Whisper on the Wind (36 page)

‘Don’t, Jonty. You can’t change things. You can’t volunteer and that’s all there is to it.’

‘You joined up, Kath. Married women don’t have to volunteer.
You
didn’t have to.’

‘Oh, but I did; I damn-well did. It was something I had to do.’

‘There you are, then! So why shouldn’t I?’

‘Now it’s you who isn’t listening.’ Kath shook her head, dismissing his argument. ‘Listen – I didn’t do it for King and Country, I did it for
me
! I did it for Kath Allen because it was the only chance she’d ever get to do what
she
wanted.

‘And I’m so happy doing it that I’m scared stupid sometimes and wonder when the reckoning day will be. So don’t try to make out I did something noble and patriotic, because I didn’t. One day I thought that it was now or never. I think joining up was the bravest thing I’ll ever do, and I know it’s nothing to do with me but I’m going to say it just the same. Don’t go making any marvellous gestures, Jonty. Not for Roz, I mean …’

He didn’t answer her. Instead he made a sign of surrender with his shoulders; a sad shrugging that acknowledged all.

Strange, Kath thought, gazing across the field. When she had come here that field had been dark, cold and wet, the wheat in it sown in the short grey days of winter. Yet now it stood knee high almost, its pale green ears ready to swell and turn to summer gold. She hadn’t known Jonty and Roz, then. Nor Marco. In six months a small grain of wheat had grown almost to fruition. And her own life had completely changed.

‘What’s his name, Kath?’ he asked without turning his head, without moving his gaze from the far end of the field.

‘Paul. Paul Rennie.’

‘I saw him once. With Roz. I’d gone to the game-cover to make sure the fire was properly out. It was dark. They didn’t see me but they were so close I could have touched them. And you don’t have to rub my face in it, Kath. I know she’s mad about him.’

‘She’s besotted, Jonty; best get it straight, since we’re on about it. And whilst you’re binding about not having a glamorous uniform and I’m feeling guilty for volunteering and actually enjoying it, let’s both of us think about Peggy Bailey, shall we?’

‘Think we better had. Thanks for straightening me out. It had to be said, I suppose. Reckon Peggy wouldn’t mind being called a bloody civvy, right now …’

‘Reckon she wouldn’t at that. You know what they say – it’ll all be the same in a hundred years. In fifty years, even, most of this’ll be water under the bridge – fifty years from now, as Roz is so fond of saying.’

‘Lord! Fifty years from now Roz’ll be nearly seventy. And I’ll be seventy-
four
!’

‘Hmm. Sobering thought, isn’t it? And Jonty – since you care for her so much –’

‘Yes.’ He trailed his fingers through his hair. Just as Mat did, Kath realized. ‘And since I suppose I always will …’

‘Then don’t turn your back on her, will you, if ever she needs you?’ She touched his cheek gently, affectionately, but his gaze was still a million miles away. ‘Best be getting off to Helpsley, then. So-long, Jonty. See you.’

Without speaking, he nodded his head. He was still there, leaning on the gate, when she turned at the end of the lane to look back.

What a mess it all was. And there couldn’t be a happy ending to this story. What ever happened, someone was going to get hurt. When there was a war on, it was all you could expect …

June came in with an early sunrise that touched the blowsy red roses on the walls at Ridings; a bright sun that threw gold on the little twisting river and the tiny, peeping ducklings that swam there.

Roz quickened her step. No time to waste counting ducklings. Soon Paul would be back; even now his train should be somewhere north of Birmingham and by noon he’d be at Peddlesbury, only a step away from a telephone. If she could slip away, if they were still working on Ridings’ land, she could call him to say ’I love you’, and beg him please,
please
to be there tonight.

Days were long and the nights short now. Because of Double Summer Time, which was really the stealing of an extra hour of daylight to help the war effort, it was light until almost midnight and blackout curtains drawn late. No longer could darkness wrap round their secret meetings. Now they met in Peddlesbury Lane, beside the wood of oaks and elms that grew thick and dark with undergrowth.

He’s on his way. He’s on his way. She said it to the rhythm of the train wheels that brought him nearer with every ticked-away second. She had missed him unbearably. Three days without him had been an agony. She had wanted him until it became an ache inside her; wanted the nearness of him, his mouth hard on hers. Now her body screamed its need to be roused and loved.

What would she do she thought, suddenly cold with fear, if one morning – a golden morning such as this one – she were to awaken to the certain knowledge that she would never again see him nor hear his voice nor close her eyes and lift her face for his kiss? How could she tolerate a life of which he was no longer a part? How would her heart, her mind, her aching, unloved body endure without him?

Six more flights into an alien sky. Six more green lights flashing him on his way; six more touch-downs, that was all. They would make it. Somewhere in England a bomber crew completed its tour of ops every day of the week and soon it would be Sugar’s turn.

She cleared her head of anxious thoughts, recalling instead the early morning news bulletin. Over Cologne again; a thousand of our bombers in a massive raid. A
thousand.
Who would have thought we had so many? She tried to envisage a sky filled with aircraft. Ten Lancasters took off from Peddlesbury; imagine a hundred times that number?

But we were getting stronger all the time; not winning battles yet, but getting over the mauling that had been Dunkirk. We were no longer alone. America and Russia had joined the fight and one day we would win; a day dim and distant, but certain. There would be peace and no one need ever know fear or parting or heartbreak again.

She looked at her watch. Six more hours before she could ring him. Already she could hear the low, slow clunk of the milking machine. Another day had already begun at Home Farm.

I have missed you so and I love you so. Be there tonight, Paul. Please don’t be flying.

She had not seen Marco since Friday night which was just as well, Kath thought soberly, since he’d hardly been out of her thoughts since the night of the Helpsley dance. How completely stupid he had been, yet she understood his impatience with the indignity of imprisonment.

She clicked her tongue, backing the little pony into the shafts of the milk-cart, smiling at Roz who crossed the yard at a run.

‘I’m late. Sorry, Kath. Did a bit of day-dreaming along the way.’

‘Heavy date tonight?’

‘Hope so. Shouldn’t think there’ll be much going on at Peddlesbury; not after last night’s shindig. A thousand bombers! Imagine it!’

And thirty-one of them missing. Roz had blanked that bit out of her mind. More than two hundred airmen unaccounted for, though the announcer who read the news hadn’t put it quite like that. The announcer never did, Kath brooded. ‘…
and thirty-one of our aircraft
failed to return.
’ That was all, just a few trite words. Thirty-one bombers out of a thousand wasn’t bad; not bad at all decided the man in the street. Only those who might have a son or lover on that massive raid closed their eyes this morning and prayed that it wouldn’t be to them that one of the small yellow envelopes came. Someone once told her they asked you to sign for that telegram.
Sign
for it.
The next of kin have been informed
… So who would inform Roz, who wasn’t next of kin, if one night Paul’s plane did not return?

Stop it, Kath Allen! Paul would make it. Skip was an experienced pilot. Skip had a wife and a soon-to-be-born child to come home to. Sugar was a lucky old bitch; all the crew said she was.

‘What am I going to do about Marco?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Marco? You’re asking
me
, Kath? I’ve got problems enough of my own.’

‘Like telling your gran the truth about Paul?’

‘Well – no, not really. I
will
tell her, though, when he’s –’ She stopped, frowning. ‘Of course I’ll tell her when they’ve done their thirty. It’s just getting the thirty over with that sometimes has me worried.’

‘You’re worried about it, Roz? But I thought you were so sure?’

‘I am sure – most of the time. It
will
come right for me and Paul, I know it. But just sometimes I get afraid; times when I love him so much it’s as if I’m a part of him and if he died, then so would I …’

‘Hey! That’s enough!’

They had reached the village and Kath picked up the first two milk bottles. One for the Black Horse, the other for Holly Tree cottage. God, they knew all about telegrams there.

‘Here, do the pub; I’ll take this one.’

Gently she pushed open the gate of Holly Tree cottage, walked quietly up the path. In all other houses, curtains were drawn back and doors opened to the morning; here the door was shut against the world, the curtains at every window still resolutely closed. And they would remain closed, until Peggy had come home and been carried to the little graveyard across the green. It was like that, in the country, when a house was in mourning.

Carefully Kath set down the bottle; not even the slightest clink against the step this morning. Briefly she gazed at the door.

I didn’t know your daughter, but I’m sorry; so very sorry
…

They didn’t speak until well away from the house that grieved. It wouldn’t have seemed right, somehow, for the man and woman who lived there to have heard young voices.

‘Will you be going to the funeral, Roz?’

‘I don’t know. I’d like to. Gran’ll be there, of course, and Grace and Mat, so someone will have to stay behind at the farm. I don’t know if Jonty will go. I think he’ll want to, but suppose Mrs Bailey sees him? It wouldn’t help her any. Oh, damn this war!’

Damn it, Kath silently agreed.
This
war as opposed to the last war, as the Great War was now called; the one they said was the war to end all wars. But they had let it happen again, those people who should have known better, then left it to the young ones to fight.

‘Yes, dammit,’ she said out loud. ‘But let’s try not to think about it, Roz. Let’s only bother about the war when the war bothers us?’

And Roz agreed that it was the only thing to do. After all, only fools looked for trouble.

‘Kat,’ said Marco when she and Roz joined the men working on Ridings’ land, ‘you have been avoiding me. I haven’t seen you since three days.’

‘
For
three days,’ Kath corrected automatically, ‘because on Saturday I went to Helpsley and Sunday was your rest-day and mine, too, and this morning –’

‘Okay. Okay. I only tease you. But bring your sandwiches outside, Kat? Today is too good for eating in the kitchen. And I have something to tell you, and something to give you.’

She should have told him no; that she wanted to eat her lunch in Grace’s kitchen, but when Marco smiled as he was smiling now, when his eyes challenged her and her own stupid heart joined in the clamour, should-haves became why-nots and made it easier to say that yes, she would like that.

‘We can have a talk,’ she said with studied ease as she moved away from him down the row, eyes down, hoe working rhythmically.

Talk. Why shouldn’t they? Marco was her friend like Jonty was her friend; two men Barney knew nothing about and heaven only knew the fuss he’d make if he did.

But all this was Barney’s fault, Kath thought irritably. Barney should write more often; write warm, loving letters like Flora’s husband wrote – letters to pink her cheeks when she read them as Flora’s did.

Yet maybe it always got like this after so long apart. She frowned petulantly, jabbing her hoe deep. Just five months of being a wife, then the Army had sent Barney to North Africa. Not France, thank God, his mother had said. If he’d gone to France he’d have been killed on the Dunkirk beaches; nothing was more certain. But Barney’s mother had been like that.

Now they had been apart for more than two years. Once, when she read his letters she had been able to hear his voice, saying the words to her. Now, she could not.

She forced her mind back to a July wedding, just before the war started. There had been a lot of weddings in the summer of thirty-nine. Soon, on her twenty-fourth birthday, it would be their third anniversary. Would Barney remember? Did she want him to?

‘Kath! You haven’t heard a word I said,’ Roz pouted. ‘You were miles away.’

‘Mm. Birmingham.’ At a Register Office, getting married to Barney – and Barney’s weeping mother, had she but known it. ‘Sorry – what did you say?’

‘I said I was going to slip away in about an hour. Down the lane, to the Black Horse …’

‘To the phone?’

‘Right in one.’ Her smile was brilliant. ‘If I ring a little after noon I’ll be almost sure of getting him. If anyone notices I’m gone, be a love and tell them I had to go home for something.
Please.
’

‘Oh, all right.’ Roz was on one of her highs and her joy was catching. See-saw Roz, who was up in the air or down in the deeps; never with two feet planted firmly on the ground. Today she floated high on a fluffy pink cloud, scattering down rose petals on a world filled with love.