‘Oh, damn, damn, damn!’ She threw off the bedclothes and pulled back the curtains, pushing the window wider so she could lean over the sill and look out into the near-darkness and the garden below, smell dew-soaked grass and roses and honeysuckle and newly-flowering lavender. And she gazed over to the wood, a darker mass that merged into the sky, where perhaps there was a nun who appeared to star-crossed lovers.
Are you there, you who know about lost love? If I walk in Dickon’s Wood will you come to me to let me know you understand?
‘Idiot!’
She crept back into bed, leaving the curtains open so the square of window took in the night glow from a darkness that in high summer was never quite complete; from a sky that outlined tree tops and rose bushes and the wooden bench where, only a few hours ago, she and Lorna had sat. And talked, would you believe, about hens!
She burrowed into the pillows, pulling the blanket over her head, trying to shut out what was gone for all time and think instead of the manor, and hens on the back lawn, and Mam and Da and Nan, so far away in Ruth Street, Liverpool 4. And about the invasion, and if it would come. And if she had one iota of sense left in her head, to count her blessings like any other reasonable woman would do, and get on with the rest of her life!
There was a strange quiet in the sitting room. It was as if, when the Prime Minister spoke, he was warning them, warning everyone, of what was to come. His voice, low and defiant, had filled the room as he told them, over the wireless, what they already knew, dare they admit it. Britain could resist invasion he said, and, when the time came, could defeat Hitler, too.
‘Be the ordeal sharp or long, or both, we shall seek no terms, shall tolerate no parley. We may show mercy, but we, the people of these islands, will ask none.’
Never before, he stressed, had Britain had an army such as it had today. London itself, if German soldiers had to fight for it street by street, could easily devour any hostile forces that might land.
‘We would rather see London laid to ruin and ashes than that it should be abjectly enslaved.’
Brave talk. Fighting talk. Talk to make any man straighten his shoulders and vow love and devotion to this bomb-happy, defiant little country, Lorna thought, tears pricking her eyes. Any woman, too. And of the battle raging in the air over the south, Mr Churchill declared that for every one of our own aircraft, we would claim five of the enemy’s. Let them come! We would be ready!
‘It’s as if the government have something up their sleeves,’ Ness said when the speech was over, the wireless switched off. ‘I mean – he was so confident we’d be all right. Have we got a secret weapon, or something that they aren’t telling us about?’
‘Wouldn’t be a secret if Churchill told us, would it? And I honestly think he was trying to give us a shot in the arm. But talk like that makes you think, doesn’t it, Ness?’
‘Think that perhaps we really are goin’ to be invaded?’
‘That Hitler will try – yes. Whether he’ll get any troops ashore is another thing. And where will he invade? Germany has overrun Holland. An invasion could come on the east coast, and not the south as most people think.’
‘Or it needn’t come at all.’ Ness smiled shakily, trying all at once to be brave.
‘So you believe in miracles?’
‘I – I, Yes! I do. This is such a daft, cockeyed little country that I believe there’ll be a miracle. I do!’
‘That’s putting your head in the sand, Ness. Churchill’s as good as warned us it’s going to happen.’
‘All right, then! But there’s no harm wanting a miracle, is there? We had one at Dunkirk, didn’t we? Thousands and thousands of soldiers taken off the beaches before the Germans could get to them. Those same men are fighting mad now, and wantin’ to take a swipe at bluddy Hitler! So why shouldn’t we have another miracle?’
‘OK. This is the silly season; the season of miracles! And enough invasion talk! Didn’t you say we’d go to Glebe and take a look at a couple of poultry arks?’
‘Why not? It’s still light. And Kate said if they were any use to us we could have them, and the best of British, because, as far as she was concerned, they were only good for burning.’
‘So hadn’t we better see Jacob Tuthey first, ask him to look them over, see if he thinks they’re fit for salvage? No use thinking about hens if we’ve nowhere to put them.’
‘You’re right, queen, but it would be a shame if we couldn’t have them, especially as I’ve seen them and taken a fancy to them already. Lovely, they are. Light Sussex pullets, Kate said they were called. She’s got fifty or sixty there, not ready to lay yet, but doing nicely. White, with black tail feathers and black-tipped wings. They lay white eggs, Kate said; she chose that breed because they made good table birds when their laying days were over.’
‘Ness! I couldn’t do that; couldn’t eat hens that had been laying eggs for me. At least,’ she thought about the miserable meat ration. ‘I don’t think I could.’
‘Well you won’t have to think of eating them till they get old – three years at least.’
‘You seem to know a lot about poultry, Ness Nightingale!’
‘That’s because looking after hens and collecting eggs is easy learned. Wish I was as good in the cow shed. I can’t milk a cow, y’know.’
‘You’ll learn.’
‘That’s what Kate says. When Rowley’s got a few minutes to spare he can show me how, she said, but milking comes natural to Kate, her being a farmer’s daughter and now a farmer’s wife.’
‘I wouldn’t worry, if I were you. Right now we’re more concerned with hens, so shall we go to Glebe – see if those arks can be salvaged?’
The hen ark stood in the far corner of Ladybower’s lawn. It did not blend into the background as she had hoped it would, Lorna frowned, but perhaps she would get used to it being there and when the hens arrived she would like it a little more, she was sure.
‘So what do you think,’ she had asked of Jacob Tuthey, four nights ago. ‘Could you cobble something out of these two wrecks, or are they past redemption?’
‘Cobble? I don’t cobble anything, young Lorna! Cobbled jobs aren’t for me, but I’ve got to admit it’s going to take a bit of fettling, for all that!’
To fettle, Lorna explained later to Ness, was to repair a thing; to fix it or, at the very outside, make the best of a bad job.
So Jacob had removed the arks one by one on his handcart, pushing and heaving, with Lorna and Ness doing their best to support each one and keep it from falling off when intricate manoeuvres were necessary, like turning a corner or negotiating a gateway.
‘I’ll see what can be done,’ they were told when the two arks had been transported to Jacob’s yard. ‘Will give it my full attention, to be sure.’
His full attention, Lorna sighed, resulted in one poultry ark in amazingly good order and a large pile of off-cuts of wood which he had sawn into lengths and barrowed back to Kate to be used as kindling.
In short, everyone had been pleased with the outcome, no one more so than herself, Lorna thought, yet now the hens were almost here, now that the poultry run awaited six white and black pullets, she wondered if they had done the right thing. Or, more to the point, she wondered what William would say to the spoiling of the lawn in