Under the Apple Tree (34 page)

themselves from her body; hard, painful sobs that wrenched

at her chest and shoulders and made her throat feel raw and

scraped.

‘I’m sorry,’ she choked.

She felt Mrs Hazelwood’s hand laid gently on her

shoulders. It was firm and soothing, and a strength seemed

to flow from it into Judy’s body. She found a large

handkerchief pressed into her hand and after a while the

sobs eased and she was able to blow her nose and sit up. She gave her hostess a faint, wobbly smile.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.’

‘I’ve told you, there’s no need to apologise. You’re not

the first person to have wept in this garden.’ The vicar’s

wife glanced around the tranquil little haven. ‘It’s meant for

peace, but there are some griefs that have to be expressed in

order to find peace. Was Sean your sweetheart?’

Judy nodded, understanding only the last part of this

little speech. ‘We only knew each other for a short while.

We wanted to get married, but there wasn’t time.’ She

looked down at the ring he had given her, with its tiny scrap

of diamond. ‘I can’t seem to believe he’s gone. I keep

thinking about it, trying to imagine …’ Her voice shook

again. ‘He was at sea, like Polly’s husband. It must have

been so awful.’

‘Yes, it must.’ Mrs Hazelwood’s hand gave her shoulder a

final squeeze, then dropped gently away. ‘It must be so

awful for so many people. For you as well.’

Judy shook her head at once. ‘No - I’ve hardly suffered at

all. I wasn’t hurt in the bombing, I’ve got somewhere to live

and my family are still there. I’ve been helping, until this

happened.’ She touched one of her ears. ‘I want to help

again. I need to do something - I can’t just spend, my time

going for country walks and being looked after by other

people. It feels wrong. It feels wrong not to have suffered.’

Mrs Hazelwood looked at her thoughtfully. ‘But perhaps

you need to be looked after for a while. There are more

kinds of illness than the physical ones, you know.’ This was

a difficult sentence to read, and she wrote it down. Judy

flushed and she shook her head vehemently.

‘I’m not mad! Just because I can’t hear—’

‘No, no, my dear, I didn’t mean that at all.’ She wrote

again. You’ve had terrible shocks. You need rest to get over

them. You mustn’t feel guilty about that.

‘I don’t know if I feel guilty or not,’ Judy said, ‘but I do

know I want to do something to help. Please, isn’t there anything? I don’t mind what it is.’

Mrs Hazelwood looked at her steadily, and then smiled. It

was a warm, friendly smile and Judy felt comforted by it. In

fact, she thought, she felt comforted simply by being here,

in this small, peaceful garden with its flowers and its

sheltering walls. ‘I hope the vicar never grows vegetables in

here,’ she said.

‘I won’t let him. It’s a healing place, and that’s just as

important as cabbages. Food for the soul,’ the vicar’s wife

said, and smiled again. ‘Now, let’s think what you could do.

Have you ever made scrim?’ She laughed at Judy’s blank

expression and wrote it down.

‘Scrim?’ The word still meant nothing. Judy shook her

head. ‘I’ve never heard of it.’

‘I don’t suppose you have! Nor had we until the war

started. Come with me - I’ll show you.’

Judy got up and followed her. Scrim! she thought.

Whatever can it be? But it didn’t really matter. Whatever it

was, she was going to be doing something to help the war

effort. She was going to be able to feel useful again.

Chapter Seventeen ‘Scrim’ turned out to be strips of dull green, khaki and grey

fabric which had to be woven into huge nets to make

camouflage material for the Army. The work was being

carried out in a large barn, where a number of women were

standing at wide wooden frames on which the net was

stretched. The fabric was laid out on the earthen floor and

they were painstakingly threading the strips through the

netting. They looked up and smiled as the two newcomers

arrived, and spoke to the vicar’s wife, but in the dim

shadows of the barn it was impossible for Judy to read what

they were saying.

‘It’s not quite as easy as it looks,’ Mrs Hazelwood said.

‘You see, it has to look as real as possible so you have to fade out the edges and make the corners turn so that there are no

sudden sharp lines. It’s called “breaking shadow”. Think of

the dappled light of sun falling through trees, and you’ll

understand. It’s rather dirty, tedious work, I’m afraid,’ she

added apologetically, ‘but we all take a turn at it. There are

other jobs to do as well, in between.’

Judy found that while she didn’t catch all of Mrs

Hazelwood’s words, she could read enough to understand

the gist. She stood beside an elderly woman wearing a

pinafore, with a strip of the fabric wound round her head in

a turban, watching to see how the work was done.

Mrs Hazelwood spoke to the other women and then

smiled at Judy and left the barn. She had evidently

explained Judy’s problem and they didn’t attempt to talk to

her, but gave her friendly looks and showed her what to do.

One of them wound some fabric round her fair hair to keep it clean, and in a little while she felt confident enough to join in on her own section of netting.

As Mrs Hazelwood had said, it was dirty work. The air

was full of dust and fluff from the fabric, so that she found

herself sneezing every few minutes and soon understood

why they all wore turbans. It was also hard on the fingers,

which were soon sore from twisting the fabric through the

stiff, oily netting. Yet even so, the work itself was strangely soothing. And you could take pride in weaving in the

subdued colours, making dappled patterns and shadows

here, a pool of light there. It’s almost like painting, she

thought. We’re making a picture. And we might be saving

soldiers’ lives as well.

The other women were mostly elderly, one or two of

them sitting on chairs as they worked. There was one

enormously plump woman with swollen legs who could

have done few other tasks, and another who could only work

with one arm. It’s a job for the weak and feeble - like me,

Judy thought, and she smiled. Anyone and everyone could

help the war effort in some way.

It was also a very sociable job. There was no machinery to

make a noise and she could see that the other women were

enjoying a good gossip and plenty of laughter. She sighed,

wishing she could join in, but she was beginning to get

accustomed to this sense of isolation now. Accustomed to

being deaf, she thought in dismay. And I’m only twenty

two. Am I going to be like this for the rest of my life?

For a moment, she was swept with the sense of desolation

that had also become painfully familiar - and then she took a

grip on herself. I am not going to give way to self-pity, she

told herself firmly. I’m fit and well and I’m working again.

Plenty of people are far worse off than me.

She picked up another strip of fabric and wove it into the

netting. This is a wood, she thought. It’s a wood somewhere

in Europe, and there are British soldiers creeping through

the undergrowth. They’re making dugouts to sleep in and

they need this camouflage netting to hide them and keep

them safe. Or they want to cover a tank or a lorry with it, so

that the enemy doesn’t know they’re advancing. They’re

depending on me to make a really good camouflage.

Someone out in Germany or France is depending on me Judy

Taylor. They’re depending on me to keep them alive and

it doesn’t matter a scrap to them whether I’m deaf or

not.

By the time Mrs Hazelwood returned she had completed

a whole frame. Pleased with her work, she stood back to

admire it, just as an artist might stand back to assess a

painting, and Mrs Hazelwood smiled her approval.

‘You’ve done well, my dear. Now it’s time for a break. I

dare say Mrs Sutton will be expecting you back for dinner.’

‘Goodness, is it that time already?’ They came out into

the sunlight and Judy glanced up at the church clock. ‘I’ll

come back this afternoon and do some more.’

Mrs Hazelwood shook her head. ‘No, I’ve got something

else for you to do, outside in the sunshine. Most people only

pop in for an hour or so, or even less, in between their other

jobs. Come back at two o’clock and you can help collect

sphagnum moss.’

Judy looked at her in bewilderment, totally unable to

make out the last two words, Mrs Hazelwood just smiled

and said, ‘I’ll explain when you come back,’ so she smiled

back a little uncertainly and went off down the lane in the

direction of the farm.

‘So you’ve been making scrim?’ Mrs Sutton said, serving

her a helping of cottage pie. ‘I’ve done a bit of that too. Filthy work, but it’s got to be done. And are you going back this afternoon?’

‘Not to make scrim,’ Judy said, watching her face

carefully to read the words. ‘I don’t know what I’ll be doing.

I couldn’t understand.’

The three children were back from morning school and

sitting up at the table, watching the big dish of cottage pie eagerly and squabbling about who would have the crispy

bits round the edges. Sylvie nudged Judy and said, ‘Perhaps

you’ll be digging up acorns. They did that last year, for

pigs.’

‘Acorns?’ Judy said in surprise. ‘Why? Can’t the pigs dig

up their own acorns?’

Mr Sutton, who was washing at the sink, laughed and

said, ‘That’s what the women said, but they were just told to

get on with it,’ and Brian said scornfully, ‘You don’t collect

acorns in May, silly. Anyway, they got them all last year.

There won’t be any more till after the summer. I expect it’s

rosehips for making juice for babies.’

‘Well, that just shows who’s silly, then!’ Sylvie retorted.

‘There aren’t any rosehips either, so yah boo!’

‘That’s quite enough of that,’ Mrs Sutton said severely.

‘We’ll have none of that kind of language at the table,

Sylvie, if you don’t mind.’ To Judy, who had missed most

of this exchange, she said, ‘Perhaps you’re going to be

collecting moss. I’ve heard they use it for injuries. Put it on cuts and bruises,’ she added, demonstrating.

This time, Judy understood. ‘It might have been moss

that Mrs Hazelwood said,’ she said doubtfully, ‘but they

don’t really put it on people, do they? What good would that

do?’

‘Don’t ask me. It’s a wonder what they can do, these days.

Why, the vicar himself told me they use spiders’ webs in

telescopes and submarine periscopes and such, to give them

sightings. Spiders’ webs! I wouldn’t have believed it if

anyone else had told me. But he’d know, because he was in

the Army. Chaplain, he was.’

Judy gave up on all these complicated words, and

fastened instead on the mention of the vicar. ‘I met their son

in the garden. Ben.’

‘Oh, Ben!’ Mrs Sutton face broke into a smile. ‘Their

youngest, he is. Late baby - the others are all quite a few

years older. In the Services, all of them - Ian in the Army, chaplain like his father, Alexandra gone for a nurse, Peter in

the Navy. It must be a worry for the vicar and his poor wife,

but at least they know Ben’s safe at school.’

Judy followed this carefully and decided to say nothing

about Ben’s intentions. Brian, who had been concentrating

on his cottage pie, looked up and said, ‘Is it true they use

spiders’ webs for telescopes? Do they pay people to collect

them? I could get lots.’

‘Yeugh!’ Sylvie said. ‘Don’t you bring them indoors. I

hate spiders.’

‘That’s because you’re a girl,’ he said dismissively. ‘All

girls are scared of spiders.’ He grinned evilly and made a

spidery shape with his fingers, and Sylvie gave a little

scream and cowered away.

‘That’s enough, now,’ Mrs Sutton said, and held out the

cottage pie dish. ‘Does anyone want more of this? It’s

macaroni pudding for afters.’

‘Bags the skin!’ the three children shouted in unison, and

she handed the dish to Mr Sutton, who scraped his fork

round the edges and cleaned out every last scrap.

Judy walked back to the vicarage feeling well-fed and

warmed by the cheerful company. The children were

certainly better off in the country, she thought. Milk

straight from the cow, home-made butter, home-baked

bread and fresh eggs such as were rarely seen in the shops in

Portsmouth. And peace. Freedom from the raids. Freedom

from the wail of the siren, the roar of aircraft, the thunder of exploding bombs. Freedom from fear.

She took a deep breath of clean, country air, and

wondered if she really was going to spend the afternoon

collecting moss to put on soldiers’ wounds.

It turned out to be true. With half a dozen other women,

some of them the same age as herself, Judy was directed to a

wood a mile or so from the village. The little group strolled

along the lane, laughing and joking, and although Judy