The Farmer's Daughter (21 page)

‘There.' Jean pointed.

A head and an arm had come out of the window to open a door. And then a kitbag was thrown out, followed by a pair of crutches and then Gordon. His awkwardness should have alerted Doris, but she was too impatient to notice and rushed down the platform just as he managed to alight and stood uncertainly, waiting. She
had almost reached him when she stopped suddenly. ‘Gordon.' Her voice was a whisper.

‘Well, here I am, Mum,' he said, cheerfully.

She pulled herself together to go forward and kiss him. She would have hugged him tightly but she was afraid he might fall over if she did. Instead, she wept.

‘Hey,' he said. ‘It's nothing to cry about.'

‘Mum's crying because she's happy,' Jean said, moving forward to plant a kiss on his cheek. ‘Let's get you home and then you can tell us all about it. Can you make it to the truck?'

‘Course I can.' He set off down the platform, his gait ungainly as he went from his good leg to the wooden peg, visible beneath a new pair of uniform trousers. They could certainly hear it:
tap, tap, tap.
Jean picked up his crutches and kitbag and followed; he seemed to have forgotten them.

‘Jean, what are we going to do?' Doris whispered, watching his back. ‘He's crippled.'

‘Don't say that in front of him, Mum.'

‘I won't. Of course I won't. And he's so terribly thin. I don't think there's an ounce of fat on him.'

‘No, but we can feed him up.'

‘What do you think your father will say?'

‘We'll soon find out.'

Gordon had negotiated the steep slope down to the road, passed through the passenger gate and was stomping towards the truck. There was just room to squeeze three in the front. ‘Mum, you go in the middle,' Jean said. ‘I'll help Gordon in.'

‘I don't need any help, thank you very much,' he said sharply. ‘I can manage. In fact, I think I'll drive.'

‘You will not,' Doris said, while Jean put the crutches and kitbag in the back. ‘You will get in and behave yourself.'

He laughed as he climbed in beside his mother. ‘Now I know I'm home. No one has said that to me since I left.'

‘How long …?' Doris began as Jean drove through the village.

‘How long have I had this contraption?' He tapped it with his knuckle. ‘One of the chaps in the camp made it for me. Very useful it is, too.'

Jean realised, even if her mother did not, that his cheerfulness was all on the surface, put on for their benefit. Later, perhaps, she would try and talk to him on his own; it was important to know how he really felt.

As they turned in at the gate of the farm, he noticed the big banner across the front of the house. ‘Welcome home, Gordon', it said.

‘God, no!' he shouted. ‘Bloody hell! I could do without that. Whose great idea was that?'

‘Don's,' his mother said, as they drew up and stopped. ‘He's excited at having you home.'

‘Well, I don't want any of that nonsense. I'm not a conquering hero. I've done nothing but sit on my backside for five years. It's got to come down.'

‘Oh,' Doris said and fell silent.

‘We are all glad to have you home, Gordon,' Jean said. ‘Don't spoil it.'

He climbed out and stumped into the house, leaving the women to follow. There was an appetising smell of roast pork coming from the kitchen. Don was sitting at the table, stringing bunting for the party in the village hall they had arranged for the following evening.

‘Hallo, young 'un,' Gordon said.

‘Gordon, you're back.' He jumped up and then stopped. ‘What's that?' he asked, pointing.

‘Donald!' Doris remonstrated. ‘Don't be rude.'

‘You can see what it is,' Gordon said. ‘It's a wooden leg.' He lifted it with his hands and put it on the seat of a chair, balancing himself on his good leg. ‘Take a good look, if you like.'

‘I don't want to look at it.'

‘No, I don't suppose you do. I don't want to either, but I've no choice.' He put it down again.

‘You won't be able to dance.'

‘Dance?'

‘Yes, at the party tomorrow. We're putting it on in the village hall, 'specially to welcome you home. Everyone is coming.'

‘Then they can have it without me.'

‘But you can't not go.'

‘Don, that's enough,' Doris said. ‘Let Gordon get in the door before you start arguing with him. I'm sure he's tired after his journey.' She turned to Gordon. ‘Can you make it up the stairs?'

‘Yes.' He looked about him. ‘Where's Pa? Milking, is he?'

‘No. He's in the front room with Gran. Go and say hallo, then go up and have a rest before dinner.'

He left the room. The two women looked at each other and Doris burst into tears. ‘I never imagined … I thought he might be thin and perhaps not well and we could make him better …'

‘I'm afraid we can't cure the loss of a leg, Mum. We have to accept that's how he is now. He seems to be managing very well.'

‘Why didn't he tell us? He wrote, he could have said …'

‘Dry your eyes and go and see what they are talking about. I must go out and see how Karl is managing with the milking.'

It was Karl's last day. He could not stay at the farm now Gordon was back, she had told him. ‘I expect he will want to take over running the farm,' she had said, with a half-laugh meant to
disguise the fact that she was not looking forward to the prospect. ‘I will become a simple farmhand.'

‘And he will not need me.'

She noted that he had said ‘he' and not ‘you'. She needed him as much, if not more, than ever. ‘I'm sorry, Karl. If I had my way you'd stay, you know that, but Pa says it won't be necessary.' But that was before they knew about his amputation.

Karl was finishing the last of the milking when she entered the cowshed. ‘He's home then?' he queried without looking up.

‘Yes, but it's not quite what we imagined …' She paused, watching him rise from the stool, a tall, well-muscled, handsome man whom she could not help but love. ‘He's lost half his leg and is getting around on a wooden peg leg. Poor Mum has taken it hard.'

He went to a bowl of water to wash his hands. ‘I am sorry,
Liebling
.'

‘I don't know how much he will be able to do on the farm. He could work about the yard, if that's what he wants, but as for going over the fields … I think perhaps I shall still need you.'

He flung down the towel and strode over to take both her hands in his own and search her face. ‘Jean, my dearest love, if you need me, then I will move heaven and earth to come. Unless something occurs over which I have no control, I will always come.' He spoke quietly, still holding her hands. ‘Wherever I am.'

‘I'll see what Pa and Gordon say about it,' she said, trying to be practical but he was making it very difficult with his tender concern. ‘I'll send up to the camp for you if they agree. I'll take you back in the trap now. Have you got your bag?' He had packed it earlier so she could prepare Gordon's room.

He let go of her hands. ‘It's in the barn.'

‘Fetch it and harness Misty up, while I go and tell Mum we're going.'

Gordon was sitting by the kitchen range in her father's old rocking chair. Pa hadn't used it since his stroke. Moving him from one chair to another was not easy and he hadn't felt safe in it. ‘Everything all right?' she asked.

He looked up. ‘Why didn't you tell me Pa was like that? You could have put it in a letter.'

‘For the same reason you didn't tell us you'd had half your leg amputated, I expect,' she said tartly. ‘We didn't want to worry you.'

‘I could hardly understand a word he was saying.'

‘You'll get used to it. We have.'

‘Can't he walk at all?'

‘No.'

‘Then I'm better off than he is, I suppose. I never in my wildest dreams … How on earth have you managed?'

‘I had a little help.'

‘Is it true you've got a Jerry POW working here?'

‘Until today, yes. I didn't think we would need him once you were home.'

‘A ruddy Jerry …'

‘Yes, Gordon. If it hadn't been for him, I wouldn't have been able to keep the farm going and you would have had nothing to come home to, so we'll have no insults, if you please.'

‘He's gone now?'

‘I'm just going to take him back to the camp in the trap. I won't be long. We can talk when I come back. Your room's all ready. I've taken your bag up. Do you want help getting upstairs?'

‘No, I can manage.'

‘Then go and have a rest. We'll talk later.'

He managed the stairs, one step at a time, hauling on the handrail, and went into his bedroom. It was just as he had left it. His cricket bat was still propped in a corner by the window. The same pictures decorated the walls; the same books occupied the bookcase. His model aeroplanes were still suspended from the ceiling. He opened his wardrobe door. It was full of his civilian clothes and shoes. It was as if he had never left, or had simply gone out for the day and was expected to return by nightfall. He bent to pick up his football boots and then it hit him. Nothing had changed and yet everything had.

He threw the boots back and sank onto the bed. God, he was tired and his stump ached like hell. He let down his trousers, unbuckled the harness and dropped the leg on the floor beside the bed. Then he fell back and slept.

‘Raus! Raus!'
He woke with a start, picked up the nearest thing to hand – a small bedside clock – and flung it at the intruder. It hit the wall and smashed.

‘Hey, you didn't need to do that.' Donald was aggrieved. ‘I only came to tell you dinner's ready. Now you've broken it.'

‘And you didn't have to shout like that. I've had five years of it. I don't want to hear it ever again. I won't be responsible for my actions if I do.'

‘Sorry.' He noticed the peg leg on the floor. ‘Is that it? You can take it on and off, can you?' He was more curious than repelled.

‘You didn't suppose I slept in it, did you?'

‘I didn't suppose anything. I didn't know anything about it, did I? Mum's pretty cut up.'

‘Not half as cut up as I was,' he said, attempting a joke.

‘Are you coming down to dinner? You'll have to strap it on again, won't you?'

‘That's the reason I'll give dinner a miss. My stump is sore. And
you don't need to tell Mum that. Just say I'm tired. I'll see you all tomorrow.'

Donald left him, but now he was awake he could not go back to sleep. He lay there staring at the ceiling, thinking of his childhood, running about the farm on two good legs, playing cricket and football, helping to look after the animals, walking behind the plough, courting Rosemary. Rosie. That was another ordeal he would have to face. If ever anyone was useless, he was.

He heard a soft tap at the door and looked towards it as Jean put her head round it. ‘May I come in?'

‘Yes, of course.' He scrambled into a sitting position and pulled up his trousers.

‘Don said you threw the clock at him.'

‘Yes, sorry about that, but he shouldn't have shouted like that. I've heard nothing but
“Raus! Raus!”
for five years and I just reacted. Where did he learn it?'

‘I've no idea.' She crossed the room to sit on the side of his bed.

‘From that German worker, I suppose.'

‘Karl? I doubt it. He speaks very good English. It may have been the escaped prisoner who pushed his way into Gran's cottage. He didn't speak English. Don and Terry walked in on him when he was terrifying the life out of her. They knocked him out and tied him up.'

‘Good Lord! Bully for them.'

‘Yes, they were very brave. It made the newspapers.' She looked at the contraption lying on the floor at her feet. ‘Don said your stump was sore.'

‘I told him not to tell Mum.'

‘He didn't, he told me. Is there anything I can do? Have you got some cream or something?'

‘Yes, it's in my bag.'

She rose and went to his bag, fetched the tube of cream and handed it to him. ‘I'll unpack for you, shall I?'

‘Yes, please. There's not much.' He began creaming his stump while she busied herself putting his things away. ‘I didn't have anything much in the camp and I left most of it behind when we were liberated. The Red Cross gave us some things and we were kitted out with new uniforms at Cosford.'

‘You aren't going to need the uniform any more, are you?'

‘Why not?'

‘I imagined you'd been discharged.'

‘No, I'm on leave. I have to report back to Cosford in six weeks' time. If they won't let me fly again, I'll get my discharge after that.'

‘Is that what you want to do, go on flying?'

‘Yes, if they'll let me.'

‘And if they don't?'

‘I don't know. I'm hoping they'll give me a false leg, one with a foot on it. I'll be able to walk properly then, instead of stomping around like Long John Silver.'

‘How did it happen? When did it happen?'

‘When I was shot down. They had to cut me out of my kite and left part of my leg behind. I didn't know anything about it until I woke up in hospital. I'll say that for Jerry, his doctors are first class. They said I'd be given a new leg, but it never happened. Still, I should get one now.'

‘Will you be able to work on the farm?'

‘I don't know until I try. Not immediately. Don't feel up to it.'

‘No, I understand. There will be adjustments to make. I was thinking of Karl …'

‘The Jerry.'

‘He is a good man, Gordon. He had no time for Hitler or the Nazis and he's an excellent worker …'