone’d think you’d never seen a sailor before!’

‘Not as tall and fair and handsome as this one!’ someone quipped. ‘Where’ve you been hiding him, Gracie?’

‘Stop it, I told you, or you’ll get me the sack! Drew’s my boss – well, sort of …’

Drew’s embarrassment and Gracie’s protests had been cut short by the arrival of the transport from RAF Holdenby Moor, and they climbed aboard, laughing.

Over Brattocks Wood, a full moon was rising. It was round and white but tonight on the way home it would shine silver, help light their way, pick out shapes and ditches – even potholes in the narrow road.

‘Everybody okay?’ the driver asked. ‘Get yourselves settled. Just one more pick-up to make. Soon be there.’

She let out the clutch, and the truck lurched forward and on to Holdenby village, where more girls waited. Later, when darkness came, she would be thankful for the moonlight. It was the very devil, driving in the blackout with headlamps painted over black except for the smallest slit in the centre. Thank heaven for white-painted kerbstones, she sighed. The times she had run off the road were too many to count.

The guardroom lay ahead and she stopped with a squealing of brakes that brought shouts and giggles from the back of the truck.

‘Ladies for the sergeants’ mess, plus one matelot,’ she called as the red and white pole that barred the road was raised.

Tatiana shivered with delight as she jumped down into Drew’s waiting arms because even though the door and all the windows of the Nissen hut that served as a mess were closed, she could hear the faint sound of music and the vibrating thunk and tap of bass and drums. She loved to dance and closed her eyes and fervently begged for her fair share of partners. It would be too awful, too degrading, if she sat out every dance when she had taken such trouble to look her best.

She need not have worried. Lady partners were thin on the ground and a cheer went up as they pushed aside the curtain that hung over the door.

Already the air was stuffy and thick with cigarette smoke. It wasn’t time for the blackouts to be put into place, but the windows had been nailed up during the winter and no one had bothered trying to open them since.

They laid their coats over a table at the end of the hut and Tatiana shook her head and ran her fingers through her long dark hair. Then she turned to look into eyes almost as blue as Daisy’s and smiled a breathless, ‘Yes, please,’ when a tall, fair sergeant asked if she would like to dance with him. He held her gently and not too closely and she matched her steps to his as they moved into a waltz.

‘You haven’t been here before.’ It was more a statement than a question. ‘I’d have seen you, if you had.’

‘No. This is my first time. I was only allowed to come because my cousin is home. That’s him,’ she nodded. ‘The sailor, dancing with the land girl. Maybe I won’t be able to come again,’ she sighed, wide-eyed.

‘Then we’ll have to make the most of tonight, won’t we?’ he smiled. ‘I want every dance – okay? Name’s Timothy Thomson – the Scottish Thomson, without the P. Tim.’

‘I’m Tatiana Sutton,’ she breathed, wondering why her voice wobbled and her lips were so stiff. ‘Tatty – and I’m very pleased to meet you.’ The words came out all in a rush.

‘Tatty’s a silly name. Where I come from, a tattie-bogle is a scarecrow and you’re no’ that. I’m very pleased to meet you, too.’ His eyes challenged hers, daring her to look away, claiming her, almost. ‘Tell me where you live. I want to know all about you.’

So she told him, and that her father was dead, but that very soon her grandfather would be coming to live with them when the military moved into the house they were going to take away from him.

‘Is that the old castle? I’ve often seen it when we fly over.’

‘It isn’t old and it isn’t a castle. It only thinks it is. It’s awful, really – sort of pushy. I think Grandfather’s glad to be leaving it for the duration.’

‘You must be rich.’

‘We aren’t, actually. We might have been if Father hadn’t been killed. He’d have inherited, you see. But I suppose, in the end, Bas will be stuck with it and he hates it.’

‘Bas?’ he frowned.

‘Sebastian Sutton. He’s my cousin – lives in Kentucky.’

‘And why, Tatiana Sutton, do you have a Russian name?’ The dance ended and he took her arm and guided her to chairs in the far corner of the floor.

‘My mother is Russian. Her family left because of the Communists. She’s called Aleksandrina Anastasia – Anastasia for the grand duchess. They were born on the same day, just a few hours apart.’ And because all at once she felt so easy with him, she told him about her Grandmother Petrovska, who was very sniffy and always wore black, and how she was very poor because most of what they owned had been left behind in St Petersburg, which Grandmother refused to call Leningrad.

‘You don’t know what poor is,’ he said bluntly. ‘Take me, for instance. I come from a Greenock tenement. I’m bright, though. Got a free place at the local academy. Should’ve been at university if the war hadn’t happened.’

‘But you’ll get there in the end,’ she comforted, ‘when the war is over.’

‘When this war’s over I’ll be long dead,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘The survival rate for aircrews is pretty grim, and it’s grimmer for tail-gunners like me.’

‘Then why did you volunteer? Did you have to?’ she demanded angrily, because she had only just found him and she didn’t want, ever, to lose him.

‘Not really. But on the first Clydeside raid I lost family and friends and I went out in a rage and signed up.’

‘How old are you, Tim?’

‘Twenty. And you …?’

‘Eighteen. Nineteen next March. But can we dance again, please?’

All at once it wasn’t enough to be sitting beside him, her hand in his. She needed to be closer, his arms around her. She needed it especially because he was right; not only did aircraft go missing, but even when they got back the rear-gunner was sometimes dead. Tail-end Charlies they were called. Luftwaffe fighter pilots always shot up the gunner first.

He took her in his arms and she moved closer. ‘I think I’m falling in love with you,’ she whispered in her best Imperial Russian.

‘What did you say?’ he laughed.

‘I was speaking in Russian.’ She lifted her eyes to his. ‘I said I think – I think you are a very good dancer.’ Her cheeks flushed hotly because she had almost said it; had wanted to say it.

‘Thanks. You’re no’ bad yourself.’

He drew her closer still and rested his cheek on her head and she relaxed against him and let go her indrawn breath in a sigh of contentment.

She wanted tonight never to end. She wanted to stay in his arms until the war was over.

‘Will you ring me tomorrow?’ she murmured, suddenly bold.

‘If we aren’t flying. No one can phone out if we’re going on ops. Security, you see. But if there’s no call, wish me luck when I fly over?’

‘I will, Tim.’ With all her heart and soul she would wish him luck; will him safely back. He had to get back. He couldn’t get killed; not when they had only just met. Not when she loved him so much.

‘Sssh. We’ll wake them up,’ Daisy breathed as their feet crunched the gravel drive that led to Denniston House.

‘Can you see all right, Tatty?’ Drew whispered as she fumbled her key into the lock.

‘Fine, thanks.’ Carefully she swung the door open, then turned to fold her arms round Drew, kissing him fondly.

‘G’night, coz. ’Night, Daisy. It’s been just great. Thanks for getting me in, Gracie.’

‘No bother. I’ll let you know next time they send us an invitation.’

At an upstairs window, Anna Sutton pulled back the curtain, peering into the moonlit night. She needn’t have worried. Her daughter was safely home. She watched as Drew and Daisy and Rowangarth’s land girl waved a silent good night, then slipped back into bed, listening to the sound of the closing of the front door, the slipping home of the bolts, the creaking of the second stair from the top as Tatiana crept to her room. The knob of the bedroom door turned slowly, carefully.

‘I’m home,’ Tatiana whispered.

The light from the landing fell on Anna’s closed eyelids. Her mother was asleep. Gently she closed the door.

Anna’s eyes flew open and a smile tilted the corners of her mouth. Dear, innocent Tatiana. She hoped she’d had a lovely time.

They said good night to Gracie at the bothy gate, then Daisy slipped her arm through Drew’s.

‘Are you coming in for a drink? Mam said she’d leave a tray for us.’ She pushed open the door, still unlocked, then switched on the kitchen light, her eyes automatically turning to check the blackout curtains. ‘Sit down, Drew. Won’t be a minute. My, but you had a good time – danced with Gracie most of the night, didn’t you?’

‘Mm. I like her. She’s fun. She’s a good dancer, too. Taught me some new steps. She says there’s a dance in Creesby on Wednesday night – shall we all go?’

‘Drew Sutton, I believe you’re sweet on her! You haven’t fallen for her, have you?’

‘Of course not!’ Drew’s cheeks coloured.

‘You kissed her good night …’

‘I kissed Tatty good night and I suppose I shall kiss you good night too, Daiz, but I haven’t fallen for any of you!’

‘Then you disappoint me. Here you are, almost twenty-three and still heart-whole. Are you going the way of all sailors with a girl in every port?’

‘Sorry, Daiz, no. I’d like to have just one special girl – fall in love with her. I like Gracie. She’s pretty and she’s great to be with. And could you lend her a dress, do you think, for the Creesby dance; just until her mother sends her one from home, and her dancing shoes? She says it’s awful going to a dance in breeches and a shirt and tie.’

‘Course I will, but are you sure you aren’t just a little bit in love?’

‘I like Gracie a lot – I’ve just said so – but she isn’t the one. I’ll know the minute I kiss her when the right girl comes along. And when she does, you’ll be the first to know, Daiz, I promise you!’

Julia lay still in bed, not wanting to move lest she awakened Nathan. Her mind buzzed with silly thoughts and tired as she was, sleep would not come.

She supposed she should try counting her blessings as her mother did. ‘Better than counting sheep, dear.’ And blessings Julia Sutton had aplenty. Drew was home and her husband had no fear of call-up. Nathan was fifty-two, next; her brother Giles’s age, had Giles lived. Giles would’ve been pleased she and Nathan were married.

Why had she waited so long? Why hadn’t she known Nathan loved her, had always loved her, even when he assisted at her wedding to Andrew?

Almost two years, now, since she and Nathan had been married quietly in York, yet even on their first night together she felt she must surely be cheating him; that never again could she love as she had loved Andrew.

That first, long-ago loving had been deep and passionate because for an army doctor and a young VAD nurse there were no tomorrows; just here and now and living wildly their moments together. Yet in all the three years she and Andrew had been married, only ten nights were spent in his arms.

Yet being married to Nathan was equally good, but in a different way. This time it was gentler and sweeter and safer, somehow, because for her and Nathan there was a tomorrow.

She swung her feet to the floor then padded to the window to pull aside the curtain. Delight washed over her at the sight of trees silvered by a bright, full moon, gilding the stable block and the outline of the bothy behind the wild garden; making a mockery of the blackout.

She stood, breath indrawn. Not a sound outside. No bombers airborne tonight. Unsafe for aircraft to range the skies silhouetted darkly against the brightness, easy targets for hunting night-fighters.

Tonight the crews at Holdenby Moor were grounded and doubtless dancing without a care because tonight at least they could be sure of one tomorrow. Drew had put on his uniform and gone to that dance with Daisy and Tatty and the new land girl. Now it was almost midnight and he wasn’t home yet.

‘Julia …’

‘Sorry, darling. Did I wake you?’

‘I wasn’t asleep. Come back to bed. Drew’s a grown man now. Bet he stays out later than this at Plymouth.’

‘Yes, but he’s at the aerodrome and outside it’s like daylight.’ She pulled back the covers and lay down beside Nathan. ‘On nights like this, German fighters come nuisance raiding, remember; flying in low out of the moon and shooting up our aerodromes and –’

‘Julia, for goodness’ sake! Drew is all right and Daisy and Tatty, too.’

‘Y-yes. I suppose so. But how did you know I was thinking about Drew being out?’

‘Of course you were. I know you so well that knowing what you are thinking comes easily.’

‘It does?’ She turned to face him, kissing him gently, her breath soft on his cheek. ‘Then tell me, what am I thinking now?’

‘You are thinking,’ he said huskily, drawing her closer, ‘that you want me to make love to you.’

‘Mm.’ She kissed him again. ‘My darling – how well you know me …’

7

Yesterday, Mary Strong returned from Creesby in triumph, having found the blue silk cabbage roses with which to trim the wide-brimmed biscuit-coloured hat she was to wear to her wedding.

‘I tell you, Tilda – no silk flowers to be found. I’d just about given up hope when I went down a side street and found them in a poky little shop. Dust all over everything, mind, but there they were, just what I’d been looking for and exactly the same blue as the frock!’

‘Lucky,’ Tilda murmured, glad that in four days Mary would be Mrs Stubbs, and wedding talk a thing of the past.

‘I’ll take them over to Alice to sew on the hat.’ Mary eased on the biscuit-coloured wedding shoes she was breaking in for Saturday, because not for anything was she walking down the aisle at All Souls’ squeaking with every step. ‘Won’t be more’n a couple of minutes. Table’s laid for dinner – you know they want it a bit earlier, tonight?’

On account of Drew going to the dance in Creesby, that was. Daisy was going, too, and the land girl, Mary learned only that morning when she had gone to the kitchen garden with Tilda’s vegetable list. Indeed, it had been the land girl’s idea for Mr Catchpole to make a finger-spray of flowers instead of a posy for her to carry.

‘Pale pink carnations and white gypsophila, that’s what, with a little loop underneath so you can slip it over your middle finger. And a pink carnation, perhaps, for your bridegroom’s buttonhole …?’

Mary had taken at once to the idea though truth known she had never heard of finger-sprays before.

… and the bride, dressed in conflower blue and given away by Mr Thomas Dwerryhouse, carried a finger-spray of pink carnations. It would read very well in the Creesby Advertiser. A nice girl, that Gracie, even if she did go dancing with Sir Andrew and presumed to call him Drew after only six days’ acquaintance.

She sighed, though with pleasure or relief she couldn’t be sure. Relief, she supposed, to be getting wed at last.

Tatiana Sutton looked critically at her reflection in the full-length mirror and was pleased with what she saw. And she would look better still once she was able to put on her lipstick and dab a little of her precious perfume on her wrists. But the finishing touches must wait until later or her mother would become suspicious if she went to Daisy’s house all dressed up. If Mama really knew where she was going she would put on her Grandmother Petrovska face and forbid the Creesby dance, even though Drew and Daisy would be there. Creesby dances were not allowed because, unlike the Holdenby hops, they were frequented by people – men – of unknown pedigree, who could be relied upon to take liberties with young ladies in general and Tatiana Sutton in particular.

The night following the aerodrome dance, Tim Thomson did not phone, and six Whitley bombers and six Wellingtons had thrashed and roared into the sky.

‘Please Lord, please take care of Tim; take care of all of them,’ she whispered, dry-mouthed. Then she turned to the icon above her bed and, crossing herself piously in the Russian Orthodox manner, prayed again to the Virgin and Child, just to make sure. She was relieved, on counting them home next morning, that twelve planes came in to land at Holdenby Moor.

Not long after, the phone rang and she found herself shaking when a voice whispered, ‘Hullo there, hen. Just thought I’d let you know I’m back. Can we meet?’

That was when the drawing-room door opened and she was forced to reply, ‘Daisy! Hi! I think so. When?’

‘The crossroads outside Holdenby,’ Tim had replied, laughter in his voice. ‘Tonight at seven – okay?’

‘Could you make it half-past, Daisy?’

And Tim had said that half-past seven was just fine and that he looked forward to seeing her.

Tatania spent the rest of that day partly on a pale pink cloud and partly in a trough of gloom, worried lest when they met at the crossroads someone should see them, though as it turned out no one did. They had walked the narrow road that led to Holdenby Pike with never a car passing them – thanks be for petrol rationing – and Tim kissed her, which made her cheeks flame and her heart bump deliciously.

That first kiss was kind and gentle, because she hadn’t quite known how to do it and blushingly told him so, though he assured her gravely that she would get much better with practice.

‘Tomorrow night is a bit – well, uncertain,’ he whispered throatily, kissing the tip of her nose, which Tatiana found thrilling, ‘and I mightn’t be able to phone, but Wednesday should be okay. Shall we say Wednesday – the Creesby dance? Will I call for you?’

‘No, Tim! Oh, no!’

‘But of course, you’ll be going with Daisy,’ he grinned. ‘See you at the dance, then?’

‘Yes, please,’ she breathed, closing her eyes, lifting her face to his. And she parted her lips a little, just to let him know she wanted him to kiss her again.

And their second kiss had been wonderful.

Tatiana was grateful that on the morning of the Creesby dance, Grandfather Sutton made a final check of the locks of the rooms in which he had been allowed to store his furniture, then handed over two complete sets of keys to the army major waiting to take possession of Pendenys Place. That a third set of keys was still in Edward Sutton’s pocket was of little consequence, he having neither the need nor the desire ever to use them. But having them meant he had not quite given up Pendenys, though why the thought should please him he had no idea.

He had readily agreed to the military commandeering the house he had lived in all his married life, his only regret being that if there really was a hereafter, then Clemmy would be reading his thoughts and sending down her wrath against him for not putting up more of a fight of it, for Pendenys had been his wife’s pride and joy.

And on the Wednesday of the Creesby dance, Tatiana’s mother was so occupied with making sure Grandfather Sutton was welcomed and made comfortable that she had even agreed to her daughter staying late at Daisy’s house, provided she was seen safely home by eleven o’clock.

Drew and Daisy were waiting at Keeper’s Cottage when, breathless from pedalling, Tatiana propped her cycle against one of the dog houses, apologizing for being late and begging them never, ever, to tell anyone about the Creesby dance.

‘I won’t tell Aunt Anna on you,’ Drew admonished, ‘but just let’s hope, Tatty, that she doesn’t mention it to me so I don’t have to tell any lies.’

‘She won’t. She’s going to be far too busy fussing over Grandfather ever to bother. And I’m sorry I involved you in it, Daisy,’ she said contritely, as they walked to the bothy to pick up Gracie, ‘but I’ll die if I don’t see Tim again.’

‘Tatty! You haven’t fallen for him?’ Daisy demanded. ‘For heaven’s sake, you hardly know him!’

‘I do, so! I’ve known him four days and that’s time enough. Besides,’ she added defiantly, ‘I met him on Tuesday as well. We went to the top of Holdenby Pike and –’

‘Spare us the details,’ Drew grinned. ‘And we won’t snitch on you, Tatty, just so long as you watch it – you know what I’m getting at?’

‘Of course I know and you needn’t worry, Drew. I didn’t come down with the last fall of snow,’ she flung testily, though what she would do if Tim ever wanted to do that, she wasn’t entirely sure. ‘And I think you should mind your own business and watch yourself with the land girl. You’re gone on her, aren’t you?’

‘No, I’m really not. I like Gracie, though, to dance with. Now for Pete’s sake let’s get a move on or we’ll miss the bus!’

He was pleased, for all that, to see how attractive Gracie looked in the borrowed blue dress and found himself hoping that other men at the dance didn’t find her equally so. They danced well together, and tonight Gracie had promised to teach him the dip and the spin; if he could get a look-in, that was, because, on seeing her legs for the first time, it had to be admitted they were wasted in breeches and dungarees!

‘Are you all clued up for Saturday, then?’ Julia settled herself on the hearth rug, leaning her back against Nathan’s armchair.

‘The wedding? Yes. I’ve had a chat with them both and gone over the service. Mary wants the obey bit left in,’ he laughed, ‘though once she’s got the ring on her finger, I think we know who’ll be obeying.’

‘Mary has waited a long time for Will Stubbs,’ Julia defended.

‘Like I waited for you, wife.’ There was no rancour in Nathan’s voice.

‘Mm. And soon we’ll be having our second anniversary. Shall we have a bit of a do, if the rations will run to it? I tried to persuade Mother to have a party for her eightieth birthday, but she won’t hear of it. She doesn’t want reminding, she said, that she’s been living on borrowed time for the last ten years. I wish she’d let us make just a little fuss. A lot of the tenants seem to be expecting it, and Tilda’s saving some of the rations to make her just a little cake – with one big pink candle on it.’

‘I don’t think we should push her.’ Nathan wound a strand of Julia’s hair round his forefinger.

‘You could be right, love. But we might be able to pull something off. How about a get-together for our anniversary and whilst we’re about it we could toast Mother’s birthday – belatedly, sort of. There are still a few bottles of decent stuff in the cellar – why leave them for Hitler’s lot to get their hands on?’

‘Julia! I thought we’d agreed, no more invasion talk. There isn’t going to be one, I know it.’

‘Oh? Got God’s phone number, have you?’

‘No. He’s ex-directory. But it’s a gut feeling I’ve got that we’ll be all right, so let’s talk about turning our anniversary into a surprise party for your mother’s eightieth, because that’s what you really intend, isn’t it?’

‘It is, actually. We’d have to be careful – make sure she didn’t get wind of it.’

‘You’re a scheming woman, Julia Sutton.’ He wasn’t at all sure it was a good idea. Aunt Helen had aged visibly this last year. The coming of another war so soon after the last one had upset the elderly, many of whom would never quite push the carnage of the trenches behind them. And Drew joining the Navy hadn’t helped. There were times, Nathan had to admit, when Helen’s frailty worried him. ‘Scheming and devious and I don’t know why I love you so much.’

‘I’m perfect, that’s why. And stop fiddling with my hair! You’re only looking for grey bits! Now – about Mother’s birthday party. Pity it’ll be a couple of months late, but I’m determined she’ll have one. Tell you what – why don’t we hold it in the parish hall? That way we’d have a better chance of keeping it a secret, though we’d have to find a way of inveigling her down there. But I’ll think of something …’

‘I’m sure you will.’ His wife always got her own way; always had, ever since he could remember. But she was so open and charming in all she did that she got away with it every time. It was one of the things he loved about her. ‘And I’m sorry, darling, but I promised I’d look in on Father – make sure he’s settled in at Denniston. Are you coming?’

‘Not tonight, if you don’t mind. I’ll maybe take Mother over tomorrow. And don’t worry about him, Nathan. He’ll be fine with Anna and Tatty. It wasn’t good for him being all alone in that place. Best thing They ever did was commandeering Pendenys.

‘You’ll have to try to find out who’s taking it over, and what they intend using it for. Alice told me Tom saw a convoy of army lorries this afternoon that seemed to be heading in that direction. They aren’t wasting any time, are they? Give my love to Uncle Edward, won’t you?’ She rose to her feet, clasping her arms around his neck, drawing him close to kiss him. ‘And don’t be away too long,’ she murmured throatily as he left her.

Agnes Clitherow rose stiffly to her feet, the last of her possessions packed carefully into tea chests and clearly labelled for when the carrier collected them. She had delayed her departure for Scotland until after the wedding, which would give her the opportunity to say goodbye to her friends; less sad, too, since everyone would be in a happy frame of mind.

Yet leaving would not be easy. Saying goodbye to her ladyship and Miss Julia would be near-heartbreaking and need all of that self-control she had learned over the years as housekeeper to the gentry. Nor would she relish saying goodbye to Sir Andrew on Saturday morning when his leave was over. Such a fine young man Drew had grown into. Sir Giles would have been so proud of him.

Agnes Clitherow blinked away her tears, blowing her nose loudly. Packed carefully away was a silver-framed photograph of Drew she would treasure always; a memento of a fine young man who would come safely through this war, she knew it, and marry and have sons for Rowangarth. Oh please, God, he must!

Flight Sergeant Timothy Thomson was waiting outside the Plaza dance hall in Creesby when the Holdenby bus stopped outside.

‘Tim!’ Tatiana’s cheeks flushed hotly. ‘I said to meet me inside!’

‘Oh, aye? So you think I’m mean, do you? Meet my girl inside so I don’t have to pay her in?’

‘I didn’t think that at all!’ She took a step away from him because she knew he was going to kiss her and it simply wouldn’t do – not when someone from Holdenby might just be walking past. It was one of the awkward things about being a Sutton. So many people knew her. ‘But I’m glad you could make it. Were you on ops. last night?’

‘Aye, but it was only a milk run. Counts as an op. for all that. One more off my tour.’

‘Your – tour?’

‘Thirty bombing operations in a tour. Not a lot of aircrews make it to a full tour, but those that do are taken off flying for a while.’

‘And how many have you done, Tim?’

‘Last night was the eleventh, so it’s fingers crossed for the next two. Crews seem to think that once they’re over the thirteenth there’s a good chance of making it. The first op., the thirteenth and the very last of the tour are the dicey ones. But the others have gone in and we’re standing here blethering.’

They were wasting time when he needed so desperately to have her in his arms, to dance close so he could feel her breath soft on his cheek, smell the clean, sweet scent of her hair. And damned fool him, too, when he’d vowed never to get entangled with girls; to love them and leave them. Get the war over first, then concentrate on a decent degree. But now there was Tatiana and all he could do was think about her all day, then fall asleep hoping to dream about her all night. Soft in the head, he was.

‘What’s a milk run?’ Tatiana asked when the first dance was over.

‘It’s an easy op. hen – easy as delivering milk. We didn’t carry a bomb-load last night. Our lot did a diversionary run to draw their fighters away from the Dutch coast. That way, our main bomber force had a better chance of making it to the target – somewhere in the Ruhr, I think they went. You try to attract the German fighters, then climb like mad, out of their way …’

‘Hmm. And 109s can’t climb all that high, can they, and they can’t stay airborne for very long; not like our Spits and Hurries.’

‘So how come you know so much about Messerschmitts then?’ He tweaked her nose playfully.

‘Because I take a magazine called the Spotter. It’s all about planes, gives silhouettes, too – both ours and theirs so you can recognize them in the air. I’m getting quite good at it.’

‘There’s more to you, lassie, than meets the eye!’ He rose as a waltz was announced. He liked waltzing with her. The steps were slower, so he needed to hold her closer.

‘Tim?’ Tatiana moved her head so her lips were close to his ear. ‘When we met tonight, you said you weren’t so mean that you couldn’t pay for your girl to go into the dance.’

‘Aye, well – some Sassenachs think us Scots are mean.’

‘I didn’t mean that. You called me your girl. Am I your girl, Tim?’

Her eyes met his. Such big, brown, beseeching eyes.

‘If you want to be.’

‘That isn’t what I asked.’

‘Okay.’ He lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Since you ask, Tatiana, you bowled me right over the minute I saw you. I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind since – so what have you to say to that?’

She smiled, her eyes not leaving his. They were moving more slowly now; dancing on a sixpenny piece, she supposed. And all at once they were the only people in the world.

‘Remember the night we met, Tim?’

‘Every bit of it. Which particular minute are we talking about?’

‘The one when I spoke to you in Russian.’

‘I mind fine. You said you thought I was a good dancer, didn’t you?’

‘No, darling. What I really said was, “I think I am falling in love with you.”’

‘I see. So that makes two of us.’ He said it very matter-of-factly. ‘What are we going to do about it?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t have much of a choice. I’m only eighteen, remember.’

‘No chance of marrying me, then?’

‘Not without Mother’s permission and she’d never give it.’ Her eyes pricked with tears.

‘Then it’s a pity you aren’t Scottish. You’d be considered to have sense enough to marry at eighteen there.’

‘I would? Is your law different, then?’ Her heart began to thump uncomfortably.

‘That part of it is.’

‘But I’m English.’

‘Then you’d need to live in Scotland for three weeks – become domiciled. You’d qualify then.’

The music stopped and the floor cleared, leaving just the two of them standing there, though it didn’t matter because weren’t they the only two people in the world, anyway, and in love?

‘Then when you’ve flown your thirty raids, will you ask me to marry you, Tim?’

‘I will, sweetheart.’

‘And I shall say yes …’

They smiled into each other’s eyes, then he took her hand and led her from the floor.

‘Well!’ Daisy gasped. ‘Did you see Tim and Tatty? Standing there in the middle of the floor just the two of them, gazing into each other’s eyes and not caring who sees them? She’s supposed not to be here, you know.’

‘I don’t think she cares,’ Gracie laughed. ‘Nor him. Those two are smitten, if you ask me.’

‘Lordy, I hope not,’ Drew let out his breath in a slow whistle. ‘But if they are, let’s hope Aunt Anna doesn’t find out about it. She’d hit the deck-head!’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much about her mother if I were Tatty,’ Daisy said softly. ‘But her grandmother is something else entirely. Grandma Petrovska would eat Tim Thomson alive.’

‘Yes, and spit him out in very small pieces.’ Drew was all at once uneasy. ‘What are we going to do about it, Daiz?’

‘Nothing,’ said Daisy, who knew all about falling in love. ‘Absolutely nothing. And the best of luck to them!’

8

‘Well! Did you hear the six o’clock news?’ Alice demanded hotly the minute Tom stepped through the kitchen door. ‘Think they can do anything they want, just ’cause there’s a war on!’

‘They can do anything they want!’ Tom kissed his wife’s cheek. ‘And I didn’t hear the news, so you’d better tell me.’

‘Income tax, that’s what! It’s going up to eight and sixpence in the pound in the New Year. That’s more’n a third of what folk earn – and it’s to be taken out of folks’ pay packets every week. No more paying it twice a year!’

‘Sort of pay it as you earn it,’ Tom nodded. ‘Seems fair enough to me. Mind, most folk don’t pay anything at all but let’s face it, somebody’s got to pick up the bill for this war.’

‘Well, I still don’t think it’s right! Legalized thieving, that’s what it amounts to. It wouldn’t surprise me, Tom, if both you and Daisy don’t have to start paying tax come the New Year. And there’s nothing funny about it, so you can wipe that smirk off your face!’

Alice tossed her head defiantly because to her way of thinking, taking tax out of folks’ pay packets every week was thieving!

‘Lass, lass! Daisy won’t pay tax on the pound a week she earns.’ He was careful not to mention how it would be for his daughter once she came into all that money. ‘And as for me – well, it’ll be heaven help a lot if I start paying income tax. Lady Helen and Mr Edward’ll have to worry before I will.

‘And talking about Mr Edward, I was having a word with Pendenys’ head keeper this afternoon. They haven’t told him to go yet, but he’s expecting to hear any day that the military want him off the estate. All the house staff have had to go to the Labour Exchange. They’re expecting to be put on munitions, so talk has it.’

‘Talk is cheap, Tom. What I’d like to know is what’s going on at Pendenys.’

‘And so would I! They’ve wasted no time if what I hear is true. Guard posts set up and sentries patrolling already. Barbed wire all over the place, an’ all, and Mr Edward’s only been gone five days.’

‘It’s for the King and Queen and the Princesses to come to, that’s my belief,’ Alice nodded, income tax forgotten. ‘Just wait till they start really bombing London – and start they will before so very much longer! The government’ll have the royal family out of Buckingham Palace quicker than you can say knife!’

‘The royal family, Alice? Never! What have they ever done to deserve Pendenys? If I was the military I’d make it into a prison and lock up black marketeers in it!’

‘We’ll find out if we wait long enough.’ Alice stuck the sharp point of a knife into a potato. ‘Nearly ready. Away with you and take off your boots and leggings. Daisy’ll be in soon. She’ll want her supper smartish tonight. Off to spend the evening with Drew, seeing he’s only got two more days left. Lady Helen asked especially for her to go over. Poor soul. Her ladyship’s failing if you ask me, and no one to blame for it but Hitler! Oh, but I’d like just five minutes alone with that man!’ Alice fumed because she would never, as long as she lived, forgive him for starting another war.

‘You and a million other women! Now don’t get yourself upset, love. Fretting and fratching will do you no good at all. And don’t they say that nothing is ever as bad as we think it’s going to be?’

‘And who told you that?’

‘Reuben, as a matter of fact.’ And Reuben had reminded him not so very long ago that Alice was coming to the age when women were on a short fuse and had to be handled carefully. Women that age, Reuben warned, blew hot and blew cold at the dropping of a hat, then burst into tears over nothing at all. Queer cattle women were, so think on!

‘He’s entitled to his opinion!’ Alice stirred the stew that thickened lazily on a low gas light then slammed back the lid. Jugged rabbit, stewed rabbit, savoury rabbit and rabbit roasted. Oh for a good thick rib of beef! ‘Well, go and get into your slippers. That’s Daisy’s bus now at the lane end.’

Daisy. Still no letter from the Wrens. Happen they really had forgotten her.

‘Pull up a chair, Daisy love, and have a cup. There’s still a bit of life left in the teapot.’ Polly Purvis set the kettle to boil.

Teapots were kept warm on the hob now, and hot water added to the leaves again and again until the liquid was almost too weak to come out of the spout. And she was luckier than most, Polly reckoned, having fifteen ration books to take to the shops each week. She had solved the egg problem and butter, lard and margarine she could just about manage on, but good red meat and sugar were a constant problem, especially when a land girl did the work of a man to her way of thinking, and needed a bit of packing inside her.

‘You’re all right, Polly? Not working too hard?’

‘I’m fine. The girls are a good crowd. Always popping in for a chat – mostly about boyfriends. I was lucky to get taken on here, Daisy. Keeps me busy enough and keeps my mind off – well, things. And by the way, I had a letter from Keth this morning.’

‘And?’ Daisy raised an eyebrow, not needing to ask the one question that bothered them both.

‘Not one word about that. I asked him outright last time I wrote just what he was doing in Washington, but no straight answer. The job is fine is all I’m told and that he’s saving money. Ought to be grateful for that, at least – our Keth with money in the bank! And he’s obviously managed to get himself a work permit. His letters are cheerful enough and at least he’s safe.’

‘That’s what I keep telling myself, Polly. Sometimes I wouldn’t care if he stayed in America till the war is over. Not very patriotic of me, is it, when Drew’s already in it?’

‘I feel that way, too.’ Polly stirred the tea thoughtfully. ‘But folks hereabouts understand that he’s stranded over there. I don’t feel any shame that he isn’t in the fighting. Wouldn’t want him to suffer like his father did. My Dickon came back from the trenches a bitter man.’

‘Don’t worry.’ Daisy reached for Polly’s hand. ‘One day it will all be over. Just think how marvellous it’ll be! No more blackout, no more air raids and the shops full of things to buy.’

‘And no more killing and wounding and men being blinded.’

‘No more killing,’ Daisy echoed sadly.

‘But you’ll give my best regards to Drew when you see him tonight, won’t you?’ Polly said, rallying. ‘Wish him all the luck in the world from me and Keth?’

‘I think he’ll pop in for a word with you before he goes, but don’t say goodbye to him, will you, Polly? He said sailors are very superstitious about it. You’ve got to say cheerio, or so long, or see you. I think Drew’s going to be all right, though. Jinny Dobb told me he’d come to no harm; said he had a good aura around him. Jin’s a clairvoyant, you know. She can see death in a face – and she isn’t often wrong, either way.’

‘Then I reckon I’d better ask her over for a cup of tea and she can read my cup – tell me when Keth’s going to get himself back home. Mind, I’d settle for knowing just what he’s up to and if he’s getting enough to eat.’

‘And I would give the earth just to speak to him for – oh, twenty seconds; ask him how he is.’

‘Oh, for shame!’ Polly laughed. ‘You could do a lot better’n asking him how he is in twenty seconds! Now then, how about that cup of tea?’ She began to pour, then laughed again. ‘Oh, my goodness! Did I say tea?’

‘Well, at least it’s hot.’ Daisy joined in the laughter because you had to laugh. If you didn’t, then life would sometimes be simply unbearable.

‘I won’t come over tomorrow night, Drew. I think you should spend it with Aunt Julia and Lady Helen. I’ll be there on Saturday, though, to wave you off.’

The July evening was warm and scented with a mix of honeysuckle and meadowsweet and the uncut hedge was thick with wild white roses. Beneath the trees, on the edge of the wild garden, tiny spotted orchids grew, and lady’s-slipper and purple tufted vetch.

Drew reached for Daisy’s hand, remembering scents and sounds and scenes, storing them in his mind so he might bring them out again some moment when he was in need of them.

‘My ten days have gone very quickly. It seemed like for ever when I got on the train at Plymouth. I think Grandmother is feeling it. Her indigestion is playing her up again, but I’m not to tell Mother, she says. I think she’s had it for quite a while. It’s the war. I think she remembers the last one, and gets a bit afraid. You’ll always pop over to see her, won’t you, Daiz?’

‘Of course I will. I love her a lot, and she was once Mam’s mother-in-law and Mam loves her, too. We’ll see she doesn’t fret too much when you’ve gone back – and there’ll be Mary’s wedding in the afternoon to help take her mind off your going back.’

They skirted the wild garden and crossed the lawn to the linden walk. The leaves on the trees were still fresh with spring greenness and their newly opened flowers threw a sweet, heady perfume over them.

‘Just smell the linden blossom, Daiz. I think I shall take it back with me to barracks – maybe think of it when I’m at sea in a gale, and being sick.’

‘You won’t be sick! Where do you think they’ll send you?’

‘Haven’t a clue. They say big ships are more comfortable, but if I had a choice, I think I’d go for something small and more matey – perhaps a frigate. And having said that,’ he grinned, ‘I’ll end up on an aircraft carrier, most likely. Wouldn’t mind Ark Royal. There’s always been an Ark Royal in the British Navy. There was one, even, in Henry Tudor’s time.’

‘Drew! Don’t go for Ark! Every week, Lord Haw-Haw says the Germans have sunk her!’

‘And every week we know they haven’t. Still, I won’t have a say in the matter. I’m a name and a number for the duration. I do as I’m told. Chiefie in signal school told us to keep our noses clean and our eyes down and we’d be all right. And that’s what I shall do – and count the days to my next leave.’

‘Drew – do you remember how it used to be?’ They had reached the iron railings that separated Rowangarth land from the fields of Home Farm, and stopped to gaze at the shorthorn cows grazing in Fifteen-acre Meadow. ‘It seems no time at all since that last Christmas the Clan was together. Remember? Aunt Julia took a snap of us all. Keth, me, Bas and Kitty and you and Tatty. In the conservatory. We’d all been dancing …’

‘I remember. After that, Uncle Albert started getting a bit huffy about coming over from Kentucky twice a year, but that last summer we were all together was fun, wasn’t it – except for Aunt Clemmy and the fire in Pendenys tower?’

‘And Bas’s hands getting burned. I’m glad Mr Edward had that tower demolished – what was left of it.’

‘Poor Aunt Clemmy. It was an awful way to die. I think, really, it was because she took to brandy after Uncle Elliot was killed. He was her favourite son, Grandmother said. She never got over it. Elliot was her whole life, I believe.’

‘Yes, but I know Mam and Aunt Julia didn’t like him. Even now, if ever his name is mentioned, your mother screws up her mouth like she’s sucking on a lemon. I once heard her say he’d been a womanizer – but we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, should we, and Tatty hasn’t grown up like him, Mam says. Tatty’s okay.’

‘Yes, but Tatty’s going to have to watch it. You know how strict Aunt Anna can be and Tatty has really fallen for that air-gunner. She said she doesn’t care what happens – nobody is going to stop her seeing him. She’ll have to sneak out, tell lies.’

‘Well, I’m on Tatty’s side. Tim’s a nice young man and someone should remind Tatty’s mam that there’s a war on and that young girls don’t need chaperoning now!’

‘But Tatty’s so innocent, Daiz. She’s always been fussed over and protected. And if Aunt Anna wasn’t fussing, there was always Karl in the background to look after her.’

‘Yes, and teach her to swear in Russian,’ Daisy giggled. ‘Don’t worry about Tatty. She’ll be all right. She’s good fun – away from home. But oh, Drew, I could stand here for ever. It’s all so beautiful I can’t believe there’s a war on.’

The distant sound of aero-engines at once took up her words and made a mockery of them. A bomber flew overhead, big and black and deadly.

‘Looks as if they’re going again tonight.’ Daisy looked up, preparing to count. ‘Take care, Tim,’ she said softly as another aircraft roared over Brattocks Wood. ‘Come home safely, all of you.’

Helen Sutton sat quietly in the conservatory, watching the sun set over the stable block. It tinted the wispy night clouds to salmon pink and shaded the darkening sky to red.

Red sky at night, sailors’ delight …

Rowangarth’s sailor had gone back to his barracks on the noon train from Holdenby. Soon now he should be in barracks, then where? She shivered as the short, sharp pain stabbed inside her chest. In yesterday’s papers she had read that Somewhere in England – They always called a place Somewhere in England when it suited them not to name it – close-packed German bombers with fighter escorts had attacked harbours, fighter stations and naval bases on the south coast.

Naval bases. Plymouth and Portsmouth must surely have been targeted by the Luftwaffe. It was a part, Helen was sure, of the softening-up process so there would be less resistance when the tides were right – right for the Germans, that was. In September.

Where would Drew be then? At sea, Helen hoped fervently. He’d be safer at sea. How proud she had been today of the son Giles never lived to see, tall now, and straight and Sutton fair, with eyes grey as those of his grandfather John; like his great-uncle Edward’s, too.

Drew would come back whole from this war. Fate could not be so fiendish as to take him. Besides, Helen had spoken to Jinny Dobb at the wedding this afternoon, with Jin asking why she was so sad; telling her she was not to fret over young Sir Andrew because his aura was healthy, she insisted, and was Jin Dobb ever wrong, she’d demanded.

‘Take care of yourself, milady,’ she’d urged. ‘He’ll come back safe to claim his own, just see if he doesn’t.’

Dear Jin. Those words gave her brief comfort, Helen smiled, for sure enough, Jinny Dobb could see into the future and read palms and tarot cards – with which she, Helen, did not entirely hold. But this afternoon, at Mary’s wedding, she snatched comfort from Jin’s prophecies and smiled and waved and threw confetti when Will and Mary left Holdenby for a weekend honeymoon in quite a grand hotel in York.

Mary had looked beautiful. Blue certainly suited her and she and Tom walked solemnly down the aisle to where Will and Nathan waited. How nice, those cosy country weddings.

The door knob turned, squeaking, and Tilda walked softly to Helen’s side.

‘I’ve brought your milk and honey, milady. Miss Julia asked me not to forget it.’

‘Tilda, you shouldn’t have bothered, especially as you’ll be managing alone until Mary gets back. You’ll have all your work cut out –’

‘Oh, milady, I’ll be right as rain. There’s only you and Miss Julia and the Reverend to see to and not one of you a bit of bother. It was a grand wedding, wasn’t it, though I gave up thinking long ago that anyone’d ever get Will Stubbs down the aisle. But fair play, Mary managed it though no one can say those two rushed headlong into wedlock, now can they?’

‘Tilda!’ Helen scolded smilingly. Then raising her glass she took a sip from it. ‘And here’s wishing them all the happiness in the world!’

‘Amen to that.’ Tilda turned in the doorway. ‘You’ll think on, milady, not to forget and switch the light on?’ An illuminated conservatory would fetch every German bomber on the Dutch coast zooming in over Rowangarth and would land them with a hefty fine and a severe telling-off from the police for doing such a stupid thing.

‘I’ll remember. I think you’d better remind me tomorrow to ask Nathan to take the light bulb out.’ A conservatory was too big and awkward to black out effectively. Best take no chances. ‘And don’t wait up. Goodness knows when the pair of them will be back from Denniston. They have a key. You’ve had a long day – off to bed with you.’

And Tilda said she thought she could do with an early night, but that she would see to the doors and windows first, then check up on the blackouts.

‘Good night, milady,’ she smiled, closing the door softly behind her.

Dear Lady Helen. They would have to take good care of her for there were few left from the mould she’d been made from; precious few, indeed.

Tom Dwerryhouse hung up his army-issue gas mask, took off his glengarry cap, then leaned the rifle in the corner.

There had been an urgent parade of the Home Guard called for this evening and he and several others had had to leave the wedding early and put on their khaki for a seven o’clock muster.

It was a relief to be told that their rifles – ammunition, too – had arrived at last and he opened the long, wooden boxes only to sigh in disbelief. Those long-promised rifles – and he knew it the minute he laid eyes on them – were leftovers from the last war and had lain, it seemed, untouched and uncared for in some near-forgotten store.

He took the rifle, breaking it at the stock to squint again down the barrel. Filthy! It would take a long time to get the inside of that barrel to shine like it ought to. There would have to be a rifle inspection at every parade to let them know that Corporal Dwerryhouse wasn’t going to allow any backsliding when it came to the care of rifles, old and near-useless though they were.

He snapped it shut, gazing at it, remembering against his will when last he fired such a rifle. It was something he would never forget. He knew the exact minute he took aim, awaiting the order to fire. And his finger had coldly, calmly, squeezed the trigger that Épernay morning.

It was the bullet from his own rifle, he knew it, that took the life of the eighteen-year-old boy. Aim at the white envelope pinned to the deserter’s tunic to show them where his heart was, that firing squad had been told. But the other eleven men had been so uneasy, so shocked that he, Tom Dwerryhouse, took it upon himself to make sure the end would be quick and clean.

A sharpshooter, he had been, but an executioner they made him that day. Refuse to take part and he too would have been shot for insubordination and another, less squeamish, would have taken his place.

Then, directly afterwards, the shelling started and heaven took its revenge for the execution of an innocent and directed a scream of shells on to that killing field so the earth shook. That was when he fell, surrendering to a blackness he’d thought was death.

Rifleman Tom Dwerryhouse did not die in that Épernay dawn. He awoke to stumble dazed, in search of the army camp he did not know had been wiped out by the German barrage.

How long he walked he never remembered, but a farmer had taken him in and given him food and shelter and civilian clothes to work in. And Tom acted out the part of a shell-shocked French soldier, and those who came to the farm looked with pity at the poilu who was so shocked he uttered never a word.

The Army sent a letter to his mother, telling her he had been killed in action and his sister wrote to the hospital at Celverte, to tell Alice he was dead.

The night of that letter, Alice was taken in rape. She had not fought, she told him, because she too wanted to die, but instead she was left pregnant with the child who came to be known as Drew Sutton.

Now white-hot anger danced in front of Tom’s eyes. He flung the rifle away as though it would contaminate him and it fell with a clatter to the stone floor.

He hoped with all his heart he had broken it.

9

Tom stood hidden, unmoving. To a gamekeeper, stealth was second nature. Such a man must move without the snapping of a twig underfoot, learn to sink into night shadows or merge into sunlight dapples. It was, in part, to ensure that young gamebirds were not disturbed nor frightened unduly, but mostly that inborn stealth helped outwit poachers, out to take pheasants or partridge.

The sudden clicking of a rifle bolt was a sound he remembered well. Breath indrawn, he awaited the command he knew would follow.

‘Halt! Who goes there?’

‘Friend,’ Tom called clearly.

‘We’re armed. Step forward!’ A pinpoint of light searched him out, swept him from head to feet. ‘Put down that gun!’

‘It isn’t loaded.’ Slowly, carefully, Tom laid his shotgun at his feet.

‘You’re on army property. What are you doing here?’

‘I know I am. But it’s been Pendenys land for a long time – I’d forgotten you lot.’

‘That’s as maybe, but I want to know why you’re creeping around in the dark, and armed at that.’

‘A gamekeeper usually carries a shotgun.’ Tom had recovered his composure now. ‘And they creep around because that’s the best way to catch poachers. Meat’s on the ration, and a brace of pheasants fetches thirty bob on the black market. And if I’m on Pendenys land it’s because I often meet up with their keeper, doing his own night beat. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.’

‘But how did you get in?’ The soldiers lowered their rifles. ‘This place is supposed to be secure.’

‘It didn’t keep me out. If it’s security you’re bothered about, I’d take a look at Brock Covert. It’s the way I always come in at night. If you’re interested, meet me in the daylight and I’ll show it to you. Name’s Tom Dwerryhouse, by the way. I’m keeper on Rowangarth land, joining this. And I was a soldier myself once; was a marksman when you two were still messing your nappies. Could have put one through your cap badge at a hundred yards!’

‘Ah, well. Got to be sure – and you shouldn’t have been here.’ The man reached into his pocket. ‘We were just going to have a quick fag. Want one?’

‘Don’t smoke, thanks. Never did. Want a sup of tea?’ Tom fished in his game bag for his vacuum flask.

‘Thanks, mate. Name’s Watson – corporal. And this one here’s Johnny.’

‘Which regiment – or shouldn’t I ask?’

‘Green Howards.’

‘Ah.’ Carefully, in the darkness, Tom filled the cap of the flask, passing it over. ‘Yorkshire mob, eh? What’s a regiment like the Greens doing here?’

‘Buggered if I know.’ They settled themselves comfortably, young soldiers and old soldier. ‘They don’t tell us anything.’

‘Nothing changes. They never did.’

‘It’s my guess the CO doesn’t know what’s going on either though he makes out he does.’

Tom refilled the cap and handed it to the soldier called Johnny, knowing that if he didn’t ask questions he would learn more.

‘It isn’t as if we’re doing anything but guard duties. Flamin’ boring, but the both of us were at Dunkirk so we aren’t complaining. This posting would suit me nicely for the duration.’

‘Reckon you both deserve a quiet number,’ Tom commiserated. ‘Dunkirk couldn’t have been a Sunday School outing, exactly.’

‘It weren’t. Ta.’ Johnny gave back the flask top.

‘Still, you’ll be all right, here,’ Tom directed his attention to the corporal, ‘though I wouldn’t fancy Pendenys as a billet. Great barn of a place.’

‘A billet? We don’t get nowhere near the place. Us lot are quartered in the stable block and the officers have been given the estate houses to kip down in. It’s them that live in the big house.’

‘Civilians.’ Johnny lit another cigarette.

‘You’re guarding civvies?’

‘We-e-ll, there’s a few military amongst them, but what they are nobody knows. Not even our CO gets inside Pendenys.’

‘There’s women, too.’ Johnny grunted derisively.

‘’S right. Fannies.’

‘There were Fannies in France in my war,’ Tom offered. First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. Brave lasses, they’d been. ‘They drove ambulances. Went right up to the front line.’

‘These lot don’t drive nothin’. They throw a nasty hand grenade, though.’

‘Fannies?’ Tom frowned. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Johnny’s seen ’em,’ nodded the corporal. ‘He’d nipped into the bushes for a Jimmy Riddle and a grenade landed not a hundred yards away. Live, it was. He got the hell out of it pretty sharpish. Could have done him a mischief.’

‘Folk around these parts,’ Tom said, ‘reckon they’re getting Pendenys Place ready for high-ups from London – when the bombing starts.’

‘Nah.’ The corporal said it was nothing like that. The King and Queen, in his opinion, would go to Balmoral if ever they left London.

‘Then it’s a rum do,’ Tom frowned.

‘Rum? It’s bloody peculiar. Some of the civvies are foreigners – leastways one of our lads heard them talking foreign. And the military in the big house don’t have any badges.’

‘No regimental insignia?’

‘Nothing at all to show which lot they belong to. But keep it shut, mate, or it’s me for the glasshouse, and ta-ta to me stripes!’

‘Not a word,’ Tom assured him gravely. ‘And if you’d like to give me a call one day – I live at Keeper’s Cottage on the Rowangarth estate – I’ll show you Brock Covert.’

‘Ar. Thanks.’ It would suit the corporal to be able to point out a breach in security where any old Tom, Dick or German could slip in. ‘Might just do that. An’ keep away from here, eh? Can’t always guarantee that us two’ll be on guard duty.’

‘I will, and thanks. Good night, lads.’

Frowning, Tom made for Brock Covert. The Green Howards, a crack regiment, guarding civilians? And soldiers who wore no regimental badges? Fannies, an’ all, who’d forsaken ambulances for grenade throwing. It was a rum do, all right.

In early August, the Luftwaffe flew over the south of England dropping not bombs, but leaflets. They fell in thick scatters and were eagerly gathered up. They detailed Adolf Hitler’s proposals for peace between Great Britain and the Third Reich and were read with amazement.

Make peace with that one? Surrender – because that’s what it would amount to – to an ex-corporal? Mad as a hatter, that’s what he was and his leaflets a waste of good paper into the bargain.

On that day, too, Telegraphist Sutton was summoned to the Regulating Office and drafted to his first ship, and an envelope bearing the words ‘On His Majesty’s Service’ dropped through the letterbox of Keeper’s Cottage. With it was a pale blue air-mail letter, its American stamp franked clearly with a Washington postmark.

So it had come. Alice gazed at the manila envelope. The WRNS had not forgotten her daughter nor lost the application she filled in in a fit of pique almost seven weeks ago.

She swallowed hard and noisily, then placed the envelopes on the mantelpiece between the clock and the tea caddy. Oh, damn this war and damn Hitler! She gazed about her helplessly, then hurried into the passage to pick up the telephone.

‘Hullo, Winnie,’ she said to the operator. ‘Give me Rowangarth, will you?’ She stood, eyes closed, breathing deeply to fight the panic inside her. ‘It’s arrived, I think,’ she said without preamble when her call was answered. ‘An OHMS letter for Daisy. It’ll be about her medical …’

‘Put the kettle on,’ said Julia Sutton. ‘I’m coming over!’

‘Where have you been, dear?’ Helen Sutton laid aside the glove she was knitting in navy-blue wool.

‘Popped over to Keeper’s. Daisy’s heard from the Wrens about her medical, Alice thinks. She and Tom were hoping they’d forgotten her.’

‘I don’t know why she had to volunteer. It’s bad enough Drew having to go.’

‘Dearest, don’t worry. She might not pass the medical.’

‘Of course she will!’

‘Yes, she will. But they mightn’t send for her for ages. And we’ve got to face it, women will all have to do war work before so very much longer and the young ones could well be sent into the Forces.’

‘But they couldn’t do that! Not to young girls. Is nothing sacred?’

‘The way things are going, Mother, it seems not. I sometimes think I should be doing more.’

‘But you and Alice go nights to the church canteen and you helped with the evacuees.’

‘The evacuees have all gone home and serving cups of tea to soldiers and airmen isn’t doing a lot for the war effort.’

‘You’re the vicar’s wife, Julia. Surely that’s work of national importance?’

‘Well I’m not so sure a vicar’s wife would be exempt from war work. If push comes to shove – and it will, before so very much longer – they could have me emptying middens if they thought it would help with the war!’

‘You can’t mean it!’ Helen picked up her needles and began knitting furiously.

‘Of course not.’ How could she be so stupid and her mother getting more frail and more afraid as each day passed? They were all afraid, but that was no excuse for upsetting her mother, who worried all the time about Drew. ‘And if they did direct women into the Forces, it would only be as clerks and typists, or cooks. They wouldn’t be in any danger, truly they wouldn’t.’

‘So when Daisy goes we shouldn’t worry too much …?’

‘Daisy will be fine, and she hasn’t gone yet.’ Her mother adored Daisy; looked on her as an extension of Drew, which in reality she was. ‘Now stop your worrying, dearest. I haven’t seen the paper yet. Anything in it worth reading?’

‘Nothing! They’ve shelled Dover – from across the Channel, Julia. Those poor people! And they’ve been bombing fighter stations on the south coast.’

‘Don’t believe all you read in the papers.’ Julia wished she hadn’t asked. ‘Tune in to the BBC. They aren’t scaremongers.’

‘I did, and their news was just as bad, so it must be true. Our fighters were waiting for the German bombers, though. They were in the air before the Luftwaffe crossed our coastline. I wonder how we know they are coming, Julia?’

‘Beats me. Probably we’ve got spies on the French coast – or something …’

Julia turned to gaze through the window, her thoughts not to be given voice, for what she had feared all along was happening. We were being softened up for that September invasion. It made sense to knock out the fighter stations first. Hitler had to get here if he was to be complete master of Europe and the daily bombings signalled the start of it. The fight for Britain was on, it would seem.

‘I shouldn’t wonder if there isn’t a letter from Drew soon, telling us he’s got a ship. I’ve written a couple of letters but I’m not posting them until we get his new address. He’ll be safer at sea, Mother, to my way of thinking. Plymouth has taken more than its fair share of the air raids.’

‘You could be right.’ Helen brightened visibly. ‘I think I’ll write to him, too.’

‘You do that, dearest. Tell him all the nice things. He likes hearing about Rowangarth.’ Home Farm starting the corn harvest, Jack Catchpole’s anger at the newly-appeared molehills on the front lawn; Tilda bottling Victoria plums to store for winter puddings, Tom’s bitch having a fine litter of puppies. ‘I wouldn’t mention the letter that came for Daisy this morning, though. She’ll want to tell Drew about that herself.’

‘Mm. And it mightn’t be about her medical, you know. Maybe it’s to tell her they’ve got enough Wrens for the time being.’

‘You could well be right.’

Julia felt unease as she watched her mother walk away; not so straight, now, her steps slow and unsteady sometimes.

Dearest lovely Mother. Once you were so beautiful, so sure and brave. War took your sons from you yet you never wavered; you cared for the entire village, were always there to comfort when the death telegrams came.

We all leaned on you, drew strength from you. You were like a safe haven. You saw to it that the old always had logs to burn in winter and that no one went entirely hungry.

Yet now you are old yourself and have been called on to face another war and what I’ll do when you leave us, what Rowangarth and the whole of Holdenby will do, I don’t dare think.

And, Mother, Daisy will have to go, sooner or later. We’ve got a long, terrible time ahead of us. We are on our own now, and women are going to have to help fight the war, whether we like it or not …

Daisy said, ‘Hi, each!’ looked up at the mantelpiece as she always did, faltered for just a second, then said, ‘Well, what d’ya know? A letter from His Majesty.’

‘Open it, love.’ Alice could wait no longer. It had lain there all day, tormenting her so much that she had thought – only for a moment, mind – of taking the kettle to it and steaming it open.

‘Albion Street, Leeds,’ Daisy studied the stereotyped form. ‘That’s where I’m to go. On the twenty-ninth of August, at half-past three.’

‘Two weeks away,’ Alice frowned.

‘So it is. If the date isn’t convenient I’m to let them know at once, reusing the envelope and the enclosed label,’ she grinned. ‘There’s economy for you!’

‘It isn’t funny,’ Alice snapped, more than ever agitated now she knew that what she had feared all day was fact. ‘And what do they mean – if it isn’t convenient?’

‘My period, I suppose. But I’ll be all right.’

‘Daisy!’ Such talk, in front of her father!

‘What’s the matter, Mam – doesn’t Dada know about the birds and the bees?’

‘That’ll do, lass.’ Impudent young miss! Tom fought to keep the smile from his lips. ‘What’s Keth got to say for himself, then?’

‘Don’t ask.’ Daisy took a knife from the table, carefully opening the envelope. ‘That’s between me and him – oooh, Mam, he’s looking at rings! What do I want, he says.’

‘Rings! I’d have thought he’d have better things to do with his money than send a ring that’ll likely end up torpedoed at the bottom of the Atlantic!’

‘Well, since he’s asking, I think I’d like a sapphire. It would go with my brooch.’

Would match the daisy-shaped brooch Aunt Julia had given her the day she was christened; petals of sapphires with a pearl at its centre. So valuable that she still had to ask Mam’s permission to wear it.

‘Your brooch, Daisy Dwerryhouse, would keep me in housekeeping for five years! Now where is Keth to find the money to match sapphires like those, will you tell me?’

‘Don’t know, Mam.’ He still hadn’t told anyone what his job was all about. ‘But he said he’s got money in the bank now. You should be pleased for him when he’s had to live from hand to mouth most of his life – and had to take the Kentucky Suttons’ charity.’

‘Charity! You call saving Bas Sutton’s life charity?’ Alice lifted the potato pan from the stove top, walking with it to the yard to strain the water over the cobbles. Scalding saltwater killed the weeds, she insisted.

‘Daisy love, don’t rile your mother. She’s all on edge these days and that letter of yours hasn’t helped.’

‘Sorry, Dada.’ She was at once contrite. ‘I’m not exactly pleased about it myself. But there’s no going back now and at least it’ll be better than working in a snobby shop. It’ll help pass the time, I suppose, till Keth gets home. Anything I can do to help?’ she asked as Alice returned.

‘Please. Be a love and get the plates out of the oven.’

‘Smells good. Stew, is it?’

‘I suppose so, though it’s more gravy than meat.’

Daisy sent her mother a smile across the table, realizing for the umpteenth time since the day she had filled in that application how much she was going to miss her if – when – her call-up papers came. She had such wonderful parents, such a lovely happy home; why, why had she been so stupid, so impulsive?

Because there’s a war on, answered her conscience, and because you care very much about England and this precious, one-horse dump you live in. And because Drew has already gone to war and the sooner you do your bit, Daisy Dwerryhouse, to help win that war, the sooner Keth will be home.

More selfish, really, than patriotic she admitted with ruthless honesty.

‘I think, Mam,’ she said softly, ‘that I really would like a sapphire engagement ring. But I’ll tell Keth that if he gets one he’s not to risk sending it.’

‘You do that, love.’ Alice was outwardly calm again. ‘Like I said, we wouldn’t want it to be sunk.’

Already the greedy Atlantic had claimed too much, a lot of which could never be replaced. The lives of young seamen, for instance …

‘There’s one from Drew, Mother!’ Julia ripped open the envelope which, instead of a postage stamp, bore the red frank and scribbled initials of the censor. ‘He’s got a ship at last. Listen – I’ll read it to you.

‘Dearest Mother and Gran,

‘When you get this I’ll be en route to my ship. I won’t give you the name for obvious reasons because this is to let you know we’ll be stooging around, sweeping mines.

‘I’ll be based in home waters so I should get leave pretty regularly – at least they aren’t sending me foreign. I’ll let you have my official address when I get there.

‘Just to let you know I’ll soon be doing some seatime, and glad to be out of barracks.

‘In great haste, take care,

‘Drew.

‘Well now, isn’t that good news, dearest?’

‘Yes, but why hasn’t he told us which ship?’

‘Because he couldn’t. He’s let us know he’s been drafted to a minesweeper based in home waters. If he’d given us the ship’s name, too, the censor would have cut it out of his letter.’

‘Censors! Such an invasion of privacy!’ Helen said crossly. ‘I’d be ashamed to be one of them, prying into people’s private letters. How is a man to tell his wife he loves her – yes, and write about other intimate details, too?’

‘Letters must be censored, Mother. If they got into enemy hands, even the most innocent remark could be a danger. One like, “I’ll send you a picture of a camel when I get there” would be a giveaway; that such-and-such a regiment was being shipped to some place there was sand. Where else but North Africa – and before you know it, a troopship has been torpedoed. And it didn’t stop Andrew and me in our war. We wrote the most passionate things to each other.’

‘Julia!’

‘But people in the censors’ offices are human beings, too. They are only on the lookout for breaches of security. Love letters don’t worry them one bit.’

‘Well, I hope their cheeks are red, for all that!’ Helen donned her spectacles, reaching for her grandson’s letter. ‘You haven’t finished your breakfast. Where are you going?’

‘To tell Alice.’ Alice had a right to know.

‘But can’t you ring her up?’

‘Best not. Got to be careful what you say on the phone. Never know who might be listening in.’

‘But Winnie is the soul of discretion and so was her mother before her!’

Winnie Hallam, who manned Holdenby’s tiny switchboard, never listened in!

‘I know she is, Mother, but a German spy could climb a telegraph pole and tap in on any line he wanted. That’s why telephones can be –’

Scrambled, she had been going to say, but her mother would never understand that vital war telephones were fitted with a device called a scrambler for just that very reason.

‘That’s why we have to be very careful what we say over the phone,’ she amended.

‘But I can’t believe there are spies climbing up Holdenby’s telegraph poles,’ Helen frowned, her voice anxious.

‘There aren’t any. Holdenby isn’t all that important. But if there were, Tom would soon spot them,’ Julia comforted.

‘Yes, of course he would.’ Tom Dwerryhouse’s presence was a great comfort to Helen, especially now that Drew was no longer here. Tom would take great pleasure peppering the behind of a telegraph-pole spy with gunshot. ‘Well, off you go, dear, and tell Alice …’

‘Won’t be long.’ Julia kissed her mother’s cheek. ‘And don’t forget to let Nathan know where I am when he gets back from early communion.’

She closed the door of the breakfast room quietly, then leaned against it, eyes shut tightly.

Dear God, I know Mother is old now, and frail, but don’t let her mind get old, too. I love her too much to let that happen.

Helen, Lady Sutton; always gracious and kind. Always her dearest mother. It would be too awful if her mind got old as well.

Please, God? I’d rather she died than went peculiar …

Guiltily, Julia shook such thoughts from her head, because the war was to blame! It was this awful war that caused so much worry, especially to the old. No one should have to live through one war, let alone two.

10

‘Time to put the kettle on.’ Gracie Fielding thrust her fork deep into the earth, then mopped her face and neck. They were digging the plot from which the early potato crop had been lifted, making it ready for replanting, and digging was hard work.

Yet already she felt as if she belonged here. It was as if she and Jack Catchpole were shut away from the war by the high, red-brick walls that enclosed the kitchen garden. Even on rainy days there was always something to do, something new to learn.

The tomato house she liked especially. Tomatoes were thirsty plants, Mr Catchpole said; needed more water than most. It had been a thrill to pick the first of the crop ready for the vegetable man who called each morning; tomatoes red-ripe and firm, with the scent of the greenhouse on them and not the sad, soft, ages-old things Mam had to queue half an hour for. Soon Gracie would be given a week of her annual leave and she would take home as many fresh vegetables and apples and pears as she could carry and maybe a rabbit, if she could sweetheart one out of Daisy’s dad. People who lived in the country fared better for food than those who lived in towns and cities. Mam would be tickled pink to get a rabbit.

She filled the little kettle from the standtap outside the potting shed, stirred the fire in the iron grate, added twigs and wood choppings, then set it to boil on the sooty hob.

‘Ready in about ten minutes.’ She took up her fork again. ‘Heard the early news, did you?’ Everyone listened to news broadcasts and read the newspapers from cover to cover; not because they wanted to but because it was their patriotic duty and anyway, people had to know the exact time blackout began each evening and when, in the morning, it ended. Since war came, newspapers were no longer allowed to print weather forecasts, nor were they read out at the end of news bulletins. It wouldn’t do to let the enemy know when conditions would be best suited for their planes to come dropping bombs and incendiaries. Because mark his words, Mr Catchpole had said, there were those living amongst us pretending to be ordinary, normal English folk, who looked just the same as we did and spoke and acted as we did. But they were really spies and loyal to the Fatherland and had nasty, devious ways of getting weather forecasts back to Germany, and hanging would be too good for them when they were caught!

‘News?’ Jack Catchpole paused to lean on his fork. ‘Makes you fair sickened. They’re still bombing our fighter stations down south and we all know what for, don’t we?’

‘But we shot down sixty-seven of theirs.’

‘And lost thirty-three of our own.’ Never mind the Spitfires and Hurricanes. It was really thirty-three pilots we had lost, Catchpole considered angrily.

‘The Air Ministry has confirmed that sixty-seven enemy aircraft were destroyed,’ droned the newsreader, ‘and thirty-three of our fighters failed to return …’

Thirty-three telegrams there’d be this morning. Regretting. And how many more telegrams before Europe came to its senses?

He drove his fork angrily into the earth, breaking down the clods with unnecessary force. Gracie noticed it at once but knew better than to ask what was bothering him.

‘Think the kettle’ll be just about on the boil,’ she said, and headed for the potting shed. He was sitting on his upturned apple crate when she returned with two mugs, determined to cheer him up. ‘Did you hear about Mussolini, Mr C.?’

‘What’s he been up to now?’ Catchpole scowled.

‘We-e-ll, you know he said that all British ports on the Mediterranean would be blockaded by Italian warships …?’

‘You mean the Eyetie Navy might actually put to sea?’

‘Not exactly. They didn’t get the chance. “Blockade us, will you?” said the Royal Navy, and sailed out there and then and sunk an Italian depot ship, a destroyer and one of their submarines!’

‘And serve them right!’ Mussolini was a strutting fool. No one took much notice of him. Talk had it that the Italian people hadn’t wanted to go to war; that Mussolini only landed them in it to get on the right side of Hitler. But Hitler was a different kettle of fish. There was something unwholesome about him; the same wildness in his eyes you saw in the eyes of a mad dog before you had it put down. The evil in that face made Catchpole’s flesh creep. ‘But there’ll be a nasty shock waiting for them Nazis if they try invading Yorkshire.’

‘There will, Mr Catchpole?’

‘Oh my word, yes! Now not a word to a soul about this, mind.’ He tapped his nose with his forefinger and gave her one of his knowing nods. ‘Us have been making ’em all week at the Home Guard. Petrol bombs!’

‘But I thought petrol was on the ration, for cars.’

‘So it is.’ He’d thought much the same thing when two five-gallon cans had been delivered to their headquarters, petrol bombs for the use of. He had even gone so far as to wonder what those ten gallons would bring on the black market, but such thoughts were dismissed from his mind as he had seen himself hurling petrol bombs at a ruthless enemy, giving them a bit of their own back. ‘So it is, lass, but it makes grand bombs, an’ all. You get a bottle and half fill it with petrol. Then you stuffs rag down the bottleneck.’ So simple, he wondered why they had never been used in the last war. ‘Then you wait till you see ’em coming, you light the rag and when it’s burning you throw your bottle – and duck!’

Nor would there be a problem in the delivery of such missiles. Yorkshiremen were born cricketers, could throw anything from a ball to a bottle further than most!

‘And it explodes, Mr C.?’

‘It doesn’t half!’ And not only with a bang but with blazing petrol to add to the confusion. Would stop a tank, some said, but he had his doubts on that score. You would, he had worked out, have to lob one down the tank’s turret to do any real harm and to do that would take a lot of luck. Still, petrol bombs would do very nicely until the long-promised hand grenades arrived.

‘But are you sure they’ll work?’

‘Oh, they work all right! We had a dummy run up on Holdenby Pike.’ They had thrown three, and so startling had been the effect that the entire platoon had wanted to throw one and the Reverend had been forced to point out that three was more than enough or where would they be when the time came with all the bombs used up? ‘But not a word, mind.’

His good humour restored, Mr Catchpole blew hard on his tea then took a slurping swallow. Strange, he thought, that the Reverend was of the opinion there wouldn’t be an invasion, though why he thought it he couldn’t rightly explain. And no one wanted to be overrun like the French had been and especially himself, who would take badly to Germans goose-stepping all over his garden or even – and just to think of it made him shudder – throwing her ladyship out of Rowangarth. There had been a Sutton at Rowangarth for more’n four hundred years and a Catchpole had been head gardener here since Queen Victoria was a lass; four generations of them.

On the other hand, no one could blame him for wanting to throw a petrol bomb. Just one. Slap bang into the turret of a Nazi tank. He set down his mug and returned to his digging. And to his dreams of glory.

Tatiana heard the long, low whistle then ran towards it, arms wide.

‘Tim! You’re all right!’ She always waited now in the shelter of the trees beside the crossroads, hoping he would come because it wasn’t always possible for him to phone her after he had been flying nor dare she, sometimes, pick up the phone when he did.

‘I’m fine,’ he said when they had kissed, and kissed again.

‘Were you on ops. last night? It wasn’t Berlin?’

There was a tacit agreement that open cities were not to be bombed by either side, yet this morning’s newsreader announced that 120 bombers had raided Berlin in retaliation for the bombs dropped two days ago on London.

‘It was.’ He pulled her close and they began to walk, arms tightly linked, thighs touching, towards Holdenby Pike. ‘And for an open city, there was a heck of a lot of searchlights and flack.’

Open cities, Tatiana frowned, were supposed not to be of military importance and left unmolested; beautiful old places like Dresden, or York perhaps.

‘They said it was a mistake – them bombing London, I mean. They’d been trying to bomb a fighter station, and got it wrong.’

‘In broad daylight, henny? The RAF can fly in total darkness and get it right! No, they meant to do it. You can’t mistake London for a fighter station.’

‘It’s getting worse for us, isn’t it, Tim?’

‘Hush your blethering.’ He kissed her fiercely and she clung to him, eyes closed, lips parted, silently begging for more. She had loved Tim Thomson since first they met, but now she was in love with him and naked need flamed from him to her each time they touched.

Grandmother Petrovska had been wrong. It was a woman’s duty to give her husband children, and a man, she said, liked making children. It was his nature. A woman, on the other hand, did her duty in the privacy of the bedroom, reminding herself that it was a small price to pay for a household of her own and the respect society gave to a married woman.

But this dizzy-making feeling could not be a part of duty but a need, and to have children with Tim would be a shivering delight. And why in the sanctimonious privacy of a bedroom? Why not here on the wide hilltop with the sun to bless them and little scuds of cloud to see them, then float by uncaring.

‘Penny for them?’

‘A penny won’t buy them, Tim.’ They had, to her reluctant relief, begun to walk again. ‘I’ll tell you if you want, but you mightn’t like it.’

‘Try me.’

‘Remember I once said I thought I was falling in love with you?’

‘Aye. You said it in Russian.’

‘Well, I don’t think any more.’ She took a deep, steadying breath. ‘I know I’m in love with you.’ She looked down at the grass at her feet, cheeks blazing.

‘Then that makes two of us. What are we going to do about it?’

‘I can’t marry you, Tim. My family wouldn’t let me.’

‘Because I’m a Scottish peasant, a Keir Hardie man, and you are landed gentry?’

‘No, darling, no!’ She wanted him to kiss her again but he walked on, chin high. ‘All right – my mother was a countess, but countesses were two a penny in St Petersburg. And the Petrovskys aren’t rich. The Bolsheviks took almost all they owned. What Mother and I have is because of the Suttons. It’s their charity we live on!’

‘Charity! You live in a big house with servants!’

‘Only Karl, now, and Cook, and Maggie who comes twice a week. And Cook might have to do war work in a factory canteen, she says.’

‘Aye, well, my mother works in a factory and glad of it, and my father works in the shipyards – unemployed for years till the war started – so I suppose that rules out marriage. And let’s face it, your Grandmother Petrovska wouldn’t take kindly to one of her enemies marrying into the family.’

‘You’re a Bolshevik?’ He couldn’t be!

‘They call us Communists, now. And I’m not red. Just nicely pink around the edges. Before the war I wanted to go into politics – Labour, of course – try to help my own kind, because there are only two classes in this life, Tatiana: those who have and those who have not.’

‘Then why do you love me when you despise my kind of people?’ She was angry, now. Any minute she would round on him in Karl’s earthy Russian.

‘I don’t know, God help me. But I do love you, Tatiana Sutton and I want you like I’ve never wanted a woman in my life.’

‘And I think I want you, Tim. When you touch me and kiss me something goes boing inside me and I think how lovely it would be to make a baby with you.’

They had stopped walking again and she stepped away from him because all at once she knew that if he held her close, laid his mouth on hers, there would be no crying, ‘No, Tim!’ because she wouldn’t want to say it.

‘Make a baby! Are you mad? I could get killed any night and then where would you be?’

‘Pregnant and alone, I suppose, and people would call me a tart.’

‘And would you care?’

‘Only that you were dead,’ she said softly, sadly. ‘But it doesn’t arise because I wouldn’t know what to do. I’ve never done it before …’

The pulsating need between them had passed now. They linked little fingers and began their upward climb and she didn’t know whether to be sad or glad.

‘I’d teach you, henny. And there wouldn’t be any babies. No mistakes – I’d see to that. They tell you how to keep your nose clean in the RAF – if you don’t already know, that is.’

‘So you know how?’ She felt mildly cheated. ‘You’ve made love before, Tim?’

‘Aye. It was offered, so I took it. It wasn’t lovemaking though, because I didn’t love her. It would be different with you, sweetheart. We’d be special together.’

‘We wouldn’t. I’d spoil it thinking about Grandmother Petrovska.’

‘Not when I make love to you you won’t!’

They scuffed the lately flowering heather as they walked, not looking at each other.

‘So shall we, Tim …?’

‘Aye. When the mood is on us. It doesn’t happen to order, you know – leastways not for a man.’

‘And will I know when?’

‘Oh, my lovely love – you’ll know when.’ He threw back his head and laughed. ‘Darling lassie, we’ll both know.’

‘There, now.’ Catchpole straightened up, hands in the small of his back. ‘That’s them seen to. Plenty for the house and for me and Lily, and two score extra for the vegetable man. Just got them in in nice time for the rain.’

‘But how do you know it’s going to rain?’

‘A gardener alus knows, Gracie. Don’t need no newspapers nor men on the wireless to tell me what the weather’s going to be like. A drop of nice steady rain towards nightfall and them sprouts’ll be standing up straight as little soldiers in the morning. You’ll learn, lass.’

‘I hope so, Mr C. I like being here.’ She liked everything about being a land girl except being away from Mam and Dad and Grandad. ‘I had a letter from Drew this morning. He said he’d write, but I never expected him to.’

‘Why not? Drew don’t say things he don’t mean.’

‘I’m sure he doesn’t, but he’s a sir, and I come from mill folk.’

‘He’s a sailor and you’m a friend and sailors like getting letters. You write back to him and tell him about the garden and what we’re doing, so he can see it all as if it was real.’

‘But he didn’t give me an address. He just put Somewhere in England and the date, because he’s expecting to be sent to a ship, he says.’

‘Then he’ll send it later, or you can get it from Daisy Dwerryhouse. She’ll have it, that’s for sure, her being related.’

‘Mmm. I know she’s his half-sister, but how come?’ Gracie concentrated on wiping clean her fork and spade before putting them away; one of Mr Catchpole’s ten commandments. ‘What I mean is – well, I know Mrs Dwerryhouse is Drew’s real mother, but she’s the gamekeeper’s wife now, and you’d think the gentry wouldn’t be so friendly with their servants – and I don’t mean that in a snobby way,’ she hastened.

‘I know you didn’t, lass. And to someone as don’t know the history of the Suttons – both families – it might seem a bit peculiar. But Daisy’s mam came to Rowangarth a bit of a lass nigh on thirty years ago. Worked as a housemaid till they realized she’d a talent with a needle and thread, and so made her sewing-maid.’

He rinsed his hands at the standtap then dried them on a piece of sacking with irritating slowness.

‘And then, Mr Catchpole?’

‘Well, one summer – before the Great War it was – Miss Julia went to London to stay at her Aunt Anne Lavinia’s house. A maiden lady, Miss Anne Lavinia Sutton was and alus popping over to France, so her ladyship sent Alice with Miss Julia – Alice Hawthorn her was then. In them days, a young lady couldn’t go out alone, not even to the shops. Alice was a sort of – of …’

‘Chaperon?’

‘That’s the word! Any road, Alice went as chaperon and to see to Miss Julia’s clothes and things, and there was all sorts of talk below stairs when the two of them got back. For one thing, they’d got themselves into a fight with London bobbies and for another, Miss Julia had met a young man and them not introduced neither.’

‘So Daisy’s mam wasn’t very good at chaperoning?’

‘Nay. Nothing like that. Miss Julia had fallen real hard for that young man and her mind was made up. Headstrong she’s always been and not ten chaperons could have done much about it. A doctor that young man was, name of MacMalcolm. Was him seen to her when she got knocked out in the fight. That was the start of it.’

‘But I can’t imagine Mrs Sutton fighting, nor Mrs Dwerryhouse. What had they done?’

‘Gone to a suffragette meeting, that’s what. Those suffragettes were agitating for women to get a say in things. Women couldn’t vote, in those days.’ Jack Catchpole wasn’t altogether sure that giving votes to women had been a wise move, though he’d never said so within his wife’s hearing.

‘So then what?’

‘Then nothing, Gracie Fielding. It’s a quarter to six and time us was off home. Lily’ll have the supper on and her can’t abide lateness.’

‘But you’ll tell me some more tomorrow?’ The Sutton story had the makings of a love book about it, but unlike love stories it was real.

‘Happen I will. But what’s told within these walls isn’t for blabbing around the hostel, remember!’

‘Not a word. Hand on heart.’ Besides, she liked Drew and Daisy too much to pass on scandal about them – if scandal there was to be.

‘Right then, lass. We’ll shut up shop for the night. See you in t’morning.’

Amicably they walked together to the ornate iron gates that Catchpole regarded as his drawbridge and portcullis both, though Gracie knew they would not be chained and padlocked until he had made his final evening rounds – just to be sure. On the lookout for cats an’ things he’d assured her, but it was really, she supposed, to bid his garden good night.

‘Wonder what’ll be on the six o’clock news,’ Gracie murmured. ‘It’s worrying, isn’t it?’

‘It is. All those German bombers coming day after day cheeky as you like in broad daylight!’

‘But they aren’t getting it all their own way!’

‘No.’ And thank God for a handful of young lads and their fighters and for young girls, an’ all, that were in the thick of it. He wouldn’t want a lass of his firing an anti-aircraft gun. If they’d had bairns, that was. Happen, he thought as he clanged shut the gates, if him and Lily had no family to laugh over then they had none to worry over now. It worked both ways. ‘Good night, Gracie.’

‘’Night, Mr Catchpole. Take care.’

Reichmarshal Goering had sent a signal to his commanders that his Luftwaffe was to rid the skies of the Royal Air Force, though how the papers knew what Goering was saying to his underlings, or how our own fighter pilots knew the German bombers were on their way – as soon as they had taken off, almost – no one rightly knew. All the man in the street could be sure of – and the Ministry of Information could, sometimes, get it right – was that for every fighter we lost, the Luftwaffe paid three of their bombers for it. Talk even had it that one German bomber ace had asked Goering for a squadron of Spitfires to protect them on their raids over the south of England and that fat Hermann Goering hadn’t been best pleased about the request!

Only talk, maybe, but it lifted people’s hearts. Because we were not only going to put a stop to German air raids, Mr Churchill had growled in one of his broadcasts to the nation; we were going to win the war, as well! Even though we might have to fight on the beaches and in the streets we would never give in. And such was his confidence, his tenacity, his utter loathing for Hitler, that people believed him completely – about not surrendering, that was – though how we were going to win the war and when, took a little more time to digest. And as farmers and land girls cut wheat and barley and oats, battles raged in the sky above them – dogfights, with fields in the south littered with crippled German bombers. They became so familiar a sight that small boys stopped taking pieces as souvenirs and returned to more absorbing things such as searching for conkers, raiding apple orchards and queueing at the sweet shops when rumours of a delivery of gobstoppers circulated the streets.

Yet hadn’t Mr Churchill warned, years ago, that Germany was becoming too strong and too arrogant and no one took a bit of notice of him, except to call him a warmonger? He’d been right, though, people reluctantly admitted.

So now the entire country listened to what he said and believed every word he uttered. We would win this war, no matter what, because good old Winston said so. One day, that was.

11

My darling Daisy,

Thank you for the birthday card. I did as you told me and didn’t open it until the twelfth.

Once, we thought we would be together for my twenty-third birthday and the two of us house hunting and planning a wedding. Instead, you are going into the Forces and it seems immoral, almost, that I am away from it all and that we who need each other so much cannot be together. So I promise you this my lovely girl – somehow I will get home. There has got to be a way.

‘Keth, no!’ Daisy whispered. ‘Don’t do anything stupid – oh, please.’

She screwed up her eyes tightly, refusing to weep. There were thousands of women whose man had gone away and might never come home again; at least Keth was not in uniform and was safe in a neutral country, though Dada said it was a peculiar kind of neutrality that sent us tanks and guns and food and asked no payment in return. The Americans would get their fingers burned taking such risks, if anybody was interested in what he thought, and it would need only one incident at sea and before they knew it, America would be drawn into the war. Remember the Lusitania last time?

‘But would it be such a bad thing for us to have an ally?’ Mam had wanted to know, and Daisy supposed that for us, beleaguered as we were, to have someone on our side would be nothing short of a miracle.

But why should the United States become involved again? They had the wide span of the Atlantic between them and Europe. They were far enough away from Hitler so why should Bas, even though he was half-English, help fight our war?

Daisy jumped impatiently to her feet to stand at the wide-open window, gazing out into the August evening.

At least the weather was kind. There had been little rain for weeks. A farmer who hadn’t got his harvest in wasn’t trying, Dada said. And why, she demanded irritably, had she been so stupid; why was she leaving her home, her parents? Why had she lost her temper that dinnertime because an arrogant woman and her totally unimportant account upset her?

Because she was her father’s daughter, Mam said; because she had the same stubborn streak in her and his quick temper, too.

Mam understood about being in love. Mam was silly and sentimental, too; had buttercups pressed in her Bible, still, just as her daughter pressed a daisychain between the pages of the Song of Solomon beside words written for a lover, by a lover. ‘Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away’; words about winter being past and flowers appearing and birds singing, yet now it sometimes seemed as if flowers had never bloomed and birds would never sing again. But nothing lasted, Mam said; neither bad times nor, sadly, good.

‘Our time will come, Keth,’ she whispered. ‘We’ll be together again, one day …’

The telephone began to ring, calling her back from her dreamings.

‘For you,’ Alice called. ‘It’s Tatiana.’

‘Hi, Tatty,’ Daisy smiled into the receiver. ‘What’s news?’

‘The dance tomorrow night at Creesby – okay?’ Tatiana Sutton’s voice was low and husky as if she were whispering into the mouthpiece. ‘I’m going with you and Gracie – all right?’

‘But I’m not going.’

‘That doesn’t matter. I don’t suppose Tim and I will be there, either. But if he isn’t on ops. – and there’s a good chance he won’t be – I’ll need an alibi.’

‘But couldn’t you just say you were coming over to Keeper’s?’

‘And have Mother ring me to check up? She might. She’s getting suspicious.’

‘Okay. It’s Creesby, then. But be careful, Tatty – you know what I mean? ‘Bye …’

‘And what did Tatiana want, or shouldn’t I ask?’ Alice fixed her daughter with a stare, one eyebrow raised.

‘No you shouldn’t ask, Mam, but I’ll tell you. She’s meeting Tim Thomson and she wanted to know if I’ll be at the Creesby dance on Wednesday. Her mother’s a bit stuffy about her going there.’

‘So she told her mother that you were going?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you aren’t, Daisy. It’s your medical the day after. Now you mustn’t get drawn into things!’

‘Mam, Tatty knows what she’s doing. And I don’t know why her mother tries to wrap her in cotton wool all the time.’

‘Happen it’s the way Russian mothers do it.’

‘Well, it’s stupid of her because Tatty’s as English as I am! And Tim’s a decent sort, though I don’t suppose Grandmother Petrovska would approve of him.’

‘What do you mean – approve?’ Alice looked alarmed. ‘Are things getting serious between them?’

‘Don’t think so, but you know what Tatty’s like. If it’s got anything to do with aeroplanes or aircrew, she’s mad about it. And Tim’s a good dancer, too.’

She turned to fidget with the cutlery on the table, straightening it, shifting the cruet so her mother should not see the flush that stained her cheeks. Mam knew she always went red when she told a lie, and Tatty was serious about Tim. Head over heels, truth known.

‘I still think she’s too young to be out alone.’

‘She’s eighteen, Mam!’

‘Yes, but she’s so – so unworldly to my way of thinking. They should have sent her to school instead of having that governess teach her; let her see how the other half lives!’

‘There’s nothing wrong with Tatty. And what’s that? Smells good.’ Deftly she steered the conversation into safer channels as her mother took a pie from the oven.

‘Woolton pie. Again.’ Once she’d have been ashamed to serve such a poor dish, but needs must these days. There had been a small piece of meat left over from Sunday dinner and a jug of good gravy, so a little meat, gravy, and a lot of vegetables were covered with a suet crust and heaven only knew what they would do if suet went on the ration! She glanced towards the window as the barking of dogs told her her husband was home. ‘Get the plates out of the oven, there’s a good girl, whilst I strain the carrots. And, Daisy – tell Tatiana to be careful. You know what I mean …?’

‘She is careful, Mam.’

‘Yes – well that’s as maybe.’ Alice had not forgotten what it was like to be eighteen and in love. She offered her cheek, smiling, for Tom’s kiss.

Come to think of it, she was still in love.

‘Sorry I’m late, Mr Catchpole.’ Gracie arrived, breathless, pulling her bounty behind her. ‘Found it in Brattocks Wood. It looks good and dry – thought it would do for the fire. Hope it was all right to take it?’

‘Course it was, as long as nobody saw you with it.’ Jack regarded the branch of fallen wood. ‘Get it stuck behind the shed and us’ll get the saw to it later. And Miss Julia was asking for you.’

‘I’ve seen her. Home Farm is letting her have six pullets so she’s going into Creesby to the Food Office and getting their egg coupons changed to hen-meal coupons. Seems there’s a shed at the back of Keeper’s Cottage that no one uses. Said it needs a bit of repairing and she asked me to – er – mention it to you.’

‘And I suppose her expects me to see to it? Well, I’m a gardener; no good with hammer and nails. You’d best see Will Stubbs – he’s the handyman.’ Jack shook his head mournfully. ‘I mind the time when there was an estate carpenter here, but not any longer. And when you see Will Stubbs, tell him as how Miss Julia’ll need chicken wire and posts for them birds. I suppose Alice Dwerryhouse doesn’t mind having hens in the shed at the back?’

‘Don’t think so, Mr C. Mrs Sutton said that Daisy’s mam would be saving her scraps and peelings for me.’

‘And where are you goin’ to boil the stuff for the hen mash, then?’

‘We-e-ll – I did suggest the potting-shed fire, for the time being. After all,’ she hastened, ‘that would give you first refusal of the hen muck when I clean out the shed each week. Would only be fair,’ she stressed.

‘Fair.’ Jack Catchpole coveted the droppings to make into liquid manure. When it came to fertilizers, hen droppings were in a class of their own. ‘You got a pan for the fire, then?’

‘No, but Mrs Sutton is sure there are old iron pans they used to use at Rowangarth before they got a gas stove. I’m to have a word with Cook about it. Tilda never throws anything away, I believe.’

‘So it’s all cut and dried, Gracie,’ he murmured, relieved the hens would be housed well away from his garden.

‘Almost. I’m really looking forward to having them.’

‘Do you like it here, lass? Are you going to settle?’

‘Oh, yes! I knew it the day I came. No complaints, I hope? I’m doing my best,’ she added anxiously.

‘Aye. You’m a trier, I’ll say that for you, and as long as you see to it that I get that hen muck and don’t let Tom Dwerryhouse get his hands on it, I won’t grumble.’

Gracie let go a sigh of pure contentment. Of course she was going to settle at Rowangarth – for the duration, if she had anything to do with it. She loved living in the country; even in winter when it would be cold and wet and muddy she would still love it. She liked the land girls in the bothy, too, and the food was every bit as good as Mam’s. And Daisy and Tatty were nice and Drew was lovely and not a bit snobby like she’d thought a sir would be. And then she felt a terrible sense of guilt.

‘Oh dear, Mr C. I’m enjoying this war and I shouldn’t be, should I?’

‘Happen not, lass.’ He gave her shoulder a brief, fatherly pat. ‘But take my advice and make the most of the good days, ’cause for every good day, there could well be a bad one. Now get that branch out of sight like I told you and let’s get on with some work. Have you ever clipped a box hedge, Gracie?’

‘I haven’t, Mr Catchpole.’ Until she came to Rowangarth she hadn’t even seen a box hedge.

‘Then today, lass, you’m about to learn!’

‘You aren’t one bit interested in my medical, are you, Tatty? You’re miles away.’

‘No, Daisy, I’m not – not miles away, I mean. But they’ve been doing circuits and bumps all day at Holdenby Moor and you know what that means?’

‘Mm.’ Bombers taking off, doing two or three circuits of the aerodrome, then landing. Flight-testing the aircraft, which was always a giveaway that they’d be operational that night. ‘But they mightn’t go, Tatty.’

‘They’ll go, all right. There’s no moon at all – not until the new one on Tuesday. Perfect flying conditions.’

‘Fine. They’ll have good cover, then. Fighters won’t find them so easily. Don’t worry so, please. It’s the Air Ministry’s job to worry about flying conditions and it’s yours to wish Tim luck every inch of the way; get him back safely. And Tatty – try not to get too involved.’

‘Why? Because he’s a tail-gunner and gunners get killed, even when the rest of the crew make it back? And why shouldn’t I get involved? Why did you get involved with Keth?’

‘Because I love him.’ It was as simple as that.

‘And I’m not capable of falling in love, is that what you’re trying to say?’

‘No! But I’ve known Keth all my life. He’s always been there. When did you meet Tim? You hardly know him!’

‘You know when I met him! I’ve known him thirty-seven days exactly. And I loved him the minute I saw him and now it’s more serious than that.’

‘Oh, my Lord – you haven’t …?’

‘No we haven’t, but we will, Daisy. It nearly happened on Wednesday night. We both of us know it will, one day soon. And don’t look at me all holier than thou, as if I’m a common little tart! If you loved Keth as much as I love Tim, you’d understand.’

‘Tatty! I’m not judging you – truly I’m not. And anyway, the pot doesn’t call the kettle black!’

‘You mean you and Keth – you’ve …?’

‘Been lovers? Yes. When Keth came home because he thought there was going to be a war – the summer of ’thirty-eight it was. It happened before he went back to America to college.’

‘And was it marvellous? Was it worth it – all the worry? Because I know I shall worry – looking Mother in the face afterwards, I mean. Funnily enough, I’m not so bothered about getting pregnant because Tim says he wouldn’t let it happen. And you didn’t get pregnant, did you?’

‘Tatiana Sutton! You are so innocent!’

‘I suppose I am, but I trust Tim.’

‘Oh, famous last words! Please, please be careful? And make sure Karl doesn’t catch you out. You know he’s always hovering.’

‘Karl’s getting old now. I can give him the slip any time I want to.’

They had come to the crossroads, to where a signpost once stood with ‘Holdenby 1¹/₄’ on one arm and ‘Creesby 5’ on the other. Only signposts weren’t allowed now, because of the invasion, nor names on railway stations.

‘I’ll be careful. Both of us will. And, Daisy – was it marvellous? If you were me – would you?’

‘You’ll be taking an awful risk, you know that? And I can’t advise you now, can I? Your circumstances and Tim’s – well, they’re a whole lot different to ours. There’s a war on now.’

‘I know there is. And it wasn’t fair of me to ask, was it?’ She gave a little shrug of despair. ‘Well – good night, then. Is tomorrow your half-day off, Daisy? Will I see you?’

‘It is, but let’s leave it? You’ll probably be meeting Tim, anyway.’

‘God, I hope so!’

‘Of course you will! Tim will be just fine. And you don’t know for sure he’ll be on ops. tonight. Want me to walk to the gates with you?’

‘No thanks. I’ll be all right. I’m a big girl now – really I am.’

‘Hmm.’ Daisy watched her walk away into the twilight, shoulders drooping. Oh, damn this war and damn the stupid politicians who let it happen! Old men, all of them! Just declared war, they had, then expected the young men to fight it! ‘Hey, Tatty!’ she called.

‘Yes?’ Tatiana stopped, then turned slowly.

‘It was marvellous! Good night, love.’

Tatiana smiled suddenly, brilliantly. Then she turned, head high, shoulders straight and walked with swinging stride towards the gates of Denniston House.

Good old Tatty, Daisy smiled. She still hadn’t told her about the medical, but what the heck? Medicals were two a penny. And she had passed, anyway. She had known she would. Now all she had to do was wait until They sent for her.

She crossed the field where only yesterday sheaves of wheat had stood in stooks, drying. Today they had been piled high on carts and stored to await threshing after Christmas. She winced as the sharp stubble scratched her feet through her sandals then thankfully climbed the fence into Brattocks Wood. Here, in the shifting half-light, the wood was settling down for the night. She squinted at her watch but could not see the time. About ten o’clock, she supposed. Not a light was to be seen. Official blackout time tonight was 8.31, though it would not be completely dark for a little while. Yet despite the extra hour of daylight the nights were drawing in now. Soon the leaves would begin to yellow and then would follow the misty mornings, with swallows chattering on the telegraph wires, making ready to fly away.

Clever little birds. They came in May and left, suddenly, when they knew the time was right. The war made no difference to their migrations. Swallows didn’t know about war.

A hunting owl screeched to frighten its prey into movement, and Daisy began to run towards Keeper’s Cottage.

‘Watch the blackout, lass,’ Tom warned as she opened the kitchen door. ‘Want to get us all locked up, do you?’ He glanced pointedly at the mantel clock. ‘And what time of night is this to be coming in?’

‘Nearly half-past ten, Dada. The little hand is on ten and the big one on five,’ she grinned mischievously. ‘I’ve been with Tatty – just walking and talking …’

‘Didn’t you see your Aunt Julia? She’s just this minute left.’

‘No. I came across the field and through Brattocks.’

‘And what have I told you about being in the wood alone at night? Anything could happen to you!’

‘Dada! I know Brattocks like the back of my hand – even in the dark.’

‘Happen you do, but you’ll come home down the lane in future, especially now the nights are drawing in. I could tell you things about that wood –’

‘What your dada means is that you could have been taken for a poacher,’ Alice interrupted hastily. ‘Or you could come across a tramp … Your Aunt Julia came to tell us about Drew. Seems his ship is based in Liverpool, so he’ll be nice and near when he gets leave. Only three hours by train to York. HMS Penrose, he’s on. We have to write to him care of GPO London, so no one will know where the Penrose is.’

‘But we do know, Mam, though I can’t believe Drew would say a thing like that over the phone.’

‘No. Seems the phone rang and Winnie on the exchange asked Julia if she would accept a trunk call, reversed charges. And it was Drew. Gave her his address and said they were tied up alongside, that was why he’d been able to ring, see? But he didn’t say alongside where. Then the minute Julia put the phone down it rang again. “Did you get your trunk call all right?” Winnie asked. And when your Aunt Julia said she had, Winnie dropped her voice all dramatic, like, and whispered, “Well, it was from Liverpool, but not a word to a soul, mind.”’

They all laughed, because it was good to hear from Drew and that he had sounded happy and sent his love and asked them all to write.

‘But not a word about this!’ Alice was all at once serious. ‘We’re family so we’re entitled to know, but we don’t shout all over the Riding where Drew’s ship is and what he’s doing. Drew has been lucky. He could have been sent all the way up to Scapa Flow – or even overseas. And the Germans haven’t bombed Liverpool much, so far. Not like when he was in barracks. I’m glad he’s left Plymouth.’

‘Hmm. Wonder where I’ll end up, Mam?’

‘What do you mean, Daisy – end up? You’ve only just had your medical. They told you it might be quite a while before you get your call-up papers.’

And then Alice’s blood ran cold and she wondered why she had never thought of it until now. Because they could well send Daisy down south where all the air raids were; where the fighter stations were being bombed and strafed day after day.

They could send her to Dover, which was being shelled from across the Channel every day, or to Plymouth or Portsmouth, where the invasion would be – if it came …

12

Julia unlocked the door of the room she had not entered for exactly a year. Next to it was the sewing-room where Alice once worked; the small back room in which they had shared secrets almost too long ago to remember. And this room – Julia slipped the key into her pocket – was Andrew’s surgery. Major Andrew MacMalcolm of the Medical Corps, killed just six days before the conflict they called the Great War ended. In this room she had created a sentimental replica of Andrew’s London surgery; a shrine, almost. Every piece of furniture, every book, pencil and instrument – even the grinning skeleton and the optical wall chart – had been brought here.

Once, she had found comfort from it; sat at his desk, picked up his stethoscope, willed him to walk through the door. Now she came here only once a year, on the last day of August.

She dusted the desktop, the chair, lifted the sheet that covered the skeleton then let it drop as she heard a footstep in the passage outside. Slowly, gently the door knob turned, then Nathan was standing there, eyes sad.

‘Sorry, darling. I’m not prying …’

‘Then why are you here?’ Julia was angry, not only at the intrusion into her other life, but that Nathan should witness this rite of remembrance.

‘I suppose because I thought you might need me. I do understand. Today would have been his birthday.’

‘Yes.’ The last day of August. Andrew had lived for just a little over thirty-one years. Today he would have been fifty-three and a consultant physician, maybe, or a surgeon; a father, certainly – perhaps even a grandfather. One year older than Nathan, who had neither son nor grandson because he had loved a woman who clung stubbornly to the memory of another man. ‘And very soon, Nathan, you and I will have been married for two years. I threw away a lot of happiness, didn’t I, being bitter? Yet I can’t forget Andrew. The part of me that remembers today loves him still. Does it hurt you to hear me say it?’

‘No. Andrew was a part of your life. If I were him, I wouldn’t want you to forget.’

‘And would you have wanted me to marry again if you were dead and Andrew alive still?’

‘Yes, I would. If I’d loved you as he loved you – and I do, sweetheart – then I would have wanted you not to be alone.’

‘From heaven, would you have wanted it, Nathan?’ she whispered, aware of the goodness of him and the compassion in his eyes.

‘From that other place we have come to call heaven – yes,’ he smiled.

‘Then let me tell you – Julia MacMalcolm has gone.’ She rose from the chair in which Andrew once sat and went to stand at her husband’s side. ‘I left her at a graveside at Étaples. And now I am Julia Sutton, who has been twice lucky in love; different loves, but each of them good. Can you accept that?’

‘Easily, because you are you and headstrong and sentimental and honest. I wouldn’t change what you are or what you were. And I shall go on loving you as long as I live, just as a young nurse will always love a young doctor. Nothing can turn back love, Julia, nor diminish it.’

‘You’re a good man, Nathan. Thank you for waiting all those years for me.’

She touched his cheek with gentle fingertips. She would not kiss him, not here in Andrew’s surgery. Instead, she walked to the window, drawing across it the flimsy cotton curtains that once hung in a house in a London street called Little Britain. Then she took her husband’s hand, leading him from the room, turning the key in the lock before placing it in his hand.

‘I shall not open that door again. When Drew is next home, give the key to him, will you? He’ll understand. And, Nathan – this woman I am now loves you very much, so will you kiss me, please?’

Alice took three plates from the dresser, trying to listen dispassionately to the early-evening news bulletin. For once, it seemed, the truth had not been held back. The Ministry of Information was actually admitting that fighter stations at Biggin Hill and Manston were so damaged by bombing that planes could no longer take off from them, nor land there. On this last day of August, Fighter Command lost thirty-eight planes. Usually, They, the faceless ones, never said how many, not the whole truth. But even They must admit it couldn’t go on much longer because it wasn’t how many planes were lost, Alice brooded. Spitfires and Hurricanes could be replaced; they were only money and man-hours in a factory. What was irreplaceable were those who flew them: straight, decent young men, driven almost beyond enduring, some of them younger than Drew, her son – her son, and Julia’s. Nothing could replace such desperate courage. Drew had already gone to war and soon they would take Daisy.

Was her daughter to be called upon to face danger? Would Daisy, who was so beautiful, so in love, have to struggle on and on until she moved in a daze of exhaustion, fearful to ease off her shoes because if she did, even for one blessed minute, she could not put them on again because her feet were too swollen?

Would Daisy’s kit lay ready packed beneath her bed because the sound of enemy guns was getting nearer and louder? Would Daisy ever know the stench of undignified death?

‘No, no, no!’ Alice raised the plates she held high above her head, hurling them to the floor with all the anger that was in her. ‘God! How dare You let it happen again!’

Then she sank to her knees amid a litter of broken white china. She was still there, sobbing quietly, when Tom came home for his supper.

‘Lass, lass!’ He reached for her hand, drawing her to her feet. ‘Whatever happened? Are you hurt? Did you fall over? Don’t take on so – it’s only a few plates.’

‘Only plates.’ Plates could be replaced. ‘And I didn’t trip, or anything. I threw them, Tom.’ She drew in a shuddering breath, tears spent now, all anger gone.

‘And am I to know why?’ His voice was gentle and he gathered her close and stroked her hair.

‘Oh, it was the news that finally did it. All those fighters lost. The young ones, Tom, taking the brunt of it; fighting a war that our generation let happen. I think I’d been working up to it all day. I just exploded. Remind me never to go on about your temper after this, love?’

She took a brush and shovel and began to sweep. Daisy would be home, soon; she must not know about this.

‘Building up to it all day, eh? Worrying about Daisy, were you?’

‘N-no. Not this time. It was Andrew MacMalcolm on my mind. I almost phoned Julia, like I always used to …’

‘Like on his birthday, you mean?’

‘Should I ring her – let her know I haven’t forgotten?’

‘No you shouldn’t.’ He took the shovel from her hand. ‘You should put the kettle on whilst I throw this lot on the rubbish heap. Remember she’s Nathan Sutton’s wife now, and happy again. Leave the past alone, bonny lass.’

‘You’re right.’ She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. ‘I’m fine, now. Don’t know why you put up with me, though.’

‘Because you’re a good cook.’ He turned in the doorway to smile at her and she smiled back and whispered, ‘I love you too, Tom Dwerryhouse.’

‘Tim!’ Tatiana stepped from behind the oak tree at the crossroads then threw back her head, laughing. ‘What on earth …?’

‘Hi, henny! This beats Whitleys any day!’ He wobbled to a stop, throwing a leg over the bicycle seat, leaning over the handlebars to kiss her. ‘It only took a minute to get the hang of it again. Didn’t have a bike of my own, so I’d cadge rides from the kids who did,’ he grinned, pushing the dull olive-green cycle into the bushes beside the oak tree.

‘But where did you get it?’

‘I borrowed it – sort of. Was running late and didn’t want to keep my girl waiting. Found it propped outside the Admin block. I’ll give it back tonight.’

‘Timothy Thomson, that’s stealing!’

‘No it isn’t. All bikes at Holdenby Moor are Air Ministry property. There’s a Nissen hut full of them – personnel for the use of. It’s one heck of a walk from one end of that aerodrome to the other. First come, first served!’

‘You are quite incorrigible,’ she scolded, loving him more, were it possible, when he joked and smiled. When he smiled, something squirmed deliciously through her. ‘And I haven’t had a proper kiss yet.’

She clasped her arms around his neck, lifting her chin, closing her eyes, straining close to him and he placed his hands on her buttocks and drew her closer so she knew his need of her.

For just a moment, panic sliced through her and she wondered if this was the time. Then she closed her eyes again, searching for his mouth, relaxing against him.

‘Tatiana …’ His voice was low and husky and he drew away from her a little as if to break the contact of the electricity that sparked and crackled between them. His eyes looked directly into hers, asking the question his lips had no need to speak.

‘I love you,’ she whispered as if it were the answer to all things, then stepped away from him, taking his hand in hers, holding it tightly because she couldn’t bear not to touch him. ‘Let’s walk to the top of the pike.’

It would be quiet up there. Just the sky and almost always a breeze, even in summer. There would be no one there except other couples, who wouldn’t care, anyway.

‘The grass’ll be damp.’ He wondered why he was whispering.

‘I don’t suppose we’ll notice it, Tim.’

All at once she felt shy of him because tonight, soon, would be the first time. And after tonight nothing could ever be the same again.

She glanced sideways so she might look at him without turning her head and he was staring ahead, because he knew it as well, didn’t he?

And then, without shifting his gaze he said, ‘I love you, Tatiana Sutton.’

Julia put down the telephone, then walked along the creaking passage to the library where her husband was most times to be found. When he wasn’t baptizing or marrying or burying in Holdenby and the two other parishes he looked after, that was. And when he wasn’t giving last rites, or comforting, or visiting the old and alone, she sighed. That he would one day inherit Pendenys Place and a half of his mother’s fortune never entered his head, she was sure of it, and she too had become quite good at not dwelling too much upon it, because not for anything would she live in that vulgar barn of a place that looked like the product of a mating between the Houses of Parliament and Creesby Town Hall.

She dismissed it from her thoughts then stood behind her husband’s chair, hands on his shoulders.

‘Are you sermonizing? I need to talk, but I can come back later.’

‘Just finished.’ He replaced the cap of his fountain pen and laid it down, swivelling in his chair to face her.

‘Giles always did that,’ she said in a half-whisper. ‘Swing round in that chair and smile, I mean. Just as you did, then.’

‘I still miss him, Julia.’

‘I know you do. You were twin cousins, sort of.’

‘He was more a brother to me than – well, Elliot,’ he said, at once regretting saying the name.

‘What I want to know is can I have the parish hall for our wedding anniversary?’ Deliberately, she made no reference to Elliot Sutton. ‘I know it will mean slinging the canteen out, but it’ll only be for one night.’

‘For Aunt Helen’s eightieth, you mean? Are you sure you want the hall? Wouldn’t a little party here be better?’

‘No. Mother would get wind of it and anyway, I want the entire village to come and I want there to be dancing. I’ve booked a band, provisionally.’

‘But if you go round asking everyone, your mother will be bound to find out.’

‘Not if I especially ask people to keep quiet about it. I think I’ll be able to get beer, and lemonade for the children, and I can muster one drink apiece, I think, for the toast. But it’ll have to be a bring-your-own-sandwiches-and-buns affair, I’m afraid.’

‘They won’t mind that, darling. Since rationing, it’s been the done thing.’

‘Yes – and a get-together and a dance can’t do anything but good; help everybody forget bloody Hitler for a few hours.’

‘There’s a parish-council meeting tonight. I’ll mention the hall then. I take it you’ve booked the band for the Saturday night and not for our actual date?’

‘For Saturday, October the fifth, if that’s all right?’

‘It’ll be fine.’ He pushed back his chair, crossing the room to stand at her side as she gazed out of the window. ‘Do you often think of Giles? I know I do.’

‘Yes. Sometimes I’m angry still about his death; other times I wonder what would have happened if he’d lived. Alice would still be Lady Sutton and she and Tom could never have married.’

‘Nor Daisy been born. I suppose his death was a part of the order of things, though sometimes I resent it.’

‘You resent God’s will, and you a man of the Church?’ She could not resist, sometimes, mocking God. There were times, still, that she blamed Him for Andrew’s death.

‘Priests can doubt. We are human, Julia – flesh and blood.’

‘Yes, thank God.’ She turned to gather him to her, kissing his mouth. ‘And if I’m not mistaken, that was Mary with the tea tray. I’m dying for a cup. And could you remember to post these on your way to the meeting?’ she smiled, picking up two envelopes. ‘Letters to Drew. And, darling – could you remember to call in on Reuben, some time soon? Alice told me it was his birthday, yesterday. His ninety-fifth, I think, but even Alice isn’t sure, so don’t mention it. Whilst you are there, tell him about the party. I’d like it if he felt up to coming – Mother would like it, too. Just spread the word, will you, once you’ve agreed we can have the hall?’

‘The old ones might not feel up to it. It’ll be quite a long walk for some of them.’

‘It will,’ Julia frowned. ‘I’ll have to see if I can get a gallon of petrol on the black market, then I could run them there in the car. I suppose you couldn’t spare a coupon, Nathan? You get more than I do.’

‘My extra petrol is for parish work, and you know it! And what do you mean – on the black market?’

‘We-e-ll, there are one or two hereabouts who seem to be able to get under-the-counter petrol, by all accounts.’

‘Then let them, though their consciences can’t be worth much if they stopped to think that seamen are being killed bringing it here.’

‘Only kidding!’ She smiled to picture the headlines in the Yorkshire Post: ‘VICAR’S WIFE IN PETROL SCANDAL’. ‘And ssh!’ she commanded, opening the conservatory door, smiling in her mother’s direction.

‘Ah, there you are!’ Helen Sutton returned the smile. ‘I think, Nathan, that you can smell a teapot a mile away. Tilda’s made us egg-and-cress sandwiches – dried egg, I suppose it is. I’ll be glad when your hens start laying, Julia. Be a dear and pour, will you?’

‘Of course.’ There were days, Julia thought gratefully, when her mother was like the Helen of old; today was one of them. And she would enjoy the party, she really would. Her mother had always loved surprises. ‘The hens should start laying very soon, Gracie says. Just a couple of weeks now and we’ll have our own fresh eggs, at least a dozen a week.’

‘Hmm. The land girl. She’s doing very well, Catchpole said. It was so beautiful and sunny this morning that I went to the kitchen garden – did I tell you? I wanted to see the orchid house, really. One of the white ones is putting up late buds for some reason. Now do hurry and pour, Julia, before the tea gets cold …’

On that sixth day of September, fighter pilots along the south coast waited. Some lolled in chairs outside a makeshift mess; others lay, hands behind heads, on the grass, trying to relax. They had all existed on catnaps, hastily swallowed sandwiches and cups of strong sweet tea for weeks, jumping suddenly alert to their feet, running in a half-daze to their waiting fighters as klaxons blared or sirens wailed.

Now they walked and talked, even laughed sometimes, like automatons, trying not to notice that Johnny who snored and Mike who chain-smoked were no longer there.

Most times they took off in haphazard fashion, grouping their fighters into arrowhead formation once they were airborne and undercarriages up, their leader talking to them over the radio, calming nerves that twanged.

Sometimes a pilot they had thought killed would return, hands in pockets, his face split by an ear-to-ear grin.

‘Bailed out,’ he might say with studied nonchalance. ‘Had to ditch and thought I’d bought it. But the rescue lads got to me. Bloody cold it was, in the drink. Wet, too!’

Such understatement really meant that a pilot had been shot down, had ejected and landed in the Channel. And when he had given up hope of ever being found, an air-sea rescue launch had picked him out of the water.

The sea shall not have them, was their motto. Neither the sea nor the Krauts! A pilot saved from the sea was a pilot airborne again within a week.

But often missing pilots did not return, and scarcely trained flyers with little more than twenty solo hours behind them came to take their places. It seemed that the future of Britain, of freedom itself, was held in the hands of a few unblooded youths, who hurled their anger and despair at everlasting formations of German planes set upon bombing them out of existence.

Obliterate the first line of defence; immobilize the fighters, then the rest would be easier. Soon, thought the German High Command, the tides would be high and full and right for the invasion of the arrogant little island that stood, bomb-happy, between them and total victory.

And so pilots waited in the early-morning sun of that sixth September day; waited uneasily until ten o’clock and eleven o’clock, and noon. The NAAFI van came with tea and bacon sandwiches and cigarettes as it always did, but not the Luftwaffe. And ground crews who cared for the planes, and aircraftwomen who stood around plots, ears strained for instructions that would tell them that the bombers were coming again, waited and waited but the sky above them was high and blue and empty.

On a day when it was stretched to the limit, when one more sortie would have been a sortie too many, Fighter Command, from its Air Chief Marshal to the lowest erk, asked with disbelief where the Dorniers and Stukas and Heinkels were, and what had happened that they seemed not to be coming.

And on that day, Hitler ordered the calling off of his squadrons, not knowing that two more days under pressure – perhaps even less – would have seen Fighter Command in disarray. It was the miracle Britain had been pleading for and it seemed that at last God had begun to listen to prayers spoken in the English tongue. Had Britain been given a reprieve – until next spring, maybe?

No one knew. None dared speak of his hopes. The men only knew that on that early-autumn day, neither klaxon nor siren nor the drone of enemy bombers broke the long, waiting silence.

One by one, exhausted pilots slipped into sleep. It had been a terrible and at times despairing summer, but for the moment the fight had been won. The youths who flew Hurricanes and Spitfires had earned the right to call themselves men. The September tides that would have carried an invasion fleet to England’s shores flowed then ebbed again, and all along the French and Dutch coasts invasion barges lay unmoving.

Soon, winter seas and skies and gales would ensure that for six months at least, Britain would be safe from invaders. The battle for Great Britain, it seemed, had been won.

In a fury of frustration and rage, Hitler ordered his bombers over London and Manchester and Birmingham and Glasgow, and the war, which when it began people had said would be over in six months, entered its second year in deadly earnest.

No invasion, yet, but now it became the people’s fight, with no one safe from bombing and civilians all at once in the front line. It would be a long-drawn-out war; every man and woman and child’s war, and it would get worse before it got better. But at least, thought the man and woman in the street, we know now where we stand.

Somehow, just knowing that was a comfort.

13

‘There now, Gracie Fielding, you’ve just witnessed a little bit of tradition.’ Jack Catchpole pressed the flat of his boot against the soil around the little tree.

‘I have? Well, I know we’ve planted four rowan trees and the house is called Rowangarth – so tell me.’ Anything at all about the family who owned the lovely place she worked at fascinated her.

‘You’ll know the house was built more’n three hundred years ago, when folk believed in witches, and you’ll know that rowan trees keep witches away?’

‘I didn’t, though I suppose people believed anything once.’

‘Happen. But the Sutton that built Rowangarth must’ve believed in ’em, ’cause he planted rowan trees all round the estate at all points of the compass, so to speak. They’m bonny little trees; white flowers in summer and berries for the birds in winter, so it became the custom to plant the odd rowan from time to time, just to keep it going. My dad planted half a dozen before Sir John died – that cluster in the wild garden – and now it’s my turn to do a bit of planting, an’ all. Can’t have a house called Rowangarth, and no rowan trees about, now can us? And you never know about witches – best be sure.

‘Just a tip about when to plant trees, lass. Plant a tree around Michaelmas, the saying goes, and you can command it to thrive, but plant a tree at Candlemas and all you do for it won’t ever come to much. It’ll be a weakly thing alus.’

‘When is Candlemas, then?’

‘February, and the ground cold and unwelcoming. But those little rowans will do all right, ’cause it’ll be Michaelmas in a couple of days.’ He laid spade and fork in the wheelbarrow then shrugged on his jacket. ‘Now didn’t you say you had something for me at Keeper’s?’

‘I did, and you’re welcome to it. Remember you gave me a sack? Well, it’s half full of hen droppings now and starting to smell a bit. I don’t want Daisy’s mother to complain, so don’t you think we should move it?’

‘We’ll collect it now, while we have the barrow with us,’ he said eagerly. If it was starting to smell, then Tom Dwerryhouse might get wind of it, try to get hold of it for his own garden. ‘Then I’ll show you how to make the best liquid fertilizer known to man!

‘Have you heard about the party? All Rowangarth staff’ll be there, so that’ll include you. Supposed to be a bit of a do for the Reverend and Miss Julia’s wedding anniversary, but really it’s for her ladyship’s eightieth. They’re aiming for it to be a surprise for her. Reckon all the village’ll go and there’s to be dancing, an’ all. But not a word, mind, about it being for Lady Helen or if she gets to hear about it she might say she doesn’t want the fuss of it, and Miss Julia’s set her heart on a party.’

It was a sad fact that the mistress was growing old, though considering the tribulations she’d had she had aged gracefully, Catchpole was bound to admit. And when her time came she would be sadly missed, because real ladies were few and far between these days.

‘I thought she looked tired, t’other day, when she came to look at the plants.’

‘Tired, Mr C.? If I look as good as she does when I’m her age, I won’t complain.’

That day, Gracie recalled, Lady Helen had asked for her seat to be put in the orchid house. They kept a special green-painted folding chair in the small potting shed and Gracie had brought it for her and stayed to talk about the orchids and especially about the white one which seemed to be about to flower, when really it shouldn’t be flowering.

‘My dear John gave the original white plant to me – oh, more years ago than I care to remember, Gracie,’ Lady Helen had said, her eyes all at once gentle with remembering. ‘There are eight plants now, all taken from that first one. No one was to wear the white orchids but me, he said. They were to be mine alone, though Julia carried them at her wedding – her first wedding, that was.’ She had touched that fat orchid bud as if it were the most precious thing she owned.

‘Lady Helen seems very sentimental about the white orchids,’ Gracie said now.

‘Aye. Remind her of Sir John, young Drew’s grandfather. Killed hisself speeding on the Brighton road in his new-fangled motor. Afore the Great War, that was, when I was a lad serving my time at Pendenys. Took it terrible bad. Wore black for three years for him. They don’t wear black these days like they once did. For those three years her ladyship didn’t receive callers nor socialize ’cause her was in mourning. Folk don’t have the respect nowadays that they used to have.’

He sucked hard on his pipe, remembering the way it had been in Sir John’s time.

‘What are you thinking about, Mr Catchpole?’

‘Oh, only about the way it used to be.’

‘I wish you’d think out loud.’

‘I will. Tomorrow, happen. What I’m more concerned about now is that sack you’ve got for me at the bottom of Alice’s garden. Away over the stile and get it, there’s a good lass. And go careful. Don’t want to set the dogs barking.’

He smiled just to think of it. That hen muck was worth its weight in gold. Wouldn’t do if it fell into the wrong hands!

Edward Sutton lounged in a comfortable basket chair in the conservatory at Denniston House, gazing out over the garden to the fields beyond and the trees, yellowing now to autumnal colours. Strange, he thought, that not since he married Clemmy so many years ago, and gone to live in Clemmy’s house, had he been so contented.

It had always, come to think of it, been Clemmy’s house, built for his only child by an indulgent father; always been Clemmy’s money he lived on and their firstborn, Elliot, had been Clemmy’s alone.

Now Clemmy was dead, and Elliot, too, and now Edward himself lived at Denniston House with Elliot’s widow, Anna, and Tatiana, whom Clemmy had never forgiven for being a girl. Anna was charming and kind and Tatiana a delight of a child and he felt nothing but gratitude to the Army for commandeering Pendenys Place. They were welcome to it for as long as the fancy took them. He glanced up sharply as the door opened.

‘Uncle Edward! Did I wake you up?’

‘No, Julia. I wasn’t asleep. I was just indulging an old man’s privilege of remembering and do you know, my dear, when you get to my age you can dip into the past without any qualms of conscience or regret?’

Dear Julia. She still called him uncle, though for these two years past she had been his daughter-in-law. He offered his cheek for her kiss, smiling affectionately into her eyes.

‘I know. I do it always when I come here to Denniston. And it doesn’t trouble my conscience either, because now I am the parson’s wife and middle-aged, and the girl who was once a nurse here is long gone.’

‘Of course! You and Mrs Dwerryhouse did your training at Denniston in the last war.’

‘And now Drew is in the thick of another one, and Daisy soon to join him.’

‘Drew is a fine young man, Julia. How is he?’

‘The last time we heard he was in port – tied up alongside, he called it – having something done to his ship. He didn’t say what, though. All I know is that the Penrose is part of a flotilla that keeps the Western Approaches free from mines. But we’ll find out more when he gets leave. You know,’ Julia reached out to touch the wooden table at her side, ‘I have a good feeling about Drew. I know, somehow, that he’ll make it home safely one day. But I’ve come with an invitation. I’ll tell you both about it when Anna has finished phoning.’

‘I already know about the secret party,’ Edward chuckled. ‘Tatiana brings me all the gossip and news. But Anna is always on the phone, lately, trying to get through to London. There is such a delay on calls – if you can get through at all, that is. Poor Miss Hallam on the exchange must be having a very trying time. And the delays have got worse. They say it’s because of the bombing.’

Unable to break Fighter Command, Hitler had turned his hatred on London, swearing it would be bombed until it lay a smoking ruin. Night after night the Luftwaffe came. Poor, poor London.

‘It must be. I booked a call to Montpelier Mews yesterday evening and I got it half an hour ago. It seems that Sparrow is coping with it all. When the sirens go she says she puts her box of important things in the gas oven, then takes her pillow and blankets and sleeps under the kitchen table.’

Mrs Emily Smith: Andrew’s cockney sparrow. Once, in another life when Andrew lived in lodgings in Little Britain, Sparrow was his lady who did. Now she took care of the little mews house that once belonged to Aunt Anne Lavinia.

‘Sparrow! I sometimes forget that Anne Lavinia left you her house, Julia. Is it all right? No bomb damage?’

‘Not so far. I’ve told Sparrow she must lock it up and come to Rowangarth, but she won’t hear of it. Hitler isn’t going to drive her out of London, she says, and insists she’s safer than most. It’s the people in the East End who are taking the brunt of it, though the papers say that Buckingham Palace has been bombed. Everything’s all right at Cheyne Walk, I suppose?’

‘I suppose it is. Do you know, Julia, I’d forget all about that house if it wasn’t for the fact that Anna’s mother and brother live next door. It’s been nothing but a nuisance. I could never understand why Clemmy insisted on buying it. I suppose some good did come out of it, though. Elliot and Anna met there.’

‘Yes.’ Julia had no wish to talk about Elliot nor even think about him and was glad when Anna came into the room. ‘Did you manage to get through?’

‘No, I didn’t.’ Anna and Julia touched cheeks in greeting. ‘It seems Mama’s number is unobtainable. What can it mean? Has Cheyne Walk been bombed, do you think? What am I to do?’ Anna was clearly distressed. ‘I asked Mama time and time again. “Come to me,” I said. I warned her that London would be bombed but no – the Bolsheviks drove her from her home in Russia and Hitler wasn’t going to drive her from this one, she said, poor though it was.’

‘Poor? But the Cheyne Walk house is rather a nice one,’ Julia protested.

‘I know, I know!’ Anna paced the floor in her agitation. ‘But you know my mother, Julia. Always the Countess, always in black, mourning for her old way of life. She can be very stubborn. Do you think I should go down there?’

‘No, I do not! All around the docks and a lot of central London seems to be in a mess. I doubt you’d be able to get on a bus, let alone find a taxi. It would be madness to go there at a time like this. Your mother has Igor to look after her and –’

‘Not any longer! Igor is an air-raid warden now. Since the bombing started, he’s hardly ever at home!’

‘Anna, my dear.’ Edward Sutton rose slowly to his feet to lay a comforting arm around his daughter-in-law’s shoulders. ‘No news is good news, don’t they say? The Countess will be in touch with you before so very much longer. Perhaps it’s only a temporary thing. Leave it until morning and it’s my guess you’ll get through with no delay at all. Try not to worry. And Julia is here with an invitation for us.’

‘Aunt Helen’s party, you mean? We’ve already heard about it from Tatiana. Daisy told her.’

‘Well, I’m here with the official invitation for the fifth. And don’t forget, Anna, that it’s our party – Nathan’s and mine. And tell Tatty there’ll be dancing, so she’ll be sure to come.’

‘I’ll tell her.’ Tatiana was so secretive these days. Always slipping out or hovering round the telephone. Anna frowned. A young man, of course, but why didn’t she bring him home? ‘She’s in Harrogate this afternoon, collecting for the Red Cross. She said she would come home on the same bus as Daisy.’

‘So it’s settled. We’ll all come. And here’s tea,’ Edward smiled as Karl, straight-backed and unsmiling, laid a silver tray on the table beside Anna.

‘Where is the little one?’ he demanded in his native tongue.

‘Out, helping the Red Cross. She’ll be all right …’ Anna smiled apologetically as the door closed behind the tall, black-bearded Cossack. ‘I’m sorry. He refuses to speak English. I’ve told him it isn’t polite when we have guests, but he’s so stubborn. And he does understand the language. I’ve heard him talking to Tatiana in English. I think it amuses him that people get the impression he doesn’t know what they’re saying.’

‘He’s a good servant, though,’ Edward defended. ‘So loyal, still, to the Czar and surely it’s a comfort to you, Anna, that he’s so protective of Tatiana. How old is he?’

‘I don’t know. He won’t ever say.’ Anna placed a cup and saucer at her father-in-law’s side. ‘But it’s my guess he’s about fifty-five. He’d been a Cossack for some time when he met up with us. We couldn’t have got out of Russia without his help. He’s been with us ever since.’

‘He and Natasha, both. Didn’t you pick up Natasha along the way, too?’ Julia wanted to know.

‘Sort of. She was the daughter of the woman who did our sewing,’ Anna replied in clipped tones. ‘When the unrest first started, she was delivering dresses to us at the farm at Peterhof – we’d gone there for safety. Mother insisted that Igor take her back to St Petersburg, but when they got there the rabble had taken over their house and her parents gone. What else could Igor do but bring her back to us?’

‘Whatever became of her?’ Julia persisted. ‘She went back to London with you, didn’t she, after – after –’

‘After my son was born dead, you mean? Yes, but she didn’t stay long at Cheyne Walk. She left Mama and went to France; Paris, I think it was. I can’t remember. It was a long time ago. But do have a biscuit, Julia …’

‘Positively not!’ Biscuits were rationed and she and her mother would not eat other people’s food. ‘And those are homemade, too,’ she sighed.

‘Cook has a little sugar stored away.’ Anna blushed guiltily because no one should have sugar stored away. ‘But I think it will soon be used up,’ she hastened.

‘Mm. So has our cook. I think people who remember the last war quietly bought in a few things – just in case. I know Tilda has a secret stock of glacé cherries.’ Julia had been quick to notice the tightening of Anna’s mouth, the dropping of her eyes. Did she still mourn her stillborn baby or was it thoughts of the man who fathered it that brought the tension to her face because no one, not even the compliant Anna, could have been happy with Elliot Sutton.

‘I think Tatiana is meeting Daisy in her lunch hour.’ Deliberately Julia talked of other things. ‘They’ll spend most of it searching for cigarettes, I shouldn’t wonder, though Tatiana told me the other day she was down to her last smear of lipstick, so perhaps they’ll be looking for a lipstick queue.’

‘I’ll give her one of mine,’ Anna smiled, all tension gone. ‘Now won’t you have just one biscuit?’

‘Absolutely not, thanks. And did you see it in the papers this morning? When the new petrol coupons start in October, petrol is going up to two shillings a gallon!’

‘Two shillings and a ha’penny, to be exact,’ Edward smiled, ‘and cheap at twice the price when you think of the lives it costs just getting it here.’

‘Cheap,’ Julia echoed, all at once thankful that exploding mines in the Western Approaches seemed safer by far than bringing crude oil to England. Seamen crewing a tanker deserved all the danger money they were paid when just one hit was enough to send the ship sky-high. There were no second chances on a tanker. Either men died mercifully quickly or perished horribly in a sea of blazing oil. ‘And only the other day I was thinking about people who get petrol on the black market and wondering if I could come by the odd gallon. Very wrong of me, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, but very human,’ Edward said softly. ‘You won’t be tempted, will you, Julia?’

‘Oh, I’ll be tempted all right, Uncle, but I won’t do it – promise. And I’ll have to be going. Nathan is visiting the outlying parishes this afternoon and Mother is inclined to brood, if she’s alone for too long – about Drew, you know.’ She rose to her feet. ‘Now mark it in your diaries: October the fifth. It’s a Saturday. No big eats, I’m afraid, but it’ll be a lot of fun. Sorry I can’t stay longer.’

‘That’s all right. Give Aunt Helen my love,’ Anna smiled as she closed the conservatory door behind them. ‘And I think I’ll ask the exchange to try Cheyne Walk just once more. She’ll think I’m fussing, but I’m so worried, Julia. You honestly don’t think anything awful has happened, do you?’

‘No, I don’t. Somewhere along the line, a telephone exchange has been bombed. Even a telegraph pole getting knocked down could cause a lot of upset with the phones. You’d have heard something, by now if – well, if there was anything to tell.’ She reached for Anna, hugging her close. ‘Try not to worry too much if you don’t get through, but either way, give me a quick ring, will you? ‘Bye, Anna.’

‘Grandfather will be so pleased with the tobacco,’ Tatiana said. ‘I know he’s short. Last night he kept looking in his tobacco jar, then putting the lid back.’

‘Dada’s always short, poor pet. D’you know, Tatty, I nearly hit the roof when we got so near to the counter and then the man said, “Sorry. That’s all, I’m afraid.” And then he said, “Cigarettes all gone, for today. Only pipe tobacco left. Half an ounce to each customer.” Imagine standing there for nearly half an hour for four slices of tobacco. I shall give two to Dada and two to Uncle Reuben. It’s all Hitler’s fault. I hate him.’

‘Doesn’t everybody?’ The bus stopped at the crossroads and they got out, calling a good night to the remaining passengers. ‘Shall I walk part of the way with you – stand at the fence till you’re through the wood, Daisy?’

‘No thanks. I’ll be fine. It isn’t dark yet. And I know Brattocks like the back of my hand – even in the blackout. I don’t suppose you’ll be going to the aerodrome dance tomorrow?’

‘Not a lot of use. Tim’s almost certainly on ops. tonight and as soon as he gets back he’ll be off on leave to Greenock. I’ll miss him, but at least I’ll know that for seven days he’ll be safe. I’m getting up early tomorrow. He’s promised to ring the coin box in the village. Better than him ringing Denniston.’

‘You’ll have to set your alarm, and get out of the house without anyone hearing you. Wouldn’t it have been better to get up early and wait by your own phone and pick it up the second it starts ringing? It’s awful for you having to be so sneaky about Tim’s calls.’

‘I know, but I can’t risk them finding out at home. Mother might say I wasn’t to see Tim again and they’d watch everything I did, after that. Karl especially.’

‘Listen, Tatty, I know I might be out of order, but Karl only watches over you because he’s so fond of you. Haven’t you ever thought of confiding in him – telling him about Tim? He might even be on your side, cover for you sometimes.’

‘He won’t. First and foremost he’s loyal to Mother. She’s still his little countess,’ she sighed. ‘I really couldn’t risk it. I know I can get out of the house in the morning and it’ll be worth the walk because there’ll be no risk at all of anyone hearing what I say. I’ll be able to tell him I love him loud and clear, and not whisper it down the phone like I’m ashamed to say it.’

‘What time?’ Daisy asked.

‘About seven o’clock. He reckoned he’d be back and debriefed by then. The transport to take them to York station leaves at eight, so that’ll give him time to get cleaned up and snatch some breakfast beforehand.

‘The rest of his crew are going to Edinburgh, them being Canadians and not able to get home, poor loves. Tim’s skipper said he was going to spend his entire leave hunting the shops for whisky, and sleeping. Oh, well – I’ll give you a ring tomorrow night.’

She turned away abruptly because she was so miserable, so utterly lonely, and after tomorrow morning it would be worse. Tears filled her eyes and she let them flow unchecked.

Then she turned abruptly as Daisy called, ‘Tatty – I do know what it’s like. Remember I haven’t seen Keth for two years.’

‘Yes, of course. ’Night, Daisy …’

Daisy didn’t know, she thought fiercely; not really.

Okay, so she hadn’t seen Keth for ages but at least she knew he was going to survive the war. Keth was safe in America and tonight Tim would be flying over Germany, searching the sky for fighters. Tim was a tail-end Charlie and tomorrow morning, if Whitley K-King touched down safely, Tim would have flown his thirteenth op. – the dicey one.

She sniffed loudly and dabbed at her eyes. She would not cry. Tim would be all right. Her love would protect him because now they truly belonged. Now Tatiana Sutton was a living, breathing, pulsating woman who loved and was loved in return. No longer was she a cosseted only child, guilty for having been born a girl. She was one half of a perfect whole that was Tim and Tatiana. She existed, when alone, on a soft cushion of disbelief at the new creature she had become. Just to see a flower bud opening or a bird in graceful flight made her feel warm inside.

When the squadron took off from Holdenby Moor into a peachy early-evening sky, she was sick with despair and hugged their love to her like a child with a precious, familiar toy.

When they came together – really together – their first loving had been sweet and gentle and filled with the delight of belonging but the next time had been fierce and without inhibition and if, she thought through a haze of sadness, their last coupling had made a child, then so be it. And if one morning K-King did not come home, then she would have something belonging to him and she wouldn’t care about Grandmother Petrovska nor a shocked Holdenby that would turn away from her and whisper behind her back that she was no better than she ought to be.

But she would never let them take Tim’s child from her. Daisy would understand because Daisy and Keth had been lovers. And Uncle Nathan would help her because he was the kind of man who, if a child could choose its own father then she, Tatiana, would have chosen him.

She wondered if her own father had been kind, like his brother Nathan, and knew instinctively from things half remembered from a misty childhood that he had not.

She closed her eyes. She must not weep again because if she did, someone at home would ask her what was the matter. Instead, she squeezed her eyelids tightly shut.

‘I love you so much, Tim,’ she whispered. ‘Take care tonight.’

‘There, now! See how it’s done, lass?’ Jack Catchpole held aloft a broom handle from which was suspended the hessian sack of hen droppings. ‘You tie the sack in the middle, then you tie it to your broom handle – or any suchlike piece of wood. Is the tub ready?’

‘Ready, Mr C. Half full of rainwater, like you said.’

‘Then that’s all there is to it.’ Catchpole regarded the zinc washtub his wife had discarded all of three years ago. Lily was alus throwing things away. Thank the good Lord he’d had the sense to rescue it from the rubbish tip. He had known he would find a use for it one day. ‘You lay the broom handle across the top of the tub so the sack is covered with water, then every day you lift it up and down – give it a good ponching – and by next year, that liquid’ll be food and drink to those little tomato plants.’

‘Next year? But won’t it smell, Mr Catchpole?’

‘Smell? Oh my word yes, it’ll smell.’ He closed his eyes in utter bliss. ‘There isn’t a scent on God’s earth, Gracie, like a tub of liquid hen manoor.’ Unless it was the wonderful, spring-morning whiff from a well-rotted heap of farmyard manure. ‘Next year’s tomatoes’ll wonder what hit ’em when they get a dose or two of that mixture. Tomatoes big as turnips we’ll have!’

‘But won’t it attract flies – bluebottles and things?’

‘Happen it could, and happen we might cover it up when the hot weather comes. But we’ll worry about that next summer.’ If they lived to see another summer, that was. ‘And till then, I want you to see to the ponching. Every day. The hen manoor will be your responsibility, lass, so don’t forget, will you?’

‘Every day.’ She closed her eyes briefly and shuddered inside her. Stuffed vegetable marrows were bad enough. Never would she eat one she had vowed, and now, just to think of tomatoes grown red and fat and juicy on hen muck made her towny soul writhe. ‘I’ll remember. And while I’m remembering – I won’t be able to go to Lady Helen’s party. Our forewoman told us this morning we’re to go on leave in two lots. Now the corn harvest is in, she said, we’d all of us best take it whilst we could, because soon the farmers will be busy lifting potatoes and sugar beet. Sorry, Mr C. but we’ve got to do as we’re told.’

She did so want to see her family again, tell them about Rowangarth and Mr Catchpole and all the things she was learning about gardening, yet it was a pity, for all that, to have to miss the party.

‘Can’t be helped, Gracie. I’ll miss you, but a week isn’t for ever. And them little hens are going to miss you, an’ all. Who’ll be looking after them?’

‘Daisy said she and her mother would see they got a hot mash every day, and plenty of water, though I bet you anything you like they’ll lay their first egg whilst I’m away,’ she sighed.

She was fond of Mrs Sutton’s six Rhode Island Red pullets, loved their placidity, the way they scratched industriously, their softly feathered bottoms wiggling this way and that. She had almost given each one a name until common sense told her she must not become too attached to them. But it really would be awful if Daisy were to find the first egg in one of the straw-lined nest boxes. In fact, Gracie was forced to admit, she was getting too contented with her new life in the kitchen garden, and seeing seeds she had helped to plant and pot on growing into fine cabbages and sprouts and leeks.

It was going to be awful going back to Rochdale. It would be unbearable were not Mum and Dad and Grandad there. In fact, the only thing good about leaving Rowangarth and Mr Catchpole would be the certain fact that the war was over.

‘Now don’t look so glum, lass. You look as if you’ve lost a shilling and found a penny. Cheer up. It might never happen.’

‘No, Mr C. It mightn’t.’

But it would happen. One day, one faraway day, the land girls and Waafs and the ATS girls would hand in their uniforms and go home and Gracie Fielding would take off her overalls for the last time and say goodbye to this beautiful garden.

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