The Farmer's Daughter (5 page)

‘Poor you.'

‘I get by, but she is getting worse. God help me, I sometimes stay out of the house just to get some peace and quiet.'

‘As you are doing now.'

‘Oh, I didn't mean it like that,' he said hastily. ‘I want to be with you. I want to be with you all the time, so every minute is precious.' He stopped and turned towards her. ‘If it weren't for this war and Ma and …'

‘And?'

‘Oh, you know what.'

‘No, I don't.' He took her face in his hands and bent to kiss her. She put her arms round him. ‘Is that your answer?' she asked when he drew away.

‘For now.'

‘For now?'

‘Yes. There are too many obstacles. One day …'

‘You are the most infuriating man, do you know that? You are possessive and don't like me even looking at anyone else, but you won't commit yourself. What are you afraid of?'

‘I'm not afraid, just being sensible.'

‘OK, so we'll be sensible,' she said, turning from him and striding away back towards home.

He dashed after her. ‘Don't go. I'm sorry. Don't rush off like that. Let me explain.'

‘You don't need to. I understand. You want to wait until the war ends, until your mother no longer needs you, until you can summon up the courage to jump in at the deep end. Let me know when that happens, William Howson. I might still be around. On the other hand, I might not.'

He tugged on her arm. ‘Don't be like that, sweetheart. It's not like you.'

‘How do you know what I'm like? Have you ever taken the trouble to find out?'

‘Course I have. Good God! I've known you since we were in infant school and you've known me. What's got into you?'

‘Nothing. I'm tired, that's all.'

‘We all are, but I've never known you so disgruntled before.'

‘I expect it's the war. I just want it to end.'

‘So do I. Isn't that what I've just been saying?'

She did not think so, but she was tired of arguing. She just wanted to go home and have a cup of tea, but there was the milking to do, the other animals to feed and the chickens to shut up before that could happen. ‘I'm sorry, Bill,' she said. ‘I'm just feeling a bit low today. Let's go home.'

‘Did you enjoy the dance on Saturday?' Karl asked during their midday break the following Monday.

‘Yes, it was fun. Do you like dancing?'

‘I used to go with Heidi before the war, and when I last had leave, but that was some time ago.'

‘Tell me about Heidi. Is she pretty?'

‘I think so.' He delved in his tunic pocket and pulled out a battered photograph and handed it across to her. ‘This is Heidi.'

‘She is beautiful,' she said, studying it before handing it back. ‘And such an infectious smile. You must miss her.'

‘Yes, I do. It is her birthday next week. She will be twenty-two and I cannot even wish her
fröhlicher Geburtstag
.'

She guessed what that meant. ‘I am sure she knows you are thinking it.'

‘I hope so. You work very hard,' he said.

‘Can't be helped.'

‘Have you always wanted to farm?'

‘It's the only life I know, but I wasn't expected to run it. I had a job, but I had to give it up when Gordon left.'

‘What did you do?'

‘I was a shop assistant in a dress shop.' She laughed. ‘Surrounded by good clothes. Just look at me now.'

He looked up at her. ‘You look beautiful.'

She stared at him, then laughed in embarrassment. ‘Flattery, Sergeant, flattery. I am impervious to it.' But she was not. She was inordinately pleased to think he noticed how she looked, though most of the time she was in dungarees, with rubber boots on her feet. In the interests of hygiene her hair was always rolled up and secured under a scarf tied in a turban. How could that be called beautiful?

‘Are you engaged to be married?' he asked.

‘No, why do you ask?'

‘Mr Howson is very … How do you say?'

She laughed. ‘Jealous?'

‘Perhaps. But I do not think he likes me.' He sighed. ‘I am not surprised. I am the enemy, a hated Jerry.'

‘If the boot were on the other foot and he was a prisoner in Germany working with Heidi, you might feel the same.'

‘I expect I would.'

‘But you do like working here? I am not such a hard taskmaster, am I?'

‘I do,' he said hastily. ‘You have treated me with courtesy and given me hope when I was in despair.' He reached out and put a hand on her arm. ‘You have shown me that there are good people in the world and one day we will live in peace again. You have made my imprisonment bearable. Given a choice I would still come, that is if nothing happened to prevent me.'

‘What, for instance?'

‘I don't know. Anything. A disaster.'

She looked sharply at him. ‘Are you expecting a disaster?'

‘No.' He paused. ‘Except the defeat of my country.'

‘You have known that for a long time, Karl.'

‘Hitler has ordered every kilometre of ground must be defended to the last man.'

‘You can keep in touch with what is happening then?'

‘We learn it from new prisoners. Some of them are only boys, some are too old to fight and yet they have been in the thick of it.'

‘Cheer up. The war will be over soon and you will be able to go home. And my brother and all other prisoners will be repatriated. Life will return to normal.'

‘Do you really think that?' he asked. ‘I do not think so. Nothing will be the same again, even though we might wish it.'

‘But surely Hitler will capitulate when Germany itself is threatened?'

‘Germany is threatened all the time by the bombers,' he said. ‘It only makes the Führer more defiant.'

‘What do your fellow prisoners think about it?'

‘Some are depressed but others are convinced the Führer will turn the tide. They talk of a secret weapon that will turn defeat into victory.'

‘Do you believe that?'

‘I don't know. We don't know what is happening in the homeland, how bad it is, if the air raids are having an effect or if, like the Londoners, they are bearing them and carrying on. We do not know if what we hear or read in the English newspapers is truth or propaganda.'

‘Any news from home?'

‘No.'

‘Poor old Karl.'

‘I am not old,' he said, forcing a laugh and getting to his feet. ‘And I will prove it. Come on, there is work to be done.'

She packed away their picnic things and went back to work. A few minutes later she heard him singing quietly to himself in German.

‘I recognise that tune,' she said, stopping to listen. ‘It's one we used to sing in school. We called it “Rosebud, rosebud, rosebud red”. It was about a boy who was determined to pick a rose and the rose warned him not to, but he did it anyway and the rose pricked him. I suppose there's a lesson there somewhere.'

‘It is the same song.'

‘Teach me the German words.'

So they sang together as they worked, their clear voices carrying over the fields. It was not a sensible thing to do she realised later.
Bill, walking along the lane, heard them and tackled her when he called that evening.

‘What the devil were you thinking of, singing at the top of your voice with that Jerry, and in German too?' he demanded. ‘Do you want to be arrested?'

‘What, for singing?'

‘No, for singing in German. We are at war with Germany, or didn't you know?'

‘He taught me the German words and I taught him the English ones, what's wrong with that?'

‘Jean, I do think it was a little indiscreet,' her mother put in. ‘You could offend people.'

Jean and Karl established a good working relationship. He knew the way she liked things done and deferred to her as the boss, but sometimes he volunteered suggestions and she was always ready to listen and learn. She did not feel it necessary to follow him about and if it meant they finished all the quicker if they did different tasks, then she did her own and let him get on with his. Bill grumbled, of course.

‘You will live to regret it, mark my words,' he told her one day when he came up to the farm and found her milking on her own and Karl in the barn servicing the plough. ‘One of these days, you'll find him gone. Not that I care about that,' he admitted. ‘He can go to Timbuktu for all I care.'

‘If he was going to run, he'd have done it before now,' she said. ‘I don't think he's all that keen to go back to fighting for Hitler.'

‘Did he tell you that?'

‘No, of course not. He's loyal to his roots, but I can tell by the odd things he's said; he's not a Nazi.'

‘They all are.'

‘No, they are not. Some of the German soldiers hold no brief for Hitler. As for the civilian population, I am convinced they would change things if they could.' She stopped suddenly as Karl appeared in the doorway.

‘I have finished that task,
Fräulein
,' he said formally. ‘We can begin ploughing as soon as the field is clear.'

‘Thank you.'

‘What shall I do next,
Fräulein
?'

‘Can you finish the milking? I'm going up to the house with Mr Howson.'

‘Yes,
Fräulein
, of course.'

She and Bill left him to it.

‘“
We
can begin ploughing”.' Bill repeated Karl's words. ‘Who does he think he is with his “we”?'

‘It was just a manner of speaking, Bill. Now, why did you come? You don't usually grace us with your presence in the middle of the day.'

‘
Jane Eyre
is on at the pictures. I thought you might like to go tomorrow night.'

‘That would be nice. Thank you.'

‘I'll call for you at half past six.'

‘OK. I'll be ready.'

He left, passing Karl who had finished his work for the day and was waiting at the gate for the lorry to arrive. Karl clicked his heels and came to attention when he saw him. Bill gave him a perfunctory nod and marched past.

Jane Eyre
was a dark, sombre production starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine, but it was a change from the wartime propaganda films that proliferated. The Pathé news came on between the early and late projections. She didn't suppose it told
the whole story, but it did give an idea of what the troops were facing with shots of men dodging through the ruins of Falaise in the face of enemy fire. But they were winning, judging by the long lines of German prisoners being escorted into captivity, fifty thousand, so the commentator said.

‘Where on earth are they going to put them all?' she whispered.

‘God knows. They can dump them in the sea for all I care.'

There were pictures and commentary about the bitter fighting, not only in France, but in the Far East, as well as Russia. There was some footage of the latest scourge to reach the country from the continent; rockets had replaced the doodlebugs and they had a longer range. The launch sites in France and Belgium had been put out of action by the Allied advance and they were being fired from the Netherlands whence they were capable of reaching East Anglia and the Midlands. They could cause even more destruction than their predecessors, but fortunately were nothing like as reliable and many fell into the North Sea. But they were an ever-present threat and worried the population who had been hoping that Hitler was finished.

‘Why can't the Jerries see it's hopeless and give in?' Bill said, as they caught the last bus home.

‘They don't think it is hopeless.'

‘Is that what your Jerry told you?'

‘He's not my Jerry, Bill. His name is Karl. He knows it's all over. He just wants it to end as we do, but he tells me there are people in the camp who still think they can win. They are putting a lot of faith in Hitler's secret weapon.'

‘You mean those new rockets?'

‘I suppose that's what he meant, he didn't say.'

‘The Blitz didn't work and neither will they.'

‘Let us hope so. But I don't think Hitler is done yet.'

‘Do you talk to the Jerry about it?'

‘Sometimes, but what can we say to each other? He is depressed about it and worried about his parents and sister. He thinks the Red Army will soon reach Hartsveld. He is more worried about the Russians than anything.'

‘You shouldn't be discussing things like that with him, you know that.'

‘I can't work beside him all day and not talk to him, but we do try to keep our conversation to the farm and what needs doing.'

‘I'm glad to hear it.'

Karl was passing Mrs Sanderson's cottage two mornings later when he spotted Otto working on her window. ‘What are you doing here?'

‘You can see what I'm doing. I'm replacing this rotten window frame.'

‘You didn't tell me you had a job.'

‘I was only told this morning.'

Ted Gould came round the side of the house carrying a pane of glass. ‘Haven't you got that frame in yet, Jerry. Come on, chop, chop. We haven't got all day. And who is this?'

‘Sergeant Muller,' Karl said. ‘I work for Mr Coleman.'

‘Then you'd best get on with it and let my man work. I don't pay him to gossip.'

‘What's he saying?' Otto asked.

Karl translated, then added, ‘I'll see you tonight.'

He passed Mrs Sanderson in the lane as he left. ‘No Jean?' she asked.

‘She is feeding the hens. I came back for a billhook we left on the field when we were working on the hedge up there.'

‘She doesn't usually let you go about on your own.'

‘I think she trusts me,' he said. ‘I must go back to her.'