Читать книгу Christmas on the Home Front - Roland Moore - Страница 9

Six days to Christmas.

When Joyce woke she was aware that it was later than it should be. The sun was higher than she expected, and the sky was a vibrant slate-blue colour that signified it was far beyond dawn. Usually when she awoke, it was as if the sky hadn’t been coloured in for the day. There was no denying that she had overslept and, disorientated, she fumbled for her wristwatch from the bedside table and squinted to make out the time.

Nine o’clock.

Why hadn’t Esther woken her?

Joyce swung her legs out of bed and padded over to the window. Pulling back the curtains, she could see the morning sun dappling the south field. The tractor stood parked in the distance, its rotavator blades raised skyward as if in silent prayer. There was no one working in the fields and an eerie quietness all around.

Joyce pulled her sweater over her head, walked out the room and made her way downstairs.

‘Esther?’ She shouted.

No answer.

Joyce reached the kitchen. It was silent and empty. A solitary plate sat on the farmhouse table with a single piece of buttered toast. The toast had a single bite mark. Next to it was a mug of tea, half-finished. Joyce ran her fingers against the mug and found it was still warm. Whoever had left it hadn’t left it long ago.

‘Esther?’ Joyce asked the question more quietly this time, a sense of foreboding in her bones. There was something odd about this.

She reached the back door and opened it. The chill of the morning air wrapped round her bare legs and she pulled her nightie down as low as it would go. She slid her feet into her boots that were still on the step from last night.

‘Martin?’ Joyce called across the yard, as she squished her right boot up and down to bring it up at the back as she walked. The yard buildings stood silent, their stable doors open at the top, impenetrable black rectangles that refused to reveal their secrets even to the rising sun.

‘Come on now!’ Joyce shouted, turning round in the yard, looking for any sign of movement. ‘Where is everyone?’

But there was no answer.

Joyce walked along the outside of the stables. She was always unnerved by their dark interiors and resolutely refused to look at them as she passed. She reached the entrance to the farm. The old tin postbox had some letters sticking out of it. The postman had been. And no one had collected it. That was odd.

Joyce took the small bundle of letters. One for Finch. A bill. One for Esther. And one for herself. She placed the other two letters in the crook of her arm and tore open the letter addressed to her. She knew the writing. It was John. He must have sent it nearly as soon as he’d arrived in Leeds. How romantic! For the first time since she had woken up, she felt a smile returning to her face. She scanned the contents of the letter quickly. She would reread it at her leisure later, but for now she wanted to get the gist of it. Feel his words and hear his voice.

John wrote that he was already missing her. He said that he’d arrived in Leeds to find Teddy’s house in a dreadful state. The plates and pots were unwashed and Teddy himself had been wearing the same clothes for longer than was decent. John gave allowances for Teddy’s injury – he couldn’t blame his brother for not being able to do those things – but it was a blessing that he’d arrived when he had so that he could sort things out for him. John recited a litany of the odd jobs he’d done since arriving and Joyce’s eyes scanned the list, aiming to reread it later.

She was reading the rest of the letter, when a chicken burst out from behind the end stable, squawking loudly with a hysteria that spooked Joyce. She dropped the letters and fell backwards against the gate, catching her right wrist on the latch. She felt a stab of pain in her arm and noticed a cut to her wrist. Soon a rivulet of blood snaked its way down to her elbow.

‘Damn and blast,’ Joyce muttered. She scooped up the letters and raised her injured arm and ran as fast as she could back to the farmhouse.

Inside the farm kitchen, Joyce let cold water run over the cut. Despite the amount of blood, it wasn’t a deep cut and the water soon ran clear as the wound clotted. Joyce bound her wrist with the makeshift bandage of a tea towel and looked under the sink for Esther’s first aid supplies.

Twenty-three minutes later, Joyce carefully picked up the hot kettle from the stove with her bandaged hand and poured the water into a tea pot. She was dressed in her Women’s Land Army uniform of trousers, shirt and jumper, her boots laced securely on her feet. She stirred the pot, thinking about the mystery of the deserted farm. It had never been so silent in all the time she had been working here. The small farmhouse was normally alive with chatter and the odd argument, the sounds of Esther berating Finch for his slovenly behaviour. Where was Finch? Esther? Connie? Dolores? Frank?

Of course – Frank!

Joyce remembered that Frank Tucker, Finch’s erstwhile game keeper, would be found only one and a half miles away at Shallow Brook Farm next door. The plan had been for him to take over with Iris and Martin while John was away.

Her brewing tea forgotten, Joyce got to her feet, marched across the yard, out the gate and made her way to Shallow Brook Farm.

When she got there, she was out of breath and the cold air was catching on the back of her throat.

‘Frank?’ Joyce called, her voice sounding croaky. ‘Frank?’ She tried again and this time her voice didn’t fail her.

The darkened windows of the farmhouse resembled blank eyes covered with the cataracts of dirty net curtains. The place had an undercurrent of melancholy and despair about it, forgotten and unloved, unlike the picturesque Pasture Farm. Joyce tolerated being here when John was staying, but when he wasn’t around, the sadness and silence of the place made her feel uneasy.

At first, Joyce thought that this farm too was empty and deserted. She called again for Frank, hearing the shrillness of nerves developing with each unanswered call.

‘Frank?’

‘Yeah?’

A reply came from a side-building and Frank Tucker ambled out, wiping oil from his hands on an old rag. He was a wiry man with thinning grey hair, eyes that didn’t quite go in the same direction and a face that had a lived-in expression. But there was kindness in his craggy face and his hazel eyes burned with an unexpected intelligence. This was the man who had taught Iris Dawson to read and who had preferred negotiation to violence when he was goaded into a fight with Vernon Storey all those months ago.

Joyce composed herself. The truth was she had assumed she wouldn’t get a response and she hadn’t thought about what to say if she did.

‘Where is everyone?’ She managed.

Frank scratched his chin, inadvertently leaving a smudge of oil on it. His eyes looked serious, his face grave.

‘Haven’t you heard?’

‘Heard what?’

Frank swallowed hard. Joyce had seen that type of expression before.

She guessed that he was about to tell her bad news.

There was a gnawing feeling in his belly that Siegfried Weber didn’t like. He wasn’t entirely sure if it was down to hunger or whether fear was driving his stomach into knots as well. Nervously his eyes scanned the woodland around him. He was cowering in a ditch, on a bed of the fallen leaves of autumn, his shirt getting wet from the cold ground. He gripped the dagger in his hand. The tape around the handle was fraying and Siegfried felt that it was slippery and hard to hold. He stared at the rabbit in front of him, tantalisingly twelve or so feet away to his left. He moved his free arm, using it to propel himself slowly and steadily across the ditch. Nearer and nearer to the rabbit. Siegfried paused, allowing the rabbit to sniff its surroundings. He didn’t want to alert it to any danger and he didn’t want to spook it. When the rabbit ducked its head, seemingly less concerned about any imminent threat, he decided that it would be prudent to move forward, edging ever closer, knife in hand.

He thought about Emory. His captain was hungry too and waiting for Siegfried to come good on the hunting skills he blithely promised that he had. He didn’t want to let the older man down, and he wanted to keep his spirits buoyed, but the fact of the matter was that the only rabbit he’d ever got close to was the pet of the farmer at Coswig. And he’d never dared to hunt and catch that.

He pulled forward, feeling a twig snag in his shirt. Anticipating that it might break off noisily if he continued, Siegfried reached slowly down and gently broke it off. The rabbit looked up again. How sharp their hearing was! Siegfried waited patiently for it to relax and after a few agonising moments it returned to sniffing the ground.

He edged slightly closer, scarcely daring to breathe. He was close enough to see the individual hairs on the rabbit’s chest, the light shining in its big, brown eyes, its cheeks continually inflating and deflating as it sniffed the air. Siegfried brought his knife up on the rabbit’s blind side. Then he realised that he needed to be a little bit closer to avoid making it a stretch when he brought the blade down. That would diminish his chances of landing a blow that stopped the creature in its tracks. Siegfried moved on his belly, his shirt sodden now from the damp. He stopped, motionless for a second. This was the moment of truth.

Siegfried whipped out his free hand to grasp the rabbit as he brought the knife hand down. But as his fingers connected with the rabbit’s fur, it bolted for freedom. Siegfried brought the knife down, but plunged it uselessly into the mulch. His free hand managed to feel the pads of the rabbit’s feet as it propelled itself into the shrubs and away.

Siegfried felt disappointment welling up inside him, his throat burning with the need to cry in frustration. He lay on the woodland floor for a few moments before finding the strength to pull himself up. He looked around as he pushed the knife back into his belt. He knew he couldn’t go back empty-handed, but he couldn’t rely on catching anything for dinner. And as his hunger and fatigue intensified, he knew that what paltry ability he had as a hunter would also diminish. He had to find food, and soon.

For now though, he had to improvise. As Siegfried ambled away, he looked for anything that might sustain him and Emory. As he reached the clearing of the woods, salvation arrived in the form of a dead crow near a tree root. Its feathers were sticking out at crazy angles as if a child had constructed it in nursery. Siegfried tapped it with his boot. There was no telling how long it had been dead, but he estimated it hadn’t been long. He scooped up the body in his hands and wrapped it in the knapsack that hung around his neck. It would be another culinary delight after the raw cauliflower. But nevertheless, dinner would be served.

Hoxley Manor was a flurry of activity. Some American soldiers were parading on the front lawn, against the express instructions from Lady Hoxley. She tolerated the soldiers’ presence and the fact that a large part of her house had been requisitioned by the War Office for use as a military hospital, but she appreciated it if they could keep as low a profile as possible. Parading on her front lawn, where any visitor could see them simply wasn’t on.

Joyce rushed along the driveway, the shouted instructions from the army lieutenant to his men washing over her like the distant barking of a dog. She pushed past a nurse who was smoking a cigarette in the doorway and went into the hallway. It was cooler inside than out, but Joyce was hot from running.

She rushed past the grand staircase where Nancy Morrell had first met Lord Hoxley two summers ago and made her way to the military hospital wing. Slowing to a brisk walk, and regaining her breath, Joyce passed bed after bed of injured servicemen, their bandages telling tales of their woes. Some of them called out to her, others moaned in pain. Joyce kept focussed and walked on. Reaching a room on its own, Joyce knocked on the door. The small room had once been Lord Hoxley’s reading room, a circular space of curved bookshelves, a leather armchair and a view out onto the back terrace. Now it had a single bed squeezed into the space.

A single bed occupied by Connie Carter.

Joyce moved to her friend’s bedside, feeling the heavy concerned looks from Esther, Finch, and Esther’s son, Martin on her. They had all assembled some time earlier. Doctor Richard Channing glanced up from his clipboard where he was reviewing some observations on his patient. He was a distinguished man whose handsome face was tempered by an easy look of disdain that often crossed his features. Connie’s husband, Henry Jameson was seated on the windowsill, looking gravely at the floor. He was the local vicar, a mild-mannered good-hearted man who would always worry about consequences. Whereas Connie would dive in and have fun, Henry was always pondering whether they should dive in and have fun.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know,’ Joyce mumbled. ‘I had no idea.’

Esther put a consoling hand on her shoulder.

Connie looked so pale making her smudged lipstick look even more vibrantly red, like a smear of jam across her face. Her eyelids were closed and her usually immaculately neat black hair was like a bird’s nest. A white bandage was wrapped tidily around her forehead, making the unruly hair look like it was trying to escape from above and below.

‘You weren’t to know, lovey.’ Esther removed her comforting hand from Joyce’s shoulder and gently encouraged her to move closer.

‘Can she hear us?’ Joyce asked.

‘Don’t think so.’ Finch looked downcast. ‘At least she hasn’t responded to anything I’ve said to her. Mind you, she doesn’t respond to anything I say when she’s awake.’

He offered a nervous chuckle, but no one felt like laughing.

‘What happened?’ Joyce stared at her friend.

Esther explained that Connie had rode her bicycle to Gorley Woods to deliver a magazine to one of Henry’s parishioners. She was found on a dirt track, unconscious, her bicycle by her side.

‘Did she fall off then?’ Joyce asked.

No one volunteered an answer. Had they all asked the same question already? Doctor Channing shrugged, suggesting that he wasn’t about to indulge in pure conjecture.

‘She had a blow to the head. That’s all we know.’

‘Did she hit a branch on her bike? You know, going under a low tree or something?’ Joyce could sense Henry shifting uncomfortably on his window ledge. All this talk about his wife was clearly getting to him. Maybe no one was worrying about how it had happened, just about whether Connie would ever wake up again.

‘The blow was on the back of the head,’ Channing remarked, his manner getting tetchy.

‘So someone hit her?’

Channing shrugged. Joyce looked at the other faces for an answer. And if not an answer, she wanted to hear what their theories were. Surely, they wanted to know?

‘She might have fallen off her bicycle and hit the back of her head when she went down,’ Esther offered, filling the void when no one immediately volunteered an answer. Joyce guessed she said it more to shut her up than because she wanted to enter into a discussion.

Joyce wanted to ask more, but Henry’s agitated shuffling stopped her broaching the subject. It could all wait until later when they were away from here. Joyce assumed that Henry felt uneasy not just because he loved Connie but because he may have felt guilty at sending her on the errand in the first place.

‘The problem is also that she may have been there for some time,’ Henry spoke, his voice wavering with emotion. ‘In the cold, lying there.’

His voice broke and Henry squeezed the bridge of his nose to stop himself from crying. Finch patted him on the shoulder like someone petting an unfamiliar dog. The gesture seemed to help Henry pull himself together. Joyce guessed he didn’t want to make a scene in front of these people.

‘I suggest you all go back to the farm. Await news.’ Doctor Channing surveyed their faces and then glanced down at Henry.

‘Apart from you, Reverend. You can, of course, stay if you want to.’ The offer conveyed the barest hint that Channing would be irked if the Reverend wanted to stay for too long, getting under his feet while there was important medical work to be done. Joyce knew that Channing preferred uncluttered wards. When she did her volunteer shifts, she would hear him lecturing nursing staff on the importance of minimalism in a hospital environment. And that minimalism extended to visitors. He viewed them with the same warmth that he viewed unemptied bins or clutter.

Henry nodded at the half-offer and stared forlornly at his wife, her face motionless, her eyes closed. Joyce dutifully filed out with Martin, Finch and Esther and they stood in shocked silence in the corridor for a few moments wondering what would happen to their friend. Joyce glanced back a final time as Channing shut the door on her. Connie looked so peaceful and at rest. The thought chilled Joyce. She tried to shake it out of her mind. She didn’t want to see Connie at rest. Connie was never at rest. She wanted the mouthy, passionate, talking-ten-to-the-dozen, vibrant Connie back.

She wanted her friend to live.

The meat was tough and chewy and Siegfried worried that they hadn’t cooked the bird enough. But it stopped the ferocious rumbling in his stomach for a moment, so that was good. It had taken him nearly an hour to pluck the thing and then Emory had rigged up a makeshift spit roast from twigs to suspend it above a small fire. Emory was grouchy. His arm was sore and blistering. He was cold and the shelter they had found – an old storage hut on the edge of an abandoned farm near Gorley Woods – wasn’t a secure base for them to wait in. Emory feared they would be found eventually. He wanted to make contact with some sympathisers who might be able to help them escape this country and get back to Germany. Would it be easier to give up? But Siegfried didn’t dare voice that opinion; especially when Emory was in such a bad mood.

Emory checked his luger pistol for what seemed like the hundredth time. Siegfried told him that it would have made his hunting easier to have had the gun. But Emory thought they couldn’t attract attention to themselves by firing off rounds in the woods.

‘What do we do?’ Siegfried asked, chewing on a bit of gristle and trying to make it go down.

‘Kein Englisch sprechen!’ Emory snapped.

‘We should speak English! And we should get rid of these clothes. We should try to fit in.’

‘You are right. I do not think straight,’ Emory sighed, wincing at the pain in his arm. ‘We should go to find some clothes. Steal them off a washing line or something. Maybe go back to the cottage where that man was. His clothes would fit us.’

‘It’s too risky to go back somewhere we’ve been already.’

Emory nodded, conceding Siegfried’s point. He got up and stamped out the remnants of the fire outside their hut.

‘We’ll find somewhere else with clothes,’ Siegfried replied. He wanted to talk about the other thing. But he feared that any mention might antagonise his captain. But he knew that their future might depend on it. After all, they had already attracted attention to themselves.

‘What do you think happened to the girl?’ Siegfried asked.

Emory scowled at him. Siegfried had been right. He hadn’t wanted to talk about that.

‘Who knows?’ Emory spat out a piece of gristle. ‘Who cares?’

After an afternoon silently working the frozen earth of the North Field, Joyce submerged her numb hands in Esther’s warm sink, her nerves unable to tell if it was hot or cold. Her fingers tingled in protest and Joyce could picture her mother warning her about the danger of chilblains, but it felt so good. After a moment, she pulled her hands out, steam coming off her fingers, the skin a lucid angry pink, and wiped them on a tea towel. Esther was busying herself with a stew. Finch was reading The Helmstead Herald at the table, unaware that his arms were pushing the cutlery of the carefully laid-out places into an untidy mess in the centre.

‘It’s got to be a mistake. No one would sell a pig that cheap.’ Finch scrutinised the advert in the paper as if it was a rare Egyptian hieroglyph.

‘Maybe it’s only got three legs?’ Esther smirked.

Finch shook his head, not registering the joke. Joyce assumed that his brain was busy navigating the fine line of whether this was a bargain or a scam. The man had a talent for that borne out of his own attempts to pull the wool over the eyes of the gullible bargain-seeker. It would irk him if someone else was doing the conning and he turned out to be the victim.

‘It’s got four legs and working snout, according to this.’ Finch weighed up the advert and Esther added more seasoning to her cooking.

‘Have you heard any more from the hospital?’ Joyce asked.

‘Nothing,’ Esther shook her head.

‘No,’ Finch closed the newspaper.

‘I guess there’s no change then?’

‘Maybe they’re trying to get rid of it for Christmas?’

‘What?’ Esther was confused.

‘The pig!’ Finch was already back on his own topic of conversation. ‘Here, I could take it to Leicester for Bea and Annie!’

‘Don’t go on about the flaming pig. Besides they won’t want a pig turning up!’ Esther snatched the newspaper from the table and put it on the draining board in the hope it might end the matter.

Despite her concern about Connie, Joyce couldn’t help but laugh. Finch’s hurt reaction, his face showing confusion at Esther’s words, was a picture. Obviously, it seemed eminently reasonable to him to take a pig on a train as a gift. He grumbled and turned the page. Joyce sat down for the evening meal, rearranging the pile of cutlery into rudimentary place settings.

The three of them ate in silence aside from Finch returning unbidden to the topic of the bargain pig. By the end of the meal, Joyce would have been happy never to have heard another word about it. But then Finch said something that piqued her interest.

‘Here, maybe I’ll drive over there tomorrow and have a look at the pig. If I take the van, I could pop it in the back. It’s only at a place called Hobson’s Farm on the other side of Gorley Woods.’

‘Gorley Woods?’ Joyce’s mind was racing.

‘Yes, why?’

‘Could I come with you?’

‘Why would you want to do that?’ Finch looked suspicious.

‘Thought it might be useful to perhaps see where Connie came a cropper. Find out if there was any reason for it.’

‘’Ere do you think you’re Agatha Christie, Joyce?’

‘It’s just nobody has had a chance to look at where it happened, have they?’

‘All right.’ Finch shrugged, ‘As long as Esther can spare you for an hour that is.’

‘I’ll start an hour earlier,’ Joyce ventured before Esther had time to voice an objection. But despite the appeasement, Esther still managed a scowl.

Henry Jameson was dimly aware of a low creaking noise, rhythmic and close. It took him a while to realise it came from his own chair as he rocked gently back and forth as he sat watching Connie’s face. He’d been holding her hand for what seemed like ages, gently manipulating it with his fingers as if the sensation might bring Connie back to him.

He didn’t know if she could hear him, but Henry spoke to her anyway. Mindful of the other patients outside their room and the lateness of the hour, he spoke quietly, barely more than a whisper. He gave prayers, made jokes and told Connie how much he loved her. Despite their differences, this unlikely couple had made their marriage work. Connie’s headstrong and bawdy nature, against all odds, segued with Henry’s sensible and empathetic traits. He assumed that Connie felt safe in the relationship, knowing that Henry would act as a steadying influence to her wilder traits. For his part, Connie’s unpredictability was both liberating and infuriating. But she was the spark in his life.

He looked forlornly at his wife, unmoving except for the gentle rise and fall of her chest. What dreams was she having? Henry regretted the small argument they’d had. And it had all been about that blasted magazine. The thing that caused this.

‘I don’t have time to play postman!’ Connie had shouted when Henry had suggested she take the magazine while he finished the evening work at the village hall.

‘But it won’t take long,’ Henry had protested.

‘But it will take long.’

‘You don’t have to stay with him for any length of time.’

‘He’s a chatterbox. I’ve waited hours for you to come back from your visits there!’

‘Please, Connie,’ Henry had pleaded. And his wife had conceded with a sparky flash of her deep brown eyes. All right, she’d do it, but he’d better make this up to her when they’re both at home. Connie had taken the magazine and Henry had watched her ride off away from the village hall. That was the last time he’d seen her until finding her in a hospital bed.

What had happened in the time in-between?

Henry’s thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of Doctor Channing. He gave a cursory knock on the doorframe and entered without waiting for permission. He seemed somewhat irked to see Henry sitting there.

‘It may be best for you to get some rest.’

Henry didn’t need it spelling out what Channing was saying. He nodded and collected his coat and hat, before kissing his wife on the cheek and leaving. Channing watched him leave. Then he moved towards his patient, checking the clipboard at the end of her bed.

‘What happened to you, Connie Carter?’ Channing mumbled to himself.

He took her pulse, timing it against the small fob watch that dangled from his waistcoat. He made a note of the reading and then took a mercury thermometer from his pocket. He gave it a shake to zero it and was about to put it in Connie’s mouth, when she opened her eyes with a start.

‘Where am I?’ She asked, pulling herself up.

‘You’re at Hoxley Manor. You had a bump on the head,’ Channing tried to gently push her back onto the bed. ‘It’s important you rest.’

‘No, you don’t understand,’ Connie’s eyes were darting around the room. She clutched her head suddenly, an excruciating pain forcing her to squeeze her eyes tightly shut.

‘Easy, it’s all right.’

‘No, they attacked me,’ Connie broke off to wince in pain, her mouth open in silent anguish as if making a noise would hurt her further.

‘Who? Who attacked you?’

Connie’s brown eyes widened in fear.

‘Who was it?’

‘German airmen!’ Connie forced the words out amid the pain. And with that, she collapsed back onto the bed, her hand lolling listlessly over the edge. Channing tried to gently rouse her and then he shouted for assistance.

‘Nurse! I need some help here!’

He looked worried, but there was something in his eyes that indicated it might not be just concern for the well-being of his latest patient.