Whisper on the Wind (23 page)

‘What about that flour you sieved? Wouldn’t like that either, would they?’

‘Happen they wouldn’t, Mat Ramsden, but folk can’t abide that nasty brown stuff they’re making us use. And who can make a sponge with it, will you tell me? Only fit for pigs. Lord alone knows what all those brown bits in it are doing to our insides.’ She had sieved the detested flour through an old silk stocking to get the white flour she needed for Roz’s cake then thrown the residue into the pig-swill bucket. She’d done nothing wrong, she thought defiantly; nothing
really
wrong. And was a drop of cream such a sin once in a while, even though the making of cream was absolutely forbidden. ‘Anyway, who’s to know, if you don’t tell them?’ she sniffed.

‘I’ll not tell on you, lass.’ He placed an arm around his wife’s shoulders. ‘Did you find anything to give to Roz?’

‘I didn’t. It’s a terrible thing, not being able to give presents. Nothing at all in the shops, not even a bottle of scent. Mind, I did think about Grandma Ramsden’s jewel box – just something small – but it wouldn’t have been right, would it?’

Grandma Ramsden’s jewels had been left to Jonty, to be given to his wife. That box of trinkets was like the calling of the wedding banns in St Mary’s; part of a lovely, indulgent dream that one day Roz would wear them. Now, Grace wasn’t so sure.

‘No, love. Not right. But the lass won’t be expecting presents. And she’ll be pleased as Punch with the cake.’

They came laughing into the kitchen; Roz and Jonty, Marco and Kath, demanding to know what the fuss was about and why the best cups and saucers and the silver teapot?

‘It’s for Roz’s birthday, that’s what. Come on now, the lot of you. Get your hands washed.’

Excitedly she ducked into the pantry; triumphantly she bore in the cream-filled sponge cake. ‘Happy birthday, Roz!’

‘Grace! A
cream
cake! Oh, you lovely, wicked lady!’

‘Just this once,’ Grace murmured, smiling at Kath, the fellow conspirator who had secreted away the milk and helped separate it into cream. And had kept Roz away from the kitchen when the sieving and grinding and baking were being done. ‘And it’s to celebrate the finishing of the ploughing, and because we’re all here together.’

‘Grace, Mat.
all
of you,’ Roz whispered. ‘Thank you. Thank you so much.’

‘Happy birthday.’ Kath hugged her friend. ‘And get that cake cut, do. Just to look at that cream is making me giddy.’ She had forgotten, really forgotten, what a cream cake tasted like.

Happiness flooded Kath in great, warm waves. This kitchen, this farm, was where she felt at home. And just a few days ago Roz had claimed her as one of their own.
You’re not a towny. Not any more
… On this day, this beautiful April day, Kath Allen at last knew where she belonged.

‘You don’t have to walk any farther with me,’ Kath said as they walked through the lodge gates.

‘No, but I want to. Paul phoned at dinnertime. He’s almost sure it’ll be all right for Tuesday. I wanted to tell you, that’s all.’

‘I see.’ Gravely Kath regarded the bell of her bicycle. ‘And what are you going to say – about being away all night, I mean?’

‘That I’m going to York, for shoes. I do need some, Kath.’

‘The shops’ll be shut by the time you get there.’

‘Not if I ask Mat for half a day off. He’ll let me have it. I’ll go by train – pick it up at Helpsley Halt.’

‘And Paul will already be on it, I suppose?’ Kath demanded, wishing this conversation hadn’t been forced upon her.

‘No. Paul will hitch a lift. There are Peddlesbury transports going to York all the time. We’re meeting outside the station and don’t worry, Kath, I’m not involving anyone. I won’t say I’m with you, so you won’t have to tell any lies for me. I’ll just ring up and tell Gran I’ve missed the last bus and I’m finding somewhere to stay. Best I don’t say where. Don’t want her looking it up in the phone book.’

‘And the more lies you tell, the more you’ll have to tell,’ Kath clucked impatiently. ‘Is it really worth it? Won’t you be looking over your shoulder all the time?’

‘Why? York’s a big place. Who’s to see us?’ Of course it would be worth it. She wanted to be with Paul, just once. He’d flown twenty ops, now. Their new Lancaster had come to them with luck all over it, but for ten more times she would be counting them out from Peddlesbury and counting them back. Nine more ops and the thirtieth. And after the thirtieth, when they could hope to be stood-down for a while, she would take him to Ridings and introduce him to Gran.

‘We’ll be all right. It
will
be worth it, Kath. They say you can do what you want, take what you want, if you’re willing to pay for it. Well, I want Paul and I love him so much that I can’t begin to tell you. And I’ll pay for loving him, if I have to.’

‘That’s fine, then. But it won’t only be you, if you’re found out. What about your gran?’ Kath urged. ‘Think how she’d feel if it got around the village that you’d signed into a York hotel with –’

‘But why should it get around?’ Roz demanded, impatiently. ‘I’m not going to proclaim it from the pulpit next Sunday, am I? And York isn’t Alderby. It’s a big place. Nobody’s going to see us.’

‘But have you thought about it –
really
thought?’ Kath leaned her cycle against a field gate for one last try. She wasn’t going to talk Roz out of it; she knew already that the battle for reason was lost. Roz was so obsessed with Paul, so completely in love that reason didn’t enter into it. ‘Had you thought you mightn’t be able to find anywhere?’

‘No I hadn’t, because we
will.
Skip’s wife comes up often to be with him and nobody demands to know if they’re married when they ask for a bed for the night.’

‘Of course nobody asks them. Skip and his wife probably
look
married. They won’t look all furtive and guilty when they sign the hotel register.’

‘Neither will we, because we won’t feel guilty. Paul and I are lovers, Kath. We’re married already. We just haven’t had it blessed in church, that’s all.’

‘Oh, you won’t listen, will you? You’re so stubborn and pig-headed! You haven’t got a wedding ring have you, Roz, and do you think they’re going to let you have a room if you march up to the desk without luggage, without at least one small case between you?’

‘All right – so I’ll remember to take a case with me. Thanks for reminding me.’

‘Great! You’ll walk out of the house on Tuesday afternoon with a suitcase in your hand? Your Gran is going to ask you how many pairs of shoes you intend bringing back with you!’

Kath shook her head despairingly, looking up at the sky as though she could expect to find the solution written there.

‘All right, then, Paul can take a case. And I’ll put my signet ring on my left hand, and turn it round.’

‘You’ve got an answer for everything, Roz Fairchild. But think on this, will you,’ Kath demanded. ‘Skip and his wife probably started that baby she’s carrying in a York hotel. It could happen to you, and then where would you be? Just imagine the gossip in Alderby – stop to think, will you, what tattle like that would do to your Gran, and to Mat and Grace and yes, to Jonty, too.’

‘I won’t get pregnant.’ Roz leaned against the gate, arms folded, her stance defiant.

‘Ha! Famous last words.’

‘No, Kath. You said your piece, told me to be careful and to talk to Paul about it, and I did. Do you think Paul’s completely irresponsible? Don’t spoil it for us. And don’t let’s you and me fall out? If you go on and on about it much more I’ll be thinking you’re jealous or something.’

‘Jealous? Of course I’m not! It’s just that I want you to be sure. Somebody’s got to talk to you, Roz, but if you’re set on it …’

‘I am, Kath.’ Her voice was calm. ‘We both are.’

‘All right, then. If that’s what you really want, then good luck and God bless you both. And I’m truly not jealous – just a little envious, maybe. I suppose,’ she said gently, ‘I’d do exactly the same, if I were in your shoes.’

If she weren’t Kath Allen and married to Barney; if ever she should love someone as deeply and dangerously as Roz loved Paul. If ever she should be so lucky.

Tuesday was not a good day for Arnie, but he knew he would accept it with the stoicism that had carried him this far in his nine-and-a-bit years and tomorrow, he reasoned, it would be all over for another year.

But today, this last Tuesday in April, the school dentist was coming to Alderby. His name was Mr Brown; a name spoken in a whisper. Two weeks ago, Mr Brown’s visit had been a fleeting one. That day he had merely said, ‘Open wide,’ murmured to the lady who wrote things on a card, then said, ‘Next one please, nurse.’ And Arnie’s keen ear had translated the murmurings into
one extraction
which was a relief, really, when it might well have been The Drill.

The Drill was an instrument of torture and this morning the dentist would bring it with him, and The Chair, and set up his surgery in the front parlour of the school house. And The Drill would stand beside The Chair like a thin, menacing stork which came to horrible, whizzing life when the pedal at its base was pumped up and down by foot; up and down without stopping as if the dentist were pedalling the organ in church, or Aunty Poll’s sewing machine. That pedalling, Arnie considered, was bad enough at half-past nine in the morning, but by three in the afternoon, when the dentist’s foot was tired, The Drill whizzed more slowly, more erratically, and fillings then were only for the stout-hearted; for those boys amongst them who would be Paratroopers or spies or maybe even pilot a Lancaster, should the war last long enough.

Arnie walked reluctantly to school, a clean white handkerchief – for the blood – folded carefully in his pocket. He wished he were grown-up enough to be able to make up his own mind about visits to the dentist; wished people could be born complete with teeth which would stay there, undecaying, until they grew old like Aunty Poll and could choose to have the sort of teeth they could put in and take out and leave all night in a cup on the window sill. But mostly this morning he wished that God would drop a brick on Mr Brown’s pedalling foot, or something equally miraculous and sneaky.

He stuck his hands in his pockets, thinking how it would be. He would be brave, of course, even though Aunty Poll had said it was only a baby tooth that was getting in the way of the new one growing beneath it; a tooth she said he could have wiggled out himself if he’d had the sense, and saved her a shilling. But even the comparatively painless loss of a milk tooth was nothing compared to The Waiting.

The Waiting was almost as awful as The Drill and The Chair. The Waiting began when the footsteps of the nurse could be heard in the corridor outside, causing the entire class to hold its breath and eyes to swivel to the door.

Sometimes the footsteps tapped past and the dreaded knock was heard on the door of the other classroom and they knew it was all right again for fifteen more minutes.

The dentist’s nurse was little and plump and walked like a pigeon with short, jerky steps. She wore a white coat and a blue hat with a silver badge pinned at the front of it. She was always cheerful, always smiling. That was why Arnie disliked her almost as much as he disliked Mr Brown, for she had no right at all to smile or be cheerful whilst leading boys and girls to the horrors of The Chair and The Drill.

But it was lovely, he acknowledged, when a patient was led groggily to a low stool outside and given a white enamelled mug, half filled with rosy-pink liquid.

‘Rinse and spit out.’ They were words of magic, Arnie sighed. They meant it was all over and he could sit there, swooshing the liquid around his mouth and spitting noisily and splashily into the bowl on his knees. With luck it was possible to make the half-mug last until the next victim was led in, eyes wide with terror, as you grinned at him shamelessly.

Arnie also liked it because it was the one day on which spitting was allowed; the one day in the whole year when you could do it and not get a cuff around the ear.

He closed his eyes and thought not of the smiling nurse who would stand at the classroom door and cheerfully say, ‘Arnold Bagley, please,’ but of the delights of rinsing and spitting. If he hadn’t, he would have run away to Hull, and never come back.

Had Kath known what awaited her at Home Farm that same morning, she too would have run away.

She had arrived to find a scowling Mat, an indignant, pink-cheeked Grace, and Jonty, who told her apologetically, almost, that the milking machine had broken down. Could she and Roz get milking-stools and caps from the dairy?

‘Milking-stools?’ This was the day she had so dreaded, the day on which she would be exposed for what she was: a towny who was unable to milk a cow by hand. ‘Jonty, I’m afraid I –’

‘Damn! I’d forgotten. Come on. I’ll show you how. Best you should learn.’

This, thought Kath unhappily, was the moment of her undoing; when the silly cow kicked out or refused to let her milk down. This was when she would fail miserably and all she had learned these past four months would count for nothing. This was when Aunt Min would say, ‘I told you it wasn’t all collectin’ eggs.’

‘Chin up, now. Don’t look so badly-done-to.’ Jonty smiled. ‘You can try your hand on the old girl. Placid as a worn-out boot, that one. You’ll be all right with her.’

‘I won’t be able to do it.’ Kath pulled the milking-cap over her hair. ‘Your dad’s going to hit the roof when he finds out I’ve never hand-milked before.’