Читать книгу We'll Meet Again - Patricia Burns - Страница 6

January 1953

IT SEEMED to be a day like any other. Windy, certainly, but at Marsh Edge Farm they were used to almost constant wind, exposed as they were. It swept over the Essex flatlands with increasing power that day, the last day of January in the year of the new Queen’s coronation. It came howling across the low grasslands that had once been part of the sea, raced over the snaking sea wall and buffeted the grey North Sea into angry white-topped waves.

It whipped the skirts of Annie Cross’s old grey mac round her frozen legs as she brought the dairy cows in for evening milking. She pulled her muffler more snugly round her neck and looked round anxiously at her small son. Bobby was plodding behind the last animal, stick in hand, the clinging mud nearly to the top of his wellingtons. His small face was pinched and his nose was streaming. In the gap between his raincoat and his boots, his bare knees were bright red with cold. Annie forced an encouraging smile.

‘Nearly there, darling! Grandma’s making us some scones for tea. That’ll be nice, won’t it?’

Bobby nodded and sneezed, and wiped his nose on his sleeve. Annie’s heart contracted. He shouldn’t be out here in the wind and the cold. He should be indoors in front of the kitchen range, being cosseted by his grandma. But cosseting was out of the question at Marsh Edge Farm.

Her father was waiting for them in the yard. A small man, Walter Cross watched their arrival from beneath the peak of his cloth cap, his eyes hard in his narrow face.

‘You took your time. What’s the matter with you? Having a holiday?’

Annie shook her head. It wasn’t a question that required answering.

‘You’ll have to do the milking. I still haven’t got that blasted tractor to work. Don’t know what you’ve gone and done to it,’ her father said.

‘Right,’ Annie said.

It was no use pointing out that the tractor had failed while he’d been driving it. After all, everything that went wrong round here was her fault. Hers or Bobby’s.

‘And make sure that brat of yours helps. Cold, indeed! I never heard the like. Never got colds in my day. Get the little bastard working. That’ll soon cure him.’

Walter glared in the direction of the child, who stood in the yard entrance, his frightened eyes flicking from his mother to his grandfather. Walter grunted.

‘Bad blood,’ he muttered.

Annie’s self-control snapped. ‘He’s your grandson!’

Her father’s mouth stretched into a grim smile. He had provoked her. Satisfied, he turned to trudge across the yard to where the tractor stood under an open-sided shelter.

‘Make sure it’s all scrubbed down proper after. No skiving off early. I’ll be checking to see you’ve done it right, mind,’ he warned over his shoulder.

Annie said nothing. Walter stopped and slowly looked back at her. Behind her, Annie heard Bobby give a small whimper of fear.

‘You heard what I said?’ he demanded.

‘Yes, Dad.’

‘Good.’

His absolute authority assured, Walter walked on.

‘Pig,’ Annie muttered under her breath. ‘Bully. Schweinhund.’

She had learnt that one from the pictures. It gave her particular pleasure. She repeated it with as guttural a German accent as she could manage.

At least the milking was inside. Annie and Bobby went about the well-worn routine—feeding, washing udders, fixing on the cups. Without Walter there criticising their every move, they could almost enjoy it. Bobby sniffed and sneezed but worked manfully. He was only seven, but he was a well-seasoned assistant.

‘When I was little,’ Annie told him, ‘we did all this by hand. It took ages, even though we didn’t have so many cows then.’

Like Bobby, she had had to help from an early age. She could hardly remember a time when she hadn’t laboured on the farm.

‘Did they like you doing it by hand?’ Bobby asked. ‘The cows?’

Annie thought about it.

‘Yes. I think so. But you had to do it properly, or they’d kick you, or knock the bucket over.’

‘I bet he didn’t like that.’

‘No, he didn’t.’

The long day wasn’t yet over. The cows had to be turned into their pens and the dairy scrubbed down. Then there were the pigs to feed and hens to shut up for the night. By the time they had finished, Bobby’s teeth were chattering. Annie fished a handkerchief out of her pocket and held it over his nose.

‘Blow,’ she told him.

He blew.

‘That feel better?’

He nodded.

Annie put an arm round his shoulders and gathered him to her. He hugged her hips, nestling his balaclaved head against her. She glanced over to where her father was still leaning over the tractor engine with a spanner in his hand. She knew better than to go in without clearing it with him.

‘We’re finished, Dad,’ she called across the yard.

He didn’t let them go in straight away, but that was normal. Instead he found fault in their cleaning of the milking parlour. But when that was finally done to his satisfaction, they all went inside.

Marsh Edge farmhouse was a square plain brick building with a parlour, large kitchen, a scullery and an outside toilet downstairs and two large and two small bedrooms upstairs. The only room in the house that was heated was the kitchen, and it was there that they lived. It was hardly a model of comfort. The floors were stone-flagged, the walls whitewashed. A wooden sink and some shelves were built under the window, a green-painted dresser and some deal cupboards stood against one of the walls, a plain scrubbed table occupied the middle of the room with four stick-back chairs round it, while two Windsor carver chairs and a settle were set round the rag rug in front of the blackleaded range. The only clues that this was 1953 rather than 1903 were the big brown wireless on top of one of the cupboards, and the single electric light bulb under its red shade in the centre of the room.

Plain as it was, the kitchen seemed a haven of light and warmth after the raw cold of the yard. Annie and Bobby left their macs and wellingtons in the porch and washed their hands in the scullery. Edna Cross welcomed them in.

‘You poor things; you must be frozen. How’s my poor boy? That cold any better? Here, come and get warm by the range. I’ll open the front up …’

Edna was an older version of her daughter, small and round-faced with a turned-up nose, but years of hard work, poor health and marriage to Walter had etched lines into her pretty face, and made her painfully thin rather than slender. Her narrow hands were red and rough and the hair that had once been fair and naturally wavy was limp and colourless. She had long ago given up any idea of being anything but a drudge.

‘Is he coming?’ she asked Annie, with a motion of her head towards the yard.

‘I think so.’

‘I’ll do the toast, then. Can you make the tea, love?’

Annie shifted the big black kettle from where it was simmering on the side of the range to the hot spot in the middle, while her mother threaded a thick slice of bread on to the toasting fork. Bobby crouched on the rug, warming himself like a cat.

‘He got that tractor fixed?’ Edna asked.

‘Not yet.’

Neither of them made any further comment. It went without saying that his failure would not improve Walter’s temper. Edna’s hand shook a little as she held the toasting fork. Walter came in and the meal was put on the table—toast and dripping followed by scones and gooseberry jam, washed down by plenty of tea. The lack of conversation was disguised by the measured voices of the BBC announcers on the Home Service.

The evening passed like a hundred others. Annie put Bobby to bed and then sat by the range knitting him some socks. Walter read the local paper with the odd comment on the stupidity of one person or another while Edna hand-worked buttonholes in a rayon blouse for one of her customers. They listened to Saturday Night Theatre on the wireless. The weather forecast warned of continuing gales.

‘There’s a spring tide tonight and all,’ Walter said.

Edna looked fearful.

‘Spring tide and a gale? Will we be safe?’

‘Don’t talk daft, woman,’ Walter scoffed. ‘Wind’s offshore. If anyone gets it, it’ll be them Dutchies. Very low-lying, Holland is. Much more’n here.’

Annie made cocoa and put the porridge pot to simmer on the range, then there was the ritual of locking up before they went upstairs. Annie undressed as quickly as possible in her freezing bedroom and put on a flannelette nightie that came up to her neck and down to her ankles while on her feet she wore woolly socks.

Before getting into bed, she held back the curtain and took a quick peep outside. Way across the fields was the dark line of the sea wall, the place where she had met Tom, all those years ago when they had both been hardly more than kids. She pulled her mind away. It was no use dwelling on Tom. Under the sea wall, a light shone in a window, bringing a smile to her face. The light meant love and cheerfulness and hope. It came from Silver Sands, the little wooden chalet where her dear friends Reggie and Gwen lived, surrounded by the half dozen caravans that they insisted were going to make their fortune one day soon. While Reggie and Gwen were there, her life had a bright spot in it. She sent them a goodnight blessing. Then she climbed into the iron bedstead with its lumpy mattress and curled into a ball round her stone hot water bottle, gradually extending her feet down the bed as it warmed up.

Tired out from a long day working in the cold wind, she fell deeply asleep, only to be woken some time later out of a confused dream. Somewhere out in the yard, a door was banging. It was still a wild night out there. Wide awake and anxious about her friends, Annie slid out of bed and padded across the dark room to the window. Gwen was expecting a baby any day now. What if it had chosen tonight to arrive? What if Reggie’s car, never very reliable, refused to start? She drew back the thin curtain and looked out once more. The sky had cleared and a bright moon shone down, silvering the marshes, glinting off—water! Annie caught her breath, not wanting to believe her eyes. There was a lake where the lower meadows should be. The fields were flooding.

She stared through the night, trying to make out what was happening, trying to distinguish the solid bulk of the wall, their only protection from the North Sea. She could see the pale glimmer of Reggie and Gwen’s caravans crouching under where it should be.

‘My God! Gwen!’ she cried out loud.

If the water was coming over the wall, Reggie and Gwen were right in its path.

She blundered for the door, feeling for the light switch. Nothing happened. She flicked it up and down. Still nothing.

‘Damn, damn.’

She stumbled across the landing and banged on her parents’ bedroom door.

‘Dad, Mum! Wake up! The water’s coming over the wall! There’s a flood!’

It took a few minutes to get her father awake and to make him understand what was happening. Once he did, his thoughts were for the stock.

‘Get dressed. We got to get the store cattle in. The dairy herd’ll be all right. The water won’t reach as far as here.’

‘But, Dad, it’s already over the lower meadows—’

Her head rocked sideways as his heavy hand caught her round the ear. Through the ringing, she heard him shouting at her.

‘Don’t argue with me, girl. Get some clothes on. Quick.’

Annie knew better than to say any more. As she hurried into sweaters and trousers and felt her way downstairs in the dark, anxiety about her friends gnawed at her. How could she warn them? If only they had a telephone. Her father was in the kitchen, cursing as he lit the hurricane lamps that they kept for emergencies. The warm glow only made the shadows in the corners of the kitchen look darker. He thrust one into her hand.

‘Come on.’

Annie hurried after him into the night. Once out of the protection of the farmyard, the full force of the gale hit her, nearly knocking her off her feet.

‘Shift y’self, you useless mare, it’s not even high tide yet. It’ll get worse,’ her father yelled.

‘Who said it was all right because the wind was offshore?’ Annie muttered, but she did not dare say it out loud.

They struck out across the fields, leaving the gates open as they went, Annie almost running to keep up with her father as he strode ahead. The wind was pulling at her raincoat, buffeting her face, making her ears ache and her eyes water. She did not look ahead, just kept her eyes on her father, a darker shape in the surrounding night. When they got close to the drainage ditches, where the water usually flowed sluggishly along the bottom, she could see by the moonlight that it was lapping over the edges. And there was another thing—something wrong. She could not put her finger on it at first, what with the wind and the dark and the effort of keeping up with her father, but then it came to her. The water in the ditches was running the wrong way. It was not draining away to the sea, it was coming in. Soon it was spreading out into wide puddles. She slid and floundered on the waterlogged ground. She fell on her knees and staggered up again. The journey took on the quality of a nightmare, going on and on, with her father looking back occasionally and cursing her for not keeping up.

Then at last they were at the field nearest to the sea wall. The young cattle were huddled at the gate, already up to their hocks in floodwater.

‘Get round behind them, you stupid slut!’ her father bawled.

She tried to obey, wading round the uneasy herd, moving with difficulty as the floodwater came over the tops of her wellingtons and filled them up. She started yelling at them. The wind tore the sounds from her mouth. She thumped and pushed the animals’ rumps, her feet sliding and squelching in the thick mud. Already upset by the storm, they started lowing and milling about. She could only hope that one would have the sense to get going, and then the others would follow it. To her relief, some instinct for survival seemed to get hold of them. One went through the gate, then another. Knowing where to go now, they went plodding into the next field. Already that was awash as well, the gale whipping it into miniature waves. Over the next field and the next they went, gathering up more stock, herding the frightened animals towards each gate, forcing them through. The water seemed to be racing ahead of them, turning each field into a lake before they reached it. Annie’s throat was raw with yelling at the beasts, every muscle in her body ached, her legs felt like weights, dragging her back, slowing her down. But ahead was the farmhouse, silvered in the moonlight. They were in the home field.

She paused in her own battle to spare a thought for her friends, staring through the night towards Silver Sands. With the electricity out, there were no lights showing, no way of knowing whether Reggie and Gwen were awake and saving themselves.

‘Don’t stop now! Get on!’ her father shouted.

‘Reggie and Gwen—’ she yelled.

‘What? What now?’

‘Reggie and Gwen. At Silver Sands—’

‘Too late. Get on.’

If only they had a telephone. Or a boat. If only the tractor were working. If she could just know what was happening. How deep was it down by the sea wall now?

Then, above the howl of the storm, she heard, or rather felt, a rumbling roar, and there, coming towards her across the flooded fields, was a wall of water that seemed as high as a double-decker bus. Terrified, she turned and tried to run.

She staggered forward, fear giving her a new desperate energy. Ahead of her the farm buildings loomed, blacker in the surrounding darkness, promising safety, but her way was blocked by a solid rank of frightened, bewildered cattle. She shrieked and beat at them, trying to get through. She glanced over her shoulder. The wave was getting nearer.

The first cows reached the farmyard and waded inside, fanning out into the wider space. Annie lashed out at the ones behind, swinging the hurricane lamp at them, screaming. Then the water hit her.

Icy and black, the whole weight of the North Sea behind it, it knocked her off her feet. Helpless, she was carried along, her arms and legs thrashing uselessly in the swirling current, knocking into bony rumps and sharp horns. There was a roaring in her ears. Her lungs were bursting. Then, just as she thought she could not hold her breath any longer, she crashed into something solid and held on with both arms and all her strength. She found her feet and dragged herself upright. Her head surfaced. Choking and gasping, she sucked in the blessed air.

She had fetched up against a tree. For several moments she just clung on to the slender trunk, shaking, gasping, thankful simply to be alive. Around her she could hear the cattle still lowing in fear, but now her only thought was for herself. She had to get to the house. The water was up to her shoulders and still rising.

‘Ann!’

A croak in the darkness. Her father. At first she couldn’t see him in the swirling confusion.

‘Ann! Help me!’

The moonlight caught his head. His hat was gone, his face was twisted in fear. He was being washed towards her, the tyrant reduced to a helpless rag doll by the raging force of the flood. Annie could see him trying and failing to get his feet to the ground, his arms flailing. An odd disconnected thought slid into her head. He hadn’t called her by her name in years.

A chance eddy brought him near to her, nearer—

‘Ann!’

There was terror in his voice, desperation in his face. His hand stretched out to her. He was three yards away, two. The events of her life seemed to whirl before her. She was six years old again, was cowering before him as he grasped her arm, his heavy hand beating her again and again. She was eleven. Her teacher said that if she worked hard, she could pass the exam for the grammar school. But her father sneered at the very idea. Grammar school was not for the likes of her. She was needed on the farm.

‘Please, Ann—!’

He was her father. He couldn’t swim.

‘Dad?’ she croaked.

She had only to let go of the tree with one hand and reach out to him.

She saw Bobby cowering, Bobby terrified at having failed to do some task way beyond his years and strength, Bobby called nothing but ‘that boy’ and forced to call his own grandfather ‘Mr Cross’.

‘Ann, for God’s sake—’

He was close enough for her to touch his fingertips. But she did not. And a moment later he was gone, swallowed up into the black water.

‘Dad!’ she screamed.

She let go with one arm and strained after him. The hungry current got her in its grip, tugged and sucked at her.

‘Dad!’

Frantically, she flailed about, trying to find him, to catch hold of him.

But it was too late.