Whisper on the Wind

4

It was not until the last of the milk had been delivered, the last empty bottle collected, that Roz said:

‘He’s flying again.’ The words came reluctantly, angrily. ‘After what happened two nights ago, Paul was on ops again last night.’

‘But I thought – didn’t you say their plane was a write-off? And surely they can’t fly without a gunner?’

‘They didn’t need to. Jock’s replacement arrived yesterday morning. As soon as Paul told me, I got a nasty feeling inside.’ And cold, frightening fingers tracing the length of her backbone. ‘Oh, K-King isn’t airworthy; they’ve already removed the engines and wings to make it easier to move. Then they’ll put the whole lot on a transporter and send it back to the factory that made it. It’ll be like a new plane when they’ve finished with it and nobody will ever know that Jock –’

‘Hush, now.’ Kath pulled on the reins, calling the pony to a stop. ‘You mustn’t get upset again. You said yourself that Paul is over his thirteenth op; the unlucky one’s behind him. He’ll be back, all right. Bet everything’s gone just fine. It’s nearly light; we’ll be hearing them soon.’

‘No. They didn’t leave till midnight. It’ll be an hour yet, at least. Unless it’s been France or the Low Countries, which I doubt.’ She shivered then dug her hands into her pockets, hunching into the upturned collar of her coat, holding herself tight against her anger. ‘I thought he’d be all right; when they came back all shot-up I thought at least they’d be given some kind of a break from flying. But no. A crew goes on leave so Paul’s lot take over their plane. Hell, but I’d like a few of those desk-wallahs to have a go. Just one sticky op so they’d know what it’s like. It was inhuman, sending them out again so soon after what happened.’

‘Steady on, Roz. Maybe they had a reason. You know what they say about falling off a horse – that you should get straight back up again? Perhaps that’s why they did it – so they won’t lose their nerve.’

‘Ha!’ Roz clicked her tongue and the pony walked on. ‘And as if that isn’t bad enough, he’s going on leave as soon as they’ve been to debriefing and I won’t see him before he goes, though he’s promised to ring me. Every night, he said, if he can manage to get through.’

‘Then what are you worrying about? Everything’s going to be fine. I heard them go last night, but I didn’t count. How many went?’

‘Nine. I stood at the window. It was a good sky; quite a bit of cloud-cover for them. Oh, Kath. I get sick, just to think about him …’

‘I know, love. I know. Do you want to take Polly’s milk, or shall I?’ Change the subject. Talk about anything but flying. ‘And tell me – why doesn’t the other gate lodge get milk from us? Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen them.’

‘You wouldn’t. She keeps herself to herself. Doesn’t drink cow’s milk – she has her own goat. Bombed out in that first big raid on Manchester, I believe. She’s an artist – does illustrations for advertising, or something. Gran was glad to let her have the lodge. It had been empty for ages.’

‘She’s alone?’

‘Yes, but that isn’t unusual these days.’

‘Suppose not.’ Keep at it. Just don’t let her talk about Paul. ‘What’s she called?’

‘Don’t know, but Arnie calls her the Manchester lady.’

‘Arnie.’ Kath smiled. ‘He’s a great kid.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Polly’s going to miss him when the war’s over.’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s been –’ Kath stopped. She was getting nowhere. ‘Listen, Roz. Paul will be all right and you can’t go on like this, every time he’s flying. Worrying isn’t going to help him – unless there’s something else?’

‘What do you mean?’ Roz jerked out of her apathy. ‘Paul’s flying. Two nights ago they lost their gunner, then crash landed – isn’t that enough? And isn’t the prospect of not seeing him for ten days more than enough?’ she demanded.

So something else was bothering her. She’d been sure of it. All day yesterday Roz had hardly said a word and there had been a tenseness about her, a strangeness.

‘Roz. Are you and –’ None of her business, but somebody had to talk to her about it. ‘Are you and Paul lovers?’ There. She’d said it. She turned her head away, not wanting to see the truth of it in the young girl’s face; turned away from the anger she knew was to come.

‘What the hell has it got to do with you, Kath Allen? Mind your own business – right?’

‘Right!’

They walked in silence along Ridings drive, between the rows of shiny-black, dripping trees. They had almost reached Home Farm when Roz said:

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. I know you were only trying to help. Kath – you can’t get pregnant, can you; not the first time?’

‘They say not, but I wouldn’t bank on it.’ Oh, the silly young thing; so innocent it just wasn’t true. She took a deep breath, trying hard to keep her voice even. ‘But best you don’t take chances, Roz, next time. Maybe when Paul comes back off leave you should have a talk with him about it? They tell men about things like that, I believe, in the Forces. He’ll see that nothing happens.’

‘Yes, I will. I must. Only at the time it seemed so – so right.’

‘I know. And nobody’s blaming you. It had to happen, I suppose, sooner or later. But be careful, Roz.’

Kath sent a jet of water bouncing over the cow-shed floor. ‘Cheer up, Roz. They’re all nine safely back. Aren’t you relieved that Paul has really broken his jinx, now?’

‘Of course I am. I was thinking that he’ll probably be on his way to the station by now. Wish I could have seen him, just for a second; even a wave as they drove past. I’d have settled for that. Wish he’d asked me to go home with him, though. I want so much to meet his family. Paul said his sister was trying to get some leave to be with him. They haven’t seen each other for a year. It must be hard for them, being apart. She and Paul are twins – did I tell you?’

‘You didn’t, but at least for the next ten days you can stop counting bombers; that should make a change.’

‘Yes, but it’s going to be a very long ten days, though heaven knows they deserve a break. And he’ll phone, if he can get through.’

‘Then you’ll just have to learn to live from phone-call to phone-call, won’t you?’ Kath rolled up the hosepipe and hung it on the wall. ‘But it wouldn’t be you, would it, without something to worry about?’

‘Sorry.’ Roz smiled briefly. ‘I do go on and on about me and Paul, don’t I? I’m selfish. I should spare a thought for you. Poor Kath. You don’t know when you’ll see Barney again; all you’ve got to look forward to is letters.’

Look forward? My, but that was a laugh, when recently she had come to almost dread the arrival of Barney’s next letter. But soon he would receive the one she wrote to him on Christmas Day; a letter full of love and reassurance. She had hoped he would come to realize that many a soldier serving overseas had left behind a wife in the armed forces, and was proud of her, too. She wished that Barney could come to be proud of a wife who was doing everything she could for the war effort; everything she could to help bring him safely home. And she wished with all her heart he would begin to understand, and to trust her.

‘Letters? Can’t say I’m looking forward, exactly, to the next one. Barney’s still mad at me for joining up. And he makes me feel guilty about what I’ve done because I know I shouldn’t be so happy. Wars aren’t meant to be happy, are they?’

‘I suppose not. And I don’t know why I’m going on about Paul asking me home with him. Can you imagine what Gran would say if I told her I was going off with a man she’s never even heard of – even if Mat would give me the time off. Why is my life in such a mess?’

‘Come on.’ Kath grinned. ‘You wouldn’t change one bit of it, and you know it. And if we don’t get this mucking-out finished we’ll miss drinkings. Y’know, I’m looking forward to the threshing on Monday, aren’t you?’

‘Not really.’ Roz frowned. ‘It’s a back-breaking, dirty job; I’ve had some. I helped out last time. Everybody turns-to; every farm hereabouts who can spare a man sends him along.

‘Grace has the time of her life, though she won’t admit it. How she’ll provide food for everyone who comes I don’t know, with rationing the way it is. But she will. She always does. Look, that’s Grace at the kitchen window, holding up a mug. Come on – looks as if we’re going to be lucky!’

Happy? Kath thought, washing her hands at the stand-pipe, drying them ponderously. Yes, she was happy. Indeed, she had never thought such happiness possible and it seemed wrong that Barney could not, would not, understand her need for this one, wonderful experience; wouldn’t give her his blessing and be proud of her. But he never would. She was certain of it, now.

‘Hang on, Roz! Wait for me!’

‘It isn’t fair, Aunt Poll, me having to go back to school the very day the threshing machine’s coming to the farm. I’ll miss it all, and I wanted to help.’

‘Well, you can’t. School’s more important than threshing day and anyway, you’re too young to help. The law says you’ve got to be fourteen.’

‘But I’m big enough.’ Arnie’s bottom lip trembled.

‘Aye, I’ll grant you that.’ A fine, strong lad he’d grown into. ‘But not old enough, so you’d best eat up your toast and be off with you. You’ve got to learn all you can if you’re to get that scholarship.’

A place at the grammar school; Polly wanted it for him more than she cared to admit. Arnie was a bright boy, his teacher said. Given to carelessness sometimes, though that was understandable in the young, and too eager to be out of the schoolroom and away into the fields. But bright, for all that. If he’d only take more pride in his handwriting and not cover his page with ink blots and smudges, then yes, he stood a very good chance of winning a scholarship.

He’d look grand in that uniform with the striped tie and the green cap, Polly thought proudly, though where she’d find the clothing coupons and money for such finery she wished someone would tell her. But she would manage. She always had.

‘Eat your toast, lad,’ she murmured, ‘and don’t be so free with that jam. That pot has to last us all month, remember.’

‘Yes, Aunt Poll.’ He eyed a strawberry sitting temptingly near the top of the jar and decided to leave it there for tomorrow. ‘I bet you’ll be helping with the threshing. I bet you’ll be able to get a good look at that engine.’ Nobody told grown-ups what to do. He couldn’t wait to be a grown-up.

‘No, I won’t. Doubt if I’ll see it at all, noisy, dirty old thing. I’ll be helping Mrs Ramsden feed all those people, though how she’ll find rations enough for seven extra is a mystery to me.’ Grace Ramsden was proud of Home Farm’s reputation as a good eating place, in spite of food rationing. Like as not there’d be rabbit pie and rice pudding; good farmhouse standbys. Rumours had been flying, since the Japanese came into the war. No more rice, people said, and if their armies got as far as India, no more tea. Now the rice, Polly considered, folk could do without if they had to, but tea was altogether another thing. ‘And anyway, who’s to say for sure that the team’ll be coming today? Mat will have to wait his turn. There’s a war on, lad, don’t forget.’

‘I know, Aunt Poll.’ People said there’s a war on all the time these days, as if a war was something terrible. Wars weren’t all that bad, Arnie considered. They’d be a whole lot of fun if it wasn’t for people getting killed. It would be awful when it was all over and he had to go home. He liked being with Aunt Poll, having regular meals and regular bath-nights, and living in the country was a whole lot better than living in Hull.

He liked Aunt Poll a lot; she was better, he had to admit, than his mother. Not that he was being unkind to his real mother; it was just that he had to try very hard, these days, to remember what she looked like.

‘Do you think,’ he frowned, taking his balaclava from the fire guard where it had been set to warm, ‘that Mam’s forgotten where I am?’

‘Now you know she hasn’t. Didn’t she send you a card at Christmas with a ten-shilling note inside it? Of course she hasn’t forgotten you.’

No indeed, though she wished she had, Polly mourned silently. What was more, an action like that gave rise to suspicion, especially when such generosity had previously been noticeable by its absence.

But at least Mrs Bagley’s visits had ceased after that first year, for now she was on war work; on nights, mostly, though night-work could cover many occupations, Polly brooded, especially when a woman bleached her hair with peroxide and plucked her eyebrows, somehow managing to get bright red nail varnish and lipstick when most other women hadn’t seen such things in the shops for months. My word, yes. There was night-work and night-work.

Arnie pulled on his knitted helmet and its matching gloves. He’d been delighted to open the soft, well-wrapped parcel on Christmas morning. He wouldn’t mind betting that when he got to school this morning, he’d be the only boy with a khaki balaclava and gloves; khaki, like the soldiers wore.

He called ‘So-long, Aunt Poll,’ then ran out quickly before she could attempt to kiss him; kissing was for girls. Whistling joyfully he squinted up at the Lancaster bomber that flew in low to land at RAF Peddles-bury.

Smashing, those Lancasters were. Great, frightening things, with four roaring engines and two guns and bomb-doors that opened at the press of a button. He wouldn’t mind flying a Lancaster. Pity he was only nine and a bit, though with luck the war would last long enough for him to be seventeen-and-a-half. He crossed his fingers, frowning. Grown-ups got all the fun.

Climbing the garden fence he made for the long, straight drive and the beeches and oaks that stood either side of it like unmoving, unspeaking sentries. This morning he was taking the ‘field’ way to school, cutting behind Ridings and the pasture at the back of Home Farm, to pick up the lane that led to the pub and the school nearby. This morning’s journey was longer and wetter underfoot and usually taken in spring and summer only, but Arnie felt cheated to be missing the dirt and din of a threshing day and was determined at least to see the monstrous, huffing, puffing engine; to close his eyes with delight as it clattered and clanked past him, making the most wonderful, hideous noises.

Instead, he saw Hester Fairchild. She was standing very still, gazing at the ploughed earth around her and she looked up, startled, as he approached.

‘Arnie! Hullo! Taking the long way to school this morning?’

He gave her a beam of delight. He liked Mrs Fairchild; not because Aunt Poll liked her but because Mrs Fairchild liked small boys. She was always pleased, really pleased, to see him. And she didn’t look at him as if he were a nuisance nor speak to him in the silly voice grown-ups used when they spoke to children.

‘I’ve come this way to see if the threshing team has got here. Are you going to see it, too?’

‘No, Arnie. I came to look at the ploughing – to see how they’re getting on.’ She had come, truth known, because she knew the ploughs would be idle today; because Mat and Jonty and the Italian would be busy all day in the stackyard and she wouldn’t have to acknowledge a man she would rather were anywhere than on her land. ‘Shall we walk together as far as the house?’

‘All right.’ Arnie liked Ridings, too; liked it because it was big and full of echoes and hollow noises. He liked the big, painted pictures on the walls; pictures of people with serious faces, dressed in old-fashioned clothes and whose eyes followed him as he walked past them.

He dug his hands into his trouser pockets and matched his step to that of his grown-up friend.

‘Did you know,’ he confided, ‘there’s a boy in the village whose dad is abroad in the Army and yesterday the postman brought him a big box of oranges, all the way from Cairo. Twenty-four, there were. Can you imagine having twenty-four oranges, all at once?’

‘I can’t, Arnie. I really can’t.’ Not for a long time had anyone been able to buy oranges – except perhaps one at a time and after queueing for it at the village shop. Nor could children like Arnie remember the joy of peeling a banana, for that particular fruit had disappeared completely at the very beginning of the war. ‘Twenty-four oranges, the lucky boy! Never mind, Arnie. Perhaps someone will send you oranges from abroad one day.’

‘Nah. Not me. Haven’t got a dad, see? Well, I have, but not an official one. Stands to reason, dunnit, when I’m called Bagley and Mam says me dad’s called Kellygodrottim. Glad I haven’t got a name like that. Think how they’d laugh at school if I was called Arnold William Kellygodrottim.’ He’d do without the oranges, thanks all the same.

‘Just think!’ Hester’s voice trembled on the edge of laughter. What a joy of a child this was. Small wonder Polly adored him. ‘But I’m afraid you won’t see the threshing team. The driver won’t set out with such a big machine until it’s properly light. It’ll be another half hour before it gets here.’

She reached the orchard gate then turned to watch him walk away, raising her hand to match his wave, thinking how cruel life could be when an unwanted, carelessly-conceived love child like Arnie could grow up so straight and strong and delightful.

And I couldn’t give you a boy, Martin; couldn’t give a living son to Ridings. Nor, when our babe died, could I try again.

I’m sorry, my love. Forgive me. I didn’t know. Believe me, I didn’t know …

The threshing team clanked into the yard on great, grinding, cast-iron wheels, spewing out coal-smoke, throwing mud in all directions.

‘Good grief,’ Kath gasped.

‘First time you’ve seen one?’ Jonty smiled.

It was. She stood still and wide-eyed, thinking so strange a contraption could only have come from an age that had known Stephenson’s Rocket. It was almost a steam-roller, yet with the look of an ancient steam train about it and it pulled a brightly painted contrivance behind it.

‘That’s the thresher,’ Jonty supplied, following her gaze. ‘They’ll back it up to the stack and the sheaves will be thrown down into it, into the drum.’

‘Y-yes.’ Kath frowned. ‘Does it work on electricity?’

‘Nothing quite so convenient.’ Jonty shrugged. ‘Look – see that big wheel on the engine beside the driver’s seat? It’s that wheel that connects by a belt to the thresher; and, roughly, is what drives it. And without blinding you with science,’ he laughed, ‘the straw comes out at one end, the wheat at the other and the chaff – the wheat husks, that is – drop down below it.’ He smiled again and his eyes, thick-lashed and blue, crinkled mischievously. ‘Got that?’

‘Yes. Well, I think so.’ My, but he was handsome. ‘You’ll let me down lightly, Jonty?’

‘I will. If you aren’t afraid of heights you can go on top of the stack with Marco. He’ll be feeding the sheaves down into the drum; you can keep them coming to him – okay?’

It wasn’t. All at once she was apprehensive, but she said she’d do her best – and thought how foolish she had been to worry about milking a cow, when, had she known about traction engines and threshing machines that day she volunteered for the Land Army, she’d have taken to her heels and run a mile!