Gracie's Sin (18 page)

She strove not to think of Tizz, yet it was so hard. The shock and numbed disbelief which had kept these images at bay during the day was now wearing off and several times during that long, freezing night, she would wake sobbing, and know that in her dreams at least, she’d witnessed her dear friend’s death. She didn’t give a passing thought to Eddie.

A sound seemed to be echoing in her head, coming from some far distant place. Rose found herself gripped and shaken hard by a hand upon her shoulder, bringing her instantly awake.

‘Wot the ‘ell are you doing ‘ere? ‘Oo let you in?’

She struggled to gather her wits, to bring some sense into her sleep-fuddled brain. ‘Nobody. Sorry, I - I came upon your barn quite by chance and didn’t think you’d mind if I spent the night here. I had to have somewhere to sleep. I’m sorry.’

The man’s glare was unnerving. The ensuing silence as he considered this statement, even more so. Rose sat quite still as his eyes roamed over her, though they didn’t do so necessarily in the same direction at the same time, there seeming to be a slight cast in one of them, yet evidently taking in every detail of her unkempt appearance, her tousled hair and her few pathetic possessions.

He was old, fifty, sixty or seventy, Rose couldn’t be sure, with red-brown hair and in dire need of a shave. Perhaps he’d decided to grow a beard or, more likely, the household was short of hot water and he couldn’t be bothered to boil any. His clothes comprised an ancient tweed jacket with holes in the elbows and grain spilling out of the pockets, a muffler wrapped about his scrawny neck and tucked into a stained waistcoat, and trousers that were a sort of mud colour strapped tight to his calves with canvas gaiters. Rose thought they looked decidedly uncomfortable. On his feet were enormous steel-tipped boots which rang on the stone flags as he shifted his feet. She realised this had been the sound which had woken her some seconds before the hand had touched her, almost as if he’d been hard put to know what to do for the best when
 
first he’d spotted her.

Rose wished she looked more presentable, that she’d had time to clean herself up, comb the tangles from her hair and remove some of the odd collection of clothing she’d piled on to keep warm.

The man gave a short, ill-tempered grunt and jerked his head in the direction of the door, the aggression in his expression having changed to one of bored disinterest as if it wasn’t in the least unusual for him to find someone sleeping in his dirty old barn, but it was time for her to leave. Rose sighed and began to pack up her few belongings, heart sinking. At the door, she made one last desperate bid for salvation.

‘I’m a hard worker. I can cook, clean, hoe, weed, whatever you need. All I ask is bed and board and a few shillings a week to put by. Could you manage twenty? Eighteen perhaps?’ She believed she was offering him a bargain as the timber girls got twenty-six.

Twin bushy eyebrows lifted in surprised unison. ‘Is that all? I wouldn’t mind that meself.’

‘Please. I’d take less. Whatever you think fair, only you won’t be sorry you engaged me. Perhaps your wife needs help in the house?’ Rose glanced towards the farm kitchen window where she’d caught a glimpse of a figure hunched over, supposedly washing dishes while trying to see what was going on, as she had used to do.

‘You’d have to ask her.’

‘Would I?’ Hope soared. ‘I mean, may I? May I ask her?’

The farmer had already turned away on a half shrug. ‘Do as you please. You could have bed and board in the loft over the stables in return for some hard graft but the wife is the one who’d have to pay you to work in the house. She hires and fires girls, not me. Ask Agnes.’

Agnes was, it seemed, perfectly agreeable to some extra help about the place, and offered ten shillings a week. Rose knew it was a pittance but felt desperate enough to take it, a great surge of relief that she wouldn’t have to go back on the road washed away any reservations.

Summer was a distant memory, autumn days were growing shorter, the leaves losing their colour and turning russet and gold, rustling and crunching beneath their feet as they walked through woodlands. There was a crispness in the air as the warm moistness of a damp autumn dried out in the cooler breezes of coming winter. There remained also a certain crispness in their relationship.

Lou and Gracie had been sent out on census work. Even though they were sharing a room at their billet, conversation was confined to remarks such as ‘Do you want the window open?’ or ‘It’s your turn to be first in the bath tonight.’ Their bemused landlady watched her new tenants each morning at breakfast, silently eating their porridge with nothing exchanged between the two of them save for the marmalade. The pair of them everylastingly polite, functional and utterly miserable.

Their task, along with many other teams across the country, was to take a count of all standing timber. This entailed travelling throughout Devon, Somerset, Wiltshire and Dorset, investigating every green patch on the Ordnance Survey map, then taking sample surveys so that reasonably accurate estimates could be made. Heavy inroads had been made into established woodlands and with no end to the war in sight, it was necessary for the authorities to know just how much standing timber there was still available.

 
Many tears had been shed as the squad had gone their different ways.

Jeannie and Lena made up a second team, working further north in Gloucestershire, Hereford and Worcester. Tess had moved on to driving duties elsewhere. At the last minute, Enid had decided to marry her airman and got a job cleaning nettles and ragwort from a farmer’s field close to the airfield. It was dull, back breaking work but at least she could count the planes going out and coming in again each evening, and see her husband at every available opportunity.

Lou envied her. She had seen Gordon only once since the Saturday before Posting-Out Day. He’d sent her a frantic telegram, saying that he’d got his sailing orders at last. She’d dropped everything, caught the train to Plymouth, agonising over its slowness. They’d had only a few precious hours together before she was standing on the quayside, weeping and waving him off along with the other wives and sweethearts. The war didn’t seem such a lark now.

Lou had gone back to the farm house where they were billeted with her heart in her boots. Gordon’s departure did nothing to ease the restraint which rankled between them. Their friendship had been sorely tested by the kidnap attempt. Lou couldn’t quite bring herself to forgive Gracie for having been so easily taken in by her parents. Gracie remained adamant she’d been utterly helpless, until her mother’s need to visit the lavatory.

‘Even then, I had to run, Father shouting and waving his fist like fury at me. He chased after me for a while, until he got out of breath. You can’t imagine how awful that was.’

‘Nowhere near as terrible as never seeing my Gordon again,’ Lou replied, in clipped tones.

Gracie, riddled with guilt, was dismayed by the unfairness of her friend’s attitude. ‘Do you think I ever imagined, for one moment, that they might do such a crazy thing? It must have been all Father’s idea, and Mother went along with it out of weakness. He’d set his heart on my joining him in the shop, and he does so hate to be bested. Goodness knows what they meant to do with me. Chain me up in the cellar and feed me on dry bread and water till I promised to obey their every whim, perhaps?’ she said, chuckling at the very idea. ‘More likely they hadn’t worked that part out, or at least Mum hadn’t.’ Gracie made a mental note never to be as weak as her mother. She would choose a man with greater care and once having found him, they would be equal in every way.

Lou refused to be either mollified or teased out of her glums. She was far too worried about Gordon who was even now steaming overseas, right into the line of enemy gunfire. She almost felt as if this were Grace’s fault too. ‘You
could
have left earlier. You could have stood up to them. Did you never think of the effect your lateness would have on the rest of us? Just like that time when you fought Matron over the “biscuits” and the lorries for goodness sake, as if that had anything to do with her. You put her back up from the start. No wonder she pounced on you when she got the chance. Why can’t you consider
other
people for a change!’

‘Are you accusing me of being selfish?’ Gracie looked at her friend, bemused and hurt. ‘Hold on a minute. In one breath you’re telling me to stand up for myself more, and in the next, not to make a fuss so that I don’t offend anyone.’

‘So that you don’t offend
Matron
! Didn’t you realise how much power that woman has? Now she’s used it on
us
. Now Gordon has been sent overseas and I’ll
never
see him again.’ And because she was so very near to tears and hated to be seen in such distress, Lou had stalked off to sob in private.

Relations had continued cool ever since. It was going to be a long winter.

Yet they enjoyed the job and found it interesting. Both girls loved the challenge, and the freedom. They had their bicycles sent from home so they could get about easily, and their first task was always to check whether the green bit on the map was indeed woodland and not useless scrub, or had perhaps already been cut. After that they would map its boundaries, dividing it into workable portions before they set about discovering the average volume per tree and the average number of trees per acre. In order to do this as accurately as possible, they would select a plot which typified the whole wood. The larger the acreage, the more samples needed to be taken, so they might take several days to complete one piece of woodland.

And as they worked, few words were exchanged, saying only what was necessary and no more.

Gracie would measure the girth of a tree with a tape at a set point from the ground. ‘Thirteen and a quarter inches. Got that?’

‘Of course. I’m not deaf.’

‘This is a larch.’

‘No, it’s a silver birch, can’t you tell by the leaves.’ The type and quantity of standing timber was of vital importance, and careful notes had to be made of the tree’s possible age, whether it were Scot’s pine, European larch, beech or oak, if it had been damaged by squirrels, disease or blight and whether the wood had any outstanding features or peculiarities. After this would come further dispute as they attempted to estimate the height of each tree, and just to make sure they were doing the job correctly they might be inspected from time to time by their divisional officer, or someone from the Forestry Commission.

Before they could embark on any particular survey, they first needed to locate and contact the owner of the wood and gain his, or her, permission to acquire the timber. They’d met some delightful people, including actresses and Members of Parliament, many of whom were only too happy to donate their trees to the war effort, perhaps requesting a few favourites to be left standing, a point on which the team were always ready to oblige. But it wasn’t always so straightforward. Old ladies would sometimes stand on their doorsteps with tears in their eyes, declaring it impossible for them to even consider relinquishing such a family treasure.

‘You can’t take my wood, my great grandfather planted it in 1850. It’s always been here, a part of the estate. I know each and every tree individually.’

Or even. ‘Where would all the dear little squirrels go?’ and they found themselves assuring her that they were only stocktaking, that others, coming after them, would make the final decision.

They’d once been chased away by a farmer wielding a cut throat razor, while another had taken a pot shot at them with his air gun. Fortunately his aim had been wild and they’d already dived into the duck pond. It was a memorable experience.

This morning was proving to be yet another. They were having no luck at all locating the owner of the next piece of woodland they wished to survey, and the frosty atmosphere that still pervaded between the two girls wasn’t helping one bit. Everyone they’d asked had either been a stranger to the area or stone deaf, or so it seemed. In the end they’d spotted a man clearing out ditches and he’d told them Colonel Driscoll was the chap they were looking for. Unfortunately, this was his day for hunting or racing or some such, so they’d be lucky if they caught him.

‘It’s another world,’ Lou muttered. ‘Come on, we can’t waste the entire day waiting for Colonel whoever he is, to finish chasing foxes or betting on the gee-gees. Let’s make a start and get his permission later.’

More cautious, Gracie thought this risky, and suggested they mention their presence to someone up at the big house. ‘Maybe there are other members of the family living there, or even a housekeeper.’

‘Fuss, fuss, fuss.’ They cycled up a drive that was at least two miles long in Lou’s estimation although Gracie thought half a mile a more accurate assessment, only to find the place locked and barred at every door and window. No sign of the Colonel or a single member of his family. Not even a housemaid, let alone a housekeeper.

‘Has the old boy taken the whole lot of them hunting with him? Well, that settles it,’ Lou declared. ‘If we don’t get a move on, by the time the inspector arrives, we’ll be way behind and then we’ll get another rocket. And our reputation is already in ribbons as it is.’

‘Thanks to me, you mean.’

‘If the cap fits.’

They might well have gone on indefinitely in this vein, despite the fact they were both secretly longing for the feud to end but were too proud to admit it.
 
Salvation, however, was at hand in the form of one small boy, highly inquisitive and full of the adventures he devoured daily in his
Hotspur
. When he spotted two shabbily dressed figures in dungarees lurking in the woods, each carrying maps and clip-boards, he ran hot foot to the village bobby to report them as enemy spies.