Whisper on the Wind (21 page)

A farmer always checked on the weather to come, studied the sky and the clouds, the rising and the setting of the sun, the more so since weather forecasts on the wireless were a thing of the past. Stood to reason, didn’t it? We weren’t going to broadcast the weather to the enemy so they’d know when to come and bomb us.

Jonty pulled up the collar of his jacket and walked out into the night, blinking his eyes until they adapted to the darkness, standing quite still until he could pick out the vague, darker shapes of stables, stacks and barns. A cloud drifted over the half moon and the outlines were gone.

Carefully he walked through the foldyard and the stackyard, his eyes more accustomed now to the night. It was distinctly warmer; soon sowing and planting could begin. Only today he had noticed the pale, pinky light around the sycamore trees; the haze that told a countryman that buds were swelling and spring not far away.

The days were lengthening, too. Tonight there had been good light until well past seven. Winter was almost gone and like all men who worked the land, he would be grateful to see the back of it.

Quietly he closed the orchard gate. It was Ridings’ orchard, really; the point at which Home Farm acres met those of the big house. It was land standing idle save for almost a hundred fruit trees, and most of them past their best.

Roz wanted pigs. They’d do well in this orchard when the fruit began to fall; could run-on into autumn and forage for themselves, save on precious feed.

But Marco had been right, Jonty shrugged; war or no war, you couldn’t give a girl a present of pigs and he wouldn’t be making such a gift to Roz. He would give her the piglets of course, but later, when they were ready to leave the sow.

He stopped at the far fence, leaning his elbows on it, taking in the quietness of the night. Roz was all woman, now. Without his ever being aware of it she had left girlhood behind her and with it the easiness between them had gone.

Roz had been a love of a child; pert, bossy, easily upset – that red hair, of course – and he had adored her with dog-like devotion. Had it been the Christmas after her seventeenth birthday when caring had been replaced by love, when he had been shocked that suddenly he had thought of her as desirable, had looked at the curve of her breasts and longed to cup them in his hands?

That was the time the Air Ministry had commandeered Peddlesbury, torn out hedges, felled trees and trailed two concrete runways across good farmland. That was about the time the uniforms came to Alderby and he began to be ashamed that he wasn’t wearing one.

And now his Roz was a beautiful woman and the pain of wanting her was sometimes near-unbearable. Green-eyed Roz, who could send a man’s senses into turmoil with the smile of a coquette or the wrinkling of that absurd, tip-tilted nose. Roz, who dated young men with the wings of aircrew on their glamorous uniforms; who were infinitely more desirable than farmers who worked all the daylight hours God sent, yes, and half the night if needs be.

Yet still he was called
conchie
, told to get some in, reminded that now women were being called-up into the fighting forces, and why should the likes of him evade call-up?

A hunting owl ghosted silently past; distantly, a dog barked. This was a night undisturbed by the roar of bombers. The Lancasters were grounded; tonight she would be with him, the nameless, faceless airman.

A faint, fresh breeze touched his face and reminded him of his reason for being there. Climbing the fence he walked to the old game-cover and all that remained of their fire, sniffing the scent of burnt wood, kicking the ashes with the toe of his boot, knowing they would not ignite again.

He heard the crunch of their feet as he stood there and the murmur of low, indulgent voices, lovers’ voices. He heard a laugh that was easy to recognize and he moved into the shelter of the hedge as they drew near; so near that in the moon-haze he was able to recognize the outline of the woman and know that the man who walked with her hand in his own was an airman.

They did not see him. Pulling in his breath he saw them stop, watched as she took his face in her hands and lifted her mouth to his. The man took her thighs in possessive hands, pulled her closer, and they merged into one shape and one body.

Anger took him silently. Damn the man in his fancy uniform and damn the war that had brought him to Peddlesbury!

Fists clenched in his jacket pockets he stood unmoving as they moved past him and into the orchard, to the gap in the hedge that led to Ridings’ kitchen yard. Jonty Ramsden did not wish any man dead, but he wished some great, godly hand would snatch up the aerodrome and fling it into oblivion; wished every bomber would take off and never return to Peddlesbury. But mostly he wished he could be free of his love for Roz and his tearing need of her; be free of the sight and the sound of her, the knowledge that she belonged, almost certainly, to another man.

‘Everything all right?’ Grace asked of her son as he closed the door and slid home the bolts.

‘Everything’s fine. The fire’s dead. No trouble,’ he replied, tersely. ‘It’s a good sky. No rain tomorrow.’

Roz. He would never get her out of his mind or out of his heart; it was as impossible to stop loving her as it was to stop breathing in and breathing out. And everything
was
fine – if you liked red-hot knives thrusting into your guts and turning till the pain made you want to cry out.

‘Want a drink? Won’t take a minute.’

‘Thanks, Mum, no. I’ll be off upstairs. Had enough for one day.’ He bent to kiss her cheek. ‘Say goodnight to Dad for me.’

No, he would never be free of her. He pulled off his clothes and let them slide to the floor. She had his heart and that was the way it would always be. There’d be no one else for him. Only Roz, for all time. Christ, how he needed her, hated any man who touched her.

He banged the pillow with his fist, then buried his face in it. What in God’s name was he to do?

Spring came suddenly to Alderby St Mary with primroses at her heels and a gentle, south-west wind at her skirts, for spring is a woman called April.

Kath closed her eyes briefly and breathed in the sharp morning air that smelled of moist earth and green things growing. To her left hand gorse blazed golden; to her right, if she were to part the leaves gently, she knew she would find violets, purple and white, and smelling so sweetly it would make her heart ache with happiness.

Now, a little before six, it was daylight and by the end of the month, when clocks had been put forward an unnatural two hours, it would still be light at ten o’clock at night. Double Summer Time it was called and necessary, it was said, for the war effort and the saving of electricity. She wasn’t at all sure that animals liked the strange, long days but she supposed it didn’t really matter to a creature whose life could never be regulated by the hands of a clock. But extra daylight enabled farmers to work longer hours and grow still more food which pleased everyone, save those who worked on the land from dawn to dusk.

She looked up at the flock of rooks that rose cawing from the treetops, making for the fields and food. Kath liked rooks. They never seemed to panic. Unhurried birds they were, their call lazy and slow, the beat of their wings the same. She knew the difference, now, between rook and crow, was learning to identify a bird by its song; knew the warm, bubbling notes of a blackbird, the clear sweet piping of a thrush. Mornings were a din of birdsong; the dawn chorus that awakened the soundest sleeper. No need now for five o’clock alarms at Peacock Hey.

‘I am so lucky,’ she whispered to the morning. Lucky to be here, where she knew she belonged, doing what she wanted to do and doing it amongst friends. Soon, she would lean her cycle against the stackyard wall and if Mat and Jonty had finished the milking she would loose the cows from their stalls and herd them slowly to the pasture.

The milk-cows had left their winter quarters in the foldyard. With young grass growing thick and plentiful once more, they spent the day out at pasture and soon it would be warm enough, Jonty said, for the herd to spend nights, too, outdoors. That would save time and fodder, and the milk would be richer, more plentiful.

She wanted never to leave Alderby, there was no denying it. She wanted to stay here when the war was over, if some small miracle could make it possible. Barney was a lorry-driver, could take a job wherever he pleased – if jobs there would be when the war ended, of course. After the last one there had been terrible poverty, people said, with heroes begging in the streets, medals pinned to their chests; brave unwanted men, selling bootlaces.

She lifted her chin. The war was
not
over. This war, Kath Allen’s war, had a long way to go. Only
now
mattered. One day, one distant tomorrow, there’d be an end to it but now there were cows to be pastured and milk delivered and the dairywork to be done. Done with Roz. With temperamental, bothersome, lovely Roz.

Life was good. She was ashamed it should be so in wartime, but there it was. She was happy – give or take a letter or two from Barney and even those petulant outpourings had begun to worry her less and less. North Africa was a long way away; no sense in looking for trouble. She would worry about Barney when Barney came home.

‘Morning!’ she called to Mat. ‘Take this lot down to the field, shall I?’

‘There’ll have to be a proper going-on I tell you, or there’s going to be such a muddle that we won’t know where we are. You’ll have to talk to Mrs Fairchild. There’s the settling-up to be done for the ploughing and young Roz hasn’t had a penny-piece in wages since the day she started here.’

Grace paused for breath, eyeing her husband. He needed telling, great soft thing that he was; needed a prod from time to time.

‘Aye, love. I think we’ll have to pay Roz the same as we pay Kath. She’s a game little worker; don’t hide behind her grandmother’s skirts when it suits her to.’

‘And the ploughing?’ The ploughing had been the bane of Grace Ramsden’s life and she wanted things straight. ‘One egg, or two?’

‘A couple, if you can spare them. I think we should charge the going rate for the ploughing. Mrs Fairchild wouldn’t want it any other way, and she’ll still have a bit left in the bank from the War Ag. money. And talking of banks, she reckons her and me should have a talk to Mr Potter, have him see to things for us. We’ll both know where we stand, then. She’s going to ring him up and fix a time.’

‘Trouble with Mrs Fairchild,’ Grace frowned at the spitting fat, ‘is that she don’t like talking money. Her sort never do.’

‘Well, she’s been a long time without it, so she’ll just have to learn, won’t she?’

‘She will. And you should give Roz her wages into her hand, Mat. Don’t let that man at the bank juggle them against what her gran owes us. The lass has worked for them; she should have them every Friday, same as Kath does. Happen you could see to that, an’ all, whilst you’re about it?’

‘I will, Grace. I will.’ They should have had things seen to by Lady Day, it being a proper settling-day for farm matters, but they’d have everything set to rights before long, Mat thought comfortably. The back of the hard work had been broken and most of the seed potatoes set. With a bit of luck and a lot of fair weather they’d catch up with themselves before so very much longer. They would manage. ‘And come on, our lass. When’s a man to get his breakfast, then?’

Kath opened the field gate wide then leaned on it comfortably, calling the cows from the far pasture for afternoon milking. The herd of shorthorns looked up, eyes enquiring, then went on, tails flicking, with the business of cropping grass.

‘Come. We give them a push,’ Marco said impatiently. ‘We’ll be waiting too much.’

‘Leave them,’ Kath murmured, eyes closed, face lifted to the April sun. ‘They’ll come. You can’t hurry them.’

You couldn’t, she had learned. Cows had their own way of doing things, a pecking-order that was to be respected, with the oldest, longest-standing member of the herd taking precedence over the younger, newer beasts. They would wander slowly to the open gate when called, then stand there waiting their rightful turn, waiting for the cow who always led the way into the milking parlour, her bag so full that her udders stood out at angles, like the four short legs of a fireside stool. Only then would they follow her in, the newest amongst them being placed in order by the well-aimed toss of a head, the sharp, reprimanding jab of a horn. Cows were not, she had discovered, the gentle, mild-eyed creatures they were made out to be. A cow could be vicious when the mood took her; already Kath knew that a milk-cow with a sore udder had a kick like a mule.

‘Have a cigarette whilst we’re waiting. Go on,’ she urged, at Marco’s reluctance. ‘I can spare it.’

He would smoke only half of it; the remainder, she knew, would be carefully saved and enjoyed later that evening in some quiet corner, if prisoner-of-war camps contained such a luxury.

‘You smile. Kat. You go dancing tonight? Your husband will be angry.’

‘Can’t I smile, then? And I’m not going dancing but if I were it wouldn’t be any of your business, Marco Roselli, nor Barney’s either. If you must know, it’s because Grace is planning a birthday surprise for Roz, that’s all. And don’t think I like keeping things from my husband,’ she added sharply, ‘because I don’t.’

‘Kat, I only tease. But there should not be things hidden between a man and his wife. If you were my wife, I would not –’