She was back, and never before had two days taken so long to run. Meg blinked up into the sky, breathing deeply, because even the air here was special; golden-coloured and scented with green things growing, and hay and honeysuckle.
She smiled at Mrs Potter, who always peeked through the post office window whenever a bus arrived, checking in those she knew, making a mental note of those she did not, and who, two weeks ago, had drawn the attention of a stranger to a printed postcard.
‘Candlefold,’ Meg whispered, lips hardly moving. ‘Where I live; where I was born; where I am meant to be.’ And where she would stay till Fate – or the Ministry of Labour and National Service – decided differently.
At the stile she stood quite still, listening to the safe stillness: a bird singing, leaves rustling green above her. Even the lambs were still, laying close to the ewes who stared steadily ahead, mouths rotating cud, like the blank-faced tarts who stood on every street corner the length of Lime Street, chewing gum.
But Lime Street was a long way away and in just a few more seconds she would see the old house, the worn stone steps, the thick, squat door and the pump trough. In just a few more seconds, she would be home.
‘You’re back!’ Mary Kenworthy smiled. ‘And just as I was thinking I’d have to go all the way to the garden to tell Polly that lunch is ready!’
‘What’s to do with that thing, then?’ Meg nodded in the direction of the bell that hung outside the door.
‘They’re both asleep, upstairs – thought we’d get our lunch before they’re awake.’ She broke two more eggs into the bowl. ‘Omelette and salad and stewed apples,’ she answered the question in Meg’s eyes. ‘Be a love, and tell Polly it’s on the table in three minutes, will you?’
The walk to the kitchen garden took Meg across the courtyard, beneath the far arch, past the henrun and across the drying green to the tall, narrow gate in the eight-feet-high wall. Mr Potter’s little kingdom where the war was shut out every morning at eight o’clock sharp and not confronted again until work was over for the day and the gate clanged shut behind him.
Meg saw Polly on her knees beside the strawberry bed and whistled through her fingers.
‘Hey! Ready in three minutes!’ she called, then ran down the path, delight at her heels. ‘What are you doing?’ Everything that happened at Candlefold delighted her.
‘Strawing up,’ Polly grinned, linking her arm in Meg’s. ‘The berries are starting to swell so we put straw beneath them to keep them clean and to keep the slugs away. Then when we’ve done that we’ll net them over, and that’ll take care of the thieving blackbirds too. But I’m so glad you are home. Yesterday there wasn’t a letter. I felt so miserable I got to wondering what else could go wrong, and you not coming back was high on the list. But this morning –’
‘This morning there were two letters and I am back. And if you thought I wouldn’t be, then you’re dafter than Nanny Boag – who is asleep, by the way!’
Home again, and omelettes for lunch, stewed apples for pudding, and the sky high and blue and bright. Life was all at once so good that it almost took her breath away.
‘Pull out any weeds, and tuck the straw around the roots,’ Polly instructed later that afternoon, initiating Meg into the mysteries of Mr Potter’s garden.
‘I don’t know which is weeds and which isn’t …’
‘Anything that isn’t a strawberry plant, just yank it out before you shove the straw in. We’ll be having strawberries and cream in two or three weeks.’
‘Creeeeeam!’ Wasn’t cream illegal, Meg demanded.
‘We-e-ll, yes, but once every Preston Guild, Mummy pours the morning milk into a large bowl and skims off the cream that rises to the top. It’s illegal to sell it in the shops, but nobody can stop you skimming your own milk. And, like I said, she doesn’t do it often. Davie and Mark are due leave at the end of June, so I hope there’ll be plenty of sun to ripen the berries. When that happens, we have to be up good and early to do the picking and have them ready for the van that calls. I often think how pleased some lady will be to get some – even though she probably won’t have sugar to spare to sprinkle on them.’
‘Nor cream,’ Meg grinned. ‘And I wonder how long she’ll have to queue for them, an’ all. That’s when your Davie will be on leave, then – three weeks from now?’
‘Twenty days. I’ve started crossing them off on my calendar. Mind, the bods in the armed forces are always told that leave is a privilege and not their due, but most times nothing happens to stop it.’ She crossed her fingers. ‘We’re having two days here, then spending the rest of his leave with his parents. They live a few miles from Oxford where Davie ought by rights to be, studying engineering. Oh, damn this war!’
‘What d’you mean! It was because of the war youse two met!’
‘Mm. That Davie met Mark and Mark brought him home for a weekend. Funny, isn’t it?’
‘Nah! Just meant to be.’ Meg removed a weed then manoeuvred straw beneath the berry plant. ‘Ma always said that what was to be would be; that the minute you are born there’s this feller who knows what’ll happen to you an’ he writes it all down. Your Book of Life, it’s called, and there’s no gettin’ away from it.’
‘And you believe that, Meg?’
‘Makes as much sense as anythink else.’
‘More sense than believing in God?’
‘’Fraid I’m not a God person. I mean – what about when Ma was bad and I’d believed, and prayed for her to live? Well, where would I be now, eh? He’d have let me down stinkin’, wouldn’t He?’
‘We don’t always get everything we want.’
‘Then why bother?’
‘Meg, you really don’t believe, do you?’
‘Reckon not. Ma didn’t either; only in the Book of Life thing.’
‘But what about Christmas and Easter?’
‘We never bothered. Christmas trees and Easter eggs cost money, she said, an’ it was all a big con by shopkeepers to get cash out of you, and by the Church, so you’d go and put money on the plate. All down to pounds, shillin’s and pence!’
‘So you don’t say your prayers or go to church?’ Polly whispered. ‘Nor ask God to take care of your young man?’
‘Told you, I haven’t got a young man. Kip’s only a friend.’
‘He sent you shampoo and scented soap you told us at lunchtime!’
‘A friend,’ Meg said firmly. ‘And we’d better stop nattering and get on with this strawing, or Mr Potter isn’t goin’ to let me work in the garden again!’ And she liked working in Mr Potter’s garden. It was better than running upstairs every time Nanny rang her bell. Anything was better than being near the old biddy, who’d been in a right mood, earlier on.
‘You’re back,’ she had grumbled. ‘I thought you’d gone, Meg Blundell!’
A fine way to greet someone you hadn’t seen for two days and who’d brought up your lunch, an’ all!
‘Bad penny, that’s me!’ she’d said saucily. ‘And if you aren’t hungry I’ll take this tray downstairs again!’ She was starting the way she meant to go on, turning away to show she meant what she said! And the old girl had jumped to her feet like a two-year-old and grabbed hold of her lunch with a look like thunder on her face.
‘Give it to me, girl, and get out! And never, ever, give me backchat again!