The Farmer's Daughter (4 page)

She watched him finish with Gertrude, measure the milk before pouring it into the churn and begin on the next animal, carefully washing his hands and her teats before starting. There was no doubt he knew what he was doing and the routine must have been familiar to him.

They had finished milking, recorded the yield on the Ministry forms and were settling the cows in for the night, when Doris came to tell them dinner was on the table. ‘I have set a place for you, Sergeant Muller,' she said.

‘I do not think you are expected to feed me,' he said. ‘Your food is rationed.'

‘It's a poor do when we can't give a bite to eat to a working man. You have earned it.'

‘What about your husband?'

‘Oh, pay him no mind. I'll deal with him. Come and eat. Your transport will be here soon.'

They ate at the big table in the kitchen where he met the rest of the family: Mrs Coleman's mother, Mrs Sanderson, who lived in her own cottage but had some of her meals at the farm; two schoolboys, who stared at him with unabashed curiosity, one of
whom was Jean's brother, the other an evacuee; and a little girl, called Lily who was the evacuee's sister. She didn't live at the farm but with another family nearby. ‘When she's not at school, she spends nearly all her time here,' Jean told him.

‘I like being here,' the child said. ‘I like the animals. And Mrs Coleman cooks better than Mrs Harris.'

‘Shush,' Doris said. ‘You mustn't say things like that. Mrs Harris is a very good cook.'

‘Not as good as you.'

Arthur laughed. ‘She's right there.'

‘And you've no call to encourage her, Arthur Coleman. She'll be telling everyone.'

‘I'll tell her not to,' Terry said.

‘And does she do as she's told?' Jean asked him. She had taken off the unflattering headscarf and brushed out her hair. It was, Karl noticed, a rich brown.

‘Ma said I was to look after her and she has to obey me,' Terry said, then turning to Karl. ‘Do you have evacuees in your country Mr German Man?'

Karl smiled. ‘Yes, we do. Just the same. And my name is Karl.'

‘Have you been in many battles, Mr Karl?' Donald asked.

‘A few.'

‘You're getting good and beat now,' Terry said. ‘Monty is a better general than Rommel.'

‘Terry, we won't talk about the war,' Jean said.

‘Why not?'

‘Because in this kitchen, at this table, we are at peace with one another,' she said firmly. ‘Find something else to talk about.'

They went on to discuss the farm work and the meal progressed amicably until the sound of a horn alerted them to the arrival of the camp's transport. Jean accompanied Karl to the gate.

‘Has he behaved himself?' Corporal Donnington asked, as he let down the tailboard.

‘He has been a great help,' Jean told him.

‘So you want him back tomorrow?'

‘Yes, please. If he wants to come.'

Karl clicked his heels together and bowed. ‘I shall come,
Fräulein
.' He scrambled up beside his fellows and was gone.

Jean went back indoors and told Terry to take his sister home, then pushed her father into the sitting room and made him comfortable. ‘That wasn't so bad, Pa, was it? He's just a man, obeying orders like everyone else.'

‘S'pose so,' he admitted grudgingly. ‘What did he mek on the work?'

‘He was very good, knew what he was doing. We got the pasture scythed and the milking done in record time. Gertrude didn't kick out once. I think he's going to be quite useful.'

‘Still don't like it.'

‘Needs must,' she said.

He grunted. ‘And the devil's driving this one.'

It was a second or two before she understood his reference. ‘Hitler, yes, not Sergeant Muller.'

‘If you say so.'

‘Pa. It's Hitler and his like who caused all this bother so it's only right the prisoners should help out when our men are away. Call it recompense, if you like.'

‘All right, I'll hold me tongue for your sake. Can't have you getting ill on account of me not able to work.'

‘You will be able to one day, Pa. It just takes time. Now I must go and help Mum. Is there anything you want before I go?'

‘I'll have the
Farmers Weekly
and you can bring me the accounts. I want to check on the cost of feed.'

He liked to keep an eye on their accounts even though he knew she was meticulous in keeping them straight. There would be a new expenditure from now on, because they were expected to pay a labourer's wage for Karl's work. It wasn't given to him directly because he had told her he was paid in tokens which he could only spend in the camp shop. She fetched the magazine and the ledgers and pulled a small table up beside his chair and put them on it.

‘All right?' Doris queried, when she returned to the kitchen where her mother was washing up with Donald's help. He didn't like doing it; he maintained it wasn't a man's work and he had to be bullied into it. She took the teacloth from his hands and let him escape.

‘Well?' Otto demanded as he wolfed down Karl's supper as well as his own. ‘How was it?'

‘
Gut. Sehr gut
. I spent the day scything a meadow and milking.'

‘What have you discovered?'

‘The farm is a small mixed farm and the family, all except the father, were friendly. They are having the same problems that we have at home with rationing and shortages. The cattle are a bit thin and the milk yield is not what it should be, but
Fräulein
Coleman put it down to shortage of feed and not having as much pasture as they once had.'

‘
Fräulein
Coleman?' Otto queried with a grin.

‘The daughter of the house. She has been trying to run the farm almost single-handed.'

‘Good-looking, is she?'

‘I suppose so; I never thought about it.'

‘I don't believe that. You haven't seen a woman, much less spoken to one, for weeks and all you can say is you “suppose so”.'

‘I am engaged to be married.'

‘What difference does that make?'

‘All the difference in the world. Besides, I'd be a fool to try anything on even if I were tempted. I don't fancy a month in the
Kühler
.'

‘What else did you see?' His voice was an undertone, not intended to be heard by anyone else.

‘I saw trees and lanes and farm buildings, a church and a windmill and a lot of flat fields.'

‘No railway lines, no barracks, no airfields, no signposts?'

‘No. I think they must have been removed. Since we have been in England I have not seen a single one. I know the village is called Little Bushey and it's in Cambridgeshire – that's a county by the way – but exactly where in Cambridgeshire, I do not know. North, I should think, judging by the terrain.'

‘Then try and find out more. I want to know the lie of the land, how far we are from the sea, things like that. I want to add it to my map.'

‘You've got a map?' he asked in astonishment.

‘Yes.' He patted the breast pocket of his uniform.

‘How did you get it?'

‘I drew it.' He laughed. ‘It was on a poster in the train that brought us here, advertising seaside resorts and places of interest. I copied it.'

‘Where did you get the paper?'

‘The sandwiches they gave us for the journey were wrapped in brown paper.'

‘That was enterprising of you.'

‘Wasn't it? The more detail I can add the better.'

‘You really are serious about this, aren't you?'

‘Yes. It is our duty to escape.'

Karl supposed Otto was right, but he did not want to do
anything to prolong the war. It was hideous and he held no brief for Hitler and his Nazis. Everyone, on both sides, was suffering because of them. On the other hand, he wanted to go home, to find out what had happened to his parents and sister. Most of all to see Heidi again and take her into his arms, to feel her soft compliant body against his own.

‘You are silent, my friend,' Otto said.

‘I am thinking. I spent some time in England before the war.'

‘You never said.'

‘No reason to.'

‘Where?'

‘Cambridge. I learnt to know it quite well. I know where the station is and where the trains go, and some of the countryside around it.'

‘How far away from here, is it?'

‘I don't know. Probably not far.'

‘And how far are we from the coast?'

‘Again, probably not far.'

‘Which coast, east or west? I know it's not south because that's where we landed and the train was travelling north.' Anyone who had been in the Hitler Youth knew about using the sun and stars to find his way. It was rather like the Boy Scouts in that.

‘East.'

Otto put down his spoon and stood up. ‘Let's talk about it after roll call.'

Karl followed him to the pan of greasy water in which he washed his plate and cutlery and then they made their way outside for roll call. This inevitably took some time, but they were becoming used to it. Some of their compatriots made it difficult for their guards by dodging about in the lines and shouting insults. As soon as it was done to the commandant's
satisfaction, they were herded into their huts and locked in for the night. While the lights were still on, the prisoners amused themselves playing cards or chess, writing or reading magazines and books, a limited supply of which was on a shelf in the corner.

Otto fetched the largest book he could find, an illustrated one of British wild flowers, and he and Karl sat on Karl's bed and appeared to be absorbed in it together. ‘I don't want anyone else to see this,' he said, drawing the brown paper from his pocket and spreading it out on the pages of the book. ‘The escape committee will take it off me and I'm not having that.'

Karl looked at the somewhat stylised map which was dotted with places of interest, especially seaside towns. ‘There's Cambridge,' he said pointing. ‘Here would be King's Lynn, here Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft, the most easterly point of the British Isles.'

‘A good place to make for, do you think?' Otto gave him a pencil to mark them.

‘Possibly. Or we could go to London. It would be easy to conceal ourselves among the crowds. Lots of shipping there, too.'

‘None of it going to Germany though?'

‘Naturally not.'

‘Where then?'

‘Middle east, far east. There's Lisbon. Portugal is neutral but how often ships call there, I've no idea.' He paused. ‘And Gibraltar, of course. We might be able to make it into Spain from there, assuming we can board a ship going there and leave it undetected. We'd need a good cover story.'

‘I'm willing to give it a go. How about you? Just the two of us.'

‘I'll think about it. We'd have to get out of here for a start.'

‘You go out every day. Suppose I was to volunteer to come with you.'

‘
Fräulein
Coleman said they only wanted one man.'

‘I could get work nearby. We could meet up and be on our way before anyone missed us.'

Karl knew it would be anything but easy and he would have to deceive
Fräulein
Coleman and her family. Would they be punished for allowing him to escape? They would certainly not be allowed to employ any more prisoners. How would the
Fräulein
manage without help? Why did that matter? It didn't, of course, not against the broader issue of his duty.

‘It can't be done in a hurry,' he said. ‘We need civilian clothing and identity cards, food and English money.'

‘Steal them.' Otto folded the map and put it back in his pocket. They turned a few of the pages in the book and commented on the illustrations to avert the suspicion of their fellows, before returning it to the shelf. Then they began a game of chess which was brought to a sudden end when the lights went out.

Karl undressed in the dark and went to bed, where he lay thinking. The farmhouse kitchen he had been in today was so like the kitchen of his home, he could almost have imagined himself back there. If anything it increased his homesickness. Could he make it back? If he did, would he be sent back to the front line? His guess was that he would. And if he failed, what would the English authorities do to him? He sat up and thumped the lumpy pillow before settling down again and falling asleep.

The tank was rolling ever nearer. There were others continuing an inexorable advance all round him. He could hear the rattle of machine-gun and rifle fire, screams and groans all around him. Staying where he was was not an option. He preferred death from a bullet to being squashed to death. He scrambled out of his foxhole and began to run. There was no way he could outrun the tank. He stumbled and fell. Why the tank commander did not shoot him
he did not know. He threw down his rifle and scrambled to his feet, raised his hands above his head and waited.

The tank stopped and an officer in a British uniform climbed out and walked over to him. He had a pistol in his hand. Karl held his breath waiting for the shot that would put an end to his existence. Instead of firing, the officer used it to signal to him to move out of the way and join a crowd of his compatriots being rounded up. He had been spared to become a prisoner. He woke, breathing heavily, to find himself tangled in his blanket and a room full of men snoring about him. In the bunk next to him, Otto Herzig slept soundly. The desperate fear slowly drained away, leaving him limp.

‘Gott sei Dank,'
he murmured and turned over to try and sleep.

‘The reaper is here,' Jean told Karl as soon as he arrived the following Saturday. ‘Everyone is up on the top field, ready to begin. Get your overalls on and let's join them.'

A crowd of villagers was on the field, including several children who were on holiday from school, a holiday referred to in the country as the ‘harvest holiday' when they were traditionally expected to help bring in the harvest. Bill was there, as promised. Jean introduced Karl.

Bill nodded curtly. Karl bowed his head and said,
‘Guten Tag.'

‘Right, let's make a start,' Jean said, aware of the tension between the two men.

The reaper-binder had arrived behind a tractor driven by an employee of the firm who owned it and they set to work along with everyone else to follow behind it as it circled the field. Karl and Jean had already scythed the headland to make room for it.

As the cut corn fell to its blades it passed over conveyor belts which bound it in sheaves and spat them out behind the machine.
It was the job of the helpers to gather them up and stand them upright in stooks at intervals along the field. When all but the last half-dozen rows had been cut, everyone gathered in a circle round what was left with sticks and staves in their hands, as the rabbits, who had been driven further and further into the standing corn for safety, bolted. Then began a wild chase and the sickening thud of weapons being used, at the end of which a goodly number of dead rabbits were destined for the next day's pot.

As soon as the last swathe had been cut, the tractor and its reaper were driven from the field, leaving everyone to return to the farmhouse where Doris had prepared some refreshments. Jean led the way with Karl.

Besides Doris and her mother, there was another woman in the kitchen helping with the refreshments. They had nearly finished and the kitchen table was covered with plates of sandwiches, sausage rolls and home-made buns. ‘Will it do?' Doris asked Jean.

‘It's a wonderful spread.' Jean turned to Karl. ‘The sandwiches are made with our own eggs, and bacon from the pig we slaughtered. Sausages ditto. The butter's churned in our own dairy, so no one will have milk for their tea for a few days. A bit of lard made the pastry.'

‘It is a feast,' he said.

‘By the way,' she went on. ‘This is Mrs Brotherton, the rector's wife.' She indicated a plump lady in her sixties dressed in a tweed skirt and blouse, over which she wore a flowered apron.

He clicked his heels and bowed to her.
‘Guten Tag, Gnadige Frau.'

‘How do you do?' The lady gave him a half-hearted smile before returning to her task.

‘Help yourselves,' Doris said, addressing everyone who had crowded into the kitchen behind them.

‘What's he doing here?' Bill murmured to Jean, indicating Karl with a nod of his head. ‘You'd think he was one of us.'

‘As far as I am concerned, he is,' she whispered back. ‘He has worked hard all morning in spite of your unfriendliness towards him and he has earned his food.'

‘Why the hell should I be friendly? He's the enemy. And fraternising is banned by law, as you very well know.'

‘What exactly is fraternising? I'm sure it doesn't mean you can't be polite.'

She could see Karl looking at them and went over to him. ‘Here, Sergeant, let me fill a plate for you.'

He thanked her and took his plate of sandwiches and a sausage roll out to the scullery to eat it in isolation. She thought it wise not to go after him.

As soon as he had finished he went outside again. Jean joined him just as the lorry drew up. ‘I have fetched in the cows,' he told her. ‘But I do not have time to help with the milking.'

‘It doesn't matter, I can manage.' Jean accompanied him to the gate and then went back to the cowshed.

Gertrude was restive at having to wait and kicked out. Jean just managed to grab the pail of milk before the whole lot went over. ‘What was the magic word Karl said to you?' she asked the cow. ‘Whatever it was, it worked. I'll have to ask him tomorrow. I know I shouldn't, but I feel sorry for him, so far from home and his fiancée. I don't suppose he wanted this war any more than we did.'

‘Who are you talking to?' Bill was standing in the doorway watching her.

‘The cow.'

‘Oh, and what does she say?'

‘Moo.' She laughed. ‘You off home?'

‘Yes. I'll see you at the dance tonight, shall I?'

‘Yes, I'm looking forward to it.'

He left and she finished the milking, then went to shut up the chickens before going back indoors to help her mother finish cooking the evening meal. That was how life was nowadays, unrelenting, going from one job to another, never having time to stop and just do nothing. But on Saturday evenings she could forget about the farm for a little while and what better way to begin it than a long soak in the bath.

She stoked the fire in the range and threw more logs on it to reheat the water and then went up to run five inches of water into the bath, which was all they were supposed to use. It was a big bath in a room converted from a bedroom several years before, and the water hardly covered her legs. Nevertheless she stayed in it until it began to cool. Dressed in a printed cotton skirt and a flowered blouse, and feeling more like a human being and not one of the animals she tended, she set off to walk to the village hall.

Hanging her jacket on a peg in the cloakroom, she made her way into the throng. Mr Harris was in charge of the gramophone and had a pile of records on the table beside it. Already people were dancing to ‘A String of Pearls'. There was a noticeable shortage of men, so many of the women were dancing together, laughing at the muddle they were making of it.

Bill beckoned her over to where he had saved seats. ‘What are you having to drink?' he asked. ‘There's beer while it lasts, or home-made wine. It's some of Mrs Maynard's elderberry, pretty potent, so I'm told. Or there's the cider you sent up.'

‘I'll have the cider, please,' Jean said. ‘At least I know what's in it.' The Coleman family had been making cider with their apples for generations, for their own use, not for sale, but everyone who
came to the farm and sampled it said how good it was.

It was after Bill had brought the drinks and he and Jean were dancing that he asked about the German prisoner of war. ‘How did he come to be working for you?'

‘I did as you suggested and asked the War Ag. for someone with a farming background and he came.'

‘He seems to have made himself at home.'

‘Oh, Bill, of course he hasn't. He works hard and I'm glad of his help.'

‘You refused my help when it was offered.'

‘Bill, I've told you, you've got enough on your plate with your own farm and looking after your mother.'

‘I can be the judge of that. I hate to see you struggling.'

‘I am not struggling. Lots of women are doing harder jobs than I am and doing them well. I've got nothing to complain of. And I do have some help.'

‘The Jerry.'

‘Why do you keep on about him, Bill? He works all day and then he goes back to be locked up again until the next day. It's not much of a life, is it?'

‘Have you forgotten he's the enemy? He's one of those causing death and destruction and upsetting all our lives.'

‘No, I haven't forgotten but he's out of it now and besides, helping us to win the war is his punishment, don't you think?'

‘You call it punishment when he's fed and clothed with our taxes.'

‘What else are we supposed to do? Now, can we drop the subject? Concentrate on your dancing, you just trod on my foot.'

‘Sorry. Will you come for a walk tomorrow afternoon? Just a stroll to blow away the cobwebs.'

She looked up at him and laughed. ‘I haven't got any cobwebs,
Bill. I don't have time to stop and let the spiders do their work.'

‘All work and no play …'

‘I'll come for a walk with you, if you promise not to grumble about Sergeant Muller.'

‘OK, it's a promise.'

The dance came to an end and they wandered back to their seats. He knew he had annoyed her, but he was annoyed with himself. Why couldn't she see things his way? ‘I'll go and ask Rosie to dance,' he said. ‘She's looking a bit of a wallflower.'

Rosemary Shelley was Gordon's fiancée. She had declared her intention of waiting for him and refused to go out with anyone else. She was at the dance with her mother who liked dancing as much as anyone and had left her sitting on her own, tapping her foot to the rhythm.

‘Come on, Rosie,' he said, taking her hand and pulling her up. ‘You're safe with me. I'm spoken for.'

‘Everyone knows that,' she said, as the music began for an old time waltz. ‘When are you going to make it official?'

‘There's plenty of time. Got to get this war over with first.'

‘Why?'

‘Why? Because life's so uncertain, that's why. You never know what's round the corner.'

‘Do you ever? You want to watch out she isn't snapped up by someone else.'

‘Like who?'

‘I don't know, do I? I wish Gordon and I had tied the knot before he joined up.'

‘Would it have made any difference? He'd still be a prisoner.'

‘But I would be married, with a gold band on my finger and maybe a baby to look after. Now I'll have to wait for all that until he comes home. God knows when that will be.'

‘Oh, you are down, aren't you? Cheer up and enjoy yourself while you can. It will soon be over.'

‘Do you really think so?'

‘No doubt of it. Jerry's on the run.'

Karl was not taken to the farm on Sundays, much to Arthur's disgust. ‘Do they think animals don't eat or need milking on Sundays?' he demanded, when Jean arrived back late for breakfast and everyone was ready for church.

‘I, for one, am glad of a day on our own.' Doris told him. ‘Are you going to stay at home, Jean?'

‘Yes, there isn't time to change and I can find plenty to do. I'll see you later.'

They left and she was alone in the house. She made a fresh pot of tea and some porridge and sat down to eat it with the newspaper propped against a jar containing home-made strawberry jam.

German armed forces were holding up the advance on the Caen-to-Falaise Road and there was heavy fighting. The Russians were approaching Warsaw and the Polish underground army had risen up to try and take the city before they arrived. Did the German POWs hear the news, she wondered, and if they did, what did they make of it? Were they glad to be out of it? Karl was unfailingly polite and worked hard, but she had no idea how he felt. He had reacted calmly to Bill's unfriendliness, but how much self control that had taken, she had no idea. As a man she liked him, as an enemy she ought to keep him at arm's-length.

She cleared her breakfast away and prepared the vegetables for lunch then sat down to make a list of jobs to be done during the week and decide which she would assign to Karl. It was a pity he had to be so closely watched or she would set him to work on his
own. Once the sheaves of wheat had dried out, they would have to be loaded onto the cart and taken to the corner of the field where they would be carefully built into a stack with ears facing inwards and thatched with straw to await the arrival of the threshing machine. After that there would be ploughing to do and the ditch alongside one of the fields was becoming choked and needed digging out and there were some hedges that needed trimming. She had almost finished when everyone came back from church and all was noise and bustle again.

‘I've been making a list of jobs for Sergeant Muller to do,' she said, as they sat down to eat. ‘Do you want to add to it, Pa?' She pushed the list over to him.

‘He could mend the window frames in Gran's cottage and give them a lick of paint,' he said, after scanning the list.

Elizabeth, her grandmother, looked up. ‘Oh, yes, that would be good,' she said. ‘You've no idea how draughty that one in the sitting room is. When it's windy it rattles fit to fall out.'

‘I'm not sure I'm allowed to ask him to do jobs like that,' Jean said. ‘It's not strictly farm work, is it? I'll see if Mr Gould can do it.'

They had just finished washing-up, when Bill arrived to go for the walk she had promised him. The afternoon was already well advanced and they could not go far before the jobs on their respective farms called them back. He tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and held it there. Laddie ran along beside them, sniffing here and there along the hedgerows. The sky was overcast and not warm for August.

‘The bombers won't be flying tonight,' she said. The Allied bombing of German cities was relentless. She often woke at night to hear the RAF bombers going over and wondered how many of them would not come back. During the day the American Flying Fortresses droned overhead and they suffered badly, too. She
thought about the families of those who were lost and her gentle heart felt for them. She was thankful Gordon was out of it.

‘Good. With luck we might get a good night's sleep.' His farm was closer to the airfield than Briar Rose.

‘Have you tried ear plugs?'

‘They don't work. The noise is a constant throb. I swear it shakes my bed. Besides, if I try and block that out I can't hear if Ma calls me.'

‘Does she do that often?' She knew he had been born when his mother had been in her late forties, long after she had given up hope of having a child, and the birth had been a difficult one. Consequently his growing up had been a strange mixture of neglect because she was getting on in years and didn't know how to look after him, and overprotection because she was afraid of losing him. Since his father died, she clung to him more than ever.

‘Often enough. She seems to lose track of time, sometimes doesn't know night from day.'