Put Out the Fires (29 page)

“Why don’t you go indoors and start on breakfast,” Ted said to Eileen as Peggy collected a bucket and trudged away. “I won’t be a minute.”

“I’ll wait for you,” she said hastily. She always tried to avoid being alone with Edna. She watched Ted’s expert fingers as he worked away underneath the cow.

“What’s this one called?” he asked.

“Maud.”

“Come into the garden, Maud,” he warbled. He always seemed much more cheerful outside the house than in. He glanced in her direction and she smiled.” Y’know,” he said, “the way Edna acts, it’s nothing personal.”

“I guessed that much.”

“She’s had a lot of disappointments in her life and she took them hard, too hard.”

“Lots of people have disappointments,” Eileen felt bound to say, though didn’t add they don’t usually take it out on everyone else.

“Aye, that’s true, but I suppose they affect different folk in different ways.”

“I suppose.”

Ted began to pour the milk into metal churns. One would be placed outside the gate to be collected along with the eggs, the other delivered to local customers as soon as he’d had breakfast. “How’s your back?” he asked.

Eileen made a face. “Bent.”

“It looks straight enough to me.”

“It feels bent.” She was convinced her spine would remain curved for the rest of her life.

He screwed the top on the second churn and gave it a satisfied slap. “Come on, let’s get something to eat.”

She sometimes wondered if she could have stood it under normal circumstances; the mind-numbing, finger-numbing work, the sheer tedium of much of it. The worst job of all was clearing the land which had turned to scrub. One patch in particular, adjacent to the marshes, was virtually a swamp, and she and Peggy waded into the thick stagnant water to drag out rotting trees and other rubbish. One day they came across the skeleton of some other farmer’s sheep. In no time, the stinking, freezing water would spill over the tops of their boots and they would be soaked for the remainder of the day.

It was a wonder to Eileen they didn’t catch pneumonia.

Instead, apart from numerous aches and pains, they both decided they felt unusually healthy.

“At least we’re doing this particular job in winter,”

Peggy said cheerfully. “Imagine what it would be like in the hot weather! The insects would bite us to death.”

Eileen admired Peggy enormously for her stoical, uncomplaining willingness to tackle everything, despite the fact the results were usually met with churlish criticism from Ted. She would hold up her once-white hands, hands which had done no more than manipulate the keys on a typewriter until recently, which were now red and sore, a mass of blisters and scratches, the nails grimy and broken.

“Just look at these!” she would crow. “Mummy would have a fit if she could see them.”

War, decided Eileen, brought out the very best in most people.

There were days when it rained, but no matter how heavy the downpour, they still had to work, and the rain would run down their necks and they would feel damp all over. On other days, it snowed, yet still they worked.

According to Ted, it was an unusually mild winter, and both women tried not to think what it would be like if the weather had been worse.

It was the sheer inevitability of farmwork that Eileen found particularly daunting. How on earth could people like Ted and Horace spend their entire lives planting things at a certain time, pulling them up at a certain time, terrified there’d be too much rain or too much sun or not enough of either? The same old thing year after year after year, a sort of uncertain and precarious renewal, knowing exactly what you would be doing in May or July or September, not just in 1941, but in five years’ time or ten. There was always something that had to be done—ploughing, sewing, reaping—then the whole thing would start all over again, like a never-ending circle.

Laura Kinnear arrived at the farmhouse, windswept and shabby, on Eileen’s first Saturday there. “Have you got anything to do?”

“Nothing all weekend, apart from Mass tomorrow morning.” Eileen had been wondering how to fill the two free days. Originally, she had planned on taking long walks, perhaps venturing even further than she’d done before, but felt bone weary, too tired to walk an inch, too tired even to stand. On the other hand, she didn’t fancy spending the whole time in her room. Ideally, she would have liked to sit in the warm kitchen listening to the wireless, but that was out of the question. Ted rarely seemed to be in the house except for meals. He disappeared every night as soon as he’d eaten.

“I thought you might be feeling a bit lost,” Laura said, which surprised Eileen, as she’d imagined the woman to be entirely unaware of her existence. She couldn’t remember them speaking, apart from being introduced, when she’d stayed at the house. “Conor’s back in Cambridge,” Laura continued, “the children are back at boarding school or university or the Army. The house is dead. I sometimes wish there was a place for me to go to. I wondered, would you like to join our sewing circle? It’s the Women’s Voluntary Service, actually, the WVS. We always meet on Saturday afternoons, New members are very welcome.”

“I’d love to help, but I’m not much good at sewing.”

“Then you can stuff palliasses or something. Don’t worry, we’ll find something for you to do.”

Eileen wasn’t sure whether Laura was merely being kind or genuinely wanted assistance. She hoped it was the latter. Either way, it seemed churlish to refuse. She agreed to go and was told to be ready at two o’clock. The afternoon was spent in a delightful stately home stuffing straw into palliasses made from flour bags.

“They’re for the evacuees,” an elderly lady, the home’s owner, informed her. “Poor little things, some of them are so unhappy they still keep wetting the bed. Do you have any children, dear?”

Eileen had known the question was bound to be asked someday, though had never been able to work out what she would reply.

“Yes,” she said, “I have a little boy of six, his name is Tony.” Then she moved away, just in case the old lady asked where Tony was.

Chapter 12

Eileen had been living on the farm less than a week when the letters began to arrive from home. She seemed to get at least one every day; from her dad, from Kate Thomas, from several of her Pearl Street neighbours. Apparently, after a lull over New Year, the raids had begun again, but although some were heavy, none were as bad as those before Christmas. There was a long funny letter from the girls at Dunnings relaying all the latest dirty jokes and including love from the entire workshop. Lil had been offered the job of overseer but had turned it down and Mona Dewar had been appointed, much to Doris’s disgust as she felt the job should be hers.

Sheila had some good news: Sean had begun his training as an airframe fitter, “which means he’ll remain safely on the ground, thank goodness, even though it mightn’t be in this country”. There was a PS: “You’ll never believe this, but Brenda Mahon’s got a sort of boyfriend. He’s a bus conductor, but don’t mention it if you write to anyone, as no-one else knows except me and that Carrie woman.”

Another letter arrived from Sheila before Eileen had a chance to reply to the first, this time enclosing an envelope addressed to 16 Pearl Street. Eileen recognised Nick’s untidy scrawl immediately. Sheila had written on the back, “The girl from your house, Alice Scully, brought this over this morning.”

“I’ve felt so hopeless since Christmas,” Nick complained, and she imagined his dark handsome face twisted bitterly as he wrote. “Please write back straight away and assure me you love me. Please say we’ll be together one day. It’s all I live for. It’s all that keeps me going throughout this damn bloody war.”

Eileen sighed. She felt equally hopeless, and, remembering the promise she’d made to Nick on Christmas Day, wondered if the time would ever come when the promise would be kept. She put the letter to one side and opened the one from Jacob Singerman which had arrived in the same post.

He’d been to see Goodbye, Mr Chips, though he’d had to stand in a queue which was longer than for his weekly rations. “The whole country wants to go to the pictures nowadays to escape from the horrors of war. Even if you are killed, as several were in the Gaiety and the Ritz, what a way to die, with one’s eyes fixed on Laraine Day or Greta Garbo! As for the film, it was rather sad. All in all, I think I prefer a musical. I kept hoping Robert Donat would burst into song, or at least give us a tapdance.” Snowy, he went on, was becoming more agile by the minute. “He can jump on the mantelpiece and sits there making faces at me. I wonder why I never thought of having a cat before. He’s such good company and keeps me amused all day long.”

“Because it took you all your time to keep your own belly half-full, let alone having a cat to feed as well,” Eileen said to herself. There was a letter from Ruth in the same envelope. Dilys Evans was enormous and her time must surely be near. “She’s determined not to keep the baby, so as I know nothing about how you go about such things, I shall get in touch with Miss Thomas as you suggested.”

She assured Eileen there was nothing to worry about.

Dilys was absolutely fine.

Ruth Singerman got off the tram at Spellow Lane feeling more than a little weary. It wasn’t that she was physically tired, but calling on Dilys, which she’d done every single day since Christmas, was becoming a trial. Ruth would be accosted by the landlady on the way in and again on the way out. Was there nowhere else Dilys could go, no-one else who would take her? She was driving the whole house mad with her noisy, hysterical behaviour.

“It’ll be over soon,” Ruth would assure her patiently.

The woman would then demand to know where Dilys intended to live when the baby arrived. “If you’ve got somewhere lined up, why can’t she go there now?” But Ruth had no idea what plans Dilys had for herself once the baby had been born and taken, Ruth supposed, to an orphanage. The girl was too busy bemoaning her fate, cursing herself for being “sinful, just like me mam said”, to consider her future.

Ruth opened the door of the off-licence and the landlady appeared immediately in response to the bell. “Oh, it’s you,” she said coldly. “I thought it might be. Well, the girl’s gone. She left this afternoon.”

“Gone!” Ruth felt her jaw drop. “Gone where?”

“I’ve no idea, she wouldn’t say.” The woman looked at Ruth with a mixture of contempt and indignation.

“You’ve got a nerve, telling us she was married. We had quite a little talk today and she told us she didn’t have a husband. I would never have taken her in if I’d known the truth.”

Ruth’s anger rose. “You have no idea what the truth is,” she snapped as she went over to the door. There was no need to kowtow to the woman any more. “You should be ashamed of yourself, throwing the girl out when her baby could be born any minute. I suppose you call yourself a Christian!”

The woman flushed. “What do you take me for? I didn’t throw her out. I merely told her to find somewhere else and she immediately said she had a place to go. Anyroad, what’s it got to do with you? You’re not a relative.”

“I’m not a Christian, either, but I know where my duty lies when a young unmarried girl needs help.” It sounded rather pious, Ruth thought as she slammed the door and began to walk back towards the tram stop, particularly in view of the fact she’d been only too keen to have Dilys dumped in a home -when she’d first discovered she was pregnant, but she’d grown fond of the girl over the last few months, though there were times when she could be intensely irritating. She felt worried sick throughout the journey home. Where on earth had Dilys gone and what would Eileen Costello say if she knew what had happened? She’d let both of them down, Ruth thought miserably. It had been wrong just to let Dilys rot away in that gloomy room. She should have spent more time with her, but she’d always been only too selfishly eager to escape from the poor girl’s endless weeping. She supposed it was even more selfish to wish the whole affair would be soon be over; that Dilys would have her baby and continue with her life and Ruth would be left with nothing else to do except go to work, look after her father, and save for America.

Her mind was still consumed with worry over the whereabouts of Dilys when she opened the door of the house and realised there was no need to worry any more.

Dilys was in the living room, nursing the white kitten and chatting happily away to Jacob.

“Hallo, Ruth,” she said as if nothing untoward had happened. “I thought you wouldn’t mind me coming.

That woman, the landlady, turned out to be dead horrible.

She said I had to find somewhere else to live and where else could I go but here? Anyroad, I never thought much of that room and me money had run out, so I had no more left to pay the rent.”

Ruth glanced at Jacob, who merely rolled his eyes. He looked as if he was enjoying himself. Of course, he always loved a bit of excitement. She felt cross with the pair of them.

“I can sleep in your bed again, can’t I?” Dilys said. “It was ever so comfortable.”

Ruth stared wordlessly at the spotty, bulging girl who had taken over her armchair, had designs on her bed and seemed to have perked up considerably since she’d seen her yesterday. So far, Dilys had taken everything Ruth had done completely for granted. Ruth remembered Leah and Simon had been exactly the same. Children and young people seemed to think that grown-ups existed purely for their convenience. Probably Ruth herself had been the same, expecting sacrifices from her father as a matter of course. She felt slightly uneasy when she realised that she’d probably taken the place of Ellis in Dilys’ eyes. Quite unintentionally and very unwillingly, she’d become a surrogate mother to the girl. Under the circumstances, she supposed wearily, it was only natural she would want to be with the person she thought cared for her, now that the time approached for her to have the baby.

Thinking of Ellis, she asked, “Does your mother know you’re here?”

“Oh, no,” Dilys said quickly. “You won’t tell her, will you? I’ll keep very quiet.”

Jacob put a finger to his lips and looked mysterious. “We won’t say a word, will we, Ruth?”