Whisper on the Wind (2 page)

‘I’ll be all right. Managed before I was bombed out, didn’t I?’ Of course she would manage. With Kath out of the way and the cleaning and polishing done, there’d be plenty of time to stand in the food queues. It wasn’t a bad way of passing a couple of hours – even in winter. ‘I suppose you’ll be living off the fat of the land? Them farmers’ll have plenty of milk and eggs. Don’t tell me they don’t keep a bit back for themselves.’

‘I really don’t know. But wouldn’t you keep some for yourself now and again? Wouldn’t you treat yourself to a nice fresh egg for your breakfast?’

Fresh eggs. They were a thing of the past to ordinary people. Minnie Jepson reckoned that the weekly egg on her ration book was at least a fortnight old when she got it; stood to reason, didn’t it, the way they smelled when you cracked one? Only fit for putting in a cake – if you had the butter and sugar to spare.

‘What’s a fresh egg?’ she demanded, truculently. ‘And hadn’t you better be thinking about getting yourself off? You can’t rely on a bus being there when you want one; not with a war on, you can’t. That case is going to take a bit of carrying, an’ all. Best be on your way, girl. Take it slowly.’

‘Yes. No use hanging around, I suppose.’ She wished Aunt Min wasn’t so anxious to be rid of her. ‘I’ll just slip across the yard to the lavvy and then I’ll be going.’

She wished the churning inside her would stop. She was always like this when something untoward happened. Like the morning she married Barney. She’d wanted to run away. If she hadn’t been so desperate to leave the house she’d worked in for the past six years, she would have. A skivvy, that’s all she had been. She had exchanged the drabness of the children’s home for the drabness of domestic service and only marriage to Barney had freed her from it. Or so she had thought until he’d taken her to the little house he had promised her. Trouble was, he hadn’t ever mentioned they’d be sharing it with his mother.

She had felt the same churning that day she walked through the doors of the Labour Exchange and told them she wanted to be a landgirl, surprised that she hadn’t needed her husband’s permission. The knowledge had made her feel slightly giddy, because for once she was doing something entirely because she wanted to. She was making only the second important decision in the whole of her twenty-three-and-a-bit years and she had been shaking with the enormity of it when she left the counter; when the clerk had already made an appointment for her medical and there was almost no going back.

‘Ain’t you taking Barney’s picture with you, then?’ Aunt Min took the Clark Gable photograph from the piano top and dusted it absently with her pinafore.

‘I’ve packed one already. I’ll leave that one for you.’ Kath smiled, wishing her heart hadn’t joined the turmoil inside her with loud, insistent thuds. But this was her first real adventure and being in the Land Army was the only taste of freedom she would ever have.

Oh, she was grateful to Barney. He’d given her respectability, a name. She was Kathleen
Allen.
She knew
exactly
who she was and that no one could push her around any more – unless she chose to let them. Now she was the same as anyone else. She had the same identity card, the same ration book and from today she would wear the same uniform and get the same pay as all the other landgirls in a hostel called Peacock Hey. For a woman who had never quite known who she was, that was something of an achievement. When the war was over and Barney came home, she would settle down, be a good wife and have his children.
When
the war was over. In two years, three years, maybe even longer now that Japan had come into it; now that it wasn’t just Hitler they had to see to but all those Japs as well. Funny little slant-eyed men who people said fought and fought and never gave in. How long would it take to beat
them
, she wondered, even with the Americans on our side.

‘Well then,’ she said, wondering why her voice sounded so whispery and strange. ‘I’ll just put on my hat and coat.’

A short, well-cut top coat; a round, leather-tied hat, though just how she was expected to wear it she didn’t know. She placed it comfortably on the back of her head, picked up her gas mask and said again, ‘Well then.’

Minnie Jepson walked down the passage, opened the front door then stood, arms folded, waiting.

Kath picked up her case, manoeuvring it with her knee to the doorstep. Then she put it down with a thump, placed her hands on the elder woman’s shoulders and kissed her cheek.

‘So-long, Aunt Min. Take care of yourself. I’ll write, like I promised.’

‘Ta-ra, girl. God bless.’

Kath picked up her case. She didn’t turn round – you didn’t ever look back in wartime – and she wasn’t surprised to hear the door slammed shut behind her. Even before she reached the gate.

Slowly she walked to the top of the street. The churning and thumping were even worse now and she felt strange in her uniform, especially in the breeches and knee-length socks.

‘Alderby St Mary,’ she whispered. Somewhere in the North Riding of Yorkshire and a million miles away, thank God.

The letter addressed to Rosalind Fairchild came by the second delivery on the 18th of December. It bore the words On His Majesty’s Service and she had expected it daily for the past two weeks. Sucking in her breath she opened the envelope with a swift, decisive tear, quickly scanned the single sheet of paper, then looked up, her face a blank.

‘It’s all right, Gran. They’re letting me stay at Ridings. I don’t have to be called up.’

Hester Fairchild let go her indrawn breath. She had been worried; useless to deny it. Government departments usually did the exact opposite to what was expected or hoped of them, but for once it seemed they had got it right. She was more relieved than her face showed, for war was hateful to her. War – the last one – had taken her husband and she had no wish for this one to snatch away her granddaughter.

‘I suppose it’s official, now – puts you in a reserved occupation?’

‘Seems it does. I’m exempt from call-up, it says here, but I can’t change my job without first asking them.’ She shrugged. ‘I suppose I’d better let Mat Ramsden know. At least I’m one of his problems solved.’

So now it was official. She had a reserved occupation; work considered so important that she was exempted from call-up. And farming
was
important. Now into the third year of the war, food was becoming alarmingly short. Already it was strictly rationed, with rumours of cuts after Christmas and farmers were left in no doubt that they must grow as much food as they could, and then some, with every acre of land used to capacity. Farms and farm-workers became important almost overnight and vital to the war effort, Mr Churchill said. Britain’s rundown farms were suddenly in the front line. For the first time since the last war ended, farmers were needed.

‘Read it.’ Roz handed over the letter.

She was glad it was all settled, that she could stay in Alderby St Mary, though not so very long ago a small, secret part of her had longed to join the armed forces. She had wanted to wear a uniform, to be
seen
to be doing her bit for the war, but that was before Paul; before she had gone to a dance at the aerodrome and met the tall, flaxen-haired navigator. Once she would have scoffed at the idea of love at first sight. That kind of feeling couldn’t be love, she’d have said. Instant attraction, perhaps; something sexual. But something strange had taken hold of her that night; some feeling she had not known to exist had set every small pulse in her body beating exquisitely and her mouth had gone dry as he crossed the floor towards her. He hadn’t even asked her if she wanted to dance. He’d held out his hand and smiled as if their meeting was meant to be. They had danced the floor twice round before he said, ‘Paul. Hullo.’ And she had whispered, ‘Rosalind. Roz. Hullo, yourself.’

At least she thought that was what she said, but her heart was thudding in her ears and she’d only been sure of his nearness and the absolute rightness of their being together.

Paul Rennie. Crew member of the Lancaster bomber K-King, based at the hastily constructed aerodrome not two miles away. Paul, who had flown his eighth bombing raid the night before and who would soon be on his thirteenth. Operational flight number thirteen; the dicey one, after which it would all be easy until the thirtieth, which would mark the end of the tour.

His first ‘op’ had been a swine, he’d said. He couldn’t remember a lot about that first raid over Germany save that it had been on Bremen and that the sickness in the pit of his stomach had been nothing at all to do with turbulence. But Paul was like that. He didn’t think that flying was a piece of cake; bloody stupid of him, really, ever to have volunteered for aircrew. But he was smiling as he said it and his eyes had been laughing, too. Flying Officer Paul Rennie, who lived near Bath and had a twin sister called Pippa who was a Waaf, somewhere in Lincolnshire.

She would see Paul again tomorrow at the Friday-night dance – if he wasn’t flying, that was. If this viciously cold weather continued all week; if a wind from the south didn’t banish the frost overnight.

‘Won’t be long, Gran.’ She shrugged into her coat. ‘Just going over to the farm.’

Mat would be glad they were letting her stay, just as Gran was. Even if she had never met Paul, it made sense that she should remain in Alderby, because Gran needed her and now Ridings needed her too; a need which had first arisen the day the representative from the War Agricultural Executive Committee – the man from the War Ag. they called him – had come to Ridings. That day, he had gravely and silently paced the boundaries of the parkland surrounding the house, the game-cover and all the grazing Gran rented to Mat for his beef cattle. He had made notes and calculations then said he hoped Mrs Fairchild appreciated that all these idle acres must come under the plough?

‘Technically, you see, parkland is grassland and grassland is an extravagance. It just doesn’t produce enough food to the acre. It’s wasteful, and –’ He shrugged away the remainder of the sentence. He had no need to explain or to ask. It was simply a case of going politely through the preamble. The Government needed more wheat and barley, potatoes and sugarbeet and farmers must grow them. A landowner with two hundred-odd acres of parkland doing nothing must contribute too. Or lose her land.

‘We’ll confirm it officially, Mrs Fairchild. And I think it might be reasonable to expect it to be ploughed –’ he waved an all embracing arm, ‘by the first of March, next?’

Hester Fairchild nodded apprehensively. ‘The beeches?’ she asked him, gazing stunned down the majestic tree-lined drive. ‘And the oaks? I don’t have to – surely you aren’t asking me to –’ Her lips refused to form the words
have them cut down.
There were more than a hundred, and to fell such magnificent trees was unthinkable.

The man from the War Ag. pursed his lips. ‘I think we can leave the trees – plough round them.’ He had acquired over two hundred acres for cultivation with less trouble than he’d expected; he was willing to leave the woman her trees. ‘I’m afraid, though, that the spinney …’ He condemned the game-cover with a nod. ‘The rough woodland must go. You’ll appreciate that?’

‘Yes. Of course.’ The mistress of Ridings agreed at once; there were no trees of importance there.

So the man from the War Ag. had thanked her, shaken her hand and wished her good-day, well satisfied. She watched him drive off in his official car wondering how she was going to be able to plough up all those acres, tear out game-cover, and cultivate and harvest crops for the war effort.

But at least it would be a means to an end, Roz considered, reluctant to leave the warmth of the kitchen. Ridings was almost a farm now, and she was a farm-worker in a reserved occupation and for that she must be grateful. She could see the war out at home, which was more than most eighteen-year-olds could even begin to hope for.

‘Oops! Sorry, Polly,’ she gasped, almost colliding with the slight, grey-haired woman who stood in the doorway. ‘Didn’t see you! Gran will tell you the news.’

‘And what in the name of goodness was all that about?’ Polly Appleby put down the brown paper carrier-bag which held polishing cloths, pinafore and slippers. ‘Rush, rush, rush, that one. Never a minute to spare. Where’s she off to now?’

‘The letter came.’

‘Oh, aye? It’s all right, then?’

‘It’s all right. They’re not going to call her up.’

‘Never thought they would.’ Polly filled the kettle and set it on the stove top. ‘Stands to reason, don’t it? I suppose she’s away to tell Jonty Ramsden?’

‘To tell Mat, actually. It’s good of Mat to help out with the ploughing and such-like. He hasn’t got the time, really, and he certainly doesn’t have the men. He’s got his own farm to run and there’s only Jonty to help him.’

‘There’s Grace. Works like a man, Grace Ramsden does. And Mat Ramsden’ll do all right out of your parkland – or so talk has it.’ She held her hands to the fire. ‘But you’ll not be interested in village talk.’

Only Polly spoke to Hester Fairchild as an equal. Polly had always been there; had been a housemaid at Ridings when Hester Fairchild came there as a bride, all those years ago.

She stooped to throw a log on the fire, sending white ash falling into the hearth, and red sparks darting up the chimney.

‘My, but that’s a frosty fire, ma’am. Be a cold ‘un tonight.’

‘The village?’ Hester took cups and saucers from the dresser. ‘What are they saying now?’