Whisper on the Wind

2

There was no denying that bicycles figured importantly in Kathleen Allen’s life. They always had, as far back as she could remember, starting with the orphanage and the little tricycles that were the only memory worth keeping from those days of grudging charity. The bright red three-wheeler with the noisy bell was her favourite and she had pedalled around and around the asphalted yard on this gaudy friend who shared her secret dreams; dreams in which she was not an orphan but a real little girl whose mother dressed her in a buttercup-sprigged cotton dress with knickers to match and whose father gave her rides on the crossbar of his bicycle and boasted, ‘Our Kathleen’s doing well at school.’ Our. That lovely, belonging little word.

When her in-service days began, there had been her first proud possession, something entirely her own, paid for at three shillings and sixpence a month, for a whole year. A second-hand bicycle, black-painted, with a bag on the back and a basket at the front.

‘Lizzie,’ she whispered, remembering. ‘Old Tin Lizzie.’

She had ridden Tin Lizzie on her afternoons off and on summer evenings when she finished work. She was cycling in the country the day she and Barney met. Had it not been for a flat tyre, the lorry driver would never have jumped from his cab and offered his help.

‘Oh dear, chucks. Know how to mend it?’

She shook her head, knowing only that the cost of repair would take a large bite from the one pound ten shillings she received on the last day of each month.

So the driver put the bicycle on the back of his lorry and drove to the Birmingham town house in which she worked, offering to remove the wheel and repair the puncture in his own backyard. To her shame she had refused, for where was the guarantee she would ever see her wheel again?

But she saw Barnaby Allen again that very next evening when he knocked loudly on the front door – the front door, mind you – saying he was the bicycle repair man. The parlourmaid pointed in the direction of the area steps, reminding him tartly that the kitchen door was the one upon which to knock when doing business with a housemaid.

Barney. His cheekiness had made her laugh and the dedication with which he courted her had been quite bewildering. And now, at six o’clock in the morning she was cycling into her new, exciting life, wishing she knew where Alderby St Mary was, let alone Matthew Ramsden’s farm.

She stopped, listening, eyes peering into a darkness that came back at her in dense, rolling waves. ‘Alderby’s about a mile down the lane,’ Flora had told her at the hostel. ‘Keep straight on and you can’t miss it. Watch out for the Air Force boys, though. Drive those trucks like fiends some of them do …’

She set off again cautiously; you had to take care in the blackout. Swollen noses, bruises and shattered spectacles had become a joke, almost. ‘Jumped out and hit you, did it?’ Unexpected obstacles had a lot to answer for, especially lamp-posts.

Ahead, the first pale streaks of daybreak coloured the sky, tipping the clouds with yellow, all at once giving shape to houses and trees and the tower of a church. This must be the place, sitting at the end of the longest, darkest, slowest mile she had ever pedalled. Surely she would find someone soon, who could tell her where to find Matthew Ramsden’s farm.

She stood still again and listened, breath indrawn. That was something else about the blackout. You couldn’t see, so you listened. Surprising how another sense took over. Someone was there and not too far away, either. She pulled in her breath once more, heard the slow, rhythmic grating of cartwheels and the clop of hooves somewhere to her right. ‘Hullo?’ she called eagerly. ‘Hullo, there!’

‘Over here! Watch out for the horse-trough!’ A pinpoint of light made circles in the darkness and she walked carefully in the direction of the voice. A pony and trap came into focus; milk bottles clinked.

‘Hullo?’ she said again.

‘Here I am.’ A woman’s voice. ‘Looking for someone?’

‘Goodness! Am I glad to meet you.’ Kath’s laugh was high with relief. ‘I’m looking for Ridings Home Farm. Is this Alderby St Mary?’

‘It is. Just hang on till I check that I haven’t missed anybody.’ A spot of torchlight shone on the pages of a book, lighting a young face and a fall of auburn hair. ‘That’s it, then. Just the school milk to drop off, and Polly’s, then I’m finished. I’m Roz Fairchild, by the way. I work at Ridings.’ A hand reached out.

‘Kathleen Allen. Kath.’ She grasped the hand firmly, ‘I’m pleased to meet you.’ She really was.

‘Not as glad as Mat Ramsden’s going to be to meet you. He’s desperate for help. Hope you’re his new landgirl?’

‘That’s me, though I’ve only just joined. It’ll be my first farm and I’m a bit nervous.’

‘Then don’t be, because I’m new to it, too. This is my first day – my first official day. We’ll muddle through between us.’

‘I can’t milk, Roz.’ Worrying about those cows again, dammit.

‘Neither can I, but it’s machine milking at Mat’s so it won’t be too bad. Jonty will show us how. Let’s be making tracks, eh? I’m just about frozen.’ The weather wasn’t letting up, thank heaven. There’d be no ploughing but there wouldn’t be any flying, either. Paul would make it to the dance tonight. ‘Grace is sure to have the kettle on. C’mon, Daisy. Hup, girl.’

The little pony set off with a toss of its head that set the harness jingling.

Daisy, Kath smiled; Roz and Daisy. Two friends, and she was on her way to hot tea and a welcome.

Happiness flushed her cheeks. She wouldn’t spoil one minute of this day by worrying about what Barney’s letter would bring. There was a war on and a woman whose husband was away at war must learn to think for herself, make decisions she would once never dreamed of making. No, Kath decided, suddenly headily defiant, she wouldn’t worry – well, not until Barney came home.

She smiled with pure pleasure and fell in behind the milk-float that would lead her to the farm. New friends and tea. What more could a girl – a landgirl – want on this most special morning?

They came upon Ridings unexpectedly, rounding the broad sweep of lane to see it there ahead of them. It was one of the nice things about the old house, Roz always thought. Now, the fast-lightening sky silhouetted it sharply, sending a glow like candlelight through the empty stone windows, gentling the jagged, broken shell.

‘What’s that old ruin? An abbey?’ Kath gasped.

‘That’s Ridings,’ Roz laughed, ‘or what’s left of it. I live there.’ She always enjoyed telling people she lived in a ruin.

‘Oh, goodness, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean …’ Her embarrassment was short-lived, for Roz was smiling. ‘I mean – it’s an unusual name, isn’t it?’

‘Ridings? I suppose it is. It’s because half of it is in the North Riding and half of it’s in the West Riding. The boundary line runs right through the estate. And it isn’t all a ruin. There’s a bit more to it than that. It was built in the shape of a T, you see, and the top of the T was completely destroyed, but the stem, the bit at the back, survived. That’s the part we live in.’

She called the pony to a halt. She loved this aspect of the old house; always from this spot she sent up a thank you that it hadn’t been entirely gutted that December day, twenty-four years ago.

‘It must have been one heck of a place,’ Kath breathed. ‘And just look at those gates …’

The entrance to Ridings had been built with pride. Sweeping stone gateposts were topped by finely chiselled greyhounds and on either side of them the gate lodges stood splendidly ornate. Kath gazed at the intricately patterned gates and the garish morning light that filtered through the delicate ironwork.

‘The height of three men and as old as the house itself.’ Roz smiled, though the name of the craftsman who created them had never been known. ‘I’m glad you like them. Mind, we live in fear that someone’s going to take them away before very much longer.’

She hoped the gates would escape the scrap metal hunters; men who came with the blessing of the Government and removed gates and railings without so much as a by-your-leave, carting them off to be melted down for the war effort. Only field gates were safe, and unpatriotic though it was to harbour such thoughts, Roz was glad that so far Ridings’ gates had not been found.

‘Who did it?’ Kath demanded. ‘Cromwell?’

‘No. This one we can’t blame on him, though the Fairchilds were Royalists, I believe. It was a fire; a wiring fault. Funny, really, that it survived for nearly four hundred years with candles and oil lamps and then my grandfather decided that electricity would be safer.’

‘How big was it?’ Much bigger, surely, than the orphanage.

‘Quite a size – over twenty bedrooms, but I never saw it the way it was. There are pictures, though, and photographs, and I sometimes think the fire was meant to be because Gran and me couldn’t have kept it going; not a place that size.’

‘It’s yours? You own it?’

‘It’s Gran’s. Before my father died – he was an architect – he had the ruins tidied up, sort of. The fire destroyed the roof so everything had to be pulled down for safety, except the outer walls. Then Gran had creepers and climbing roses planted against them and in summer it looks really beautiful. It’s mellowed, I suppose.’

‘And was much left, at the back?’

‘Too much, I’m afraid. It’s murder keeping it warm in winter. The part that survived was once the kitchen block and servants’ quarters and my father drew up the plans when Gran had it done over. You’ll see it, when you meet her.

‘But let’s get Daisy watered and fed, then we can thaw ourselves out at Grace’s fire, and cadge a cup of tea.’

Roz looked at the young woman beside her, seeing her clearly for the first time, amazed by her beauty. There was no mistaking it, even in a face pinched with cold and tied round with a head-scarf. Deep, blue-grey eyes, thick-lashed, and a full, sensuous mouth.

‘Is your boyfriend in the forces, Kathleen?’

‘My husband is. Barney.’ Her lips moved into a brief smile. ‘He’s in North Africa – a driver in the Service Corps. And call me Kath, will you? I’m used to Kath. What about you?’ Too young to be married. Seventeen, perhaps?

‘Not married, but I’ve got a boyfriend. I’m seeing him tonight. There’s a – Damn!’ She reached for a bottle of milk. ‘I forgot Polly at the lodge! Won’t be a minute. Just follow Daisy, will you? She knows her way home. I’ll catch you up.’

Kath turned to watch the girl who ran swiftly back to the gates. A little older than seventeen, she conceded, but in love for the first time if shining eyes were anything to go by. Amazing how important people were in wartime; how easily you got to know them. Before the war you didn’t ask such personal questions; you kept yourself to yourself and respected the other person’s right to privacy. Yet now it was necessary to make friends quickly, because one thing no one had a lot of was time. For some, there wasn’t even a tomorrow. Young as she was, Roz could already have learned that, poor kid.

But tomorrow was a long way off when today had only just begun. Lovely, lovely today. Her first day in the country where she had always longed to be.

‘Sorry, Barney,’ she whispered, ‘but you owe me this one.’

Smiling, she set off after the little pony.

‘There now, that’ll be Roz. I thought she’d forgotten us.’ Polly Appleby glanced up from the porridge pan at the clink of the milk bottle on the back-door step. ‘Bring it in, Arnie, there’s a good lad.’

She watched the boy dart away. He would expect the top of the milk on his porridge and she would give it to him; after all a growing lad needed a good breakfast inside him. Arnie ate every last scrap of food she set before him with silent dedication and no I-don’t-like-this and I-don’t-like-thats. His appreciation of food made cooking a joy, even with rationing the way it was. He’d been like that right from the start, come to think of it; a small, hungry seven-year-old, scrawny and unwashed, the last of the bunch.

They had started, that day the evacuees arrived in Alderby, at the far end of the village and house by house the pretty little girls and the clean, tidy boys had been picked out and taken in. Since she was the last call on the list, Polly accepted, it stood to reason she had been given what was left; an evacuee called Arnold Bagley whose clothes didn’t fit and who’d scowled at her something alarming.

‘I’m afraid,’ said the WVS lady who accompanied the billeting officer, ‘that he’s all we have to offer, but there is an allowance of five shillings a week …’

Polly had squirmed inside at the injustice of it and her heart warmed to the unwanted boy who stood on her doorstep, his possessions in a carrier-bag, a label pinned to his jacket.

‘Just what I wanted,’ she said briskly. ‘Come you in, lad, and let’s get you sorted out.’

She’d have wanted him with or without the five shillings. Arnold Bagley was a challenge, a child to be cleaned and fed and put snugly to sleep in the little back bedroom. And cleaning and feeding he received, for there had been scarcely a pick of flesh on the young bones.

She recalled that first meal. Rabbit pie and rice pudding for afters. He’d eaten it as if it were the first food he’d seen all week, then looked with longing at the pudding dish and asked to be allowed to scrape it clean.

‘There was another lady with Roz, Aunty Poll. I saw her.’ Arnie took his place at the table again, sitting with spoon erect, waiting. ‘She was pushing a bike and she had trousers on.’

‘There now, that’ll be the landgirl. Mat Ramsden’ll be relieved she’s come, even though the lass won’t know a cow from a bull. Come on, then. Get on with that porridge whilst I make your toast.’

She smiled fondly. The lad was a credit to her, everybody said so. He’d filled out and was three inches taller than when she got him and his two top teeth had grown in straight as a die.

She’d had her anxious moments, though, clothing that ever-growing, ever-hungry frame, but with the help of jumble sales and hand-me-downs she had managed. Arnie was the centre of her lonely life and just let his feckless mother try to take him back to Hull. Just let her try!

She turned the bread on the fork and held it to the fire. There’d be something fresh to talk about this morning when she went up to the house. Pity the frost hadn’t broken in the night. The Mistress was letting that ploughing business get out of all proportion and no use telling her it would get done in the Lord’s good time, though it always, had and it always would be. They’d manage, somehow.

‘Jam on it, or marmalade?’ she said to Arnie.

‘It looks,’ Grace Ramsden pulled aside the kitchen blackout, ‘as if our landgirl has arrived.’ She nodded in the direction of the dairy where Roz and a strange young woman unloaded the milk-float. ‘And making herself useful already. The post has come, by the way. On the table.’ She pulled out the fire-damper and set the kettle to boil. Roz had managed the milk-round all right, it seemed. But then, the lass knew the village, didn’t she; lived in it since she was a bairn of two, bless her. ‘Ready for a bit of breakfast, then?’

She broke eggs into a pan, a contented woman, a rare woman, even, who recognized happiness the moment it came upon her, not like some who saw it only when it was past, and lost. These moments were happy ones, to be lived and remembered. Just this morning when she shook Jonty awake, she had felt such a blaze of happiness to see him there that she had thanked God yet again for letting her keep her son, then sent up another prayer for all the sons who had gone to war and the mothers who had waved them bravely on their way.

Jonty had been their only child, she frowned, basting egg-yolks with spitting bacon fat. She and Mat had never been blessed with a daughter, but now she was to have girls around the place at last; two young lasses to help on the farm and be in and out of her kitchen all day, she shouldn’t wonder. Just to think of it gave her pleasure.

‘Fried bread?’ she demanded of her husband who didn’t look up from the letter he was reading.

Fried bread for Jonty, too, when he’d seen to the cows, and the lasses would soon be in for tea and toast, huffing and puffing with cold and warming their hands at her fire.

Daylight had been late coming this morning. Farming was hard enough in winter without the blackout making it worse, Grace considered, but soon the shortest day would be past them. Winter would be half-way gone and the days would begin to lengthen; there’d be the first snowdrop beneath the holly hedge where they always found it and spring just around the corner.

She gave an involuntary shudder. Something, no mistaking it, had just walked over her grave. Or maybe it was only her silly self being so contented with her own little world that Someone up there was sending down a warning.

Grace Ramsden lifted her eyes, offering a silent apology, assuring Him she really did count her blessings and would count them harder, if need be.

‘Fried bread, I asked you,’ she murmured, ‘and you take not a bit of notice. What’s so interesting in that letter, then?’

‘It’s the farm man. They’ve got us one. He can plough, too, it seems.’

‘There you are, then! Problem solved, so why the long face, you daft old brush?’

‘Why?’ Mat handed over the envelope. ‘Read this. Go on – read it.’

‘Oh, my word.’ Grace frowned when she had read the letter, then read it again. ‘This is going to put the cat among the pigeons, all right. Mrs Fairchild isn’t going to like this at all. And who’s to be the one to break it to her, will you tell me?’

‘Mrs Fairchild’s land has got to be ploughed and worked for the duration, lass, so she don’t have much of a choice,’ Mat retorted, tight-lipped. ‘Nor do we, come to that. Complain and all they’ll do is tell us there’s a war on.’

‘Then if you want my opinion,’ Grace laid the letter on the table, ‘that lot at the War Ag. are dafter than I thought.’

Trouble, that letter was going to bring; nothing but trouble and heartache.

Polly saw the black and white bird as it slipped sleekly into the holly bush, and crossed her fingers.

‘Drat you, bird,’ she hissed.

She didn’t like magpies; to see one so early in the day and flying away from a frosty sun, she liked still less. Devil’s bird; bringer of ill luck. One for sorrow …

Taking a deep breath she hurried past the bush. Nor did she uncross her fingers until she opened the back door at Ridings.

‘Well now, you’ll have heard about the landgirl?’ She hung up her coat, hoping the Mistress had not, wanting to be first with the news.

‘I’ve heard.’ Hester Fairchild set the teapot to warm. ‘It’s the other business I find so hard to accept.’ Her face was pale, her mouth tight-set. ‘How could they, Polly? How dare they?’

‘Dare they what?’ Polly was mystified. She had hoped to have a chat about the landgirl this morning; discover her name and age and if she looked like shaping-up to farm work. ‘What’s happening, then, that I don’t know about?’

‘I told Mat; told him to ring the War Ag. at once. But no, they said, there hadn’t been a mistake and he’d be arriving on the first of January. Mat says we’ve little choice in the matter. If we refuse to take him, Ridings will go to the bottom of the list and the man can use a horse-plough, they said.’

‘So where’s the bother? Seems Mat’s got what he wanted and he’ll be able to make a start on those acres of yours. I’d have thought that things were bucking up a bit and you could’ve looked forward to the new year with a bit of hope; aye, and money to come once that grassland of yours has been seen to,’ Polly reasoned, ever practical.

‘Seen to by an Italian, because that’s what we’ve been offered.’ Her voice shook with anger. ‘That’s what my husband gave his life for, Polly; to have his land worked by a man who fought with the Germans.’

‘Nay, surely not …’

‘A Fascist, I tell you! We’re so short of manpower that we’re having to make prisoners of war work. But I don’t want one here. Didn’t Italy declare war on us after Dunkirk; stab us in the back? He’ll be every bit as bad as a German!’

Why must they do this to her, to a woman who had hated all things German with a bitter intensity since the December day the telegram came. From that day on she had never trusted them and she had been right, because now they were at war with us again. And Italy fighting with them.

But thank God that no one at Ridings need speak to the man when he came, for there must be no fraternization, the War Ag. had told Mat. The man would be brought to the farm each morning from the camp at Helpsley and taken back there by a prison guard. He’d be trusted not to try to escape and anyway, who could hope to escape from an island?

Don’t worry, they had said on the phone. One or two farmers had already taken Italian prisoners and it was working out all right. Worry? It would be worry enough just to have the man on her land; on Martin’s land.

Yet did she have a choice when the first of March would be on her before she’d hardly had time to think? All the lonely years she had struggled to keep Ridings land intact, yet now it would be given to others to farm if she refused the help of a prisoner of war. But to have such a one walking Martin’s acres was too much. The world had gone completely mad.

‘Tea,’ said Polly briefly, setting down the tray with agitated hands. She knew the Mistress almost as well as she knew herself; knew the pent-up emotions that had found no relief with the passing of time, that writhed and festered inside her, still. Pity the poor woman couldn’t have given way to her feelings as she, Polly, had done. The day they told her about Tom’s death she had walked and walked, hugging herself tightly, weeping until there were no more tears inside her. In Flanders, her young man had been killed, the spring after the Master was taken.

But Mrs Fairchild’s sort didn’t weep and rage at life. The gentry hid their feelings because that was what they’d been brought up to do. Pity she’d had to stifle all that grief and bitterness, because hating got you nowhere. Thank the Lord that what happened that December day hadn’t affected young Roz, she thought gratefully, for the lass was as happy as the day was long. Which was just as well, all things considered, for it would be her and not the Mistress who’d have to work with the prisoner.