‘Sorry.’ Roz smiled briefly. ‘I do go on and on about me and Paul, don’t I? I’m selfish. I should spare a thought for you. Poor Kath. You don’t know when you’ll see Barney again; all you’ve got to look forward to is letters.’
Look forward? My, but that was a laugh, when recently she had come to almost dread the arrival of Barney’s next letter. But soon he would receive the one she wrote to him on Christmas Day; a letter full of love and reassurance. She had hoped he would come to realize that many a soldier serving overseas had left behind a wife in the armed forces, and was proud of her, too. She wished that Barney could come to be proud of a wife who was doing everything she could for the war effort; everything she could to help bring him safely home. And she wished with all her heart he would begin to understand, and to trust her.
‘Letters? Can’t say I’m looking forward, exactly, to the next one. Barney’s still mad at me for joining up. And he makes me feel guilty about what I’ve done because I know I shouldn’t be so happy. Wars aren’t meant to be happy, are they?’
‘I suppose not. And I don’t know why I’m going on about Paul asking me home with him. Can you imagine what Gran would say if I told her I was going off with a man she’s never even heard of – even if Mat would give me the time off. Why is my life in such a mess?’
‘Come on.’ Kath grinned. ‘You wouldn’t change one bit of it, and you know it. And if we don’t get this mucking-out finished we’ll miss drinkings. Y’know, I’m looking forward to the threshing on Monday, aren’t you?’
‘Not really.’ Roz frowned. ‘It’s a back-breaking, dirty job; I’ve had some. I helped out last time. Everybody turns-to; every farm hereabouts who can spare a man sends him along.
‘Grace has the time of her life, though she won’t admit it. How she’ll provide food for everyone who comes I don’t know, with rationing the way it is. But she will. She always does. Look, that’s Grace at the kitchen window, holding up a mug. Come on – looks as if we’re going to be lucky!’
Happy? Kath thought, washing her hands at the stand-pipe, drying them ponderously. Yes, she was happy. Indeed, she had never thought such happiness possible and it seemed wrong that Barney could not, would not, understand her need for this one, wonderful experience; wouldn’t give her his blessing and be proud of her. But he never would. She was certain of it, now.
‘Hang on, Roz! Wait for me!’
‘It isn’t fair, Aunt Poll, me having to go back to school the very day the threshing machine’s coming to the farm. I’ll miss it all, and I wanted to help.’
‘Well, you can’t. School’s more important than threshing day and anyway, you’re too young to help. The law says you’ve got to be fourteen.’
‘But I’m big enough.’ Arnie’s bottom lip trembled.
‘Aye, I’ll grant you that.’ A fine, strong lad he’d grown into. ‘But not old enough, so you’d best eat up your toast and be off with you. You’ve got to learn all you can if you’re to get that scholarship.’
A place at the grammar school; Polly wanted it for him more than she cared to admit. Arnie was a bright boy, his teacher said. Given to carelessness sometimes, though that was understandable in the young, and too eager to be out of the schoolroom and away into the fields. But bright, for all that. If he’d only take more pride in his handwriting and not cover his page with ink blots and smudges, then yes, he stood a very good chance of winning a scholarship.
He’d look grand in that uniform with the striped tie and the green cap, Polly thought proudly, though where she’d find the clothing coupons and money for such finery she wished someone would tell her. But she would manage. She always had.
‘Eat your toast, lad,’ she murmured, ‘and don’t be so free with that jam. That pot has to last us all month, remember.’
‘Yes, Aunt Poll.’ He eyed a strawberry sitting temptingly near the top of the jar and decided to leave it there for tomorrow. ‘I bet you’ll be helping with the threshing. I bet you’ll be able to get a good look at that engine.’ Nobody told grown-ups what to do. He couldn’t wait to be a grown-up.
‘No, I won’t. Doubt if I’ll see it at all, noisy, dirty old thing. I’ll be helping Mrs Ramsden feed all those people, though how she’ll find rations enough for seven extra is a mystery to me.’ Grace Ramsden was proud of Home Farm’s reputation as a good eating place, in spite of food rationing. Like as not there’d be rabbit pie and rice pudding; good farmhouse standbys. Rumours had been flying, since the Japanese came into the war. No more rice, people said, and if their armies got as far as India, no more tea. Now the rice, Polly considered, folk could do without if they had to, but tea was altogether another thing. ‘And anyway, who’s to say for sure that the team’ll be coming today? Mat will have to wait his turn. There’s a war on, lad, don’t forget.’
‘I know, Aunt Poll.’ People said there’s a war on all the time these days, as if a war was something terrible. Wars weren’t all that bad, Arnie considered. They’d be a whole lot of fun if it wasn’t for people getting killed. It would be awful when it was all over and he had to go home. He liked being with Aunt Poll, having regular meals and regular bath-nights, and living in the country was a whole lot better than living in Hull.
He liked Aunt Poll a lot; she was better, he had to admit, than his mother. Not that he was being unkind to his real mother; it was just that he had to try very hard, these days, to remember what she looked like.
‘Do you think,’ he frowned, taking his balaclava from the fire guard where it had been set to warm, ‘that Mam’s forgotten where I am?’
‘Now you know she hasn’t. Didn’t she send you a card at Christmas with a ten-shilling note inside it? Of course she hasn’t forgotten you.’
No indeed, though she wished she had, Polly mourned silently. What was more, an action like that gave rise to suspicion, especially when such generosity had previously been noticeable by its absence.
But at least Mrs Bagley’s visits had ceased after that first year, for now she was on war work; on nights, mostly, though night-work could cover many occupations, Polly brooded, especially when a woman bleached her hair with peroxide and plucked her eyebrows, somehow managing to get bright red nail varnish and lipstick when most other women hadn’t seen such things in the shops for months. My word, yes. There was night-work and night-work.
Arnie pulled on his knitted helmet and its matching gloves. He’d been delighted to open the soft, well-wrapped parcel on Christmas morning. He wouldn’t mind betting that when he got to school this morning, he’d be the only boy with a khaki balaclava and gloves; khaki, like the soldiers wore.
He called ‘So-long, Aunt Poll,’ then ran out quickly before she could attempt to kiss him; kissing was for girls. Whistling joyfully he squinted up at the Lancaster bomber that flew in low to land at RAF Peddles-bury.
Smashing, those Lancasters were. Great, frightening things, with four roaring engines and two guns and bomb-doors that opened at the press of a button. He wouldn’t mind flying a Lancaster. Pity he was only nine and a bit, though with luck the war would last long enough for him to be seventeen-and-a-half. He crossed his fingers, frowning. Grown-ups got all the fun.
Climbing the garden fence he made for the long, straight drive and the beeches and oaks that stood either side of it like unmoving, unspeaking sentries. This morning he was taking the ‘field’ way to school, cutting behind Ridings and the pasture at the back of Home Farm, to pick up the lane that led to the pub and the school nearby. This morning’s journey was longer and wetter underfoot and usually taken in spring and summer only, but Arnie felt cheated to be missing the dirt and din of a threshing day and was determined at least to see the monstrous, huffing, puffing engine; to close his eyes with delight as it clattered and clanked past him,