Our Yanks (3 page)

‘They will be far from their homes and their own country and some of them will be coming here to die. I don't think we should forget that, Miss Skinner.'

She nodded. ‘Yes . . . you're right. We must keep that in mind. Well, goodnight, Rector.' He watched the schoolmistress striding away from him, a bulky figure in the green tweeds she wore whatever the season, her pork-pie felt hat skewered firmly to her head. He closed and locked the door and stood still for a moment, thinking. Unlike the Dakins he had never heard God's voice with any certainty. His own prayers never received such clear answers but he thought that guidance did appear in other ways – through thoughts coming into his mind that gave him the power to see things more clearly. And he saw clearly that he was right about the Americans. When strangers were willing to come miles across an ocean and lay down their lives in the struggle against evil, then they should be welcomed, even if it was only with a cup of tea and a paste sandwich.

An inner doorway connected the parish room to the back hall of the rectory. He was about to go into his study when Agnes came down the stairs.

‘How did the meeting go, Father?'

He looked up at his only child, the light of his life. By some blessed quirk of nature, she had taken after his own dear mother in looks. Exactly the same eyes and hair and the same smile. The kind of true and real beauty that would last a lifetime. ‘Not so badly. We managed to agree on most things.'

‘Supper's ready.'

‘Thank you, my dear.' He followed Agnes down the stone-flagged passageway and into the kitchen where they now took all their meals. It was far more convenient and warmer than the chilly wastes of the dining room. Once upon a time, before the war, there had been a cook and a kitchen maid, as well as a housemaid, but the cook had gone to work in a munitions factory and the maids had both joined the ATS. Mrs Halliwell now obliged on two mornings a week and did some cooking for the larder when she and her bunions felt up to it. Otherwise it was Agnes who coped. He sat down at one end of the massive pine table that had been there since the days of a far larger Victorian household when the rector had had eight children. He hoped that the supper, whatever it was, had been cooked by his daughter and not Mrs Halliwell, who had a heavy hand as well as bunions. It had. ‘It's oxtail,' she told him. ‘They had some at the butcher's today.' She set the plate of stew in front of him.

She was an excellent cook, creating appetizing dishes out of the most unpromising wartime ingredients – tails and tongues and trotters and all kinds of offal and animal parts that nobody would have dreamed of eating before – but he was almost too tired to eat. More and more to be done in the parish, he thought, and less and less energy to carry out all his duties now that he was getting on in years. Since Sylvia had left him, bored out of her mind, as she had put it, with the life of a country parson's wife, he had found it a constant struggle. Various village ladies had nobly stepped into the breach and, as Agnes had grown up, she had shouldered an increasing share of the burden that her mother had laid down. In addition to teaching in the school kindergarten and at Sunday school and running the Brownies, she fulfilled any number of other parish duties for him.

His daughter sat down to eat opposite him and he observed her covertly, thinking of Miss Skinner's words of warning. Agnes was engaged to be married to Clive Hobbs but, as Miss Skinner had cautioned, her fiancé was away serving in the army and likely to remain so for the rest of the war. Just to himself, he admitted that he was rather relieved about that. It put off the day when he must come to terms with marrying Agnes to a young man he did not care for. He had been dismayed when Clive had presented himself at the rectory, not so much to ask for Agnes's hand as to announce that he was taking it. He could see, though, how it had come about. Agnes and Clive had known each other since they were small children and as she had grown into a beautiful young woman, Clive had pursued her relentlessly and with all the assurance of his privileged situation. The Hobbs family with their acres and their property and their fingers in many pies were important people in King's Thorpe. Still, the rector had demurred and prevaricated. Agnes was only eighteen. She had met so few young men in her sheltered life. Was she truly in love? Had she any idea what that should feel like? Did she feel anything close to the passion he had felt, and still felt, for her mother? He had worried about these things in private, but, in the end, there had been no real reason to withhold his consent – other than the irrational dislike of his future son-in-law, which he kept to himself. People told him how fortunate his daughter was. In his view, it was Clive who was the fortunate one.

He had wondered sometimes since if Agnes was marrying to escape the wearing routine of rectory life, just as Sylvia had been desperate to escape, but when he had asked she had denied it vehemently and pointed out that she would still be living in the village and still intended to go on helping him. Her answer had made him wonder guiltily if
that
, instead, was part of the reason. She knew how much he depended on her in every way and marrying Clive meant she would stay in King's Thorpe. There was no denying that he was selfishly thankful for it. He doubted, though, whether, once married, she would find it easy to carry out many parish duties. Clive Hobbs struck him as the kind of man who would demand a wife's full attention. There had already been arguments, he knew, over her teaching at the kindergarten. Agnes had announced her intention of continuing; Clive wanted her to stop. The outcome remained to be seen.

‘You're not eating, Father. Is anything the matter?'

‘No, nothing, my dear.' He picked up his knife and fork. ‘I'm just a bit tired.'

‘Mrs Gibbons sent a message. She says Mr Gibbons has taken a turn for the worse and she'd like you to go and see him as soon as you can.'

Matthew Gibbons had been bedridden for several years, wavering uncertainly between this world and the next. There had been many false alarms about his final departure, but the rector always hurried to his bedside.

‘And Mr Law rang about the magazine. I said you'd ring him back. Is the stew all right?'

‘Delicious.' He ate some more to please her. ‘We're going to give a welcome party at the village hall for the American airmen when they arrive. It was agreed at the meeting. Nothing elaborate, of course. Just tea and sandwiches. Your help will be appreciated, my dear, if you can manage to spare the time.'

‘When are they coming?'

‘During the next week or so, apparently. The proposal is to invite the commanding officer and a limited number of others. Impossible to ask them all, with the best will in the world. But I feel we should do our utmost to welcome them and show that we care.'

‘They haven't cared very much about us up to now, have they?'

He was rather taken aback; he had expected her full support, as always. ‘You can understand their reluctance to become involved in another European war.'

‘I'm not sure I
can
understand – not very easily, anyway.
We
didn't want to get involved in one again either, but we did because we wouldn't stand by and let the Nazis tyrannize other countries. The Americans have only thought of themselves all along, haven't they? Tom thinks they're despicable.'

‘Does he, indeed?'

‘They wanted to keep their precious neutrality at all costs, didn't they? They refused to help us and they're only fighting now because the Japanese attacked them – not for our sake.'

He said ruefully, ‘Brigadier Mapperton would certainly agree, my dear.'

‘Well, it's true, isn't it?'

‘Up to a point. But there must be many Americans who would have liked to join in much sooner. Indeed, some of them did. American pilots fought in the Battle of Britain, you know.'

‘It doesn't excuse the rest of them.' She smiled at him. ‘But don't worry, Father, I'll help with the teas.'

He smiled back, thinking how very dear she was to him, and it suddenly crossed his mind – no more than a faint stirring in his consciousness, like a soft little summer breeze passing through leaves on a tree – that he half-hoped that Miss Skinner's fears might be justified.

Sam Barnet found his wife in the sitting room, engrossed in her knitting; something for the Forces, to judge by the look of it. He'd had his evening meal earlier, before the PCC meeting, and now he fancied a cup of tea and a piece of cake and a quiet sit-down before he turned in early. He'd be up well before four, in time to stoke the oven furnace and heave an eight-stone sack of flour down the ladder from the store above the bakehouse for mixing up in the trough. There were no fat bakers. It was backbreaking, sweat-of-the-brow work and he did it all himself, now that Roger was away, except for a school-age lad who came to chop the sticks and bring the coal in. He'd noticed lately that he was getting more and more aches and pains – in his back and his hands, and sometimes trouble with his chest and eyes from the flour dust. The cakes were women's work and he left those to a hired woman, Mrs Trimwell, and Sally to do once he'd finished the bread and the oven was cooler. They couldn't make the very fancy cakes any more because of the shortages, but they'd plenty of eggs from two hundred chickens to make good, plain ones. Freda was busy counting stitches, muttering away under her breath, so he went and put the kettle on the hob himself. While he waited for it to boil he put the cups and saucers and the milk in its matching jug out on a tray with a clean white cloth underneath. He liked things done nicely in the house and sometimes wished that Freda was a bit more particular in that department. The kitchen was in a real muddle with the dirty dishes from the meal still piled in the sink. He took the Coronation cake tin off the larder shelf and cut two slices of Madeira – a thin one for Freda and a larger one for himself. It was still good and moist, he noted with his baker's eye. It'd be one of Sally's, more than likely: she was very good at the cakes. When the kettle had come to the boil he made the tea in the teapot and fitted the wool cosy over it, with a bit of a struggle. Another of Freda's knitting attempts with the hole for the spout not in quite the right place.

When he carried the tray back into the sitting room Freda was shaking her head over the knitting lying in a khaki heap on her lap.

‘I've gone wrong somewhere, Sam, but I'm blessed if I can make it out. I've got too many stitches.'

He set the tray on the side table. ‘What's it meant to be?'

‘A pullover. The WVS are sending comfort parcels to every man from the village who's away serving in the Forces.' She held up the knitting which dangled lumpily and lopsidedly from the needles. He felt sorry for the soldier who might have to wear it. Freda was no good with her hands. No good at knitting or sewing and hopeless in the bakehouse. She had tried when they were first married, but everything she'd touched had turned to disaster. Cakes never rose or they burned, pastry turned to lead, even simple rock cakes were more rocks than cakes. But she was good with the customers and popular in the village, which was all useful for business. He was proud of the bakery and of being the fourth generation of Barnets to run it. The family had made its mark in the village, he reckoned; earned a respectable place. He was proud to serve on the Parochial Church Council, to be churchwarden, to read the lesson at Sunday matins, to serve as a school governor, to be seen to count for something in the community.

Freda had come from the next village, the daughter of a carter who ferried goods in a horsedrawn covered wagon. He'd aimed his sights higher when he'd been looking for a wife, but the minute he'd set eyes on her he'd been bowled over. She'd had beautiful long, nut-brown hair in those days and a slim figure with a tiny waist. The hair was cut short now and mostly grey and having Roger and Sally had put paid to the waist, but she was still a fine-looking woman. Sally took after her in looks, though she had gone and dyed her hair blond which he thought was not only a shame but unseemly. He'd been furiously angry about it, but powerless to stop her. She knew her own mind, did Sally, and he had a hard job keeping her in order. She was good with the customers, though, as well as at making the cakes: quick as anything with the serving and the money and all smiles. Too much so with some of the men, for his liking. As soon as she'd left school she'd started in the bakehouse, but he didn't want her staying there for ever. He'd other things in mind for his only daughter. A respectable marriage to somebody suitable. He'd had his eye on one young man in the village who was away at the Front at present, but it might turn out to be someone from Stamford or Peterborough. Someone from a decent, prosperous family of some standing, like his own. The Barnets had come a long way since his great-grandfather had rolled up his shirtsleeves and plunged his arms into the flour.

He poured the tea. ‘Where's Sally?'

‘She's gone out. Round to see Doris.'

‘She spends too much time with that girl. I'd sooner she kept different sort of company.'

‘What's wrong with Doris?'

‘She's in service,' he said, a shade uncomfortably, knowing that so had Freda's mother been as a girl.

‘Other jobs are hard to find in these parts and she's too young to join up. Anyway, she's more like a daily help, so far as I can see. Doesn't have to live in and skivvy all hours of the day and night, like my mother had to. It's different these days.'

He didn't want to hear about it and wished Freda would keep quiet about her mother. She'd probably told all and sundry in the village. ‘Well, Sally'll have to stop going out in the evening once the Americans get here. We can't have her doing that any longer.'

‘You won't stop her, Sam. She's not a child.'

‘She's only fifteen. That's too young to be out alone.'