Whisper on the Wind (22 page)

‘But I’m
not
your wife! I’m Barney’s – if wife you can call me,’ Kath flung testily. ‘I’m a married woman who
isn’t
married. I don’t know what the heck I am!’

‘I think a woman needs always to be loved, Kat. I am sad you must be parted from love.’

‘Then don’t be. I’m just fine.’ Of course she was. She didn’t need to be loved. Kath Allen needed to be understood and Barney refused to understand her great need to once, just once, do something she wanted to do. ‘I can manage very well without being loved. These days women have had to learn to, you know.’

‘
Si
, Kat. I know it. It is the same in my country. Men go to war; women suffer.’

‘Then you shouldn’t have gone to war, should you?’ Suddenly she was angry. ‘Clever of that fat Mussolini of yours to sneak into the war after Dunkirk when he thought his German pal had got it all sewn up. The Brits were finished, weren’t they, so why not kick them when they’re down? But we aren’t finished, Marco, and you’re a prisoner and –’

She stopped, shocked by her outburst, at each waspish word that tore from her tongue. Marco had done nothing to deserve her fury, wasn’t the cause of the turmoil inside her. It always happened, didn’t it, when she thought she was doing something wrong – like standing easily beside an Italian who was Barney’s enemy, who would have killed him and thought nothing of it, had they met in combat in North Africa. But Marco had not killed Barney. Marco had saved her life and been kind to her afterwards, held her tightly and told her it was all right.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘That was cruel of me. I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it. Please, Marco, I didn’t.’

‘Of course you not mean it. You have a bad day. Is okay, Kat. I too have bad days. Like you, I not know what I am. I think I am a man, but I am prisoner. I am nothing. I do as I am told. I must not speak to girls. You think I like it? You think I say to myself, “Hey soldier, is good you can’t fraternize!”’

‘I said I’m sorry, Marco, and I am. I felt fed up, all of a sudden. I took it out on you.’

‘Took it out?’ He frowned. ‘What is took it out?’

‘Something annoyed me, I suppose,’ she shrugged, eyes downcast, ‘and I took it out – it means that I –’ She stopped, choosing her words carefully. ‘It means that I threw my sadness, my annoyance, at you and for no reason at all except that you happened to be there. How do I say I’m sorry – in your language?’

‘You would say
mi scusi
, but there is no need.’

‘There is,’ she said softly. ‘
Mi scusi
, Marco? Forgive me?’

‘You are forgiven, and hey! You have your first lesson in Italian.’

Her first lesson? Sad that it should have been the words of an apology.

She threw down her cigarette and ground it into the grass as the first cow lurched toward them, walking awkwardly, impeded by the weight of her milk. ‘Think you better had go and hurry them up a bit. They don’t seem to want to come in this afternoon.’

Roz would be impatient for them to begin the milking, be finished in good time. Roz was meeting Paul tonight. Tonight they would touch and kiss, and stand close, arms clasped tightly. Make love.

Was she jealous, Kath brooded, or was she ashamed she could recall the safeness of Marco’s arms so vividly, the way he had held her, touched her hair and told her she was safe? Did she want Marco’s arms around her, or would any man’s arms do? Was she, underneath, the same as any other woman? Was she lonely and in need of love?

She closed her eyes to shut out the shame. She was not lonely; she was not in need of love and Marco Roselli’s nearness meant nothing at all to her.

‘Come on, then!’ Peevishly she slapped the dark red rump of a cow that had stopped in the gateway to eye her with curiosity. ‘Shift yourself, you silly creature!’

Oh, damn, damn,
damn.
And this morning she had been so very happy.

The leisurely walk back to Home Farm behind a plodding Daisy was such a delight these mornings, Kath thought. Milk delivered, the time could be given to gossip and small-talk and
don’t-tell-anyone-buts.

On either side of the long straight drive that led to Ridings, oaks and beech trees were coming into leaf; the beeches first, the oaks more reluctant to show their green-brown foliage. And beneath them, in the parts left unploughed, drifts of bluebells grew on thick carpets of leaves, a shimmer of sapphire, slow-moving in the breeze.

‘Listen, Roz – and don’t tell anyone I’ve mentioned it – but you won’t be planning to take the day off on your birthday, will you? I can’t tell you why, but –’

‘But do I plan to be in York with Paul, you mean?’

‘No. I don’t want to know about York. I’ve told you that already. What I’d like you to tell me is whether you’ll be around for afternoon drinkings, that’s all.’

‘I suppose I will. I’m not planning to ask for time off that day. I’d rather have it when we’ve got something arranged and so far we haven’t. Even when we can get around to it, it’ll still depend on whether Paul is on ops. I won’t know for certain till the last minute. But what’s happening on my birthday? Come on – tell.’

‘Sorry.’ Kath smiled primly. ‘Just be there, that’s all. And you never got around to telling me about St Mark’s Eve.’ She changed the subject with a firmness that would have done credit to Hester Fairchild. ‘Remember you once said something about Polly, and it all being a load of superstition. You got me curious.’

‘It’s just that, Kath. Nonsense. And Gran’s as bad as Polly for believing it. You’d be surprised the lengths she goes to, even now, to keep people out of the churchyard that night.’

‘On St Mark’s Eve? But why?’

‘Because that’s supposed to be the time,’ Roz shrugged, pink-cheeked, ‘when people see the ghosts – images, if you like – of those who are going to die.’

‘To
what
?’

‘All nonsense. I told you so, didn’t I?’

‘I don’t care what you say it is, I want to know, Roz.’ All at once she was curious – yes, and uneasy, too. If Mrs Fairchild believed it and Polly believed it …

‘Oh, I suppose it all started ages ago. It had been going on for quite some time before Gran found out about it. There was this old woman in the village, used to live in one of the almshouses. Daft Molly, people called her. Mad as a hatter, she was. She believed she was some kind of wise-woman, or something. She had a black cat and she swept her path with a besom – you know, made of twigs like a witch’s broomstick. All part of the act, I shouldn’t wonder.

‘Anyway, Molly was in the habit of keeping the graveyard watch on St Mark’s Eve. People believed, you see, that at some time during the night – after midnight – the images of the people in the parish who were to die during the following year would pass the church porch.’

‘Roz! That’s terrible!’

‘Like I keep saying – just nonsense.’

‘But nonsense Polly believes in, and your grandmother?’

‘We-e-ll, I suppose they just might have had reason to. It was during the last war, you see. Molly had kept the watch and at first she said there’d been nothing. But then she let it out; there’d be three, she said, in the year to come. A man of gentlemanly bearing, a soldier with two stripes on his arm, and a girl-child.’

‘And she was right?’ Kath ran her tongue round uneasy lips.

‘She was right. A little girl – a toddler – ran under the wheels of a heavy cart and my grandfather and Polly’s young man were killed in France.’

‘And Polly’s boyfriend was –’

‘A corporal,’ Roz finished.

‘It’s uncanny. I don’t wonder your gran was upset. If I’d been in her shoes, I’d have put a lock and chain on the churchyard gates.’

‘She did, eventually. At first she said it was all silly superstition and got the vicar to have a word with old Molly; warn her to stop messing about. But Molly was at it again the next year, sitting all night in the porch.

‘There were no parish ghosts that following year, she’s supposed to have said, but something awful was going to happen in the dead month – that’s what country people sometimes call December, you know. “Beware the flames,” was all they could get out of her. Alderby people thought the church was going to catch fire, but you know where the flames were?’

‘Ridings? She foretold that?’

‘Yes; the second of Gran’s December tragedies. And then there was my mother and father – they died in December, too.’

‘But I thought Polly blamed that on a snowdrop?’

‘She did –
does.
Anyway, now you know about St Mark’s Eve.’

‘Yes, and I’m sorry I brought it up.’ Kath tried not to believe in anything she could not see, smell, or touch – apart from God, that was. ‘And you’re right. It’s a load of rubbish.’

‘Of course it is. Anyway, after the fire the vicar put a lock on the churchyard gates every St Mark’s Eve and Molly went to Helpsley to live with her son and his wife.’

‘And the gates are still locked on the twenty-fourth?’ Kath demanded, cautiously.

‘Yes. I think Gran likes the custom kept up. And you can’t be too sure, I suppose. After the fire she was really upset by it – according to Polly, that is. I don’t really know. I wasn’t even born, then. Oh, look, Kath! Did you see it? Did you see the swallow? There now, that’s made it all right. A first swallow is special. You can wish on it, and it’ll come true. Swallows are lucky.’

‘Roz! What next? Graveyard watches and first swallows? What a peculiar lot you country people are.’ Wouldn’t hurt to make a wish, though, even if she didn’t believe in such things. ‘Any more of your quaint old superstitions, whilst we’re on about it?’

‘Not that I can remember off-hand. Only the first cuckoo-call.’

‘And what’s that supposed to be? Lucky or unlucky?’

‘It varies. There’s a lot said about hearing your first cuckoo of the year, Kath. Even the direction it comes from is important. Mind, it’s
very
lucky to hear it first on the twenty-eighth of April. Pity I was born on St Mark’s Eve. Better if I’d waited four days, and been a cuckoo-child. Polly says that when you hear your first cuckoo, you stand very still – after you’ve turned your money in your pocket, that is – and you count the number of calls it makes. That’s supposed to be the number of years you still have to live.’

‘And you believe it?’ Kath gasped.

‘Well, not about the number of years, that’s for sure. Last year I counted and the blessed thing only called once, so I suppose if I can manage to stay alive till I hear a cuckoo again, that’s one superstition gone for a burton.’

‘Don’t talk like that, for goodness’ sake! I thought you were reasonably normal, but if you keep on about such things you’ll have me wondering. Whatever next?’ Kath clucked indignantly, taking Daisy’s head, leading her into the yard.

‘Well, there’s the one about the tongue of a toad and the eye of a newt. Or I can give you a good love-potion to slip into your beloved’s ale.’ Roz laughed.

‘Love potion! You’ve been having me on, haven’t you?’

‘Not about St Mark’s Eve, Kath.’ All at once, the sparkle left her eyes. ‘Not about that. It happened, just like I said.’

‘But it couldn’t happen now? It would be too cruel – with the war on, I mean.’

‘There was a war on then; Gran’s war, and Polly’s. But don’t worry. There’ll be no watcher in the church porch this St Mark’s Eve, thank God. If there are any ghosts, no one will see them.’

‘You
do
believe it,’ Kath whispered. ‘I thought it was because I was a towny, and you were pulling my leg.’

‘Maybe I was. Maybe I wasn’t. I don’t know what I believe any more. I was brought up with superstition and such things. You believe what suits you, I suppose. So if I were you, I’d keep an eye open for that first swallow, Kath, and make your wish. And don’t forget to turn your money over when you hear your first cuckoo,’ Roz called over her shoulder as she opened the dairy door. ‘And you’re
not
a towny. Not any more, so don’t you forget it!’

‘There now.’ Grace fastened the ties of her clean pinafore and looked with pleasure at the kitchen table. Her best rosebud china stood on a white, starched cloth, her little-used cake forks lay beside the silver sugar bowl and milk jug.

She thought back with joy to the subterfuge; to the taking of a can of the Jersey cow’s milk and putting it through the forbidden separator; to the grinding down of sugar with the pestle, for cake-making sugar had long disappeared from the shops. And the bother with the flour! But she had managed a birthday cake for Roz, had set it on a crocheted doyley on a large rosebud plate and put it on the cold slab in the pantry, behind a closed door.

‘They’ll be here any minute, Mat.’ She smiled, setting the kettle to boil. ‘And I told Kath she was to bring Marco in, too. We couldn’t have left him out of it, could we?’

‘We couldn’t, love, though what the Ministry of Food’ll say when they find out what you’ve been up to, I don’t like to think. Land us all in prison, you will.’

‘Up to?’ Grace rose, pink-cheeked, to her husband’s teasing. ‘We produce gallons and gallons of milk on this farm and if I’m not entitled to take just a little of it, just once, for a drop of cream for a special occasion, then it’s a poor do. And what else did I do that’s illegal?’ she demanded.