They had started, that day the evacuees arrived in Alderby, at the far end of the village and house by house the pretty little girls and the clean, tidy boys had been picked out and taken in. Since she was the last call on the list, Polly accepted, it stood to reason she had been given what was left; an evacuee called Arnold Bagley whose clothes didn’t fit and who’d scowled at her something alarming.
‘I’m afraid,’ said the WVS lady who accompanied the billeting officer, ‘that he’s all we have to offer, but there is an allowance of five shillings a week …’
Polly had squirmed inside at the injustice of it and her heart warmed to the unwanted boy who stood on her doorstep, his possessions in a carrier-bag, a label pinned to his jacket.
‘Just what I wanted,’ she said briskly. ‘Come you in, lad, and let’s get you sorted out.’
She’d have wanted him with or without the five shillings. Arnold Bagley was a challenge, a child to be cleaned and fed and put snugly to sleep in the little back bedroom. And cleaning and feeding he received, for there had been scarcely a pick of flesh on the young bones.
She recalled that first meal. Rabbit pie and rice pudding for afters. He’d eaten it as if it were the first food he’d seen all week, then looked with longing at the pudding dish and asked to be allowed to scrape it clean.
‘There was another lady with Roz, Aunty Poll. I saw her.’ Arnie took his place at the table again, sitting with spoon erect, waiting. ‘She was pushing a bike and she had trousers on.’
‘There now, that’ll be the landgirl. Mat Ramsden’ll be relieved she’s come, even though the lass won’t know a cow from a bull. Come on, then. Get on with that porridge whilst I make your toast.’
She smiled fondly. The lad was a credit to her, everybody said so. He’d filled out and was three inches taller than when she got him and his two top teeth had grown in straight as a die.
She’d had her anxious moments, though, clothing that ever-growing, ever-hungry frame, but with the help of jumble sales and hand-me-downs she had managed. Arnie was the centre of her lonely life and just let his feckless mother try to take him back to Hull. Just let her try!
She turned the bread on the fork and held it to the fire. There’d be something fresh to talk about this morning when she went up to the house. Pity the frost hadn’t broken in the night. The Mistress was letting that ploughing business get out of all proportion and no use telling her it would get done in the Lord’s good time, though it always, had and it always would be. They’d manage, somehow.
‘Jam on it, or marmalade?’ she said to Arnie.
‘It looks,’ Grace Ramsden pulled aside the kitchen blackout, ‘as if our landgirl has arrived.’ She nodded in the direction of the dairy where Roz and a strange young woman unloaded the milk-float. ‘And making herself useful already. The post has come, by the way. On the table.’ She pulled out the fire-damper and set the kettle to boil. Roz had managed the milk-round all right, it seemed. But then, the lass knew the village, didn’t she; lived in it since she was a bairn of two, bless her. ‘Ready for a bit of breakfast, then?’
She broke eggs into a pan, a contented woman, a rare woman, even, who recognized happiness the moment it came upon her, not like some who saw it only when it was past, and lost. These moments were happy ones, to be lived and remembered. Just this morning when she shook Jonty awake, she had felt such a blaze of happiness to see him there that she had thanked God yet again for letting her keep her son, then sent up another prayer for all the sons who had gone to war and the mothers who had waved them bravely on their way.
Jonty had been their only child, she frowned, basting egg-yolks with spitting bacon fat. She and Mat had never been blessed with a daughter, but now she was to have girls around the place at last; two young lasses to help on the farm and be in and out of her kitchen all day, she shouldn’t wonder. Just to think of it gave her pleasure.
‘Fried bread?’ she demanded of her husband who didn’t look up from the letter he was reading.
Fried bread for Jonty, too, when he’d seen to the cows, and the lasses would soon be in for tea and toast, huffing and puffing with cold and warming their hands at her fire.
Daylight had been late coming this morning. Farming was hard enough in winter without the blackout making it worse, Grace considered, but soon the shortest day would be past them. Winter would be half-way gone and the days would begin to lengthen; there’d be the first snowdrop beneath the holly hedge where they always found it and spring just around the corner.
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.’