Jubilee (11 page)

Robert laughed. ‘Not to worry.’

‘Didn’t your mother make you wash before meals?’ Martha served the stew. Evie nodded, humiliation flooding her. And more than humiliation, the image of her mother came to her,
standing in the kitchen and serving the tea: not stew but dripping on toast . . . Something blocked her throat and for a moment she couldn’t breathe.

A hand stroked her arm. ‘Been a long day, hasn’t it?’ Robert said. ‘Eat up now, you’ll feel better for the food.’ Evie nodded and picked up the knife and
fork. Her brother shoved forkfuls into his mouth. Evie tried to be neater but it was hard when her stomach was almost touching her back with hunger. ‘Thank you, Mr Winter,’ she muttered
with her mouth full of carrot.

‘Call me Robert.’ He looked amused. ‘I’m only eighteen.’

‘I’ll be off then.’ Martha folded the dishcloth over the tap.

‘Thanks, Martha. See you tomorrow.’ Evie felt herself relax as the girl and her sharp eyes left. Fly the collie padded into the kitchen and rested his head on Robert’s lap. His
master ran a palm down the dog’s head and smiled at the children.

When they’d finished he took their plates. ‘I’ll wash up now,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to share the chores in the future as Martha only comes in once a day, rest
of the time she’s out on the farm.’

‘She doesn’t live here then?’ Evie felt relief.

He rolled up his sleeves. ‘She lives in a cottage up the lane. Tomorrow you’ll have to help with the dishes, but you two need to rest tonight.’ His movements in the sink were
quick and deft, she noticed.

‘Why did you choose us?’ Evie asked. ‘All those other people said they could only take older children. Or that they couldn’t take in two.’

He turned to consider her as though she were a grownup asking an important question. ‘I’ll tell you why, Evie Parr.’ His eyes really were the colour of toffee as Evie
remembered it from before the war, with long, thick lashes. ‘I’m always right about the creatures that’ll do well here. Matthew says I’m better at choosing livestock than he
is. He’s away being trained for the army now but he knew he could leave things with me.’ His expression grew more serious. ‘When Matthew and I go off to war we’ll have to
get in a farm manager. Martha won’t be able to manage by herself.’

‘You’re going to war too?’ Evie felt as though a cold boulder was dropping down through her body.

‘All the Winter men have gone off to fight when they’ve needed us, even though farmers don’t have to. We’re both joining the local regiment, the Royal Berkshires.’
He must have noticed the panic on her face. ‘But don’t worry, Evie. It won’t be for a while yet. I said I’d wait till we can find a good manager. And mother’s here as
well to keep an eye on things.’

She crossed her fingers that finding a manager would prove an impossible task.

Next morning he took them for a tour of the farm, starting with a climb up the side of the hill. ‘The White Horse is up there,’ he said, pointing at some curved
lines above them.

‘A horse?’ Charlie squinted.

Robert laughed. ‘You can’t see it; it’s cut into the chalk. It’s been covered over for the war. Else German airmen might use it to navigate. But it’s old, thousands
of years old, maybe more. People were living up here before Abraham was born.’

‘What did they do?’ Charlie asked.

‘Hunted. Made tools. Worshipped their gods. Come on, here are the sheep.’ They climbed a stile. ‘The lambs are putting on weight nicely.’ They barely looked like lambs
now, with their chunky bodies. Evie was disappointed. He laughed at her face.

‘Not so sweet as they were in February, I’ll grant you. These are Hampshire Down sheep. They fatten up well. There used to be hundreds and thousands of sheep up here but times grew
hard for sheep farmers and now we’re the only farmers in the parish who keep our flocks.’

‘Why?’ asked Charlie.

‘Matthew and I worked out that if a war was coming people would want meat that didn’t need shipping halfway round the world.’ He nodded at the black-and-white faced lambs.
‘Reckon he had a point. Martha and I think the farm wouldn’t be the same without the sheep.’

‘Does Martha know a lot about sheep?’ Evie asked, trying to make the question sound casual.

‘Her family were shepherds up here for hundreds of years, before the land was all enclosed. Many families had flocks on the Downs.’ Evie felt a pang of envy for Martha for belonging
so completely to the green hill and the sheep. ‘There’s not much about a sheep that Martha doesn’t know,’ Robert went on. ‘See that field there?’ He pointed at a
square below them. ‘That’s where we put them in the winter so they can feed off turnips.’

He plucked a flower from the grass and showed it to her. ‘Look, Evie, this is an ox-eye daisy.’ She took the white flower from him. ‘And this,’ he pulled up a plant with
yellow heads, ‘is yellow rattle.’

‘Yellow rattle,’ she repeated.

‘Can we go back to the house now?’ Charlie asked. Evie knew he’d be wanting to play with the toy fort.

‘We’ve got to see the cows first.’ Robert nodded down the hill to where the cows grazed in the meadow. When they reached the cattle the grass looked so juicy Evie almost
imagined wanting to chew it herself.

As they walked through the farmyard he took her by the arm. ‘This is going to be your special job.’

‘What?’

He pointed at the chickens scratching at the ground. ‘Putting the hens and the ducks in at night. And feeding the cat.’ He nodded at the stone wall at the far side of the yard, where
a tabby stretched out. ‘While I’m away it’ll be good to know you’re keeping an eye on the things here.’

At night, while they sat round the kitchen table with the wireless on, he’d read to them from an old book he and his brother had enjoyed as children. The stories were about knights on
quests and the beautiful women they fought for. While the women waited.

The days seemed to speed up. Sunday afternoons, letter-writing time, seemed to come one after the other without a second between them. Evie looked at the calendar in the
kitchen with its scenes of south coast seaside resorts and realized that three months had passed.

‘Charlie doesn’t like the animals as much as I do but he likes playing out in the barns,’ she wrote to her mother. ‘Robert says I’m a reel help on
the farm and have a way with animals. If you come down here one weekend I’ll show you the chicks, only they’re quite big now, not fluffy any more.’ She drew one for her mother,
then put down the pencil for a second and closed her eyes. Before she’d left London she’d pressed the image of Mum on that last morning deep into her memory: wearing her best dress and
a hat that was almost new, faint shadows beneath her eyes. Now Evie had to struggle to remember the exact shade of blue of the dress: periwinkle or navy? She had a photo of Mum and Dad with the two
of them, taken on a south coast beach a year back. But of course it didn’t show colours.

She wouldn’t make the mistake again. She’d be sure to remember the colour of Robert’s toffee-brown eyes. And the exact shade of his hair and the pinkness of his lips.
She’d never ever forget those. Would he forget her? He’d been so kind to her and Charlie but perhaps when he was away with all the other soldiers the children’s images would slip
from his mind. Evie sat up in bed. This couldn’t happen. From the drawer of her bedside table she pulled out her writing pad, kept for the weekly letters to her mother. What should she say?
She felt embarrassment prickling at her skin and stuffed the pad back in the drawer and curled up.

But sleep wouldn’t come. It could be months, years before Robert came back. More than a school year, perhaps. Evie sat up again and switched on the light. This time she didn’t let
awkwardness stop her. ‘I will look after everything on the farm for you,’ she wrote. ‘Don’t worry about anything. When you come back and I have grown up I would be very
happy to stay at the farm to help you or maybe even as your wife. I just wanted you to know this in case you forgot wile you were away. From Evie Parr.’

Before she could change her mind again she tugged an envelope out of the drawer, folded the sheet and sealed it up. She’d put it in his jacket pocket at breakfast time and hoped he
wouldn’t notice it until he was well on his way by train.

Next morning, his last before he went off to basic training, Robert produced a Box Brownie and took some photographs of Evie and Charlie with the farm animals. ‘For your
mum,’ he said. ‘Bet she’ll think you’ve both grown a lot. Don’t move.’

‘Let me take one of you,’ she begged when he’d finished. He looked so handsome in his uniform.

‘You don’t want me,’ he said.

‘Please.’ How much more confident she felt now that she’d written the letter. She could see the white top of the envelope sticking out from the top of his jacket pocket. He
hadn’t noticed it yet. She pictured him opening it on the train, or perhaps sitting on his bunk at the training depot, reading her words and knowing that, whatever happened, Evie would be
waiting for him, as loyal as one of the ladies in the stories of the knights he’d told them at night.

‘All right. Where do you want me to stand?’ She made him walk to the blood-red roses by the front door. ‘I feel like a Royal,’ he said. ‘Or a film star.’

Evie clicked the shutter down and caught his image for ever. When she handed back the camera she noticed Martha standing on the side of the lawn observing. Perhaps she should have offered to
take Martha’s photograph too for Robert to keep. But she couldn’t bring herself to suggest this.

That night, as she switched off the little lamp between her bed and Charlie’s, Evie thought she heard the back door open. Voices murmured in the kitchen. She turned over
but sleep wouldn’t come. Who was Robert talking to? He’d never told them not to come downstairs once they’d gone to bed but Evie hadn’t liked to get out of bed. It was how
Mum had brought them up: good children stay in bed.

Another door opened. Robert and his guest were going into the parlour, unused since the war had started. Evie sat up, wide awake. Her feet seemed to find their own path across the floor. She
hovered at the top of the stairs. She heard more movement downstairs, a man’s deep baritone and a lighter, fluting voice.

She crept downstairs and across the carpeted hallway to the parlour. The door hadn’t been closed completely. Evie peeped through.

Robert and Martha lay on the sofa. He had his hand down the girl’s blouse. She was weaving her hands around in the front of his trousers. Every now and then he’d mutter something and
stretch out his back, like the farm cat when you stroked it.

Evie took a step back. She couldn’t understand what she was seeing but it scared her. She took another step away and another. The couple didn’t seem to have noticed her. She
couldn’t draw her eyes away from the pair on the sofa. Robert was pulling down his trousers now and Martha had slipped her legs from underneath him to remove her stockings and underpants and
hoist her skirt up so that the bits of her that should be private were visible. Evie put a fist to her mouth. She’d only been months on this farm but already she knew things she hadn’t
known in London about male and female animals and what they did. Animals, but not
people,
not
Robert.
He lay down on top of Martha and now Evie could only see his firm, rounded behind
and Martha’s naked legs, covered with fine hairs, crossed above it. Robert was grunting now, as though he was hurt. One of Martha’s hands dangled down from the sofa, curling and
uncurling.

Evie looked back at the door to the parlour. Perhaps if she made a noise, coughed really loudly or dropped a book . . . She didn’t know why she wanted to stop
this
but it seemed
imperative that it be halted. Then she remembered Fly, the dog. He wasn’t allowed past the kitchen. On the few occasions when he’d managed to sneak into the rest of the house he’d
burst through doors, fascinated by the forbidden territories. She tiptoed to the kitchen and called to him. From his basket he raised an eyebrow. ‘Come on, boy.’ He looked uncertain.
She grabbed a knife from the dresser and cut a tiny sliver from the ham joint sitting on the table.

He got out of the basket, ears pricked.
Will this get me into trouble?
still on his face.

‘It’s all right. In you go.’ She patted her legs and pushed open the kitchen door. ‘Go and find your master.’ She led him out, managing to creep on up the stairs in
front of him. He stopped outside the parlour door. Robert made some kind of muffled exclamation and Martha responded with something between a moan and a laugh. Fly sniffed at the door, tail
wagging. ‘Go on!’ she whispered. He put a paw to the door and scratched it. From the stairs Evie threw the sliver of ham. It landed a few feet inside the parlour and the dog sprang
after it.

‘What the devil?’ Robert said. She heard the sofa springs squeak and the door open. ‘Fly? What are you doing here? Bad dog! Out.’ His leather belt clinked against the
parlour floorboards. He must be picking up his trousers from the floor and putting them on.

Now was Evie’s chance. She stood and came downstairs. ‘Robert? Is something wrong? I heard you calling.’

He opened the door, fully dressed though his shirt was untucked. ‘Nothing. Just the dog. I must have dozed off. Go back to bed, Evie.’

‘All right.’

She paused at the top of the stairs, hearing him return to his companion. ‘. . . You should leave now, the children . . . awake . . .’

‘. . . come up to the cottage with me . . . your last night . . .’

‘. . . carried away . . . shouldn’t do this again . . . always . . . friends . . . respect.’

‘. . . just playing with me, Robert Winter.’

The parlour door squeaked open and someone came out. There was a brief pause and Fly yelped in the kitchen. ‘Don’t take it out on the dog,’ Robert called. ‘Here Fly, here
boy.’

Then there was the sound of the kitchen door slamming.

Evie peered through the banisters and saw Robert, face pale, shivering, though it wasn’t a cold night. For a moment he looked quite unlike the person he was when he was showing them how to
do jobs on the farm. He looked lost.