Where Bluebells Chime

10

‘Time to put the kettle on.’ Gracie Fielding thrust her fork deep into the earth, then mopped her face and neck. They were digging the plot from which the early potato crop had been lifted, making it ready for replanting, and digging was hard work.

Yet already she felt as if she belonged here. It was as if she and Jack Catchpole were shut away from the war by the high, red-brick walls that enclosed the kitchen garden. Even on rainy days there was always something to do, something new to learn.

The tomato house she liked especially. Tomatoes were thirsty plants, Mr Catchpole said; needed more water than most. It had been a thrill to pick the first of the crop ready for the vegetable man who called each morning; tomatoes red-ripe and firm, with the scent of the greenhouse on them and not the sad, soft, ages-old things Mam had to queue half an hour for. Soon Gracie would be given a week of her annual leave and she would take home as many fresh vegetables and apples and pears as she could carry and maybe a rabbit, if she could sweetheart one out of Daisy’s dad. People who lived in the country fared better for food than those who lived in towns and cities. Mam would be tickled pink to get a rabbit.

She filled the little kettle from the standtap outside the potting shed, stirred the fire in the iron grate, added twigs and wood choppings, then set it to boil on the sooty hob.

‘Ready in about ten minutes.’ She took up her fork again. ‘Heard the early news, did you?’ Everyone listened to news broadcasts and read the newspapers from cover to cover; not because they wanted to but because it was their patriotic duty and anyway, people had to know the exact time blackout began each evening and when, in the morning, it ended. Since war came, newspapers were no longer allowed to print weather forecasts, nor were they read out at the end of news bulletins. It wouldn’t do to let the enemy know when conditions would be best suited for their planes to come dropping bombs and incendiaries. Because mark his words, Mr Catchpole had said, there were those living amongst us pretending to be ordinary, normal English folk, who looked just the same as we did and spoke and acted as we did. But they were really spies and loyal to the Fatherland and had nasty, devious ways of getting weather forecasts back to Germany, and hanging would be too good for them when they were caught!

‘News?’ Jack Catchpole paused to lean on his fork. ‘Makes you fair sickened. They’re still bombing our fighter stations down south and we all know what for, don’t we?’

‘But we shot down sixty-seven of theirs.’

‘And lost thirty-three of our own.’ Never mind the Spitfires and Hurricanes. It was really thirty-three pilots we had lost, Catchpole considered angrily.

‘The Air Ministry has confirmed that sixty-seven enemy aircraft were destroyed,’ droned the newsreader, ‘and thirty-three of our fighters failed to return …’

Thirty-three telegrams there’d be this morning. Regretting. And how many more telegrams before Europe came to its senses?

He drove his fork angrily into the earth, breaking down the clods with unnecessary force. Gracie noticed it at once but knew better than to ask what was bothering him.

‘Think the kettle’ll be just about on the boil,’ she said, and headed for the potting shed. He was sitting on his upturned apple crate when she returned with two mugs, determined to cheer him up. ‘Did you hear about Mussolini, Mr C.?’

‘What’s he been up to now?’ Catchpole scowled.

‘We-e-ll, you know he said that all British ports on the Mediterranean would be blockaded by Italian warships …?’

‘You mean the Eyetie Navy might actually put to sea?’

‘Not exactly. They didn’t get the chance. “Blockade us, will you?” said the Royal Navy, and sailed out there and then and sunk an Italian depot ship, a destroyer and one of their submarines!’

‘And serve them right!’ Mussolini was a strutting fool. No one took much notice of him. Talk had it that the Italian people hadn’t wanted to go to war; that Mussolini only landed them in it to get on the right side of Hitler. But Hitler was a different kettle of fish. There was something unwholesome about him; the same wildness in his eyes you saw in the eyes of a mad dog before you had it put down. The evil in that face made Catchpole’s flesh creep. ‘But there’ll be a nasty shock waiting for them Nazis if they try invading Yorkshire.’

‘There will, Mr Catchpole?’

‘Oh my word, yes! Now not a word to a soul about this, mind.’ He tapped his nose with his forefinger and gave her one of his knowing nods. ‘Us have been making ’em all week at the Home Guard. Petrol bombs!’

‘But I thought petrol was on the ration, for cars.’

‘So it is.’ He’d thought much the same thing when two five-gallon cans had been delivered to their headquarters, petrol bombs for the use of. He had even gone so far as to wonder what those ten gallons would bring on the black market, but such thoughts were dismissed from his mind as he had seen himself hurling petrol bombs at a ruthless enemy, giving them a bit of their own back. ‘So it is, lass, but it makes grand bombs, an’ all. You get a bottle and half fill it with petrol. Then you stuffs rag down the bottleneck.’ So simple, he wondered why they had never been used in the last war. ‘Then you wait till you see ’em coming, you light the rag and when it’s burning you throw your bottle – and duck!’

Nor would there be a problem in the delivery of such missiles. Yorkshiremen were born cricketers, could throw anything from a ball to a bottle further than most!

‘And it explodes, Mr C.?’

‘It doesn’t half!’ And not only with a bang but with blazing petrol to add to the confusion. Would stop a tank, some said, but he had his doubts on that score. You would, he had worked out, have to lob one down the tank’s turret to do any real harm and to do that would take a lot of luck. Still, petrol bombs would do very nicely until the long-promised hand grenades arrived.

‘But are you sure they’ll work?’

‘Oh, they work all right! We had a dummy run up on Holdenby Pike.’ They had thrown three, and so startling had been the effect that the entire platoon had wanted to throw one and the Reverend had been forced to point out that three was more than enough or where would they be when the time came with all the bombs used up? ‘But not a word, mind.’

His good humour restored, Mr Catchpole blew hard on his tea then took a slurping swallow. Strange, he thought, that the Reverend was of the opinion there wouldn’t be an invasion, though why he thought it he couldn’t rightly explain. And no one wanted to be overrun like the French had been and especially himself, who would take badly to Germans goose-stepping all over his garden or even – and just to think of it made him shudder – throwing her ladyship out of Rowangarth. There had been a Sutton at Rowangarth for more’n four hundred years and a Catchpole had been head gardener here since Queen Victoria was a lass; four generations of them.

On the other hand, no one could blame him for wanting to throw a petrol bomb. Just one. Slap bang into the turret of a Nazi tank. He set down his mug and returned to his digging. And to his dreams of glory.

Tatiana heard the long, low whistle then ran towards it, arms wide.

‘Tim! You’re all right!’ She always waited now in the shelter of the trees beside the crossroads, hoping he would come because it wasn’t always possible for him to phone her after he had been flying nor dare she, sometimes, pick up the phone when he did.

‘I’m fine,’ he said when they had kissed, and kissed again.

‘Were you on ops. last night? It wasn’t Berlin?’

There was a tacit agreement that open cities were not to be bombed by either side, yet this morning’s newsreader announced that 120 bombers had raided Berlin in retaliation for the bombs dropped two days ago on London.

‘It was.’ He pulled her close and they began to walk, arms tightly linked, thighs touching, towards Holdenby Pike. ‘And for an open city, there was a heck of a lot of searchlights and flack.’

Open cities, Tatiana frowned, were supposed not to be of military importance and left unmolested; beautiful old places like Dresden, or York perhaps.

‘They said it was a mistake – them bombing London, I mean. They’d been trying to bomb a fighter station, and got it wrong.’

‘In broad daylight, henny? The RAF can fly in total darkness and get it right! No, they meant to do it. You can’t mistake London for a fighter station.’

‘It’s getting worse for us, isn’t it, Tim?’

‘Hush your blethering.’ He kissed her fiercely and she clung to him, eyes closed, lips parted, silently begging for more. She had loved Tim Thomson since first they met, but now she was in love with him and naked need flamed from him to her each time they touched.

Grandmother Petrovska had been wrong. It was a woman’s duty to give her husband children, and a man, she said, liked making children. It was his nature. A woman, on the other hand, did her duty in the privacy of the bedroom, reminding herself that it was a small price to pay for a household of her own and the respect society gave to a married woman.

But this dizzy-making feeling could not be a part of duty but a need, and to have children with Tim would be a shivering delight. And why in the sanctimonious privacy of a bedroom? Why not here on the wide hilltop with the sun to bless them and little scuds of cloud to see them, then float by uncaring.

‘Penny for them?’

‘A penny won’t buy them, Tim.’ They had, to her reluctant relief, begun to walk again. ‘I’ll tell you if you want, but you mightn’t like it.’

‘Try me.’

‘Remember I once said I thought I was falling in love with you?’

‘Aye. You said it in Russian.’

‘Well, I don’t think any more.’ She took a deep, steadying breath. ‘I know I’m in love with you.’ She looked down at the grass at her feet, cheeks blazing.

‘Then that makes two of us. What are we going to do about it?’

‘I can’t marry you, Tim. My family wouldn’t let me.’

‘Because I’m a Scottish peasant, a Keir Hardie man, and you are landed gentry?’

‘No, darling, no!’ She wanted him to kiss her again but he walked on, chin high. ‘All right – my mother was a countess, but countesses were two a penny in St Petersburg. And the Petrovskys aren’t rich. The Bolsheviks took almost all they owned. What Mother and I have is because of the Suttons. It’s their charity we live on!’

‘Charity! You live in a big house with servants!’

‘Only Karl, now, and Cook, and Maggie who comes twice a week. And Cook might have to do war work in a factory canteen, she says.’

‘Aye, well, my mother works in a factory and glad of it, and my father works in the shipyards – unemployed for years till the war started – so I suppose that rules out marriage. And let’s face it, your Grandmother Petrovska wouldn’t take kindly to one of her enemies marrying into the family.’

‘You’re a Bolshevik?’ He couldn’t be!

‘They call us Communists, now. And I’m not red. Just nicely pink around the edges. Before the war I wanted to go into politics – Labour, of course – try to help my own kind, because there are only two classes in this life, Tatiana: those who have and those who have not.’

‘Then why do you love me when you despise my kind of people?’ She was angry, now. Any minute she would round on him in Karl’s earthy Russian.

‘I don’t know, God help me. But I do love you, Tatiana Sutton and I want you like I’ve never wanted a woman in my life.’

‘And I think I want you, Tim. When you touch me and kiss me something goes boing inside me and I think how lovely it would be to make a baby with you.’

They had stopped walking again and she stepped away from him because all at once she knew that if he held her close, laid his mouth on hers, there would be no crying, ‘No, Tim!’ because she wouldn’t want to say it.

‘Make a baby! Are you mad? I could get killed any night and then where would you be?’

‘Pregnant and alone, I suppose, and people would call me a tart.’

‘And would you care?’

‘Only that you were dead,’ she said softly, sadly. ‘But it doesn’t arise because I wouldn’t know what to do. I’ve never done it before …’

The pulsating need between them had passed now. They linked little fingers and began their upward climb and she didn’t know whether to be sad or glad.

‘I’d teach you, henny. And there wouldn’t be any babies. No mistakes – I’d see to that. They tell you how to keep your nose clean in the RAF – if you don’t already know, that is.’

‘So you know how?’ She felt mildly cheated. ‘You’ve made love before, Tim?’

‘Aye. It was offered, so I took it. It wasn’t lovemaking though, because I didn’t love her. It would be different with you, sweetheart. We’d be special together.’

‘We wouldn’t. I’d spoil it thinking about Grandmother Petrovska.’

‘Not when I make love to you you won’t!’

They scuffed the lately flowering heather as they walked, not looking at each other.

‘So shall we, Tim …?’

‘Aye. When the mood is on us. It doesn’t happen to order, you know – leastways not for a man.’

‘And will I know when?’

‘Oh, my lovely love – you’ll know when.’ He threw back his head and laughed. ‘Darling lassie, we’ll both know.’

‘There, now.’ Catchpole straightened up, hands in the small of his back. ‘That’s them seen to. Plenty for the house and for me and Lily, and two score extra for the vegetable man. Just got them in in nice time for the rain.’

‘But how do you know it’s going to rain?’

‘A gardener alus knows, Gracie. Don’t need no newspapers nor men on the wireless to tell me what the weather’s going to be like. A drop of nice steady rain towards nightfall and them sprouts’ll be standing up straight as little soldiers in the morning. You’ll learn, lass.’

‘I hope so, Mr C. I like being here.’ She liked everything about being a land girl except being away from Mam and Dad and Grandad. ‘I had a letter from Drew this morning. He said he’d write, but I never expected him to.’

‘Why not? Drew don’t say things he don’t mean.’

‘I’m sure he doesn’t, but he’s a sir, and I come from mill folk.’

‘He’s a sailor and you’m a friend and sailors like getting letters. You write back to him and tell him about the garden and what we’re doing, so he can see it all as if it was real.’

‘But he didn’t give me an address. He just put Somewhere in England and the date, because he’s expecting to be sent to a ship, he says.’

‘Then he’ll send it later, or you can get it from Daisy Dwerryhouse. She’ll have it, that’s for sure, her being related.’

‘Mmm. I know she’s his half-sister, but how come?’ Gracie concentrated on wiping clean her fork and spade before putting them away; one of Mr Catchpole’s ten commandments. ‘What I mean is – well, I know Mrs Dwerryhouse is Drew’s real mother, but she’s the gamekeeper’s wife now, and you’d think the gentry wouldn’t be so friendly with their servants – and I don’t mean that in a snobby way,’ she hastened.

‘I know you didn’t, lass. And to someone as don’t know the history of the Suttons – both families – it might seem a bit peculiar. But Daisy’s mam came to Rowangarth a bit of a lass nigh on thirty years ago. Worked as a housemaid till they realized she’d a talent with a needle and thread, and so made her sewing-maid.’

He rinsed his hands at the standtap then dried them on a piece of sacking with irritating slowness.

‘And then, Mr Catchpole?’

‘Well, one summer – before the Great War it was – Miss Julia went to London to stay at her Aunt Anne Lavinia’s house. A maiden lady, Miss Anne Lavinia Sutton was and alus popping over to France, so her ladyship sent Alice with Miss Julia – Alice Hawthorn her was then. In them days, a young lady couldn’t go out alone, not even to the shops. Alice was a sort of – of …’

‘Chaperon?’

‘That’s the word! Any road, Alice went as chaperon and to see to Miss Julia’s clothes and things, and there was all sorts of talk below stairs when the two of them got back. For one thing, they’d got themselves into a fight with London bobbies and for another, Miss Julia had met a young man and them not introduced neither.’

‘So Daisy’s mam wasn’t very good at chaperoning?’

‘Nay. Nothing like that. Miss Julia had fallen real hard for that young man and her mind was made up. Headstrong she’s always been and not ten chaperons could have done much about it. A doctor that young man was, name of MacMalcolm. Was him seen to her when she got knocked out in the fight. That was the start of it.’

‘But I can’t imagine Mrs Sutton fighting, nor Mrs Dwerryhouse. What had they done?’

‘Gone to a suffragette meeting, that’s what. Those suffragettes were agitating for women to get a say in things. Women couldn’t vote, in those days.’ Jack Catchpole wasn’t altogether sure that giving votes to women had been a wise move, though he’d never said so within his wife’s hearing.

‘So then what?’

‘Then nothing, Gracie Fielding. It’s a quarter to six and time us was off home. Lily’ll have the supper on and her can’t abide lateness.’

‘But you’ll tell me some more tomorrow?’ The Sutton story had the makings of a love book about it, but unlike love stories it was real.

‘Happen I will. But what’s told within these walls isn’t for blabbing around the hostel, remember!’

‘Not a word. Hand on heart.’ Besides, she liked Drew and Daisy too much to pass on scandal about them – if scandal there was to be.

‘Right then, lass. We’ll shut up shop for the night. See you in t’morning.’

Amicably they walked together to the ornate iron gates that Catchpole regarded as his drawbridge and portcullis both, though Gracie knew they would not be chained and padlocked until he had made his final evening rounds – just to be sure. On the lookout for cats an’ things he’d assured her, but it was really, she supposed, to bid his garden good night.

‘Wonder what’ll be on the six o’clock news,’ Gracie murmured. ‘It’s worrying, isn’t it?’

‘It is. All those German bombers coming day after day cheeky as you like in broad daylight!’

‘But they aren’t getting it all their own way!’

‘No.’ And thank God for a handful of young lads and their fighters and for young girls, an’ all, that were in the thick of it. He wouldn’t want a lass of his firing an anti-aircraft gun. If they’d had bairns, that was. Happen, he thought as he clanged shut the gates, if him and Lily had no family to laugh over then they had none to worry over now. It worked both ways. ‘Good night, Gracie.’