The Farmer's Daughter (9 page)

‘I don't. What did you think of our ploughing match?'

‘It was …' He paused. ‘Very interesting.'

‘You think you could have done better?'

He shrugged. ‘We shall never know, shall we?'

‘I think you would make a worthy contestant.'

He laughed. ‘Thank you. I shall remember that.'

‘Now we must get these horses home or your transport will be here before you are ready. You ought to have something done about your face, too.'

He put his hand up to touch it and winced. ‘It is not bad. Tomorrow it will be all gone.'

They heard the lorry's horn as they finished settling the horses. ‘I do not have time to help with the milking,' he said.

‘It doesn't matter.' Jean accompanied him to the gate

‘What happened to him?' Donnington demanded when he saw Karl.

‘It was an accident,' she told him. ‘He saved my father's life.'

‘Did he now? Well, that's a turn up for the book. He'll get a medal, no doubt.'

‘There is no need to be sarcastic, Corporal,' she said.

‘Sorry, miss.'

She turned to Karl. ‘Your jaw will probably be stiff tomorrow. If you cannot come to work, I'll understand.'

‘I will be here, Miss Coleman.' He scrambled into the back of the lorry followed by the corporal. She could hear his compatriots laughing at him as they drove away.

She was halfway up the drive when the doctor's car passed her. She had been on her way to fetch the cows, who were all gathered at the gate of the field waiting for her, but changed direction and went back to the house.

‘No real harm done,' Doctor Norman was telling her mother. ‘He'll probably be a bit stiff in the morning.'

‘No change there, then,' Arthur said, attempting a joke. ‘It's me chair what's broke.'

‘I'll get it mended,' Jean said. ‘Perhaps Bill will carry you to bed while he's here. I don't think I can manage it.'

‘Course I will.' Bill bent and picked Arthur up from the kitchen chair where he had been put. ‘Here we go then.'

The small parlour on the other side of the hall from the sitting room had been converted into a bedroom for Arthur. Bill put him on the bed and helped Doris to undress him and put him to bed while Jean went out to see to the milking.

‘Are you going to stay for a bite to eat?' Doris asked Bill when they returned to the kitchen.

‘No, thanks all the same,' he said. ‘Ma will be expecting me.'

‘I thought she would come over today. There's nothing wrong, I hope.'

‘She is a martyr to her rheumatism, Mrs Coleman, but she is no worse than usual. All the same, I must get back to her.'

‘Of course. We mustn't keep you. Thank you for your help.'

He waved a hand dismissively. ‘It was nothing. I would do more if only Jean would let me.'

Doris laughed. ‘She is too independent for her own good, that one. See you later.'

The village hall was crowded, not only with the inhabitants of Little Bushey but with contestants and their families who had come from further afield. Mr Harris was there with his records for those who wanted to dance. Doris hurried to help with the refreshments and Jean joined Bill. ‘How did you get on with your ploughing today?' he asked her, as they danced a waltz. ‘In all the bother with your pa's chair, I didn't have a chance to ask.'

‘OK, I think.'

‘How is he?'

‘A bit stiff. Bemoaning the fact he can't get about without his chair. I'll take it in to Wisbech on Monday. The bicycle shop might have a wheel that will fit.'

‘I'll take it in for you, if you like.'

‘If you can spare the time, that would be a great help.'

‘My pleasure. I'll call round first thing on Monday morning and pick it up.'

The dance came to an end and they wandered over to the refreshment table, where Doris was busy with Bill's mother and Mrs Harris serving the hungry dancers and making sure the food was distributed fairly. Jean and Bill were each given a sandwich and a sausage roll on a small plate and took it to a table to eat.

‘Ladies and gentleman,' Mr Harris shouted from the stage where he stood by the side of Sir Edward and Lady Masterson. ‘We'll take advantage of the break in the music to announce the prize-winners.' This statement was greeted with applause and
cheers. When it died down he added, ‘I'd like you all to give a big welcome to Sir Edward and his Lady.'

After the applause died down, Sir Edward made a short speech welcoming everyone and the prize-giving began. Jean was startled to learn she had come second, being pipped at the post by Mr Maynard. Poor Mr Barry came nowhere and was not present. The tractor-drawn ploughs came next and, as expected, Bill won that class. He was also the overall winner. Proud of himself, he returned to Jean clutching a large silver cup and a small wooden shield which he put on the table beside Jean's small cup. ‘Well done,' she said. ‘But I don't reckon you'd have won if Pa had been competing.'

‘Oh, you think so, do you? Perhaps next year he'll be back and we'll see, won't we.'

‘Amen to that.'

‘Anyway, well done you.'

She laughed. ‘You didn't think I could do it, did you?'

‘Course I did. I have the utmost confidence in you. Your mother told me she thought you were too independent for your own good.'

‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘Too proud to accept help when it's offered.'

‘Bill, I've told you, you've got enough on your plate with your own farm and looking after your mother. And I
have
accepted your offer to take Pa's chair in for repair.' She stood up. ‘I'm going to help with the food and give Mum a break.'

He watched her go, angry with her for what he considered her pride, angry with himself for reacting. Rosemary was sitting with her mother and looking bored. He went to ask her to dance.

‘Congratulations on your win,' she said, as they took to the floor.

‘Thank you.'

‘If Gordon had been here, he'd have beaten you.'

He laughed. ‘Not you as well. Jean is convinced her father would have beaten me if he was able.'

‘How is Mr Coleman?'

‘You were on the field?'

‘I came up after work. You'd almost finished by then, but I saw the tractor go off on its own. You did well to stop it.'

‘Yes, it was a close shave, but Arthur's OK. It's his chair that's damaged.'

‘Who was the man with Jean? I haven't seen him before.'

‘He's a German POW sent to help her on the farm.'

‘Oh, one of those. I hate the Germans.'

‘You and me both. I hope he comes to a sticky end.'

‘I hope they all do and then the war will be over and Gordon and Reg can come home.' Reg was her brother, serving abroad somewhere.

‘Amen to that.'

‘Rosie is missing Gordon,' Jean told her mother, as they walked home.

‘I know, so am I. I keep wondering what he's doing, whether he's keeping well and if he is working on a farm like Sergeant Muller is for us.'

‘I doubt it, Mum. I don't think officers have to work.'

Gordon sat close to the window of the barrack hut. He had a book in his hands but he was not reading; he was watching someone who was smoking a cigarette, leaning idly on the corner of another hut across the compound. In the middle of the hut behind him, the stove had been removed from its base and three men were grouped around a hole in the floor. Beneath them, twenty feet below ground, a man was tunnelling using nothing more than
a home-made trowel, pushing the spoil out behind him to be bagged up and disposed of. It was these full bags they were hauling up from the depths.

‘Goon on the prowl,' Gordon said, as the man with the cigarette dropped it and ground it out beneath his foot. Goon was the airmen's name for the German guards.

In seconds, the incriminating bags were dropped back down the hole, the lid was put over the shaft, the stove replaced and the floor swept clean. That done, the men arranged themselves round the table and pretended to be engrossed in a game of whist.

The guard passed by without coming to their hut. ‘All clear,' Gordon said, while opening the window and leaning out to throw out a dog-end, a pre-arranged signal to two prisoners apparently deep in conversation with another walking between the huts. They began using their arms to illustrate what they were saying, which was another signal to someone out of Gordon's sight. Behind him, the tunnel was reopened. The man who had been incarcerated down there climbed to the surface, covered in dirt and sweat, and another took his place. The prisoners were digging three tunnels from different huts, not only because if one was discovered they could carry on with the others, but because of the risk of roof falls which might mean it was too dangerous to continue.

The whole project was being organised by the escape committee with military precision. Everyone had his allotted task, from the surveyors, engineers, diggers, tailors making civilian clothes, map-makers and forgers producing essential documents, down to the men disposing of the soil from bags down their trouser legs and lookouts like Gordon. Others tracked every goon and logged his movements the whole time he was in the compound. There was still some way to go before the tunnel reached the trees, fifty or so yards outside the perimeter
fence, but already the members of the escape committee were deciding who should make use of it and the order of priority.

Gordon knew he would never escape, not down that tunnel, but he was required to make himself useful to those who could. It made him frustrated and irritable. It wasn't that he begrudged the men who worked so hard and in constant danger to make it possible, but because he was so helpless. He would never be given a place in the tunnel, even supposing he could get down there.

He could see Flying Officer Jeremy Brewster coming across the compound towards the hut. Jeremy's job was to make bags with drawstrings to dispose of the soil. He was always looking for material with which to make them and many a shirt had been sacrificed, as had bed boards for shoring. ‘Jeremy's on his way,' he reported.

Jeremy came into the hut and produced two or three bags from inside his greatcoat and handed them over to the men at the top of the shaft. ‘Is that all you've got?' Squadron Leader Alexander Jordan tossed them down to the airman waiting below. ‘Some of those we're using are all but worn out. If they split and spill the stuff out in a heap, we'll be in real trouble.' The soil they were excavating was a distinct sandy yellow and would easily be spotted if scattered on the compound in any quantity.

‘Sorry, I'll try and get more.' Jeremy spotted Gordon sitting by the window. ‘I'll have your trouser leg, Coleman.'

‘No, you don't.'

‘You don't need it, do you? It just flaps about, getting in the way.'

‘When I get a new leg, I'll need both trouser legs. And when I do, you won't see me for dust.'

‘Oh, come on,' Alex put in. ‘You've been waiting for a new leg for three years to my certain knowledge. You don't still think Jerry
is going to bother finding one for you, do you? I bet they are in short supply and they've got their own men waiting for them.'

‘All the same …' Gordon's protest faded. Alex had only put into words what he had known to be true and had been trying hard to ignore. He was not going to be fitted with a coveted new limb, not from his captors, and he was destined to stay in this
Stalag
until the war ended, one way or another; that's if he didn't die of boredom and frustration first.

‘It's all for a good cause,' Alex went on. ‘Your bit for the war effort.'

‘I've done my bit for the war effort.'

‘So you have, old chap, no one's denying it, but we really do need more sandbags. Tell you what, when your new leg comes, I'll personally see you get a new pair of trousers. How's that?'

He sighed and gave in. A pair of scissors was fetched and he lost the bottom half of one leg from a decent pair of slacks. They took it from just below the knee so that his stump was not on view. He would have to spend the evening hemming the roughly cut material so that it didn't fray. He held out no more hope of a new pair of trousers than he did of a new leg.

Often, as he sat by the window doing his stint as lookout, he wondered what was going on in Little Bushey. What was Rosemary doing? Was she sitting at home waiting for him or finding someone else? He had had a letter from her, so heavily censored he could hardly make head or tail of it, but she had said she missed him and couldn't wait for him to come home again, which could mean she was waiting impatiently for them to be reunited but could equally mean exactly what it said: she could not wait. It did not make him feel any better about his incarceration.

How was Pa coping? Jean and Don would have to help him. Had they had any air raids? There were a lot of airfields near Little
Bushey and they were prime targets. There were a few illicit wireless sets hidden in the camp which enabled some of the prisoners to listen to the BBC at risk of their lives. They made sure the rest of the camp was kept informed, but the broadcasts never gave much away about specific locations.

He had had a few censored letters from his mother, but she couldn't tell him anything except they were all well and Jean had given up her job to help on the land. He had received a Christmas parcel from his mother months after the event which had been opened and searched by his captors and anything they coveted confiscated. He wrote to thank her and said he had had a good Christmas, all things considered. He had written not a word about losing his leg. He had been hoping to have a tin leg long before now and would be so used to it by the time he returned home it would not even be noticed until he chose to reveal it. He imagined making a joke about it. It was no joke.