Time to Say Goodbye (30 page)

When the four of them returned to the harvest field, accompanied by Mrs Pilgrim and a good deal of food and drink, Rita was nowhere to be seen, but when the meal was spread out she appeared and went to sit as far away as she could get from Debby, Imogen and the boys. Once more, Imogen beckoned to her to join them, but Rita merely tightened her lips and shook her head with such vigour that her long blonde plait bounced on her back. At one point Debby, very red in the face, went over to Rita and whispered something in her ear, then pointed to where the other three sat, but all Rita did was cram a sandwich into her mouth so that speech must have been impossible and shake her head vehemently. After another try, Debby shrugged and Imogen heard what she said quite clearly. ‘All right, I know it was wrong to say what I did, but all I can do is apologise and I’ve done that twice already. Can’t you pretend I never opened my mouth? I know I never should have done, but something you said flicked me on the raw. Oh, Rita, please forgive me.’

For a moment Imogen, listening and watching, thought that Rita was about to give in, but then Rita shook her head again, saying nothing, and after waiting for a couple of minutes Debby, who had sat down on the grassy verge next to Rita, sighed and got to her feet. ‘All right. See you later,’ she said, and re-joined Imogen and the boys.

The rest of the day was spent in the harvest field. Everyone was well aware that the fine weather might not last, so they worked until it was too dark to see. The boys offered to accompany the girls back to the Linnet but Imogen assured them that she and Debby – and Rita when she turned up – could see themselves home perfectly safely, so the boys went off to the farm whilst Imogen and Debby loitered, waiting for Rita to put in an appearance. When she had failed to do so after ten minutes, Imogen tucked her arm into Debby’s, giving it a little shake. ‘Don’t worry. You know what she’s been like lately, keeping herself to herself, spending hours reading her silly magazines, going to bed to get out of the washing up and then grumbling that the rest of us leave her all the nasty jobs. What
we
have to do now is pray that it won’t rain before it’s Mr Pilgrim’s turn for the threshing machine, what they call the drum. When the fellows are sure that the stooks are dry, they’ll make them into stacks; I still don’t understand how they construct them so that they’re pretty well weatherproof even without that sort of canvas hood they sometimes put over them. And I don’t know how the drum separates the corn from the ears; I might ask Woody tomorrow. He means to join the RAF as soon as he’s old enough, but he thinks when the war is over he’s going to be a farmer because he thinks we’ll always need food whatever else we manage to do without.’

‘I wonder what I’ll do, when the war’s over I mean,’ Debby said. ‘I used to think I’d like to go to university and get a degree in languages, but now I’m not so sure. You’ve got to be awfully clever to go to university. The thing is, all my family find learning languages easy. My parents spoke French, German, Polish and even some Russian as well as English. I remember my father saying that if you had languages you could take your choice so far as work was concerned. How about you, Immy? What do you want to do?’

Imogen considered as they walked along the country lane in the deepening dusk. ‘I don’t know,’ she said dreamily. ‘I’d like life to go on like this, for ever and ever. Do you know, I can hardly remember what it was like before the war? Living at the Canary and Linnet is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, though of course it would be even better if Mum was here. I do love her, but when I think of our life in Liverpool . . . well, I don’t think I could ever be happy there again.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Debby said after a thoughtful pause. She chuckled. ‘Fancy having to go back to school every day, with no breaks for farm work or strawberry picking, no following the digger and picking the lovely new potatoes out of the loose earth . . .’

‘No sitting round the fire on winter evenings passing round a bottle of milk and shaking it vigorously when your turn comes to make it into butter; no searching for the hen who lays astray and finding a whole clutch of beautiful brown eggs cunningly hidden away at the very bottom of the hedge,’ Imogen said, joining in the game. ‘No sneaking into the bar for empty glasses and listening to the jokes and chaff of the drinkers, no Auntie handing you the mixing bowl when she’s been making her famous carrot cake and telling you to scrape it out and to share it with the others . . .’

‘Oh, Immy, I just wish . . .’ Debby began, then straightened her shoulders as they crossed the back yard of the pub. Only of course it wasn’t a back yard any more, because they had turned it into a vegetable garden, and a very good one, too. ‘No point in wishing, and anyway, I’m sure we’ll have good times when we return to city life. There are cinemas, theatres, proper tennis courts, clubs you can join, oh, all sorts.’ She looked hopefully at her companion as Imogen began to open the back door. ‘We’ll like it all right once we get home. Don’t you think so, Immy?’

‘Oh, sure,’ Imogen said, hearing her own lack of enthusiasm with some dismay. Then she cheered up. ‘Only I expect the war will last for ages yet, don’t you?’

‘Oh, Immy!’ Debby said reproachfully, and they were both laughing as they entered the kitchen, to find Auntie snoozing over her knitting. She was making socks for soldiers, and very odd they looked, for Auntie was by no means an expert at the turning of the heel and, now that Jill was no longer around to do it for her, produced some surprising results. However, the opening of the back door roused her and she adjusted her spectacles and tried to sit up straight, saying as she did so: ‘What’s so funny? If you’re laughing because I closed my eyes for a moment . . . I wasn’t asleep, if that was what you were thinking.’

‘It was; and you must have closed the pub early,’ Imogen observed, seeing that the door between the kitchen and the bar was open, showing the bar to be empty of its usual customers. ‘Is Rita back yet? There was a bit of a row – would you call it a row, Debs? – and she didn’t walk back with us, but we want to make our peace.’

Auntie removed her specs, rubbed her eyes, then yawned. ‘It’s possible that she might have come in very quietly, not wanting to disturb me,’ she said. ‘But remember she’s sleeping in Jill’s room until the harvest is over because she says you two keep her awake by talking . . . not that I believe you do, for one moment, or if you do, young Rita chatters away as merrily as either of you two. But she does like to grumble occasionally.’

‘Oh, damn!’ Imogen said. ‘I’d forgotten that. I’ll go up and tell her she should never let the sun go down upon her wrath – that sort of thing – and she’ll probably be quite chirpy and good-tempered by morning.’

Debby looked doubtful. ‘Suppose I come and say sorry all over again?’ she suggested as the two of them bade Auntie goodnight and began to ascend the stairs. ‘It’s me she’s cross with, remember. And I don’t mind apologising, honest I don’t.’

But when they reached Jill’s room and tapped gently on the door there was no response, and though neither Imogen nor Debby would have admitted to being afraid of Rita’s tongue when roused from sleep they decided, by unspoken but mutual consent, not to disturb her until morning.

They prepared for bed in unusual silence, Debby replying in monosyllables to everything Imogen said, and Imogen being far too tired to say much. But as she rolled between the sheets she said sleepily: ‘Oh, Debs, just what
did
you say to offend Rita?’ She remembered something suddenly and sat up, a hand flying to her mouth. ‘You didn’t tease her about the geranium petals?’

For a moment she thought that Debby was asleep, but then she heard a sleepy chuckle. ‘No, I’d forgotten all about the geranium petals. And it was Woody who put her back up when he asked if she’d thought of using soot to darken her eyelashes. I thought she was going to hit him, but then he went on and told the story about someone who went to see a sad flick in the old days before the war, and her mascara, if that’s what it’s called, ran all down her face and made her look like a panda.’

‘So what was it?’ Imogen persisted.

But Debby, sleepy though she undoubtedly was, sat up on one elbow and spoke firmly. ‘For goodness’ sake, Immy, I told Rita I’d forget all about it and forget I shall. You won’t learn anything, not if you nag all night, so will you kindly shut up and let me get some sleep!’

Imogen lay down with a defeated sigh. She knew when that note entered Debby’s voice that she was serious. No use nagging; so far as the other girl was concerned the subject was closed. She cuddled her head into her pillow and smiled to herself. Apparently it had occurred to Rita – or perhaps she had read it in a magazine – that if she rubbed scarlet geranium petals on her lips it would look just as though she were using a real cosmetic, now that such things as lipsticks and rouge were simply not available. So Rita had disappeared into Jill’s bedroom the previous day armed with a handful of geranium flowers and had come down with scarlet lips and a round scarlet patch on each cheek. If she had applied the petals with discretion it might have looked quite nice, but she had overdone it, not keeping to the natural outline of her mouth but trying to enhance it, and when the boys saw her they had been quite rude. Rita had pretended to take their teasing in good part and had rubbed off the offending colour on her hanky, but once the boys had gone home Rita had snapped Imogen’s head off the moment she mentioned geranium petals, and in order to keep the peace both Imogen and Debby had steered clear of the subject. They were both beginning to be a little more interested in their appearance than before, but this took the form of trying their hair in different styles and making sure that their best frocks were always ironed before they put them on. It was only Rita who truly cared about her looks. Imogen accepted that when one has coal black hair one also has pale skin which does not take kindly to being exposed to the sun, whilst Debby occasionally wished aloud that her nose and mouth were smaller and her skin less sallow. ‘Shove your head in the flour bin,’ Rita had said nastily when Debby had moaned that she was so brown she was beginning to look like a foreigner. ‘Don’t you remember that story in the French book which we read at school? The girl with the big mouth who was told to make it smaller by repeating
petite pomme, petite pomme, petite pomme
before she went to bed each night, only she forgot which fruit the teacher had told her and so she said
petite poire, petite poire, petite poire
until her mouth was so huge it met round the back of her neck? Yours is like that, so if I were you I wouldn’t worry about being tanned. No boy is going to look twice at you with a gob that size.’

Remembering, Imogen sighed to herself. What on earth was the matter with Rita? She had always been sharp, quick to criticise, but just lately she had seemed to take pleasure in being really horrible, particularly to Debby. Why? Everyone liked Debby; even Rita had done so, though she still picked on her. But there was just no understanding Rita, and Imogen made up her mind that she would take the other girl on one side the next day and ask her bluntly to stop creating friction. Things had been so pleasant when the five of them were together . . . come to think of it, Imogen realised, things were still okay when they were with the boys; it was just when there were only the three of them that Rita started to be nasty. Oh, not always to Debby, sometimes to Imogen herself, but Imogen always hit back, whereas Debby just went very quiet.

But this time was different, Imogen reminded herself, just before she slid into sleep. This time Debby had answered back, defended herself, maybe even attacked. Well, it served Rita jolly well right, and Imogen hoped, though without much conviction, that it might prevent Rita from criticising the younger girl in future.

Imogen usually slept deeply and dreamlessly, but perhaps because her mind was still active she went straight from sleep into a most peculiar dream. She was walking along beside a high chain-link fence; she trod on summer grass, like a hay meadow, starred with bright flowers, poppies, corn cockles and ox-eye daisies. But on the other side of the fence the earth was packed hard, and presently she saw men coming out from ramshackle buildings, men whose lagging bare feet scuffed up clouds of dust as they walked, and as they drew close she saw that they were skeletally thin, and though several of them looked towards her they made no sign that they were aware of her presence. More and more men poured out of the buildings, and with a sensation of sick horror Imogen saw that at intervals around the perimeter of the high fence there were towers upon which men in uniform sat, each one with a rifle laid across his knees. Staring, she suddenly saw, amidst all the skeletal strangers, someone she knew. She stared, her eyes watering, and it was Debby, but not the plump and smiling Debby she knew. This was a skinny waif, dressed in rags, her dark eyes fixed imploringly upon Imogen’s face. She crept nearer the fence and spoke in a tiny whisper. ‘Help me!’ she said, and, as though the plea had been some sort of mantra, the men around her spoke the same words in low guttural tones. Imogen put her hand through the fence, even as the scene began to whirl in the topsy-turvy way dreams do, to whirl and to shrink until it was no larger than a postage stamp and she could only just make out the two tiny figures, Debby in the compound and herself on the outside. Then she was waking, sweat running down her neck, hauling herself upright in bed whilst her heart hammered unevenly and looking across to where Debby slumbered, fearing that the bed might be empty, that Debby might have been carried off to the terrible place of her dream.

But Debby was there, snoring a little, and presently Imogen lay down once more. It was only a dream, she told herself fiercely, only a dream. Gosh, I hope I never have a dream like that again! And I wonder why I had it now? Of course, people are saying that the Germans and Japanese are doing terrible things, but . . . oh, dear, will I ever be able to sleep again?

She lay for some time, gradually growing calmer, but as soon as she closed her eyes she began to toss and turn and she must have woken Debby, for suddenly the younger girl was standing by her bed and shaking her shoulder. ‘You’re having a nightmare, Immy,’ Debby said softly. ‘You poor thing. I used to have terrible nightmares when we first came to the Linnet but Auntie said I’d grow out of them, and I have, pretty well. Do you want to come into my bed or will you be all right now I’ve woken you up?’