The Lost Days of Summer (29 page)

For a moment, Eifion simply stared, but then he began to shake with laughter. ‘You’re right, missy, I were teasing you, speaking in Welsh. How d’you do? I’m Eifion Hughes an’ I do most of the farm work at Ty Hen.’ He turned to Auntie Kath and addressed her in Welsh. ‘She may look like a scarecrow, but I reckon she’s got all her wits about her. I can see we’ll have to stick to English until she begins to pick up God’s own language.’

Nell gave a muffled snort, but her aunt shook a reproving head. ‘What’s so funny?’ she asked in English. She was cutting large wedges of pie and sliding each wedge on to a blue and white china plate as she spoke.

‘I’m sorry if I seemed rude, Auntie,’ Nell said in Welsh, ‘but I was just thinking that Maggie will have to learn proper English, because I’m sure Eifion won’t understand the Scouse dialect.’

Maggie had been trying to follow the conversation, her eyes darting from one to the other, and now she seized on the only word she understood. ‘Scouse?’ she said. ‘If you think I speak Scouse, you should ha’ heared me before I went to Miz Avery’s. Scarce a day passed but she, or Cook, or the parlour maid were hauling me over the coals for not talkin’ proper.’ She looked apprehensively from Nell to Kath. ‘Honest to God, missus, I’ll do me best, but—’

Nell cast an anxious glance at her aunt, but Kath seemed remarkably calm. ‘No one will mind about your accent, Maggie, but folks hereabout are very religious and believe it’s wrong to take the name of the Lord in vain. So don’t go saying honest to God or anything like that.’

‘Got you,’ Maggie said at once and Nell saw that the eyes in the pasty little face were bright with intelligence. She’s no beauty, but she’s quick to catch on, Nell told herself as Auntie Kath began to serve out the potatoes. She’ll never try to learn Welsh because she won’t think it’s necessary, but she’ll pick up odd words and phrases without even meaning to and before we know it she’ll understand most of what we say. She chuckled to herself. We’ll have to go carefully; I often think that if Auntie had known how much Welsh I understood in the early days she would never have said half the things she did.

When the meal was over, Maggie washed up, Nell dried and Kath put away. Then Kath announced that she and Eifion were going to check up on the sheep in Six Acre and advised Nell to take Maggie on a tour of the house, to show her her own room and to explain things generally. Nell was happy to comply, though just as her aunt was about to leave the kitchen she had a sudden thought. ‘Hang on a minute, Auntie,’ she said urgently. ‘Did you ask Mr Mason whether there had been any answer to our advertisement?’

Her aunt paused in the doorway. ‘Well, in a way,’ she said rather guardedly. ‘A boy whose father farms a couple of miles from here says they have a bicycle which no one ever rides. It’s in very bad condition, but he thinks if he puts work on it and we buy new tyres, brake blocks and so on, it could be usable. He told Mr Mason that if you cared to go over to his house he’d show you the bicycle and you could see for yourself whether you thought it would be possible to make it good.’

‘Oh, I’m sure it will be,’ Nell said excitedly. She thought of swimming in the calm blue sea, of going fishing in the little boat, of getting to know the inhabitants of the longhouse. If only she had a bicycle, all these things would be possible. ‘Did you tell him yes, Auntie? If so, I’ll go over as soon as you can spare me for a few hours. If I were to miss church on Sunday . . .’

Kath grinned. ‘Oh aye, and risk losing my good name with the locals? Pull the other one, queen.’

Nell laughed. ‘No, but honestly, Auntie, that wouldn’t happen. People missed church when we were all haymaking, so why shouldn’t I do so in order to get a bicycle? If I have one I’ll be able to do everything twice as quickly!’

Her aunt gnawed her lip, pretending uncertainty, but Nell had seen the flash in her eyes and said triumphantly: ‘You’d make use of the bike as well, wouldn’t you, Auntie?’ She turned to Maggie, who was beginning to smile delightedly. ‘And you of course, Maggie. We could ride and tie – that means take turns – and get everywhere ever so much faster. Don’t you agree?’

‘Aye, tharr I do,’ Maggie said. She turned to Kath. ‘If I were you, missus, I’d grab the chance wi’ both hands ’cos in Liverpool at any rate, bicycles is rarer’n hens’ teeth. I tek it you can both ride a bike?’

‘Of course,’ Nell said, impatiently if untruthfully. She had never ridden a bicycle in her life, but assumed that since half the urchins in Liverpool careered round on ancient machines it must be simply a matter of jumping on and pedalling fast. ‘But if you can’t, Maggie, I expect I could teach you in a couple of hours.’ She turned an appealing face to her aunt. ‘If you agree, I’ll go over as soon as evening milking is finished and take a look at the bicycle. I expect Maggie would rather stay here and rest after her long journey, but I’ve had a quieter day than usual and am raring to go, especially if it means we get a bicycle at the end of it.’

‘No, not tonight. Remember the boy’s going to do what he can to make it good before we take it. You can go after morning milking on Sunday. Maggie and I will do any jobs you’ve not had time to tackle. I don’t want her handling stock for a while, mind, so you’d best feed the poultry and see to the sows and their piglets. You can turn the cows out and I’ll prevail upon Eifion to check that we’ve no distressed sheep, though the lambs are fine, strong little animals, more than most foxes would dream of tackling.’

‘Right. Thanks, Auntie,’ Nell said, well satisfied. She turned to Maggie. ‘Ready to start the grand tour? Then pick up your bag and follow me. We’ll do the bedrooms first, so you can dump your things.’

Maggie was a satisfactory person to show round, Nell decided as her companion oohed and aahed over the size and splendour of the bedrooms. She beamed at her own quarters and went at once to the window, pushing back the pretty floral curtains to admire the view. Nell, whose room was opposite Maggie’s, remembered her own fears on her first night and warned Maggie that the sounds she would hear once darkness fell were simply owls, foxes and other wild creatures.

‘They won’t harm you,’ she assured the older girl. ‘In fact you may never actually see a fox or a badger because they’re wary of people. But you’ll hear ’em all right.’

‘I won’t mind now that I know; ta for tellin’ me, chuck,’ Maggie said comfortably. She glanced at Nell from under her lashes. ‘I oughter mention, mebbe, that I can speak Welsh like a native, so I understood every word.’

Nell gasped, a hand flying to her mouth. ‘Oh Lor’, what must you have thought of us?’ she cried, feeling the hot colour flood her cheeks. ‘But you never said . . . we just took it for granted . . .’

Maggie giggled. ‘Got you!’ she said triumphantly. ‘A’course I don’t speak Welsh; it’s all I can do to understand English when it’s someone posh speakin’. I were havin’ you on, gal!’

‘I knew you were,’ Nell said loftily, then giggled. ‘No, I’ll be honest. You had me fooled. And we didn’t say anything rude, or I don’t think we did.’ She frowned thoughtfully for a moment, then her brow cleared. ‘We were saying that you’d have to learn Welsh, because though Eifion can speak English, it doesn’t come naturally.’

Maggie giggled. ‘All right, queen, I believe you, thousands wouldn’t.’ She unstrapped her bag and put the contents lovingly into the chest of drawers, patting each garment in a proprietorial fashion as she lifted it. ‘Coo, fancy bein’ give a whole load of lovely clothes what ain’t really uniform! I knew I were right to go for the Land Army; what’s more, the only person who’ll boss me about is your aunt, and mebbe the old feller. If I’d gone for the services there’d be a hundred women tellin’ me what to do an’ I had enough o’ that at the home, to say nothin’ of Brompton Avenue.’

‘Who says I won’t boss you about?’ Nell said teasingly. ‘Why shouldn’t I? After all, I’ve been bossed about myself. It might be fun to boss someone else.’

Her new friend – for already Nell thought of Maggie as a friend – aimed a playful swipe at her head. ‘Don’t you try it, chuck,’ she advised. ‘But I reckon it’ll be the two of us agin t’others. What d’you say, pal?’

‘I say let’s shake on it,’ Nell said, holding out a hand. ‘Hey, we’d better get a move on, if you’re to see the rest of the house and the farm before supper.’

The girls did not take long examining the other bedrooms, then they went downstairs again and popped into the parlour, seldom used, and the study, a small room where Kath did the farm accounts and filled in the forms which plopped through the letter box with increasing frequency these days. After that Nell showed Maggie the dining room with its enormous table and stiffly formal chairs, and the dairy, where the milk was processed. Then the two headed for the farmyard.

Maggie was introduced to the pigs, the poultry and the horses, and shown the cattle grazing in their pasture and the sheep scattered on the distant hillside. She looked at the pigs rather apprehensively and screamed when a hen fluttered up to her, obviously hopeful that it was about to be fed. Nell eyed her anxiously. ‘Don’t be scared of the farm animals, because feeding them and mucking out is one of our main jobs,’ she said. ‘You’ll just have to get accustomed, I suppose, as I did, but I had one big advantage; I wasn’t afraid of them.’

‘I’ll be all right so long as I don’t have to touch ’em,’ Maggie said, giving a shudder at the mere thought. ‘There were a feather duster at Miz Avery’s – chicken feathers they was – and I never could abide it. I were supposed to dust the picture rails and the tops of the paintings with it, but I’d sooner use a duster, even if it did mean cartin’ a stepladder all round the house.’

Nell stared at her. ‘But Maggie, when you applied for the Land Army you must have known you’d be working with animals,’ she pointed out. ‘My aunt will expect you to learn to milk and to handle the sheep when the time comes for dipping and shearing. Then there’s Feather and Hal; when you’re tacking them up you have to touch them, and you can’t start having hysterics every time they nuzzle you hoping for a titbit.’

Maggie sighed. ‘No, I never give animals a thought,’ she admitted. ‘I imagined I’d be plantin’ cabbages, leadin’ the horse mebbe when it were ploughin’, cuttin’ the hay and the corn; stuff like that.’

‘That’s arable farming,’ Nell said wisely, having recently learned the term. ‘We do very little arable farming round here; the land’s not suitable. My aunt just has the meadow where we grow our hay. In a good year, it’s sufficient to feed the stock through the winter; in a bad year Auntie has to buy in, of course. And then there’s a couple of fields – big ones – where we grow wheat and barley, and our vegetable garden, which we all work in because it’s lovely to have fresh vegetables and salads for most of the summer. In the winter, the whole of the vegetable garden gets put down to root crops, winter cabbage and sprouts.’ She grinned at Maggie. ‘When you’re cutting cabbage and harvesting sprouts on a freezing winter day, with the field inches deep in mud and icicles hanging from every plant, you’ll think wistfully of the nice warm stable, or the shippon, where we milk the cows, and you’ll realise there’s a lot to be said for looking after stock.’

‘Stock?’ Maggie said obligingly, as Nell had hoped she would, for she was anxious to pass on the knowledge which she had only recently acquired herself.

‘Aye, stock. That covers all the animals on the farm: hens, geese, cows, pigs, sheep, the lot. And when a farm goes up for sale, as a good many did during the Depression, the ploughs and hay rakes and tractors – if the farmer possessed anything so modern – were called “dead stock”, which baffled me when I first heard it.’ She chuckled. ‘I thought they were selling dead cows and sheep. But it was only what I’d have called farm implements.’

‘Blimey, I’s goin’ to have to learn a whole new language, lerralone Welsh,’ Maggie said with a touch of bitterness. She brightened. ‘But you and me’s pals, ain’t we? You’ll put me on the right track, see I don’t mess up, won’t you, Nellie?’

Nell, who hated being called Nellie, nevertheless realised that Maggie was merely following the Liverpool habit of nicknaming, and nodded. ‘Course I will. Right now I’ll take you over to the pond in the home pasture and introduce you to the geese.’

Maggie said nothing, but gave her a suspicious glance before following her meekly out of the farmyard and over to the sloping meadow with the big, willow-fringed pond at the far end. Nell smiled to herself. The geese, and Gabriel the gander, could be unpleasant enough to people they knew, let alone to strangers, when they could be really frightening. She would warn Maggie, of course, but thought it would do the other girl no harm to see that, compared to the geese, the other animals were downright friendly.

She swung open the gate and ushered Maggie into the sloping pasture. Half a dozen of the geese were grazing on the rich green grass and took no notice of the new arrivals, but Gabriel and three or four of his wives, who were rooting around in the weeds which bordered the water, came charging up, necks stretched, beaks agape, honking a warning. ‘Stand your ground and try to look menacing,’ Nell advised. She was beginning to wish she had not decided to introduce Maggie to the geese so soon. She grabbed the other girl’s arm and said remorsefully: ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have brought you here yet, but I wanted to show you that there are vicious animals – birds in this case – on every farm and it’s as well to keep clear of the nasty ones and appreciate the friendliness and good manners of the nice ones. Don’t turn and run, whatever you do; the only time I did that, Gabriel – he’s the big white one – pursued me right to the gate, pecking as we went. I was a mass of bruises next day, which was when my aunt told me I must face them out.’

She was remembering her own disgracefully cowardly behaviour as Gabriel came within a foot of them, neck stretched, hissing like a steam train. To her astonishment, however, Maggie neither flinched nor backed away, but actually stepped forward and punched the gander right between his mean little eyes, with enough force to stop him in his tracks. ‘That’ll teach you, you nasty bugger,’ Maggie said, dealing him another blow, which laid him gasping on the grass.