Whisper on the Wind (8 page)

‘Yes,’ Roz sighed, eyes closed. ‘Don’t
ever
fall for aircrew.’

‘I won’t be falling for anyone. I’m married – remember?’

‘You know what I mean. Look, I’ll scald the churns this morning; you feed the cats, will you?’

Suddenly it was a wonderful day. All at once, at the count of eleven, the cold grey morning was bright with magic. Paul had completed his thirteenth op; the dicey one was behind him. Now surely it would be all right until the last one; until the thirtieth. And tonight they would meet. Perhaps they would dance, perhaps they would walk in the darkness, hands clasped, thighs touching, just glad to be together. Tonight, they might even be lovers.

She closed her eyes, sending silent thanks to the god who had brought eleven crews safely back, knowing that tomorrow or the next day she would once more be counting the bombers out and willing them home again; living through a fresh anguish.

But tonight she and Paul would be together. Tonight was as sure as anything could be in this mad, uncertain world, and tomorrow, and all the uncertain tomorrows, were a million years away.

At eleven o’clock, when they began to wonder if tea-break had been forgotten, Grace called them in to the warmth of the kitchen.

‘Sorry it’s late. I’ve been over to Ridings with drinkings for the men and I stayed to watch. Jonty’s made a start with the tractor and Mat and the prisoner are trying out Duke, and the hand-plough. It’s good to see Duke working. I’m glad we didn’t get rid of him.’ She smiled.

Few farmers had kept their horses once tractors came within their means, but Mat Ramsden loved horses and the great grey Shire was a joy to him.

‘Tractors don’t need feeding and mucking-out,’ some had scoffed.

‘Aye, I’ll grant you that, but my Shire runs on hay which isn’t rationed like tractor fuel is and it don’t have to be brought here, neither, in a convoy. And what’s more,’ he’d grinned, ‘you don’t get manure from tractors!’

Duke weighed a ton, almost, and his hooves were the size of a dinner plate. Such creatures were living miracles, Mat declared; tractors were cold, smelly contraptions and bother or not, the Shire horse had stayed.

‘I’m glad they’ve made a start.’ Roz watched the saccharin tablet rise fizzing to the top of her cup. ‘That ploughing business was really getting Gran down. Will it be finished on time, Grace?’

‘It will.’ The reply was quietly confident. ‘My, but it was grand to see that land getting turned over, coming to life after all those years.’

She had stood there, jug in hand, watching the plough bite deep into the sward; watched it rise green then fall dark and soft as a wave falls on the shore. She had smiled to see the seagulls wheeling overhead then settling in the wake of the plough, grabbing hungrily for grubs. Yes indeed, those long-idle acres were stirring themselves at last.

‘Is the prisoner going to be any help?’ Roz ventured.

‘That he is. He’s framing-up nicely. Him and Duke were turning over some good straight furrows.’

‘How far must a man walk,’ Kath asked, ‘just to plough a single acre? And how does he get such straight furrows?’

‘He walks miles and miles, that’s a fact,’ Grace acknowledged, ‘and he keeps straight by fixing his eyes on something ahead and not losing his concentration.

‘By the way, Roz, Jonty said I was to wish you a happy new year. Said he’s hardly set eyes on you since Christmas morning. He wanted to know what you were doing and I said you’d made a start cleaning the eggs.’

‘And I suppose he said you were to remind me to be careful?’

Eggshells were fragile, to be cleaned with care when the packers who called to collect them were entitled to deduct a penny for every mark on every egg.

‘Well, he did wonder how many you’d broken.’ Grace laughed. ‘Said he supposed it would be scrambled eggs for breakfast tomorrow. Only teasing, mind. You know Jonty …’

She knew him, Roz frowned, or thought she had until Kath had assumed he was her boyfriend. Surely Jonty wasn’t in love with her. He mustn’t be.

‘Teasing? We haven’t had a single accident, have we, Kath?’

‘Not yet.’ Just what was Roz thinking about, Kath brooded, gazing at the suddenly-red cheeks. Jonty
was
in love with her. Why hadn’t she seen it when it was obvious to everyone else? And did Jonty know about Paul: was he content to wait for the madness to burn itself out – for madness it surely was – and be there when she needed a shoulder to cry on? ‘Come on,’ she said more sharply than she had intended. ‘Let’s get back to those eggs, Roz. There
is
a war on, you know.’

Kath sat beside the kitchen fire, toasting her stockinged toes, eating the sandwiches the hostel cook had packed for her. She was always hungry these days; food had never tasted so good nor sleep come so easily.

‘Soup, Kath?’ Grace Ramsden stirred the iron pan that hung above the coals.

‘Can you spare it?’ Food was rationed and she should have refused. ‘Just a drop, maybe.’

‘Of course I can spare it.’ Grace took a pint mug from the mantel-shelf. ‘Only vegetables and lentils and barley in it – bits of this and bits of that. Drink it up, lass, and welcome. Whilst you’re waiting for it to cool, can you take some outside?’

‘To the prisoner, Grace?’ Mat’s head jerked up from his plate. ‘He’s brought his rations with him, the guard said, and there’s to be no –’

‘I mind what the guard said. No fraternization. And how are we all to work with a man and not speak to him, will you tell me? This is
my
kitchen, Mat Ramsden. That lad sitting out there has done a fair morning’s work on our land and Kath is going to take him a mug of soup!’ She stopped, breathless and red-cheeked, ladle brandished, glaring at each in turn. ‘Have I made myself clear?’

‘You have, Grace love. You have,’ Mat said quietly, though the laughter in his eyes belied the gravity in his voice. ‘We’ll not tell the guard.’

‘Good!’ Grace filled the mug to the brim. ‘Glad we’ve got that little matter settled!’

He loves her, Kath marvelled. He teases her, indulges her and his eyes follow her just as Jonty’s eyes follow Roz. After all the years, they’re still in love, she thought as she carried the steaming mug across the yard. Carefully she skirted a patch of ice, wondering if she and Barney would be as much in love after their silver wedding, confident that they would.

The prisoner sat on an upturned box, his back against the straw stack. He looked up at her approach, then laid aside the bread he was eating and rose to his feet.

Kath stood awkwardly, taking in the height of him, the smile he tried to suppress.

‘Hullo. Mrs Ramsden sends soup,’ she said slowly, offering the mug. ‘For you.’

‘The
signora
is kind. I thank her. It smell good.’

‘You speak English?’ Kath laughed her relief.

‘
Si.
I learn it in school for five years. I speak it a lot, since I am prisoner.’

‘That’s good.’ She looked into the young, frost-pinched face. He was tall and painfully thin, his eyes large and brown. ‘I’m Kathleen Allen.’ She wondered if she should offer her hand, and decided against it.

‘Kathleen. Katarina.’ He repeated her name slowly. ‘And I am Marco Roselli. If it is allowed, you will please to call me Marco?’

‘Marco. Yes. Well then, I’ll let you get on with it,’ Kath hesitated, stepping backward, ‘whilst it’s hot …’

‘
Si
, Katarina. And thank you.’

‘He’s –’ no, not nice. We were at war with Italy, so he couldn’t be nice. But he was ordinary, she supposed; like Jonty, really. And not stupid, either, as newspaper cartoons showed Italians to be. ‘He’s little different from us. He said thank you, that the soup smelled good,’ Kath supplied, sitting down again, picking up her own mug. ‘He seems all right.’

‘He is,’ Jonty said firmly. ‘We had quite a talk this morning. His people are farmers in the Italian Tyrol – there might be a bit of Austrian in him. He’d hoped to go to university, but the war stopped it. There’s nothing much wrong with him – and he can handle a horse.’

‘Aye. He can’t help being in the war any more than you can help not being in it, son,’ Grace said softly. ‘It’s the way things are and he’ll be treated decently till he gives us cause not to. What’s his name?’

‘Marco,’ Jonty supplied.

‘That’s all right, then. Well, we can’t keep calling him
the
prisoner
, or
the Italian
, can we?’ Grace looked appealingly at her husband. Their own son was safe at home; the young man outside had a mother, too.

‘Just as you say, love.’ Mat nodded. ‘And Jonty’s right; he knows about horses.’ A man who knew about horses would be fairly treated at Home Farm. ‘We’d best get back to it whilst the daylight lasts. You ready, son?’

‘I hope,’ Grace remarked when she and Kath were alone, ‘that Mrs Fairchild comes to accept Marco. You’d have thought she’d have been there to see the first few furrows turned over, but not her; not if she has to take help from the other side. It’s sad, her being so bitter, but then, she’s had more than her fair share of trouble.’

‘Trouble? In what way?’

‘Losing her man in the last war was the start of it, then having the fire so soon after. And her daughter and son-in-law getting killed in a car accident.’

‘Her son-in-law?’ Kath frowned. ‘Then why is Roz called Fairchild?’

‘It’s a long story. There was only one child, you see – Janet, Roz’s mother. There should have been a son to carry on the name but Mrs Fairchild lost him; a stillbirth, six months on, when Miss Janet was about three. Took it badly, poor soul. And after that, there were no more children. A lot of us wondered why there hadn’t been another, but Poll Appleby squashed the gossip once and for all. There was a woman in the village who happened to say that it was certain Mrs Fairchild would soon conceive again like often happened after a miscarriage, and Poll told her off good and proper; told her to watch her tongue and never, ever, say anything like that again, and especially in front of the Mistress, not if she knew what was good for her.

‘Then the war came – the first one – and the Master was taken,’ Grace brooded. ‘They said it was a sniper’s bullet, same as took Poll’s man. Not long after came the fire, and her under-insured, then Miss Janet and her husband were killed, and there was a young bairn to be brought up.

‘But proud, that woman is. Living from hand to mouth sometimes, yet always fretting about that dratted house as if all her trouble had been of her own making.’

Grace poured a kettle of water into the sink, tutting indignantly, shaking her head.

‘I’ll dry the dishes for you. Might as well, whilst I’m waiting for Roz to get back. But why,’ Kath persisted, ‘is she called Fairchild? Did her gran change it back, or something?’

‘Not exactly. Roz’s mother – Janet Fairchild as was – married a Londoner called Toby Jarvis, and he agreed to keep the name. Fairchild-Jarvis, Roz is really called, though Roz will always be a Fairchild while her gran lives and breathes, her being the last of the line, so to speak.

‘Still, there’s one blessing to come out of this war. At least that old ruin will be giving something back now. All those good acres barren for so long. But Mat and Jonty – aye, and Marco, too, will have them down to potatoes and sugarbeet afore very much longer, and wheat and barley the year after, and – careful, here’s Roz, now. Do you think the two of you could take the fodder to the cattle in the far field – hay, and chopped swedes? Take the small tractor, if you’d like.’

The tractor. Kath’s eyes gleamed. Her driving was getting better every day. She’d soon be good enough, Jonty said, to drive it on the road. Now that would be something to tell Barney!

Oh, why was life so good? How dare she be so contented, so happy, almost, when men were at war? What would her husband say if he could read her thoughts? Then her chin lifted defiantly.

Sorry, Barney, but there’s a war on here, too. We’re getting bombed and we’re cold and short of coal and next month the sugar ration is going to be cut. So I’m doing my bit the best way I know how and you’ll have to accept it. Sorry, my dear
…

Hester Fairchild switched off the kitchen light before opening the back door. ‘Jonty! Come in. Roz won’t be long.’ She pulled over the blackout curtain, switching on the light again. ‘She’s upstairs, getting ready.’

‘Mother said you might be able to use a little extra.’ He placed a bottle of milk on the table. ‘We’re a few pints in hand, whilst the school’s on holiday.’

Hester was grateful, and said so. Even in the country the milk shortage was beginning to be felt and most agreed that the sooner it was placed on official ration, the better.

‘I haven’t come for Roz.’ Jonty glanced down disparagingly at his working clothes. ‘I think she must be going dancing tonight.’ With someone else. She usually was, and he couldn’t blame her. Most girls would rather be seen out with men in uniform. Tonight, probably, Roz would be meeting one of the Peddlesbury airmen. Most of the village girls dated airmen now. ‘Why I really came was to tell you we’ve started the ploughing, though likely you’ll know.’

‘Yes, and I’m relieved it’s under way. Will it be finished in time?’

‘I think so, but the War Ag. isn’t going to quibble over a few days. Why don’t you come over tomorrow and take a look at it?’