The Farmer's Daughter (28 page)

‘How much warning will you get?'

‘I don't know, probably not more than a few hours.'

‘Then each goodbye we say could be the last.'

‘Yes.'

‘Oh, Karl.' She turned towards him and he wrapped his arms around her. ‘It's bad enough that you have to go back to camp every night, but wondering if you will ever return will be a torment.'

He smiled and kissed her. ‘You will survive, my love. As I will. As I must.' They clung to each other a moment longer. ‘I must go, I don't want to be posted missing, that would not help.' He was
no longer brought to work in a lorry but allowed to make his own way. It was near enough to walk.

She didn't go to the gate with him, but stayed to record the milk yield and shut up the hens for the night. By the time she had finished, she had regained control of her seething emotions, at least on the surface.

This unhappy time was balanced by a christening. Rosemary had a son in early September, whom they called Stanley Arthur Winston. Stanley, so Gordon told them, after the man who had made his peg leg. He was a Pole and his real name had been Stanislaw but Rosie would not agree to that, so Stanley it was, soon to be shortened to Stan. Rosemary was a doting mother and the whole house seemed to revolve around the baby's needs: his feed times; his sleep times, when everyone had to creep around for fear of waking him; the washing line was always full of his little garments and the sitting room was scattered with his toys. Jean was often called in to babysit so that Gordon and Rosemary could go out. Plodding along as usual, she knew the time was not far off when she would have to leave the only home she had ever known or become an unpaid nanny and labourer.

The ban on fraternisation was lifted in time for Christmas 1946, and it was now possible to show friendship to former enemies. Some people invited them into their homes for the festivities, others, who had lost loved ones in the war, still hated them. It didn't make it any easier for Jean and Karl. They were either ignored or scorned by people Jean had once called her friends. ‘Isn't Bill good enough for you now?' one of the women shouted when she and Karl were walking in the village one day. ‘Traitor! Nazi whore!' It bothered Karl more than it did her. She was determined not to hide away, too scared to go out.

Gordon just managed to tolerate him. He was, in no sense, free. The one occasion he and Jean had popped into the Plough and Harrow for a drink had been a disaster. John Heacham had refused to serve him and Jean had been angry, with the result they were both now barred. He was sorry for that, he told her, he ought to have known better than to risk it.

‘I warned you that would happen, didn't I?' her mother said when she learnt of it from Gordon, who had been told about it by John.

‘Yes, but I don't care. Besides, we are not the only ones. As soon as the ban was lifted, there they were, had probably been like us all the time, couples trying to hide their feelings for each other.'

‘There is still a ban on marriage. You can't marry him, Jean.'

‘Not yet,' she said enigmatically.

‘I give up.'

‘Good.'

January arrived bitterly cold with an icy east wind. Jean and Karl did their best to keep the animals warm and fed. When it started to snow, they brought them all inside and were glad they did. The snow was the heaviest they'd had for years. Karl really did not need to come to work, there was little they could do, but he never failed. It would have been easier for him to stay on the farm, but she knew Gordon would be against it and Karl himself did not want to. She wondered if he was reluctant to leave the camp in case he missed his turn to go home.

‘The winters are harder where I come from,' he told her, as they cleared a path to the pigsties, chicken coops and silage bins. Jean was glad they had made as much silage as they could; it was keeping the animals alive. ‘For weeks on end we have snow. As children, my brother and I would go about on skis. Can you ski?'

‘I've never tried.'

‘If this goes on, I think I will make some to come to work.'

‘The snow might be gone by the time you finish them,' she said. ‘There's a pair of snow shoes in the shed. I don't know how old they are, but I remember Pa using them to go across the fields when we had heavy snowfalls like we did the first winter of the war. I imagine his father did before him. I'll dig them out for you.'

They were needed. The snow continued on and off throughout January. It piled itself into huge drifts, blocked roads and railway lines and caused chaos with the housebuilding programme. Some remote villages were cut off from the outside world and arrangements were made to supply them from the air. Livestock left in the open died under heaps of snow. Coal supplies to the power stations were so low the government was forced to put restrictions on the use of electricity. Supplies to industry were stopped altogether, while households were only allowed to use it for nineteen hours a day. Rosemary wailed about the unfairness of it. ‘I've got a baby to feed and keep warm,' she said. ‘And it's so dark …'

Jean and Doris fetched out the old oil lamps from the shelf in the shed where they had been abandoned, though paraffin was also in short supply, and they lit the fire under the copper in the wash house so that Rosie could boil Stanley's nappies. There was very little coal. They were glad of the woodpile Karl and Jean had made with some of the elm tree that had fallen the previous March. As if that were not bad enough, dockers and transport workers went on strike and there was a threat of food shortages. It had to be delivered by the army. Never had Jean been more glad that the farm was almost self-sufficient.

They could not even keep up with the news properly; radio broadcasts were limited and television, a new form of
entertainment that was becoming popular with people who could afford it, was suspended. ‘It's worse than the war,' Doris complained.

On the morning the snow stopped and a weak sun broke through the clouds, Jean stood at the orchard gate looking across at the snow-covered pit, pristine and sparkling. The more adventurous of the villagers would be along soon with their skates, flying over the ice, taking a break from the miseries of a winter the like of which no one could remember. She turned as Karl joined her. As usual he had come over the fields on the snow shoes.

‘The ice must be feet thick on there,' she said, nodding towards the pit. ‘Thick enough for skating.'

‘I'm sure it is. Do you have skates?'

‘Yes, most fen people have them.' She laughed suddenly. ‘Let's go and look for them.'

She took his hand and led the way to the shed where she rummaged in a cupboard and pulled out several strange objects before her hands fastened on a pair of skates. They were not attached to boots but had straps for fastening them to ordinary boots. ‘These are Gordon's,' she said, and reached inside again to pull out another pair. ‘Come on, let's go and see if the ice will hold.' She handed Gordon's skates to him.

‘Do you think we ought?'

‘Why not? “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”.'

‘I have never heard that before.'

‘It's an old saying. I'll teach you some more if you like.' She picked up the yard broom, intending to use it to clear the snow from the ice. ‘I take it you can skate?'

‘Of course.' He looked at the skates in his hands. ‘These are very long.'

‘They are fen-runners, meant for speed skating. Before the war,
the farmers used to flood their fields to make huge ice rinks. Men used to come from far and wide to race. It was a kind of knockout competition. The contestants were paired off to race against each other the length of the rink, round a barrel and back again. The winner went on to the next round. Some reached prodigious speeds. Mind you, most of the time it was fen villagers organising their own small competitions. Sir Edward used to give a pig to the winner of the Great and Little Bushey races. Pa was very good at it, and Gordon was, too. I was never much good, though I enjoyed skating round the edges. I wonder if they'll start up again.'

Instead of trying to flounder across the orchard to the pit, they went down the lane which had been partially cleared by a snow plough fixed to the front of a tractor, leaving huge piles of snow each side. He would not let her go on the ice until he made sure it was safe. He took the broom and pushed it ahead of him clearing a path through the snow. ‘It is good,' he said, coming back to her.

She strapped on her skates and tentatively ventured onto the ice. He put on the other pair and followed her. He soon cleared an expanse of ice so that they could skate. He was much better at it than she was and she watched enviously as he sped over the ice, doing twists and turns, going faster and faster. She had not gone far before she overbalanced and found herself sitting on the ice, her legs out in front of her. They both laughed as he skated up and helped her back on her feet.

He started to hum ‘The Blue Danube' waltz. ‘Come, let us dance,' he said, turning her to face him and putting one hand about her waist. With the other he took her hand. She was nervous at first, but he held her firmly and they were soon skimming over the ice, both humming the tune. Her eyes were alight and the cold air had made her cheeks rosy. For a few short minutes, she was carefree, hardship and work forgotten, as he whirled her
round. It could not last, it was, after all, only a moment's respite from the daily grind and they had to return to that.

‘I won't say anything to Gordon,' she said, as they put the skates back where they found them. ‘It would make him sad to think he can't do it any more.'

February brought no relief from the bitter cold. Everyone went about muffled in layer upon layer of clothes to keep warm. It was March before the thaw set in and the snow melted. And that was when their troubles really began.

The snow melted off the orchard and top fields and ran into the pit which, unable to hold so much, overflowed onto ground still frozen. The orchard flooded, the lane flooded and the sheep pasture was inundated. The farmhouse was on slightly higher ground and they watched as water began to rise all about them. Gordon drove the pickup truck very slowly down the lane to fetch Elizabeth to safety, while Jean milked the cows and fed them and looked after the sheep. Some of them were due to lamb before long. Karl did not come. It may have been because he could not get through the floods, but it might equally have been that he was on his way home to Germany. She tried not to think about that. She could not ring Colonel Williamson because gales had brought the telephone lines down.

The same thing was happening all over the fens. Small areas of floodwater became wide expanses, whipped up into waves by the gale-force winds. In some areas of the fens, caused by the shrinking of the peat, the rivers were higher than the surrounding land and only kept in check by high banks. The army, prisoners of war and anyone else who could lend a hand were called in to repair breaches with clay brought up in barges from Ely. Gordon insisted on going to help, driving himself along roads awash with melted
snow, but he was soon back to Rosie's intense relief.

‘I couldn't stand up against the wind,' he said, sinking into the rocking chair by the kitchen fire. ‘Nobody could. They say it's up to a hundred miles an hour and I can believe it. I've never experienced anything like it. The water's so high the barges can't get under the bridges. They've had to abandon the work until the wind dies down. I saw acres and acres of floods, cows stuck on little islands, houses up to their first floor in water, people sitting on the roofs of bungalows. They've got boats out to rescue them.' He paused. ‘I saw Karl.'

‘Karl?' Jean could not keep the eagerness from her voice. ‘Where?'

‘On the banks with a crowd of other POWs. Give them their due, they were working like Trojans.'

Karl would not go back to the camp while there were people in trouble. He manned one of the rowing boats the army had collected and set off to row across the flooded fen to a row of cottages he could see a little way off. He supposed they lined a road, but there was no sign of one. The boat was tossing on waves whipped up by the wind and it was taking all his strength to make headway. As he came closer, an upstairs window was flung open and a young woman put her head out. She screamed for help.

He rowed alongside. He was four or five feet below her. ‘Can you jump down?'

‘I've got a baby.'

‘Drop it down gently. I'll catch it.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘Yes.'

She left the window and came back with a tightly wrapped bundle, leant over the windowsill and let it go. Karl, who was standing in the boat trying to keep it steady, caught it and laid
it gently in the bottom of the boat. ‘Now you. Get out on the windowsill with your back to me and let your feet down first. I'll grab you.'

By this time windows were being opened all along the row and people were leaning out, not wanting him to miss them. He did not think he could take them all in one go. He loaded the boat with the children and older women, who were nervous about letting themselves out of the windows and had to be helped. ‘I'll come back for the rest of you,' he told those left behind.

With a loaded boat, it was even harder work going back; he felt as if his arms were being wrenched out of their sockets and his chest ached. It was bitterly cold, his passengers were shivering, but he was sweating. The baby was crying, a thin wail of distress, which set the other children crying too. One of the women took an oar from him. He let her have it with a weary smile. Together they made it back to dry land but he was on the point of exhaustion.

‘There's more people stranded,' he told the British captain who was organising everything in their section. ‘I have to go back.'