Whisper on the Wind (64 page)

‘And to give him your love, Kath?’ They’d be all right, now, Grace was sure of it. They’d be drawn together again. Maybe closer than ever.

‘Love. Yes.’ Pity, more like. Because that was what she felt. Deep, deep pity and anger that it should have happened to him. ‘But I’ll have to go and give Roz a hand.’

From across the yard came the sounds of the pony being harnessed. If someone wasn’t there to watch her, Roz could forget, and start loading milk crates on to the cart.

‘Mind you put your gum-boots on,’ Grace called, ‘and your raincoats or you’ll catch your deaths, the pair of you. Don’t forget, now.’

‘We won’t.’
Oh, Grace – if only a soaking was all we had to worry about
…

‘I do not,’ said Marco as he helped Kath unload the milk-cart, ‘like your English rain. It is very cold.’

‘And wet,’ Roz offered. ‘In winter it freezes, if you remember, and turns into snow. I’ll see to Daisy if you like, Kath – dry her down.’

‘Thanks.’ She needed to talk to Marco; needed his nearness, his understanding. ‘You know about Barney?’ she asked when they were alone.

‘I know. It is bad. It is the worst thing that could happen to any man. And I know how things will be. Since I heard, I think about it a lot, Kat, and I don’t like what I think.’

‘That I might have to leave the Land Army – leave Home Farm; go back to Birmingham? I’ve thought about it too, Marco, and I won’t have any choice. I couldn’t turn my back on a blind man.’

‘You could, but you won’t. Not you, Kat. I think I am going to lose you because you won’t leave him; won’t ask him to let you go free – not now.’

‘No.’ She looked down at her boots, her voice a whisper. ‘No one could do a thing like that, no matter what.’

‘Jonty said he’s to have an operation.’

‘Yes. That’s all I’m thinking about. In a couple of days, perhaps, he’ll have had it and that soon he’ll be able to see again. I want it for Barney – not just for me.’

‘And is there a chance for him, Kat?’

‘I don’t know. The nurses didn’t tell me anything. They can’t, I suppose. But by now he’ll be on his way to Edinburgh with two other soldiers and I hope it’ll go well for them all.’

‘
Si.
Sometimes hope is all we have left. My mamma say that hope can be stronger than prayer. And oh, Kat, I want so much to hold you and comfort you …’

‘Like on threshing day?’ Such a fuss, over one frightened rat; a fuss over next to nothing, had she but known it, then.

‘Like that day, Kat. Did you know then that I loved you?’

‘No. But I was angry with myself that I’d liked it when you held me. Things are in a mess, aren’t they? What’s going to happen to us?’

‘I don’t know.’ He touched her cheek with his fingertips. ‘I think we must – how you say it – bear it and grin?’

‘Something like that.’ And take what life hurled at them, because the Fates got jealous. It didn’t do to love too well – already Roz knew it. ‘You’ll have to go, or someone’s going to catch us here together.’

‘Would you care, Katarina-mia, if they did?’

‘No.’ Not now when all she wanted – needed – was to feel his arms around her. But later she would care, because she was married to Barney and Barney needed her. In sickness and in health, she had promised. ‘Right now I need you so much, but it isn’t what I need, any longer. There’s Barney to think of, now.’ Barney, who would never see again.

‘I am
sick
of this rain,’ Roz grumbled. ‘It’s gone on all day and the sky is still full of it. And this kitchen smells
awful.
’

Of wet raincoats on the rack above the fireplace, dungarees and socks draped along the fireguard to dry, shoes stuffed with newspaper in the hearth.

‘Does it bother you, Roz?’

‘Not really.’ Some smells had made her want to retch, but not so much, now. And this last week she hadn’t felt quite so sick, either. In a couple of weeks, when she was three months gone, the doctor had said, it should be almost over.

Three months pregnant and a tiny, almost perfect child inside her. Hers, and Paul’s. By the time harvest was over, she would be half-way there and she would feel the baby moving. Just gentle little stirrings, at first; but when it happened, her baby would be really alive.

‘What are you thinking about?’

‘The baby. And about lighting a fire in the little sitting-room.’

‘
Another
fire? In July? We’re supposed to save fuel.’

‘But why not? It’s been really cold today, and we’ve got any amount of logs. Why don’t we sit in there, for a change? I could make a start on Gran’s desk, then. I shall have to go through it some time. Why don’t I bring some logs in?’

‘I’ll get the logs. You find paper and kindling. And what do you think has happened to that call? I booked it ages ago.’ Kath frowned. ‘Why should there be these delays over trunk calls? It never used to be like that.’

‘No, but the armed forces are ringing up all the time. It’s they who have put the phone lines on war work, and civilians have to wait their turn. There
is
a war on.’

‘I know, but I’m going to ring the girl on the exchange again. She might have forgotten.’

‘And
you
might have given her the wrong number.’

‘I didn’t. All I want to know is that Barney has got there and for them to tell him I phoned.’

‘But of course he’ll get there all right. They all will. There’ll be an army nurse with them, didn’t you say? But let’s get that fire lit. I’m cold.’

‘That’s because you’re not eating. There’s nothing inside you to burn up into heat. All you want is drinks of water, and things to crunch. A baby can’t exist on
crunch
, Roz.’

‘It can, you know. I asked Doctor Stewart about it. I was worried, you see, about two terrible shocks, coming one on top of the other, and about my not wanting to eat. But he said that embryo babies are tougher than we think and I wasn’t to worry, too much. He said that once I stopped being sick and began eating again, I’d probably feel really well.

‘And he said that pregnant women often want to eat peculiar things in the first few weeks, and provided they aren’t
too
peculiar, it’s all right. I’d told him, you see, that I was desperate to crunch on a big, juicy apple. But there aren’t any apples in the shops, now. There won’t be any until the English apples are ripe, in the autumn. So then I hit on something else. Carrots. Well, at least they aren’t in short supply and just now they’re small and sweet and –’

‘And crunchy?’

‘Mm. Sprog is going to have a marvellous complexion.’

‘And he’ll be able to see in the dark, too.’ Weren’t carrots supposed to help people see in the blackout and fighter pilots to see at night?

They began to laugh, and it was the strangest sound. Roz, laughing. Only briefly, because laughter, now, wasn’t on. But she had laughed.

‘You want this baby, don’t you, Roz?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said softly, gently. ‘More than you know …’

Later, Kath sat on the floor, in the fireglow. Outside, all was grey and rain-soaked, but in this little room the weather and the war, too, seemed to be happening in some other place. She recalled the first time she had sat here; that Sunday afternoon visit when Roz had shown her Ridings and the ruins, and Mrs Fairchild had said, ‘Come and see us again – soon.’ And had meant it.

Was it only half a year ago that Roz had reminded her not to speak of Paul. And shown her the portraits – her peculiar forebears, she’d called them.

‘Remember when –’ Kath sighed, then stopped abruptly, said instead, ‘Remember when we could have bought seven pounds of apples, if we’d wanted them? And oranges, all the year round – not just one, at the end of a half-hour queue?’

‘Yes, and cream cakes for Sunday tea.’

‘And now it’s illegal to make cream, let alone sell it.’

‘Everything nice is illegal or rationed or under the counter these days. Here – want to see one of me, when I was two-and-a-half?’

She handed over a snapshot of a small girl, unmistakably Roz, standing with toes turned inward and mischief in her eyes.

‘
Rosalind Fairchild-Jarvis. Age 2yrs. 6mths.
My mother must have written that – or my father. They always called me Rosalind, I believe. It was Jonty who first called me Roz, and it stuck. Even Gran only called me Rosalind when she was cross with me.’

‘Where was this taken? London?’

‘I should think so. That was where we lived. That snap must have been taken only a few weeks before they died.’

It was strange, Kath thought, that Roz could speak of her parents without pain – probably because she had never really known them.

‘Do you remember anything about living in London?’

‘Not a thing. My life began here, seventeen years ago in December, it’ll be. And Gran never spoke about the way things were – only if I asked, and then not much. Here’s one of me and Jonty! Just look at those awful round glasses.’ A snapshot of Jonty, holding Roz’s hand tightly – loving her, even then.

‘Glasses suit Jonty, now,’ Kath defended. ‘They make him look intellectual – donnish, sort of.’

‘Well, they didn’t when he was eight. They made him look like a surprised little owl. And I’m not being catty.
I’m
allowed to say things like that.’

‘Because he’s your brother?’

‘Yes. It’s nice in this little room, isn’t it, Kath?’

‘Yes. And cosy.’ No bad memories in here.

‘When winter comes, we’ll sit here more often, won’t we – now that we’ve got logs to burn?’

‘Good idea.’ They would use it all the time, if it meant that sometimes Roz would laugh. ‘Ssh! The phone!’ She was quickly on her feet to answer it; to break the spell and let in the outside world again. ‘That’s my call to Edinburgh …’

Kath placed a cup of hot cocoa on a tray, and a glass of milk for Roz. Boiling the kettle and setting the tray gave her time alone to think, to compose herself.

A nurse with a soft Welsh accent had answered her call and told her that yes, Driver Allen’s party had arrived and all three were safely installed in the surgical ward.

‘Your husband is second on the list tomorrow – can you try to get through in the evening? He should be over it by then and a message from you will cheer him up.’

‘I won’t be able to speak to him – later?’

‘I’m afraid we can’t allow that. But try not to worry, my dear. We’ll take good care of them all.’

And that, Kath shrugged, had been that. They had told her nothing, really, except the number of his ward.

She was glad Barney was still with his friends; glad the army nurse who had looked after him on the flight home was with them. Before she went to sleep she would write to him and post it in the morning when they did the milk-round. Letters were important to a soldier – even if he had to ask someone else to read them to him.

‘Sorry there’s nothing crunchy.’ Kath set down the tray. ‘Barney’s fine – settled in his ward and his operation is tomorrow. The nurse said I wasn’t to ring before evening – even supposing I’ll be able to get through.’

‘Good.’ Roz took the milk and drank it without thinking. ‘And I’ve got everything sorted – letters and photographs and Gran’s diaries. Y’know, Kath, I’d never opened Gran’s desk; it was a sort of understanding between us that I didn’t – just as she’d never have dreamed of opening any of my letters. The first time I did it was when I gave everything that was in the bottom drawer to Mr Dunston, as she’d said I should if – if anything ever happened to her. It felt strange, at first, but I think I’ve got it organized, now. It was very tidy – but Gran was like that. I think she could have opened this desk in the dark and put her hands on anything she wanted. The photographs and letters are in the bottom drawer, now, and I’ll go through them all, bit by bit, when I’m in the mood for it; her diaries are all in proper order, too. I shall like reading them. Well – now that she’s not here I suppose it’s all right?’

‘I suppose so, Roz. But I’ve always thought that diaries are very private. Maybe, if we knew exactly which day is to be our last one, we’d destroy things like that. I know I would.’

‘You mean I shouldn’t read them? That Gran might not have wanted me to know what she’d written?’

‘I don’t honestly know. Really, it’s up to you, Roz. The only thing we can be sure about is that she didn’t know the day she would die –’

‘So I’d better take it that she might not have wanted me to open them?’

‘No! I don’t mean that at all. They might give you an insight into a lot of things, in fact. Are your grandfather’s letters there?’

‘Yes. Bundles of them – written from the trenches. And letters from other people, too; some with Victorian and Edwardian stamps on them. Those letters and diaries are Fairchild history, Kath. I’d like to read them through one day. With respect, I mean, and love. I’d really like to have known how Gran felt about Grandpa’s death. I did look at the last of the diaries – she didn’t keep one, it seems, after Grandpa was killed, so I’m a bit disappointed about that, and that there isn’t anything there about my mother and father – and me, being born. But the last one was dated 1916 and on the very last page she’d written,
Today, they killed my darling Martin.
That’s all, Kath. Sort of final. Then no more entries; no more diaries. Just as if her life had ended. Just the way I felt when –’ She stopped, eyes closed, face twisted with pain.