Whisper on the Wind (41 page)

But it was the races that would be the saving of him. This year, each winner would receive a silver threepenny piece; those coming second would get twopence whilst the third would get a penny and even a penny would be welcome in his present state of poverty, Arnie thought morosely. He would, he calculated, have to win two firsts; two seconds at the very least. Two seconds would cover the cost of the card, he supposed, and if the worst came to the worst he could always write OHMS on the envelope and put it through the letter-box himself. And what was more, this year the boy and girl who won most races would each be presented with a saving-stamp, though saving-stamps were only paper to be stuck on a card for the duration, he considered, and what he was in desperate need of was the clink of
real
pennies, dropping into his hand.

There was nothing else for it. He would have to enter every race for the under-tens and try like mad. It was the only way to get the money.

‘Well now, Arnie. Putting the world to rights this morning, are you?’

Arnie looked up from his mental arithmetic to see a smiling Mrs Ramsden, bucket in hand, going to feed the hens in Two-acre field, like as not.

‘Not really,’ he sighed.

‘Then what?’ Arnie had a very engaging sigh. ‘Tell your Aunty Grace?’

‘I was thinking about fivepence, but fourpence would do, I suppose.’

‘That’s a lot of money, Arnie …’

‘Yes.’ Four weeks’ pocket money. You didn’t have to know a lot about high finance to work that one out.

‘And what’s this fourpence for, will you tell me?’

Grace was fond of Arnie. He reminded her of Jonty at that age, though she liked small boys no matter what shapes and sizes they came in.

‘It’s for Aunty Poll; for her birthday card, and oh …’ He told her all in a breath what the man in the paper shop had said and how that card would be gone, never to return for the duration, if he didn’t get fourpence, soon.

‘I could earn it,’ he brooded, ‘but there aren’t many jobs for boys, so I’ll have to try to win it at the War Weapons Week. If the card’s still there, that is.’

‘Well, there’s fourpence-worth of jobs around my house, if you want them.’ Grace did not hesitate. ‘I know for a fact that Mr Ramsden’s heavy boots need a good coat of dubbin before he puts them away for the summer and there’s my brass candlesticks to polish. Shouldn’t wonder if there wasn’t a sixpence to be earned on Saturday, if you set your mind to it.’ She smiled at the young boy who could be Jonty, all those years ago, fretting for twopence for a comic. ‘Shall I expect you at nine o’clock, say?’

Arnie struck a deal there and then. Sixpence covered the card and the stamp and a penny left over for a gob-stopper. And until he learned a bit more about high finance, he supposed that working for money was the surest way out.

Good old Mrs Ramsden. Grown-ups – some of them – weren’t all that bad, when you came to think about it. Not bad at all.

Grace watched him go, whistling. Bless the lad. Must see to it that he got his birthday card. She’d call in on Polly, later, to make it all right for Saturday.

My, but that boy had come on a treat since he’d lived at the gate lodge. A fair treat.

‘Roz,’ Kath ventured as they hoed their way steadily, monotonously through the last of the sugar-beet, ‘remember what I once asked you – about somewhere to live after the war?’

Roz stopped, glad of a break, leaning on her hoe.

‘What I’m trying to say is did you mean it, Roz? And you
will
remember, won’t you?’

‘Of course I will, but what’s brought this on all of a sudden?’

‘Just me, I suppose. Thinking. And it isn’t any good; I’ve turned it over and over in my mind. I’ve told myself to be grateful for what Barney’s done for me but –’

‘
Done
for you? What’s Barney ever done for you that would set the world alight? Apart from going all dog-in-the-manger like a great spoiled schoolboy and making you miserable for no reason at all that I can see. Go on, Kath. Tell me!’

‘He married me. I had a name that was mine; really mine.’

‘And what else?’

‘He gave me a home of my own …’

‘Kath – he took you home to his mother’s house. And now his Aunty Minnie’s in it. You said yourself that she’ll never let go.’

‘I know, and I really did try to be grateful. But I can’t go back to things the way they were when the war’s over. I can’t go back to that house and that – that –’

‘Bed?’

Shrugging, Kath gazed steadily down. She had said it now and she ought to have felt relief that it was out in the open, but she didn’t. Because it was her own fault. She hadn’t had to marry Barney, but she’d been sick and tired of being a nobody; of scrubbing and cleaning someone else’s house. No one had ever paid her such attention before; she had fallen for his flattery and his blinkered determination to have her.

And then what? Just a few months of being a wife, then separation before either of them had learned to adjust; he to her dreams, she to his Victorian attitude to all women – except his mother and her sister Minnie.

‘Sometimes I think I’ll just clear off,’ she choked, no longer able to keep the trembling inside her away from her voice. ‘Sometimes I think I’ll ask for a transfer – put Alderby and Marco behind me. They’d give me one, I suppose, if I asked …’

‘Kath!’ Roz jabbed her hoe deep into the earth so that it stood upright, swaying from side to side, then digging deep into her pocket she took out cigarettes and matches. ‘Here – let’s stop for a puff? And for heaven’s sake don’t do anything stupid. If you’re determined to turn your life upside down, why do it amongst strangers? And besides,
I
need you. Had you forgotten that?’

‘My life’s upside-down already, only today is the first time I’ve said it out loud. And I’ll never get things straight in my mind with Marco around because he’s the cause of it, really.’

‘No, he isn’t! Marco just brought things to a head sooner than you expected, that’s all.’

‘Oh? What you’re trying to say is that if it hadn’t been Marco it would have been some other man?’ Kath lifted her head, her glance defiant. ‘So what does that make me, then? Some kind of mixed-up tart? And why don’t you hate Marco Roselli? You ought to hate him just as I should. Why don’t you?’

‘Don’t change the subject – but since you ask, I couldn’t hate anybody – not as Gran does. If anything happened to Paul I’d just go to pieces, go numb I suppose, but I couldn’t start hating the man who’d done it.

‘Although sometimes I think there’s more to it than that – Gran hating the Germans so, I mean, for killing Grandpa. I think there’s another grief that no one knows about. I can’t explain it, but it’s there. Still, all this talking isn’t getting the war won, is it?’

They began working again, steadily, automatically, thinning out the beet to a hoe’s width, staying close enough to chat.

‘What could Barney do if I told him I thought we’d made a mistake?’ Eventually, reluctantly, Kath spoke.

‘I don’t know. I suppose he could demand that you went back to being his wife – you know what I mean? There’s a legal phrase for it, but I’m not sure what.’

‘And if I said no, I wouldn’t go back?’ She could not prevent the shudder that ran through her.

‘Then I suppose he could divorce you for desertion or – or refusing him his rights.’

‘Roz! Stop it! You make it sound so
awful.
And it isn’t. It’s only that I wanted – just
once
– to do something
I
wanted to do. And this is how it’s ended up. You’re right, Marco isn’t to blame. He was nice to me, that was all, and I began comparing him to Barney and somehow it got out of hand. It could just as easily have been Jonty who sparked it all off, couldn’t it?’

‘I don’t know.’ Roz threw down her cigarette and stamped it out. ‘Tastes awful, that thing! I know you like Jonty, but –’

‘But I never wanted Jonty to kiss me, did I?’

‘No, Kath, you didn’t, so we’re back to square one, aren’t we; back to Marco? And that’s a pity, because you’ll never be able to have him – even if you weren’t married – because how long is this war going to go on for? It isn’t over in Europe yet, and still there’ll be Japan. The Americans have come in on our war and we’ll have to do the same for them, won’t we?

‘But you
are
married and Italy is a Catholic country. How do you think Marco’s mother would like a divorced woman for a daughter-in-law? Divorce – even here – is a nasty thing. There’s still a stigma attached to it. You being divorced would be almost as bad as me having an illegitimate child. It just isn’t done …’

‘It’s done all right, but it doesn’t half rock the boat when it happens, more like.’

‘Exactly. So be very careful, old love?’

‘Yes. You too …’

‘Hmm. Reckon we’ve both got problems, Kath.’

‘I reckon we have. But problems apart, it’s pretty well all plain sailing, isn’t it?’

Gravely they regarded each other, then suddenly the laughter came. It had to.

‘Oh,
damn
this war,’ Kath gasped.

‘No!’ Roz was instantly serious. ‘It gave me Paul.’

‘Yes. And I suppose it gave me what I’ve always longed for – to live in the country.’

‘And it gave you Marco, Kath.’

‘Back to Marco, again …’

‘We are. And we always will be. He’s in your life, whether you want to admit it or not.’

‘I’ve made a mess of things,’ Kath murmured, ‘haven’t I?’

‘Maybe. But why not wait and see? Why not take it one day at a time? Fifty years from now, you and me both could be looking back wondering what all the agonizing was about.’

‘You could be right. Maybe then, what’s happening now won’t seem all that important.’

‘Exactly. So why don’t we both wait and see?’

Roz stood very still in the shelter of the hedge. She liked to be early; to be there, when he arrived.

Sometimes he came swinging up the lane to meet her; other times a transport would slew to a stop and he’d jump down, smiling. Always smiling. Paul was confident, now, of finishing his tour of ops.

‘Get that thirteenth op behind you,’ he said, ‘and it’s a piece of cake, till the last one.’

They had survived that thirteenth op. All of them but Jock had walked from the shattered bomber. And then they’d got S-Sugar, the lucky one. They would be all right.

She heard his low, slow whistle; saw him walking up the lane. She didn’t run to him, or raise her hand. She just stood there, watching him, wanting him, loving him, the blue of his eyes, the brilliant fairness of his hair. Everything about him, she loved; the hands that touched her, caressed her, and his body that was hers and oh, dear sweet heaven, had anyone ever loved as they loved?

She lifted her face as his arms claimed her and closed her eyes as she always did when he kissed her.

‘Hi.’ His voice was low. ‘Missed me?’

‘I missed you,’ she whispered, her lips on his. ‘Can we walk a little? I want to talk to you. I told Gran about us, you see – well, that soon I want to take you home to meet her.’

‘How did she take it?’ He laced her fingers with his own then tucked her arm in his, drawing her closer. It was how they must be, now. Even walking, their bodies must touch.

‘She was fine. We’ll tell her we’re engaged, won’t we?’

‘I’ll tell her –
ask
her. It’s only right that I do. Where are we going?’

‘The riverbank. There won’t be many there tonight.’ Only lovers like themselves walking close, stopping, sometimes, to kiss. And being seen with him didn’t matter so much, now that Gran knew.

Theirs was a slow-moving river that looped back on itself, encompassing the village, almost, then straightening out to flow on through flat, fertile fields, to York. Here at Alderby it was pretty, its banks thick with greenery and rich with flowers. Here ducks nested and lately swans had come. They could walk the loop of the riverbank, then return to where they had started; at the Peddlesbury Lane Wood and its secret places that only lovers knew.

‘Darling – do you think she’d let us get married? If I tell her we’ll be fine, once I’ve got university behind me? I’ll be almost sure to get in – they’re giving more places to ex-servicemen when the war’s over. I’ll be able to look after you all right, when I’ve got my degree.’

‘Gran’ll like that – you wanting to be an architect, I mean. My father was an architect. It was he who prettied up Ridings, after the fire.’

‘He made a good job of it. I’ve seen it. You can get a good view flying over. From a height, you can see everything laid out and imagine how it used to be.

‘I’ve always wanted to be an architect, but now I suppose I
ought
to be. I’ve helped knock so many buildings down I think I should do something when the war’s over to make it good. But do you think she’ll see it our way?’

‘Yes, I do. She was only my age when she married Grandpa, though there wasn’t a war on for them. But didn’t you say your father was against you getting married, Paul? Doesn’t he want you to concentrate on getting a good degree – no distractions?’

‘He does. They both do.’ He smiled down and small, wanton shivers sliced through her as they always did when he smiled like that. ‘But, Roz – I’m nearly twenty-three and God alone knows how old I’ll be by the time it’s all over. They still treat me as if I’m their boy and I’m not. I’ve earned the right to marry. If your gran will let you we can start making plans as soon as the tour’s over – if you don’t want a big affair, that is.’