Whisper on the Wind (6 page)

She gave an involuntary shudder. Something, no mistaking it, had just walked over her grave. Or maybe it was only her silly self being so contented with her own little world that Someone up there was sending down a warning.

Grace Ramsden lifted her eyes, offering a silent apology, assuring Him she really did count her blessings and would count them harder, if need be.

‘Fried bread, I asked you,’ she murmured, ‘and you take not a bit of notice. What’s so interesting in that letter, then?’

‘It’s the farm man. They’ve got us one. He can plough, too, it seems.’

‘There you are, then! Problem solved, so why the long face, you daft old brush?’

‘Why?’ Mat handed over the envelope. ‘Read this. Go on – read it.’

‘Oh, my word.’ Grace frowned when she had read the letter, then read it again. ‘This is going to put the cat among the pigeons, all right. Mrs Fairchild isn’t going to like this at all. And who’s to be the one to break it to her, will you tell me?’

‘Mrs Fairchild’s land has got to be ploughed and worked for the duration, lass, so she don’t have much of a choice,’ Mat retorted, tight-lipped. ‘Nor do we, come to that. Complain and all they’ll do is tell us there’s a war on.’

‘Then if you want my opinion,’ Grace laid the letter on the table, ‘that lot at the War Ag. are dafter than I thought.’

Trouble, that letter was going to bring; nothing but trouble and heartache.

Polly saw the black and white bird as it slipped sleekly into the holly bush, and crossed her fingers.

‘Drat you, bird,’ she hissed.

She didn’t like magpies; to see one so early in the day and flying away from a frosty sun, she liked still less. Devil’s bird; bringer of ill luck. One for sorrow …

Taking a deep breath she hurried past the bush. Nor did she uncross her fingers until she opened the back door at Ridings.

‘Well now, you’ll have heard about the landgirl?’ She hung up her coat, hoping the Mistress had not, wanting to be first with the news.

‘I’ve heard.’ Hester Fairchild set the teapot to warm. ‘It’s the other business I find so hard to accept.’ Her face was pale, her mouth tight-set. ‘How could they, Polly? How
dare
they?’

‘Dare they what?’ Polly was mystified. She had hoped to have a chat about the landgirl this morning; discover her name and age and if she looked like shaping-up to farm work. ‘What’s happening, then, that I don’t know about?’

‘I told Mat; told him to ring the War Ag. at once. But no, they said, there hadn’t been a mistake and he’d be arriving on the first of January. Mat says we’ve little choice in the matter. If we refuse to take him, Ridings will go to the bottom of the list and the man
can
use a horse-plough, they said.’

‘So where’s the bother? Seems Mat’s got what he wanted and he’ll be able to make a start on those acres of yours. I’d have thought that things were bucking up a bit and you could’ve looked forward to the new year with a bit of hope; aye, and money to come once that grassland of yours has been seen to,’ Polly reasoned, ever practical.

‘Seen to by an
Italian
, because that’s what we’ve been offered.’ Her voice shook with anger. ‘That’s what my husband gave his life for, Polly; to have his land worked by a man who fought with the Germans.’

‘Nay, surely not …’

‘A Fascist, I tell you! We’re so short of manpower that we’re having to make prisoners of war work. But I don’t want one here. Didn’t Italy declare war on us after Dunkirk; stab us in the back? He’ll be every bit as bad as a German!’

Why must they do this to her, to a woman who had hated all things German with a bitter intensity since the December day the telegram came. From that day on she had never trusted them and she had been right, because now they were at war with us again. And Italy fighting with them.

But thank God that no one at Ridings need speak to the man when he came, for there must be no fraternization, the War Ag. had told Mat. The man would be brought to the farm each morning from the camp at Helpsley and taken back there by a prison guard. He’d be trusted not to try to escape and anyway, who could hope to escape from an island?

Don’t worry, they had said on the phone. One or two farmers had already taken Italian prisoners and it was working out all right. Worry? It would be worry enough just to have the man on her land; on Martin’s land.

Yet did she have a choice when the first of March would be on her before she’d hardly had time to think? All the lonely years she had struggled to keep Ridings land intact, yet now it would be given to others to farm if she refused the help of a prisoner of war. But to have such a one walking Martin’s acres was too much. The world had gone completely mad.

‘Tea,’ said Polly briefly, setting down the tray with agitated hands. She knew the Mistress almost as well as she knew herself; knew the pent-up emotions that had found no relief with the passing of time, that writhed and festered inside her, still. Pity the poor woman couldn’t have given way to her feelings as she, Polly, had done. The day they told her about Tom’s death she had walked and walked, hugging herself tightly, weeping until there were no more tears inside her. In Flanders, her young man had been killed, the spring after the Master was taken.

But Mrs Fairchild’s sort didn’t weep and rage at life. The gentry hid their feelings because that was what they’d been brought up to do. Pity she’d had to stifle all that grief and bitterness, because hating got you nowhere. Thank the Lord that what happened that December day hadn’t affected young Roz, she thought gratefully, for the lass was as happy as the day was long. Which was just as well, all things considered, for it would be her and not the Mistress who’d have to work with the prisoner.

‘Wonder what Roz is up to on her first day as a farm-worker?’ she offered cautiously, but her effort was wasted, for she got no reply. Not that she’d expected one, but it had been worth a try.

If only, she sighed inside her, Mrs Fairchild didn’t take on so about Ridings. If only she would accept that none of this was any of her doing, that there was no price to be paid for what happened all those years ago. But she blamed herself and always would, the proud, foolish woman.

‘Damn that magpie,’ she muttered. ‘Damn the evil creature!’

Washing milk bottles and placing them in the sterilizer required little in the way of concentration and allowed for chatter. It must also, Kath decided, be the warmest job on the farm this bleak, winter morning.

‘There now.’ Roz smiled. ‘Just the milk churns to scald and the floor to mop …’

‘You know so much about it,’ Kath sighed, ‘and I don’t know anything at all. I’m a dead loss.’

‘You’ll soon learn – get used to the routine and the seasons. It’s the seasons that govern farming. I don’t really know a lot; it’s just that I seem to have been in and out of Home Farm since ever I can remember. It grows on you, I suppose. It was only yesterday they told me officially that I could stay on and work here. I’d half expected to be called up, you know. What’s it like, Kath, leaving home and living in a hostel?’

‘It’s going to be great. The Forewoman is fine and the Warden, too. They were really concerned because there was nowhere for me to sleep but the attic. And I didn’t mind at all. I hope they leave me there. It’s the first time I’ve ever had a room to myself – can’t get over the novelty …’

‘You’re from a big family, I suppose,’ Roz demanded, enviously.

‘Yes, you might say that.’ Her laugh was genuine. ‘As a matter of fact I was brought up in an orphanage.’

Best get it over with; let everyone know, right from the start. You knew where you stood, then, with people.

‘Oh, Kath, I’m sorry – well, sorry if it was awful, I mean. I didn’t mean to pry.’

‘It’s all right.’ She laughed again at the sight of the bright red face. ‘And I don’t really know if it was awful – I’ve never known anything else, you see. I was left outside a police station when I was two weeks old. That much I do know because there was a piece of paper pinned to my blanket with Kathleen written on it and my date of birth. They gave me that paper and the blanket when I left the orphanage and they’d already given me the surname Sykes after the policeman who found me, but I’m Kathleen Allen, now. That name is
really
mine.’

‘Then that makes two of us,’ Roz hastened, eager to make amends, ‘because I’m an orphan, too. My parents were killed in a car crash in Scotland, though what possessed them to leave me with Gran and go careering off just days before Christmas, I’ll never know.

‘It’s just about now that it happened. Gran hates this month. All the awful things have happened in December. And I’m sorry if I seemed rude, but I didn’t know –’

‘Of course you didn’t and I don’t mind about it any more. Can’t change things, can you, though sometimes I wish I knew who I really am and if my name is O’Malley or Rafferty or Finnegan.’

‘Why Irish names?’

‘Because that’s what I think I am. Kathleen – it’s an Irish name, isn’t it? And Barney’s aunt says my colouring is Irish.’

‘Then I wish I had it,’ Roz sighed. ‘This red hair is no end of a nuisance. Poll Appleby says I’m a throwback.’ She laughed out loud. ‘Quite an act we’re going to be – an orphan and a throwback, wouldn’t you say?’

Kath laughed with her. In spite of her accent, Roz seemed not to mind about the orphanage and her not being wanted, because not being wanted was the worst part of the whole thing. She could still weep, if she let herself, for that two-week-old baby; still felt grateful to Barney for giving her an identity. ‘That’s the floor finished,’ she said. ‘Now what?’

‘Well, the leftover milk is put in the churns for the milk-lorry to collect. Jonty usually does that, but I suppose we’ll be doing it now. I’ll ask him.’

‘I like your boyfriend,’ Kath confided. ‘Lovely and tall, isn’t he? Doesn’t look like a farmer, though. More the studious type, but I suppose that’s because of his glasses. D’you know, when he took them off he looked really handsome.’

‘
Jonty
? You’re talking about Jonty?’ Roz squeaked. ‘He isn’t my boyfriend! Whatever gave you that idea?’

‘Sorry! Must have got it wrong. I thought, you see, that –’ That when a man looked at a girl the way he looked at Roz, his eyes gentle and loving, following every move she made, his face lighting up the minute he walked into the room and saw her there … ‘that – well, I got it wrong, I suppose.’

‘You certainly did! My boyfriend is called Paul. He’s aircrew, over at Peddlesbury. I’m seeing him tonight. You’ll be coming, won’t you, to the dance? But Jonty – well, he – he’s
Jonty.
He’s been there as long as I can remember. More like a brother, really, and you don’t fall in love with your brother, now do you?’

You don’t, Kath agreed silently; of course you don’t. But he isn’t your brother, Roz, and he
is
in love with you; deeply in love, and you don’t know it, she wanted to cry. Instead she said, ‘Don’t think I’ll be coming to the dance. Most of the girls at the hostel are going, but I want to get properly settled in, and wash my hair tonight. I’ll be there next time, though.’

It was strange that a married woman could go to dances now without her husband – provided she went with a crowd and came home with a crowd. ‘What do we do now?’ she asked.

‘Don’t really know. This is my first day here, too, but we’ll be all right once Mat decides what to do with us. Think we’d better pop over and ask. Leave your gum-boots at the door, by the way. Grace doesn’t allow them in the kitchen. And Kath – I’m glad you’re here.’

‘Me, too.’

She was. And happy to be living in the country, even though it was winter and unbearably cold. There was such a feeling of rightness about being here, of belonging, that she felt sure she had been born of country stock. She saw nothing of the drabness of dead, cold earth nor of winter-bare trees, only the beauty of skeletal oaks and beeches, stark against a grey velvet sky. This morning, the early light had gilded everything it touched so that all around her had looked like a picture in a shop window.

She wasn’t just happy and glad and sure, now, that she had been right to become a landgirl – there was something else, too; something she couldn’t define or even begin to understand. Yet it was there, churning inside her like the day she had volunteered, and yesterday, when the front door banged behind her and she had known there was no going back. Now it was there again, only stronger than ever before; a feeling of joy waiting to explode; a certainty that one day, just around a corner, something wonderful awaited her. It made her feel glad and afraid and happy and guilty.

She swallowed hard and kicked off her gum-boots. Guilty? Whatever could there be to feel guilty about?

‘Wait!’ she called urgently. ‘Wait for me, Roz!’

Huddled into her coat, Roz waited at the door of the gymnasium in which the dances were held. Already the music had started, but she always slipped away as the local girls and the landgirls from Peacock Hey climbed down from the RAF truck and filed through the heavily-curtained doors. No use their meeting inside when the need to hold each other and kiss away the time between was so urgent. Always, the first to arrive would wait in the darkness and tonight it was she, Roz, who stood unmoving, ears straining against the music for a whispered, ‘Roz? You there, darling?’

She dug her hands deeper into the pockets of her coat, calling back the night of their meeting, marvelling at the intensity of their love. She had never thought it could be like this; never imagined that loving this deeply could have so changed her life.