Читать книгу Whisper on the Wind - Elizabeth Elgin - Страница 6

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Try me.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘How many went? Did you count them?’

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

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

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

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

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

‘I wonder what he’ll be like.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Is it possible to hate someone so much?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘You speak English?’ Kath laughed her relief.

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

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

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

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

‘Si, Katarina. And thank you.’

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

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

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

‘Marco,’ Jonty supplied.

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

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

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

‘Trouble? In what way?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘He was fighting for them; with them.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Darling, what is it?’

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

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

‘Sorry, darling. It’s – it’s Jock.’

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

‘Where did you go last night?’

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

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

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

‘Yes?’ She squeezed his hand tightly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Was there a lot of damage?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘You’re shaking, Paul. You’re cold.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘And then what could we do?’

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

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

‘There, now! You heard it, too?’

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

‘A what?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Cush, pet. Cush, lass …’

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

‘All right, girl. All right …’

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

‘Cush, cush,’ he soothed.

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

‘Sorry,’ he murmured. ‘Sorry, lass …’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘It’s a new one; a wishing moon.’

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

‘Yes.’

‘For me, too. I love you.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

And he was hers, now, for all time.