Читать книгу The Land Girl - Allie Burns - Страница 13

August 1915

Dearest Emily,

What terribly distressing news. My thoughts and prayers are with you and your family, and of course John. We mustn’t lose hope that he’ll be found and returned to you safe and sound.

Fondest wishes

Theo

The darkness pressed up against each of the window’s panes, but she was too alert to think of going back to sleep. She pulled the heavy burgundy damask curtains along their runners anyway, ready for the day that wasn’t yet prepared for her.

If she lay down again her mind would whirl and make John’s smile merge with Theo’s, their voices becoming one, until she couldn’t remember whose was whose. Who had said what, who had comforted her, and who had advised her. The tiredness had muddled her mind until she could no longer distinguish one from the other.

She couldn’t stay inside and whilst roaming about she found Mr Tipton in the shippon supervising the milking. She told him about John missing in action and without hesitation he embraced her, warm and clammy, his short arms stretching around her shoulders.

‘I need to keep busy. I can’t sit around up at the house. Can you give me something to do?’

She would worry about Mother later. She had insisted that Emily stayed at the house with her, but she was drugged and drowsy and Emily doubted she’d notice if she was gone.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of Mr Tipton wiping away the tears with the back of his sleeve.

John was somehow missing like a hoe or a scythe, not a living, breathing person. He had said it could happen and she’d pushed the thought of it aside. He’d asked her to take care of Mother, but their problems were bigger than her – what about the house, the estate, the farm? Would they have to sell up if John didn’t come home? If only she’d asked him what it was that he meant, what she would need to accept and how she might be of best help to Mother.

Mid-morning, as she was going into the farmhouse for a cup of tea, she did a double take as Mother, holding her skirts aloft to reveal her heeled boots, stepped around the puddles and shooed away Mrs Tipton’s welcoming committee of chickens.

‘Emily dear, there you are.’

Mother had aged twenty years in that one night. Puffy pillows had gathered beneath her eyes, new hoods hung over them and shadows lurked beneath her cheekbones.

‘Has there been more news?’ Emily asked, realising that this was how it would be now: waiting and wondering when news of John would come.

‘I’m just so astonished that you deserted me,’ Mother continued. ‘I think you should come back to the house.’

‘Will Cecil come home?’ she asked hopefully.

‘I’ve sent him a telegram,’ Mother said. ‘I insisted he stay in Oxford. His studies mustn’t be interrupted. We must carry on as usual.’

She suggested Mother pay a visit to Hawk; the stallion had grown restless in his stables at Mother’s voice. His hooves dragged across the cobbles. It had been so long since Mother had ridden him and yet the faithful old beast was still loyal. He might be the balm, the connection that Mother needed.

‘I want to see John, not a horse.’

Emily raised a boot to a too-brave hen. She could never say the right thing.

*

She and Mother spent the afternoon in the conservatory, amongst the potted palms and ferns, Mother with a pristine newspaper folded in half across her blanketed knee. She faced the vegetable garden that Emily had dug with John when he’d been home on leave.

‘It makes me sad; my rose garden all ploughed up like it is and then just abandoned to nature. You have desecrated our lawn. Surely it can’t make that much difference to food supplies.’

‘While there’s still a shortage of food, the potato crop …’

‘Haven’t we given enough to this war?’

It was a funny thing to worry about: the rose garden.

‘Can you see to it for me?’ Mother continued. ‘I want the roses back. Perhaps ask Mr Tipton to send up old Alfred to lend a hand.’

Emily held her tongue. John had asked her not to argue with Mother, to pull together, to accept what had happened. She owed it to him to try her best. But he had also told her not to give up on what she wanted. He’d been certain that she’d find a way; but then he must have known that in the event anything happened to him it would make her escape even harder.

‘I’m glad I have you here, dear.’ Mother smiled weakly. Her head slumped in her hands. ‘You are quite impossible, but you’re all I have.’

*

Bishop warns against spate of hasty marriages

She was under the monkey puzzle tree, the newspaper resting on her knees.

Young people were getting carried away with romantic ideals and marrying when they’d only just met, the Bishop warned. A young man, a gunner with the army, spoke out against the Bishop. The gunner argued that the man of the cloth didn’t understand how war made every moment precious. He stated that the marriages weren’t hasty at all, but blossomed after couples wrote to one another for many months, becoming better acquainted in pen and ink then they ever would under the watchful eye of a chaperone.

So, Theo wasn’t the only one proposing out of the carriage windows. It had seemed so soon, well it was soon – she’d only met him that afternoon and he’d asked her to marry him. But they wrote letters often and she discussed things with him she’d never dream of sharing with anyone else. He was interested in her, he believed in her and he’d been such a great comfort to her since John had been reported missing. He was often the only beam of light in an otherwise dark existence.

Her gaze travelled through the jagged branches of the tree. The gunner in the newspaper was right; life was precious. John’s disappearance had taught her that. It was important to reach out and grasp whatever the Fates sent you.

*

January 1916

Emily and Cecil shared a birthday and so Cecil came home from university so they could celebrate as a family. She might have guessed that he’d cause trouble before they’d even got to the main course of their evening meal.

‘I’m going to ignore my call-up papers,’ he announced. ‘I won’t be fighting in the war.’

Emily let go of the spoon and it fell into the soup bowl. The Conscription Act had just been passed and all single men between eighteen and forty-one had to join up.

‘John’s news made up my mind,’ he continued. ‘I’m not going to fight this government’s war for them.’

‘Hasn’t what’s happened to John invigorated you, made you angry and want to fight?’ Emily asked. It certainly had fuelled her desire to do everything she could to help them win the war. If the allies lost, John might never come home. And yet Cecil was passing that opportunity up while she was left at home to take care of Mother.

Cecil cut her dead with a withering glance and addressed Mother, who had gone a deathly pale and hadn’t moved since Cecil first spoke.

‘Asquith has no right to force me to join up,’ Cecil continued. ‘I’m going to object on the grounds of my conscience.’

Emily shook her head; her brother was to become a conscientious objector. He’d witnessed what sort of response his views elicited at John’s leaving party. It was just like him to not worry about the consequences for the rest of the family.

‘In that case, perhaps you could stay here with Mother, so that I can go to work and do my duty to King and country.’

‘I don’t believe that it is my place to run into machine-gun fire so that the upper classes can cling to their position or the capitalists can prosper. That’s not duty, that’s madness.’

‘But what about John?’ Emily asked. ‘He’s a hero, and you will undo that if you bring shame on the family.’

‘I don’t want to hurt the family. If I could leave you out of it, and just pay the price myself, then of course I would. And I will tell you now, just how sorry I am for the trouble I’ll bring to you,’ Cecil replied.

‘Oh Cecil.’ Although it sounded as if she wanted him to go off and risk his life, that wasn’t the case at all. Nobody wanted their loved ones to fight, but for both of them to sit the war out was so unpatriotic. ‘You will let everyone down.’ Mother still hadn’t said a word. ‘Don’t you think our mother has suffered enough?’

Emily pushed her soup away. How would she explain to Theo that her brother was refusing to fight while he risked his life every day in the name of his country?

‘What you’re talking about is dishonourable, you know?’ she said. ‘If every man refused to fight then the war would be lost. Mother, you must tell him.’

‘If every man refused to fight,’ Cecil jumped in, ‘then there would be no war and our differences would have to be resolved peacefully.’

She dropped her head. This was just like Cecil. He would be impossible to convince otherwise, but he would listen to Mother.

‘This war is so unfair,’ she said, thinking of Theo out there, still cheerful and doing his best for his country. ‘But if we don’t fight against the Germans, they might come here and do to us what they did to Belgium. Have you thought of that?’

‘Do you want him to go and fight?’ Mother said.

Her mouth gaped open. Of course that wasn’t what she wanted. Cecil was never meant to be a soldier. He wasn’t much older than a boy. His skin was still soft; his face wasn’t that of a killer. One brother had been missing for months, what could she possibly gain from losing another?

‘That’s a terrible accusation,’ she replied.

‘Cecil, my darling boy.’ Mother carried on. ‘Are you really certain?’

The rasp of Emily’s breathing filled the room.

‘My mind is made up.’

‘Very well,’ Mother replied.

Emily jumped up. Was that it?

‘Your family will stand by you …’

‘Mother …’ Emily began.

Mother raised her hand to silence her. ‘We must respect Cecil’s decision and support him.’

‘And does it matter what I think?’ she said.

But as usual, Mother didn’t answer.

The village would turn against them. The reminders of their patriotic duty were everywhere; Kitchener’s finger pointing at them from his poster on the railway station wall. They would lock Cecil up, subject him to hard labour. Would they even accept her on the farm if Cecil brought this disgrace on them?

She wiped her tears away. It was too much: first John and now this.

‘I will stand by Cecil’s decision.’ Mother blotted her lips and then shuffled out of the room and upstairs to bed.

‘You are making life impossible for me. Mr Tipton is desperate for help on the farm, and yet Mother insists I’m by her side, day and night.’

‘You spoke to me of duty, well Mother is yours.’

‘This might well break her, you know. Do you even care?’

‘Of course,’ he said, his voice breaking. He uncrossed his legs and stood from his seat. Had he even stopped to consider their financial troubles? Did he care that without John at the helm Mother would continue to take handouts and do nothing to resolve the root of the problem?

He was crying now. Huge tears dripping onto the tablecloth. His decision would bring him enough grief – she couldn’t add to it. She comforted him, put her arms around him. He was a pitiful sight stooped over with his nose streaming. He was electric to touch as if he exuded the toxic danger that he brought to the family.

He stepped out onto the lawn, towards the monkey puzzle tree, swung back his arm and punched the trunk. He lifted his face to the heavens and opened his mouth, but from inside the dining room his yell was silent.