Catchpole supped appreciatively. The lass could mash tea and she had a happy face and could take a bit of teasing.
He glanced at her outfit, taking in the khaki knee-stockings, the shirt and green tie; the short, smart jacket and the hat, tipped to the back of her bright yellow curls.
‘Hope you don’t intend coming to work all dressed up like that,’ he remarked, eager to find just one fault.
‘Bless you, luv, no! I’m wearing my walking-out togs just to make an impression. Tomorrow, I’ll be wearing my dungarees and a cool shirt – and my good thick boots!’
Catchpole nodded, mollified, drained his mug then placed it on the ground at his feet.
‘You got a young man, then?’
‘One or two, Mr Catchpole, but none of them serious. Well, it’s best not when there’s a war on. Don’t think I’d like having someone I cared about very much away at the war.’
‘Ar.’ The lass had sense. ‘Still, can’t sit here all morning nattering. Work to be done. Us’ve got to dig for victory, or so the Government tells us.’
Gaudy posters everywhere urged it. ‘Dig for Victory!’ they exhorted. Britain needed food, so lawns must be dug up and cabbages and potatoes planted instead. Those without gardens were offered allotments; flowerbeds in parks were planted with peas and beans and lettuces. Any grassy stretch came under the plough and this year, where children once played and dogs had been walked, wheat and oats and barley were already turning from green to gold, soon to be harvested.
Dig for victory! Every spadeful of earth turned over, every potato picked, was a second in time off the duration of the war, and Britain dug furiously.
‘Then can’t I stay, Mr Catchpole – start work right away?’
‘You could, if you wasn’t all togged up like that.’
‘Then why don’t I go back to the hostel and change into my dungarees? And I can pick up my sandwiches whilst I’m about it. And Mr Catchpole – why is our hostel called a bothy?’
Questions, questions! ‘A bothy,’ he sighed, ‘is a place where apprentice lads lived. Young gardeners, stable lads and the like. Every big house has a bothy, only once, in the old days, they were filled. Mrs Purvis looked after them all.’
‘Mrs Purvis who’s our cook?’
‘That same lady. When the garden apprentices were taken into the militia, she had nothing to do. Lucky for her you land girls came along.’
‘She’s nice. She’s been asking us, now the apples are ripening, to try to get her some windfalls, then she’ll make us an apple pie for Sunday dinner. She’s a good cook.’
‘Well, you’m welcome to any windfalls you can gather here. There’s a few about, over by the far wall. Now off with you, lass! I’ll be over yonder when you get back, hoeing the sprouts. You know what sprouts are?’
‘Course I do – but I’ve never seen them growing.’
‘Well, from now on and for the duration, Gracie Fielding, you’m going to learn how to grow ’em – aye, and peas and beans and potatoes and more besides.’
‘Suits me, Mr Catchpole.’
He watched her go. Happen he just might make something of the lass from Rochdale. She had a nice smile and a ready laugh and he’d especially looked at her fingernails, which were short cut and unpainted.
‘Us’ll see how you shape up, Gracie Fielding,’ he murmured to her retreating back and surprised himself by noticing she had a nice, neat little bottom.
He chuckled mischievously, wondering how long it would be before the lads at the aerodrome were wolf-whistling his land girl.
Picking up the mugs, he rinsed them in the water butt and returned them to the shelf beside the bottle marked poison. Then he took the teapot and emptied the leaves on the compost heap, making a mental note to instruct Gracie about compost heaps and their value in the order of things.
He reckoned the lass would be a quick learner and was very surprised to find himself looking forward to her return.
‘I see they’re making the Duke of Windsor governor of the Bahamas,’ Helen Sutton murmured over the top of the morning paper.
‘Best place for him,’ Julia grunted without looking up from her plate. ‘Hope he takes her with him. Shouldn’t wonder if Mr Churchill isn’t behind the move. The man’ll be out of harm’s way there. Tell me something important.’
‘We-e-ll, it says here that there have been air raids on Swansea and Falmouth, and convoys in the Channel have been attacked. And more raids on Clydeside and the south.’
‘Looks as if we are being softened up for the invasion,’ Julia shrugged.
‘Don’t say that, please.’ Helen Sutton laid down her newspaper. ‘Drew is in the south, don’t forget.’
‘Drew is just fine. I’d know inside me if he wasn’t.’ Julia picked up the paper, shaking it open. Newspapers were easily read these days. Sometimes containing no more than eight pages, they were quickly scanned. ‘Well! Here’s something you missed. That dratted Lord Haw-Haw! Last night, it says, he broadcast a final appeal to reason to the British, urging them to make peace with Germany. The cheek of the ruddy man!’
‘I saw it, Julia. I didn’t think it worth comment. And you know I have forbidden anyone in this house to tune in to him.’
‘But people do, you know. They reckon he’s a good laugh.’
‘Oh, no! Some of the things he says are remarkably true, or so they say. He doesn’t amuse me!’
An Englishman – no one could be quite certain of his identity – broadcast regularly from Germany. He had an arrogant, nasal voice that some likened to the braying of an ass. So Lord Haw-Haw he had become, and almost as much a part of listening in to the wireless as Tommy Handley or Henry Hall, and though no one at all admitted to having heard him, he was, nevertheless, regularly reported in the newspapers. Completely as a joke, of course!
‘Well, we don’t want peace with Hitler – not on his terms, anyway. Oh, wouldn’t he just love rubbing our noses in it? We’ll manage, Mother. He knows what he can do with his offer of peace as far as I’m concerned. And here’s another bit you missed. The Government says that no more cars are to be manufactured – not for civilians, that is.’
‘Civilians must make sacrifices,’ Helen sniffed. She disliked cars, refusing to learn to drive. You couldn’t blame her, Julia thought, when Pa had killed himself in a motor on the Brighton road, trying to reach sixty miles an hour.
‘Oh, and something else,’ she smiled, folding the paper. ‘Alice told me last night. The LDV boys have been given uniforms at last and they’re to be called the Home Guard. They’re to have shoulder flashes to sew on, and tin hats, too, just as if they were soldiers. They’ve made Tom a corporal. I think he’s quite chuffed about it. All he wants now is for them to be issued with rifles, then they’ll be ready for the Jerries. If they come, of course.’
‘And do you think they will, Julia? Honestly?’
‘Every night I pray they won’t but truly, Mother, where else is Hitler to go now? America is too far away; Russia is an unknown quantity and anyway, even Hitler wouldn’t be fool enough to take on such a big country. They’ve already taken the Channel Islands – it’s likely we’ll be next. Yet Nathan says he feels that we won’t be invaded. Apart from his faith in God, he says he just knows inside him we’ll be all right. So let’s not worry too much, uh? Every day is a bonus, so chin up, dearest. We’ll manage.’
‘Well,