This Cold Country (2 page)

“Daisy, you're just in time for a cup of tea,” she said.

Daisy hesitated. She was aware of the figure she cut: stockingfooted, an inert ferret held a little away from her body. Rosemary, in contrast, was wearing a tweed skirt and a light brown twinset; her low-heeled shoes were elegant and well polished. Only her hands, her wedding and engagement rings emphasizing her short nails and reddened skin, suggested that she was not presiding over tea at a peacetime house party.

“Daisy, this is my cousin James Nugent. And Patrick Nugent, he's by way of being a kind of cousin too. Daisy Creed.”

“I just came—” Daisy said awkwardly. “There's something on the wireless—I was in the kitchen. A battleship called the
Royal Oak
has been sunk. In the Orkney Islands—somewhere called Scapa Flow.”

The two men exchanged glances—Daisy had the impression that the mention of Scapa Flow had caused a greater reaction even than had the sinking of the battleship—and the younger, James, turned on the wireless that sat on the table beside him. It was tuned to the BBC, and after a moment Daisy heard the same bulletin that had been broadcast in the kitchen. All four looked at the wireless and listened to the account of the
Royal Oak,
sunk at anchor by a German submarine. Seven hundred and eighty-six officers and men dead.

“Dear God,” Rosemary said softly.

For an instant no one spoke or moved. Daisy felt as though she were part of a painting or photograph commemorating a moment in history. Then Rosemary poured a cup of tea and handed it to her.

“They aren't supposed to be able to get into Scapa Flow,” James said.

“They tried during the Great War. In 1918, a submarine, manned entirely by officers, was destroyed in the attempt,” Patrick said to Rosemary. “The tides and currents and the difficulty of navigating the channels were enough to keep the fleet safe from submarines ... then. The Admiralty thought they still were.”

“So what'll they do now?” she asked.

“Find a way of keeping the subs out, or move somewhere else. Rosyth, probably. It was the main base at the end of the last war. But now you'd have to worry about air raids.”

After a moment the newscaster repeated information he had already read and the tableau unfroze. Daisy was aware of how awkwardly she was placed. She was unable to drink her tea since it was all she could do to balance the saucer and spoon while Sebastian twitched slightly in her other hand.

“There are drop scones. Delicious, although I don't know how you are going to eat them with that thing in your hand. Maybe one of you chaps would like to hold Daisy's pet.”

Patrick reduced the volume of the wireless a little and turned toward Daisy.

“Isn't there somewhere we can park that brute?” he asked.

“Turn a wastepaper basket upside down and pop it under,” James suggested.

“She will if you sit on top of the basket,” Rosemary said.

“I will if you get him out afterward,” Daisy said, the grasping of the ferret by the scruff of his neck being the only part of the operation that entailed either skill or risk.

“Put your cup and saucer on the table,” Patrick said, indicating the round table that stood a couple of feet away. “That way you can drink your tea.”

As Daisy sipped her tea, all four listened again to the sparse account offered by the BBC. Then Patrick switched off the wireless.

“We'll turn on again at six o'clock,” he said.

Daisy put her cup down and went out to take Sebastian back to his cage in the gardener's shed. As she stepped into her gumboots outside the kitchen door she wondered what would happen if England lost the war. It was not a question she had ever heard asked.

 

RABBIT STEW FOR
dinner. The two men had left, and dinner was, as usual, a female affair. Daisy looked forward to meals; she was young and hardworking and often she ate because she was tired. The food at Aberneth Farm was good. Maintaining a prewar standard of cooking was Mrs. Thomas's war effort. Mrs. Thomas complained about wartime shortages, but having accepted a sympathetic hearing as her due, she turned around and adapted her recipes.

Before she came to Aberneth Farm, Daisy had never eaten rabbit. The stew had a rich, thick brown sauce, made with herbs, and over the top were sprinkled toasted breadcrumbs. There was finely chopped parsley on the mashed potatoes; the potatoes, parsley, and the carrots in the stew came from the garden. Daisy ate heartily, but Valerie, the other Land Girl, picked at the meat. There was a small heap on the side of her plate, rejected as not immediately identifiable.

It had been agreed Valerie was conservative about her food. What Rosemary, and for that matter Daisy, really meant was Valerie was suburban, but they didn't say it, even when they were alone together. Although Daisy and Rosemary had become friends, Rosemary knew that if she were to preside over an efficiently and harmoniously run house and farm, there could be no suggestion of factions, favoritism, or, worse still, acknowledgment of—or alliances formed along—class lines.

Daisy thought that even if there had not been rabbit for dinner, Valerie would have been off her feed because she had missed the teatime visit of the two young officers. War, for Valerie, who had been born and bred in Tunbridge Wells, was a catalytic event that had divided the male sex into officers and others. The outbreak of war had, seemingly miraculously, provided her with an opportunity to meet, ensnare, and marry an officer who originated from somewhere more promising than Kent. The news that two young men from regiments not usually accessible had passed through the house unmet by her seemed unnecessarily unfair. Especially since she was ready for them.

Valerie prided herself on not having let herself go although she worked on a farm. She and Daisy were paid one pound a week and were entitled to a day off. Daisy saved a day each month and had accrued a few more when Valerie asked her to fill in for her in order to be able to attend some distant officer-heavy social engagement. Valerie was made of sterner stuff; every second day off was entirely spent in beauty preparations. Her hair was shampooed with Stablonde, a mask superimposed over her face, her hands encased in gloves filled with almond oil. Eyebrows were plucked and feet were pedicured. She would appear, those evenings for dinner, looking radiant; by the end of the evening when she went upstairs to bed her expression would have turned to one of vaguely confused disappointment.

Daisy had once accompanied Valerie to the small market town nearby and the two girls had shopped together at Boots. Daisy watched as Valerie shopped for beauty products that she, Daisy, had never considered buying and, in some cases, had not known existed. Once a month Daisy stocked up on sanitary towels and such minor necessities as shampoo, toothpaste, stamps, and writing paper. Otherwise she saved her wages. She felt rich and pleasantly aware that at some stage a treat would present itself—for she, too, knew that the war devastating Europe would offer her freedoms and opportunities she had not been brought up to expect—and then she would have the saved days off, and money to be able to indulge herself fully.

Queen-of-puddings followed the rabbit stew; Daisy helped herself enthusiastically. She was always hungry and ate three meals a day with appetite and enjoyment. Like the deep hot baths, well cooked food was a luxury she had not been used to before coming to Aberneth Farm; she associated it with the long days and hard physical work of the farm. She was happy, satisfied, pleasantly full of good food and aware that within an hour, before she had finished digesting her meal, she would be asleep.

“I thought Patrick was rather taken with you,” Rosemary said, further depressing Valerie.

Daisy looked puzzled. There was nothing coy about her confusion; it was merely that she had thought James, the younger and more attractive of the two officers, to have shown more interest.

D
AISY WAS RIPPED
untimely—half past five—from the comfortable warm dark of her bed by the alarm clock. The room was bitterly cold. The peacetime house was centrally heated—George, Rosemary's husband, was, if not rich, at least well enough off to live comfortably—but during the war all heat in the house emanated from either the Aga cooker in the kitchen or from individual wood-burning fireplaces. There was a small grate fireplace in Daisy's room and she had even once on her Sunday off, lit a fire and spent the afternoon reading in bed and napping. A morning fire was not justified since she needed to be at the milking shed fifteen minutes after she had forced herself out of bed. Dressing quickly, putting on her knickers and socks before she took off her flannel nightdress, and averting her eyes from the bed for whose comfortable warmth she would that moment have given a year of her life, Daisy struggled into her clothes: two pairs of socks, a woolen vest under a sweater, a cardigan, and her uniform britches. When she was dressed, she left her room, walked quietly through the dark and silent house—she was the first one up—down the stairs, across the hall to the small room in which fishing rods, guns, riding boots, game bags, and the other accoutrements and protective clothing of sport were kept. Not all designed for the seasonal killing of small, usually edible, animals; there were also, for the summer months, a collection of tennis racquets in wooden presses and a croquet set. Dust and the occasional fine cobweb covered most of this equipment, since it pertained largely to peacetime pleasures. Though Rosemary, who was an accomplished fisherwoman, had occasionally spent a warm evening beside the small river that flowed along one side of the farm.

Daisy pulled on her gumboots, stuffed her wool-covered arms into her overcoat, put on her hat and gloves, and opened the front door. She bicycled through the icy darkness down the avenue, the cold of the frozen metal handlebars penetrating the worn rubber grips and thick gloves to her aching fingers. There was enough light from the moon to silhouette the trees on either side. Nothing moved; it was as though they were frozen in place. Had she not been so cold, Daisy would have found the landscape mysterious and beautiful.

The winter—the first winter of the war—was bitter, the coldest in many years. Flocks of birds had swept down on the berry-bearing trees and bushes and stripped them of every edible particle. Birds that now were to be seen dead, frozen in place on branches of the leafless trees.

Daisy was used to the crunch of her bicycle wheels on the frozen mud, and puddles that looked as though thin, opaque glass had been shattered to show the dark brown water beneath. The leafless trees had become sculpture, the evergreens self-contained or, in the case of the rhododendron, drooping and defeated, playing dead and waiting for the spring thaw. Frost, ice, and freezing cold were common at Aberneth Farm; snow was unusual and its consequences visual rather than practical. All that winter it could be seen covering the top of the distant hills.

Five minutes later she arrived at the milking shed. The cows were moving slowly, but with purpose, toward the shed. All but one—Duchess, the only mixed breed in the herd of black-and-white Friesians, and Daisy's favorite—would amble to their places, stick their heads through the bails, and begin to munch the hay provided to keep them from becoming restless while they were milked.

Daisy worked in the milking shed washing the milking machines and, if the milkers were shorthanded, stripping down the cows—hand-milking the last drops that the machine had not squeezed from their teats. Stripping down was the part of her work that Daisy enjoyed most. She liked cows; she found their unhurried gait calming. She liked their dreamy gaze and the way, in summer, they would stand immobile, chewing the cud, occasionally flicking away a fly with a swish of the tail, while staring at the horizon. She liked the sound milk made as it hit the metal pail and the simple rhythm set by the alternating jets bouncing off the bucket. She liked the smell of cows, and most of all, on those winter mornings, she liked their warmth. Sixty cows in a milking shed generated a certain amount of heat; an individual cow provided a warm flank for Daisy to rest her forehead on as she stripped down the teats so much warmer than her painfully cold and stiff fingers.

Unfortunately, though this morning was a stripping down morning—some of the milkers having claimed accumulated time off to sleep in before chapel—the greater part of Daisy's work took place in a cement-floored room adjacent to the shed. It was where she washed the milking equipment. The milking machines and churns were washed in cold water. They had to be kept spotlessly clean; every surface needed to be scoured and every angle and crevice thoroughly scrubbed. Daisy had a hose with good water pressure and scrubbing brushes of different shapes and sizes, but she suffered dreadfully from the pitiless cold. Cold water on the cold damp concrete made her feet ache, and her hands were raw, red, and, this winter, covered with chilblains.

The chilblains, three on her right hand, one on her left, had developed when the weather had first become relentlessly cold. In every other way, Daisy was healthier than she had been when she joined up. She took more exercise, she slept better, and she ate more and probably healthier food. The jacket of the coat and skirt she had worn on the last prewar Sunday no longer fitted her, although the skirt did; her shoulders were broader and she was sometimes surprised by the hardness of the muscles in her upper arms.

Daisy was hungry; she was tired; she was very cold. She felt lonely, neglected, hard done by, although she didn't connect all these feelings or add to them that it had been a very long time since she had felt an affectionate or prolonged touch from another human being. Instead, she felt a tear trickle down her cheek, and she thought,
I want my mother.

Her mother, she thought, not without humor although a matching tear rolled down from her other eye, would not be much use to her this morning. Daisy's father had three services to conduct—Holy Communion twice and a sermon—and although the unemotional atmosphere of the rectory precluded panic, there would be the usual anxiety about surplices and misplaced glasses and gloves.