The Lost Days of Summer (15 page)

It sounded good to Nell; surely she could manage, amongst the motley throng of farm workers and their families, to find someone who would be happy to befriend her. She missed Bryn far more than she would have believed possible, for he had come to the farm some weeks ago, full of excitement, to tell her that he was joining his ship the following day. ‘But I’ll be back home on leave every so often. Then you and me will get plenty of chances to visit my favourite place together.’ He smiled winningly at her, cocking his head to one side. ‘Goin’ to give me a kiss goodbye, like? Because I’ve decided that one of these days you’re goin’ to be my girl.’

But Nell had punched his shoulder and told him to get along with him; then she had agreed that she would not visit Church Bay until Bryn could accompany her. Privately, she did not intend to wait for Bryn before she began to explore the rest of the countryside, hopefully with someone her own age whom she would meet when the farm workers converged on each other’s property to help with haymaking. Of course she longed to go down to the shore, but thought she really would have to wait for Bryn to get leave before doing so. He was really keen to show her the place he loved most, so how could she deny him the pleasure? As for his announcement that she would be his girl one day, she took that with a pinch of salt. Sailors, it was well known, had a girl in every port, and Nell did not mean to be Bryn’s Holyhead lover.

So Nell, missing both Bryn and the companionship of the cousins whom she had known almost from birth, began to count the days until haymaking was upon them.

Nell awoke to find sunshine streaming in through her bedroom window and sat up, rubbing her eyes and wondering why she felt no exhilaration at another day of glorious weather. Then she remembered: Auntie Kath’s wireless set had arrived three weeks earlier, at the beginning of May, and last night the announcer had talked of the evacuation of allied troops from Dunkirk, which was taking place even as he spoke.

She scrambled hastily out of bed, grabbed her dressing gown from the hook on the door and pushed her feet into her slippers. Then she began to descend the stairs, donning the dressing gown as she did so, unable to suppress a huge yawn. She and Auntie Kath had sat up until almost midnight, hoping for good news, but though the announcer had said that the evacuation was under way, there had been no more details.

Hurrying down to the kitchen, Nell wondered if the fact that the troops were being brought home meant that the war was over and Germany had won. She went cold at the thought and pushed open the door to find the wireless already switched on and her aunt placidly stirring the porridge pan, whilst eggs, bacon and sliced potatoes stood on the side, awaiting her attention. Upon hearing the door open, Kath turned and raised her eyebrows. ‘What’s got into you?’ she said rather disagreeably. ‘Why aren’t you dressed? D’you know what the time is?’

‘Oh!’ Nell glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece, realising she must have slept straight through the alarm. ‘Sorry, Auntie, only we were so late to bed last night . . .’

‘It wouldn’t matter, but Eifion will be in any moment,’ her aunt said. ‘We don’t want to shock the old feller, so you’d best get back up them stairs and dress yourself.’

‘Right,’ Nell said. The wireless was playing music so she must have just missed the news. ‘I came down to hear how the evacuation was getting on. Have they said anything about it this morning?’

‘Yes, but we won’t discuss it whilst you’re flaunting yourself in that flimsy dressing gown,’ her aunt said disapprovingly. ‘Get a move on, girl. The porridge only needs another couple of minutes—’

She stopped speaking as the back door opened, and Nell fled, taking the stairs two at a time and hurling her clothes on after a wash and brush up which her aunt would have described as ‘a cat’s lick and a promise’. Tying her hair back into a ponytail and checking her appearance in the mirror, she thought sadly that the war news could not have been good if her aunt’s temper was anything to go by. ‘Flaunting myself in a flimsy dressing gown indeed,’ she informed her reflection. ‘The darn thing is made of wool and covers me from my neck to my ankles; what more does she want? Come to think, it was her dressing gown before she passed it on to me and took back the one her husband had owned.’ She chuckled. ‘And I can’t imagine Auntie Kath flaunting herself, no matter how flimsy the dressing gown.’

Having checked her appearance, Nell straightened her bed and set off down the stairs once more. When she reached the kitchen, Eifion and her aunt were already seated at the table, eating their porridge, so Nell sat down and pulled her full bowl towards her. Knowing her aunt’s dislike of being rushed, she bade Eifion good morning, but did not again raise the question of the evacuation, waiting until her aunt had replaced her spoon in her empty dish and was rising to begin frying the rest of their breakfast. Then she cleared her throat.

‘Is there any more news of the evacuation, Auntie?’ she asked bluntly. ‘I was too late to hear the wireless announcements, so—’

Kath cut across her. ‘The War Cabinet, or whatever they call themselves, have appealed for anyone who owns a boat to cross the Channel and pick up some of the troops waiting on the beaches,’ she said. ‘Eifion here tells me the Irish ferries have already left to do their bit; isn’t that so, Eifion?’

Eifion nodded, his eyes bright with excitement. ‘Aye, that’s right. My daughter-in-law tells me the port’s pretty well empty of shipping, ’cos they’ve all answered the call.’ He sighed wistfully. ‘Wish I could have gone along to help, because every fishing boat has up-anchored and left, some of ’em without half their crew; but I know I’d be more of a hindrance really.’ He grinned ruefully at Nell. ‘And who would do the milkin’ while I were off savin’ me country?’

‘Me,’ Nell said promptly. ‘And Auntie Kath might lend a hand, isn’t that so, Auntie?’

Her aunt snorted and began to put bacon, cold potatoes and eggs into the smoking frying pan. ‘You’re needed here, Eifion Hughes,’ she said severely. ‘One egg or two?’

Whilst Eifion was protesting that they were late this morning so he’d best make do with one egg, Nell was plucking up her courage to ask the question uppermost in her mind. ‘Auntie Kath, are they bringing our troops home because we’ve lost the war?’ she asked timidly. ‘Is this what they call a retreat? Oh, I know in the past there have often been retreats in big battles, but this one . . . well, it does look as if our soldiers were running away . . .’

Her aunt slapped a second egg on to Eifion’s plate and turned a furious face towards her niece. ‘How dare you even think such a thing,’ she said, her voice vibrant with rage. ‘Don’t you ever let me hear you say that British soldiers are cowards, you stupid, thoughtless, ignorant girl. Why, our soldiers are the best and bravest in the world . . . I should know! I was married to one and I knew a score of others who fought like tigers twenty years ago to rid the world of the Hun.’

Nell was shocked by her aunt’s fury, but when she began to apologise she saw that her aunt’s eyes were full of tears, saw them slowly trickling down her pale cheeks and realised, guiltily, that her thoughtless remark had stirred up memories best forgotten. So instead of continuing to speak she jumped to her feet and ran round the table, flinging both arms about the rigid figure and plonking a kiss on the tear-wet cheek, something she had never done, she realised, in all the time she had been at Ty Hen. ‘I
am
a stupid, thoughtless, ignorant girl,’ she said vehemently, still hugging her aunt’s spare figure, and felt her relax for a moment. ‘But I didn’t call our soldiers cowards, you know, because that would be a wicked lie and I do try not to tell lies. So I suppose this must be what the Duke of Wellington called a “strategic retreat” when his men backed off from Napoleon’s army in order to re-form on better ground. Have I got it right?’

Auntie Kath freed herself from Nell’s arms, but she did so gently. ‘Get along with you,’ she said gruffly. ‘I dare say you’ve guessed I’m not quite myself today.’ She returned to her work of dishing up their breakfasts, pointing her big serving spoon at her niece’s chair. ‘Now sit down and eat your breakfast; Eifion, Fly and Whisky brought the cows in a good fifteen minutes ago.’ She looked ruefully at Nell. ‘I’m not a woman who wears her heart on her sleeve, but I reckon it was wrong of me to jump to conclusions; I should have known you better, girl.’

Nell smiled at her aunt and began to eat. She wanted to ask a favour and thought perhaps right now would be a good time to do so. ‘I don’t think anyone can be blamed for worrying, even if it is a strategic retreat, because such things can go wrong,’ she observed. ‘But I’m sure you’re going to have the wireless playing for the one o’clock news. Can you call Eifion and me in for dinner five minutes early, so we can hear what’s happening in France?’

‘I’ll do that,’ her aunt said. ‘More bread and butter, anyone?’

‘When you think of the winter we’ve had, isn’t it a perishin’ miracle that ever since we started evacuating the BEF it’s been sunny and mild?’ Nell’s voice was a trifle muffled, due to the fact that her head was buried in Daisy’s warm side. ‘The man who drives the milk lorry has been giving soldiers who come from the island lifts back to their home villages. Everyone’s doing their bit. Except me, of course,’ she added bitterly. ‘Only Auntie says with all the troops coming home we’ll have to produce even more food; can’t have our men starving.’

‘Not the only one grumbling because you can’t take part in bringing our fellers home you are,’ Eifion said equally indistinctly, since he was also milking. ‘Every feller I know has rushed into Holyhead, hoping to get a place on a fishing boat or one of the ferries. I bet our Bryn’s gloating over other young men who wouldn’t join the Navy but went for the army instead. And now they’re having to be rescued by the very seamen they despised! Not that they did – despise ’em, I mean – but that’s how the sailors see it.’ He chuckled, hissed the last of his cow’s milk into the pail, and stood up. ‘Have you met Bryn’s cousin Arfon? Very full of himself, very superior. I’m told that down in Southampton he and Bryn were strutting around the docks like a couple of turkeycocks, boasting of how they’d rescue the BEF single-handed; or that was how it sounded, any road.’

‘So long as they come back safe that’s all that matters,’ Nell said fervently. ‘Oh, Eifion, they’re too young to throw their lives away!’

‘War’s like that,’ Eifion said, standing creakily upright, a hand going to the small of his back. ‘But young Bryn’s always been like a perishin’ cat, wi’ nine lives to play around with. He – and Arfon too no doubt – will be back home in a couple of days, with tall stories about rescuin’ the soldiers in the very teeth of the Huns, see if they ain’t.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ Nell said. She picked up her full pail and followed Eifion out to the yard. ‘I’m glad Bryn isn’t in the engine room, though. Auntie Kath said they’d keep him in the open air as much as possible because he’d been so ill with the measles and that. Apparently the crew are all Holyhead men and know Bryn well, so they’ll keep an eye on him. Not that he’s new to shipping, from what he told me, at any rate.

‘That’s right; he and Arfon have both worked aboard their uncle’s fishing boat, sailing out of Amlwch, so they ain’t inexperienced,’ Eifion said. ‘Come on now, girl; let’s get this milk through the cooler and into the churns. Then we can start muckin’ out.’

Throughout the evacuation Auntie Kath, Eifion and Nell worked from dawn till dusk, for as Kath kept reminding them food would be even more urgently needed now that the troops were coming home in such large numbers. Twice she took a cart loaded with supplies down to Holyhead, where the Women’s Institute workers fell on it with cries of joy, for seeing that every man who stumbled from the trains, worn out, hungry and filthy, got a hot drink and something to eat was becoming more and more difficult.

Nell accompanied her on both these expeditions, and was cut to the quick by the sight of the soldiers, some of them jauntily stepping out with their guns on their shoulders, others barely able to walk, with wounds roughly bandaged with anything they could find. She gathered from what the men told her that all their equipment had been left behind and knew the soldiers were worried about their lack of weapons and vehicles, but, as several of them said, better live men than dead tanks with no one to man them. She and Auntie Kath joined the women handing out hot drinks and food, and tried to remain cheerful, though it was not easy. The troops were pathetically grateful for the food and drink supplied, some making light of their ordeal, others telling horrific tales of the suffering of the men waiting for rescue on the long, pale beaches.

‘The Luftwaffe strafed us from the moment we came out of the sand dunes until we reached the water, and then they fired on the boats,’ one man told Nell as he took the hot drink she offered. ‘The naval shipping can’t get in close to the shore because it’s too shallow, so the little boats come right in and pick up the fellers and ferry ’em out to where the big ships can take them aboard. There have been heavy losses, among both the military and the rescuers, but they’re getting us off; that’s what matters. He who fights and runs away will live to fight another day,’ he concluded. ‘Except that we aren’t running away.’

‘That’s not what the French and the Belgians think,’ the man behind him said morosely. ‘But it would have been suicide to try to fight on once the panzers came. Wish the Brylcreem boys had been more in evidence, though. Those bloody Huns had it all their own way.’

‘I’ve got a pal aboard one of the ships,’ Nell said timidly, when her aunt was out of hearing. ‘He’s only seventeen, but he knows boats and shipping like the back of his hand. His taid works for my aunt, and he says Bryn rows like a man twice his age and swims like a fish . . . I hope he’ll be all right.’

‘Sure to be,’ the soldier said. ‘Sure to be, missy.’

‘Ye-es, but he’s not been back to tell me how he got on,’ Nell said uneasily. ‘I hope he hasn’t been wounded, or . . .’

‘The ships scarce stop in port save to let the fellers get off; small chance the crew have got to go to their homes,’ the next man said, taking the drink Nell offered. ‘Your pal will be all right. What’s the name of his ship?’