Sorry, William. I truly am, but …
July more than half over, with high blue skies and warm days to ripen corn, and it was as if Ladybower had always had its own hens on the back lawn. Ness and Lorna, pleased and proud with the rate at which the cosseted pullets grew and matured, waited daily for the cackle that would herald the first egg.
They would only be small eggs at first, but they could expect larger ones, Kate said, once the pullets got into their stride. And what was more, in their first laying season they wouldn’t have a moult as other older hens did. And Ness, who knew all about such matters, had explained to Lorna in detail that in early winter hens had a moult, lost their feathers and went around looking scrawny and dejected. The bright red comb on top of their heads went pink and flat and, worst of all, they stopped laying eggs. But Ladybower’s little flock would not suffer so in their first season. She and Lorna would have new-laid eggs all through winter, and for very little trouble, too.
It was as well they had the hens to fuss over, Lorna thought as she spread the morning paper on the kitchen table and set about checking the time at which blackouts must be in place tonight, and read the column which gave details of programmes on the wireless. Only then, reluctantly, she gave her attention to the headlines.
BIGGEST AIR RAIDS OF ALL RAF SHOOTS DOWN THIRTY-NINE MORE NAZIS
In smaller print it said that nine of our fighters had been lost. What it really meant was nine young pilots, scarcely out of school, were dead.
The raids had been on the Southeast, the Southwest, and Wales. The south-east, everyone knew, even though the Ministry of Information always withheld place names, was where the fighter stations were; Manston, Tangmere, Biggin Hill. Fighters and fighter stations must be put out of action before the invasion began. Everyone knew it. So now, whilst southern cornfields were ripening, one hundred and sixty-three enemy bombers had been shot down in five days, for the loss of fifty-four of our fighters.
The battle for Britain had begun, it would seem. For as long as they could last out, hang on to fly yet another sortie, the future of our country was in the hands of young men, most of them not yet old enough to vote. Or to marry without parental consent for that matter, Lorna thought as a choke of tears made a tight ball in her throat.
Yet she was worrying about keeping hens on the lawn; bothered because William – when he found out about them – would be annoyed. Annoyed, too, about her short-cut hair and, if he gave her a closer look, horrified she had plucked her eyebrows! And all that was as nothing when, these past five days, fifty-four mothers and wives and sweethearts would have been told, in words of regret, that their pilot would never come home on leave again. So why, in the name of all that was holy, was she worrying over nothing? Any one of those fifty-four women would be grateful to have Lorna Hatherwood’s troubles.
She folded the paper, laying it on the table top so she might not see the face of the young bomber pilot who had deliberately guided his crashing bomber into the sea so it should not hit the streets of houses below him. He had been married just nine months ago, the caption beneath his picture said, so yesterday, too, a young woman called Margaret would have received the small, yellow envelope that would consign her to widowhood, and to grief.
‘It’s just too awful and there’s nothing I can do about it, either,’ she whispered to the silent room.
Well, was there anything? Was she really, really sure? But you couldn’t be sure about anything when you were fighting tears you needed to let fall for fifty-four young men and a broken-hearted widow.
Yet of one thing she was very sure! Her short haircut stayed, Ness stayed, and the six hens, too! And if William didn’t like it – we-e-ll, she would worry about it when she had to!
‘There’s sumthin’ going on at the manor.’ Ness kicked off her shoes at the back door. ‘Everybody thinkin’ it was a false alarm, that the Army wasn’t interested after all, then there they are! Didn’t you see them?’
‘No. But I went to Meltonby – ran out of stamps. How many were there?’
‘Two lorries and three trucks. Got a good look at them from the stackyard. Kate said she thought they must be a working party, cleaning out, doing repairs and things.’
‘And how many soldiers, Ness?’
‘Couldn’t say. But there was one on the roof and a couple fixing telephone wires. Will you mind them coming?’
‘Nothing I can do about it – it’s a free country, thank God. I think we should give them a chance before we start moaning about them. After all, William is in the Army and I wouldn’t like people to resent his being there, nor think he’d steal anything he could lay his hands on. Rowley shouldn’t have said what he did.’
‘Rowley Wintersgill’s an arrogant little sod. Six months in the Armed Forces would do him the world of good. Most young men his age are already in uniform. I often look at him,’ Ness frowned, ‘and wonder how Kate and Bob could have spawned such a nasty piece of work. But blow him! Heard any news? Gossip …?’
‘No. And I didn’t put the wireless on for the one o’clock news. There’s such a battle going on, down south. Headlines in the paper that we’ve lost more than fifty pilots in five days. That lot in London tried to cover it up by saying the Luftwaffe lost more planes than we did. But how long can we hang on, Ness?’
‘As long as it takes, I reckon. And why Hitler’s hanging back, I don’t know – the invasion, I mean.’
‘Give it time …’
‘Yes. But hadn’t you thought, Lorna, that time’s running out for Hitler, too. Kate said that soon the tides and the weather will be against a landing. Some article she read.’
‘Words – articles – are cheap, like talk! But let’s forget That Man. We’re getting het up, worrying about when we’ll be invaded and that’s what he wants! Tell me – when is Bob going to start on the corn harvest?’
‘Any day now. The wheat first, then the barley. Mr Wintersgill said when they’ve got the corn into the barn, you an’ me can go gleaning. There’ll be a lot we can rake up for the hens. Kate said barley makes hens lay better. Maybe it would start ours off!’
‘Maybe,’ Lorna whispered.
‘Now see here, queen, what’s to do?’ Ness demanded. ‘Sumthin’s bothering you. Not had a nasty letter from William?’
‘No. Nothing in the post this morning. But that’s not why I feel so – so depressed. It was reading the paper, y’see. All those young men killed, and them hardly a hold on life. And all I can do is read about it in the papers and feel sorry, when all the time I should be doing something useful!’
‘But you can’t. Married women aren’t expected to leave home. And to volunteer for the Armed Forces you’d have to have William’s permission, don’t forget.’
‘I’m not likely to, and I wasn’t thinking of making such a grand gesture. I want to stay at Ladybower, yet I know I should be doing more. I’m going to talk to Nance about it, see what she says and – oh, my goodness! The phone!’ And as if she already knew that William was at the other end of it, she ran to answer it, closing the door behind her.
‘William!’ Ness muttered. Lorna could do without a call from him! Lately she had been despondent – felt guilty, Ness wouldn’t wonder, about taking in a land girl and not telling her husband she was still here. And worrying, an’ all, about the hens on the lawn. A call from her William was the last thing the poor girl needed – unless he’d changed his tune a bit and said something nice for a change. Like he loved her and was missing her.
‘William, was it,’ she asked of a wide-eyed Lorna standing in the doorway.