Put Out the Fires (26 page)

“I wasn’t, actually. You never will get over it. When you’re an old woman on your death bed, you’ll still be mourning your lost child. On the other hand, you’ll learn to live with it. One of these days, it might take weeks or months or even years, but one day the tragedy will take second place to other things which will seem more important.”

“You’re sure of that, are you?” Eileen said sarcastically.

The moon came out for a second and she saw him smile.

“Relatively sure. There are a few people, a tiny few, who buckle under and wilt away, but most of us have sufficient will to survive. You’re one of the survivors. You wouldn’t be here if you intended to allow your child’s death to dominate the rest of your life.” He threw the remainder of his cigarette away and it sizzled on the wet sand. “Coming here means you’ve already taken the first step back onto the road to normality, and the day will come, I promise, when you’ll be able to laugh and enjoy life again.”

“Are you speaking from personal experience, or have you just read all this in books?” She felt convinced he was talking through his intellectual hat, and was even more sure this was the case when he didn’t answer her question, but merely stood up and slapped his sides.

“It’s freezing!” he exclaimed. “I’ve lived here for twenty-five years, but I shall never become accustomed to Norfolk winters. I think I’ll go indoors and secrete myself in my study. If anyone wants to kiss me, I shall convince them they already have.” He extended his hand. “Coming?

I reckon we’re well into nineteen forty-one by now. I don’t want any of my guests catching pneumonia. It takes Laura all her time to look after the healthy ones.”

“I suppose I’d better.”

He pulled her upright, but immediately released her hand. “Happy New Year, by the way.”

“The same to you.”

Kate was alone in the vast, untidy kitchen when Eileen entered in search of a cup of tea the following morning.

“What happened to you last night?” she enquired. “I searched everywhere to wish you a Happy New Year, but you’d completely disappeared.”

“I preferred to be by meself,” Eileen explained. “Did anyone else notice? I hope they didn’t think I was rude.”

“Of course not! Nobody here gives a hang about that sort of thing. Anyway, Conor disappeared, too, but then he always does on New Year’s Eve.”

“He was outside with me. We had quite a long talk.”

Eileen poured tea out of the cracked, half-fullpot. “This is a bit cold. Is it all right if I make some more?”

“Anything goes in this house, dear. The kettle’s about to boil for my coffee. Empty the pot and make a fresh lot. Would you like some bacon and egg? I’ll do yours with mine.”

“No, ta. I’ll make some toast.” She cut a slice of bread and held it by a fork in front of the blazing fire. The kitchen was usually the only warm room in the house. “Where is everyone?”

“Still in bed except for Conor. He lit the fires and went out for a walk. The young ones didn’t come back until a couple of hours ago. In fact, it was they who woke me up.”

The kettle boiled on the peculiar looking stove that had its own fire glowing behind a thick glass door and Kate made herself a cup of coffee and poured water in the teapot. She cleared a space on the bare scrubbed table which was heaped with last night’s dirty dishes and began to eat.

“What did you and Conor talk about last night?” she asked.

Eileen found the butter dish amidst the mess on the table. “Life, I suppose,” she replied, adding rather sarcastically, “He was full of good advice. He told me I’d get over losing Tony in time. You’d think he was some sort of expert on getting over things.”

“Well, he is in a way,” Kate said surprisingly. “Conor lost his twin brother in the last war on the very first day they went into battle. They were identical twins and had a special bond. He was bereft without Christopher. At the time he thought he’d never get over it.”

“Oh!” Eileen felt uncomfortable. “I didn’t know.”

Kate smiled. “How could you? I’ll tell you something else you didn’t know. Conor and I were childhood sweethearts. We were to be married when the war ended.

Instead, after Christopher died, he called it off and a few years later he married Laura.”

“But why?”

“I’ve no idea,” Kate shrugged. “We remained great friends, but we never talk about the past. I told myself it was because he loved me too much, and was scared I’d be taken from him as his brother was. In other words, he was casting me out of his life before it could happen again.”

“But he appears happy now, doesn’t he?” Eileen needed to know if Conor Kinnear was happy. It seemed important, she wasn’t quite sure why. Perhaps because it proved what he’d said last night was true. He’d never got over losing his twin, but the loss had come to take second place to other things in time.

“Perfectly happy,” Kate assured her. “He loves Laura and his children, even if he does get them confused occasionally.

Everything turned out well for Conor in the end.”

“But not for you?”

“No, not for me. Though I don’t know,” Kate mused. “I had a Christmas card from my eldest daughter, Celia.

She’ll soon be eighteen and is starting to ask questions.

One of these days perhaps I shall tell her why her mother left.” She smiled. “I’ve been happier than I’ve ever been at Dunnings, despite the longing to see my girls. You sort of live life on two layers and it’s the top layer, the immediate one, that seems the most important.”

“Conor said that one day I would laugh and enjoy life again, but I can’t imagine that happening, not ever.”

“It will, my dear, it will.” Kate leaned across the table and briefly held Eileen’s hand. “That’s enough deep thoughts for now. I think I can hear Conor coming back.”

Conor entered the kitchen along with a tall, bluff, red faced man of about fifty in mud-stained boots and carrying a basket of eggs, still matted here and there with straw.

They both nodded briefly at the women at the table.

“Are you sure the Ministry have had their proper allocation?” Conor asked anxiously.

“Yes, sir,” the man replied with an air of tried patience.

“They’ve had their six dozen. This is what’s over.”

Conor looked worried. “It doesn’t seem quite proper having more than our fair share.”

“Well, you’ve got a lot of guests, sir,” the man said reasonably. He spoke with an attractive Norfolk burr.

“I suppose I have.” Conor rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“But once my guests have gone, Ted, I want you to take the surplus to the local hospital.”

Ted shuffled his feet and looked slightly annoyed.

“That’s what I’ve always done up to now, sir.”

Conor turned to Kate and Eileen. “The farm’s become a worry since the war began,” he complained. “We’re inundated with inspectors from the Min of Ag telling us what to grow and how much milk and eggs they want.

Every time I eat a piece of meat, I worry that I’m breaking the law.” He turned back to the farmhand. “How’s the new land girl making out?”

Ted’s red face grew even redder as he expostulated, “Bloody hopeless, sir, if you’ll excuse the language. She’s even worse than the last one and don’t know one end of a cow from the other. She was a typist back in Ipswich.” His voice rose in disgust. “A typist!

Eileen longed to butt in in defence of the poor typist who’d come all the way from a town to this isolated place in order to do her bit. The girl had to learn, she thought.

Ted had begun to complain even more bitterly. “Not only that, Mr Kinnear, sir, but now Bob’s had his call-up papers and he’ll be off in a couple of weeks. We’re going to have to get another of them damned Land Army girls.”

“Oh, dear!” Conor looked crestfallen. “Never mind, Ted. You manage the farm wonderfully. No-one could do a better job than you.”

Ted departed, slightly mollified, and Conor smiled.

“Flattery will get you everywhere, it seems.”

“I didn’t know you owned the farm,” Eileen said. She’d noticed it about half a mile away from the house.

“I’m beginning to wish I didn’t,” Conor said, “but I don’t suppose there’s a hope of selling it at present.”

After breakfast, Eileen wandered over the fields to the farm, a long two-storey red brick building which looked as old as the Kinnears’ house. The front garden was neatly tended, but when she pushed through the five-barred gate at the side, she found the vast rear a dreary sea of mud surrounded by a series of ramshackle sheds. Chickens pecked their way through the mud and one fluttered down beside her and hopefully pecked the toe of her boot. Pigs grunted, cows mooed, and a large dog eyed her balefully.

She was about to depart hastily when she noticed the animal was tied to a stake.

“What do you want?” A short stubby woman in a white overall had opened the back door and was looking at her even more balefully than the dog.

“Nothing really. I just came to look at the farm. I’m staying with the Kinnears.”

“Huh!” The door was slammed shut without a word.

“Isn’t she a bitch?”

Eileen glanced round in search of where the voice had come from. A woman about her own age was leaning on the bottom half of a split doorway, the top part of which was open. “She was a bit rude,” Eileen said. “Who is she?”

“Ted’s wife, Edna. Ted’s the farm manager. I’m afraid he’s gone into Norwich, if you’ve come to see him.”

Eileen made her slippery way across the farmyard towards the woman, nearly falling headlong in the process. “I’ve never been on a farm before,” she explained when she arrived. “I just came to see what one looks like.

I’m staying at the big house over there.”

“Oh! So, you’re one of the upper crust, are you? And here was me thinking you might be the new land girl, though it would have been awfully quick.” She was an attractive woman, fine-featured, with long dark curly hair tied back with a blue ribbon. Eileen had never seen a member of the Land Army in the flesh before, either. Despite the rather mannish uniform - the Aertex shirt and tie, thick green jersey and felt hat worn at a jaunty angle on the back of her head—the woman managed to retain an air of elegance.

“I’m not one of the upper crust,” Eileen informed her firmly, “I’m merely a guest, that’s all. Back in Liverpool, I’m a centre lathe turner, at least I was until recently. How are you getting on? I understand you’re new here.”

The woman pulled a face. “Abysmally! I worked in an office until a month ago, and, like you, I’ve never been near a farm in my life. Ted doesn’t have any patience with me. He acts as if I’ve been sent to try him, not help him. You wouldn’t think I’d given up a well-paid Civil Service job to help feed my starving country.” She leant her elbows on top of the door and looked around her gloomily. “Isn’t it depressing?

I had visions of lying in fields of sunkissed swaying corn and the smell of baking bread wafting from the farm kitchen.

Instead, all I can smell is pigshit, and all I can see is mud.”

Eileen smiled. “Perhaps you shouldn’t have come in December! As for the farm, I suppose it is a bit basic” In fact, the scene might well have been the same a hundred years ago. There was nothing to suggest this was the twentieth century; no trucks or tractors, no neatly paved yard or concrete buildings, merely the collection of tumbledown wooden shacks which looked as if they’d been stuck forever in their sea of mud. Conor Kinnear had clearly not thought it worthwhile to invest money in his farm. Even so, Eileen rather liked it, just as she liked all the scenery on this part of the Norfolk coast. It was completely natural and unspoilt, untouched by anything modern. “I’d better be getting back,” she said. She wanted to see Conor because she’d just had the craziest idea.

“What’s your name, by the way?”

“Peggy Wilson.”

“I’m Eileen Costello.” You never know, she thought as she began to make her unsteady way out of the farmyard, if Conor went along with her crazy idea, she’d be seeing Peggy Wilson again pretty soon.

Chapter 11

A fist hammered on the bedroom door and Eileen shouted, “I’m awake.” The floor on the landing creaked under Ted’s heavy tread as he walked away. Eileen pulled the bedclothes around her shoulders and groaned. What she wouldn’t have given for a cup of tea first thing! The room was freezing, so cold it hurt to breathe and she touched her nose to make sure it was still there, in case she’d caught frostbite during the night. After a while, she sat up and lit the oil lamp on the bedside table and began to get dressed, struggling into as many garments as she could whilst still underneath the clothes. She’d no intention of getting washed; a quick splash of the face with the icy water in the pitcher on the washstand would do until tonight. As she pulled on a pair of knee-length woollen socks, Eileen wondered if she was completely mad to have joined the Women’s Land Army—not that she was a member yet. Her application was “in hand”, and would be processed swiftly under the circumstances, in that she was already working on the farm that would employ her. In the meantime, she was living in the farmhouse with Ted and Edna Wright—much to the latter’s disgust—and, until she got her uniform, wearing clothes borrowed from the Kinnears: drill overalls, long socks, several of Conor’s old jumpers and a lumpy sort of duffel coat.

She’d approached Conor with her proposition on New Year’s Day, straight after her visit to the farm. He’d looked at her as if he’d never seen her before, as if they hadn’t had an intimate conversation about life and death the night before. He was in his study typing and seemed irritated by the interruption.

“Have you spoken to Ted about it?” he enquired brusquely when she asked if she could work as a land girl on his farm in the place of the man about to be called up.

“He’s gone to Norwich,” she explained uncomfortably.

Perhaps she was disturbing the writing of a great masterpiece.

“Of course, I forgot. I’ll have a word with him when he returns.” He turned back to his work and Eileen was dismissed, feeling slightly let down. She’d thought he’d jump at the idea. She sought out Kate to ask her opinion.

Kate chewed her lip and looked doubtful. “It’s frightfully hard work, Eileen.”