‘Have I?’
‘Seems so. Anything wrong?’
‘Why should there be?’
‘Hey, love, this is me you’re talking to, not some blind idiot. Come on. Tell me. What’s up?’
Perhaps it was the sympathy in her voice, or the warmth in her northern tones but suddenly Gracie found she wanted to talk, to share her worries with someone. She began by explaining how she’d enjoyed her trip to the pictures with Adam, but then how he’d tried it on and she’d stopped him. ‘I was sorry about that, because we’d come to be quite good friends. But I wasn’t happy about letting him – you know – fumble under me clothing. Touch me. It didn’t feel right, d’you see? Can you understand that?’
Lou guffawed with laughter. ‘With handsome Adam? No, I can’t understand at all. I wouldn’t throw him out of bed on a dark night.’ But on seeing Gracie’s troubled expression, she stopped laughing and squeezed her hand. ‘You were quite right to stop him, if that’s how you felt. So why didn’t it feel right? What was troubling you? Did he do something he shouldn’t?’
‘No, I don’t suppose so. At least I don’t think so. I dare say it was all - well, perfectly normal. I wouldn’t know, would I, not having your experience.’
‘You make me sound like some cheap hussy.’
‘Oh, sorry, Lou. I didn’t mean to. Only - I can’t help thinking about - about the other day. You know.’
‘Other day? Why? What happened the other day? Here, you haven’t got another secret admirer, have you?’
Gracie met Lou’s questioning gaze and remembered, with a shock, her friend’s complete antipathy towards the German PoWs. What should she say? How could she begin to describe the turmoil inside her head? How every night when she closed her eyes, she could see his face swimming in the darkness. His clear blue eyes smiling into hers. Karl Meinhadt. Even his very name sounded like music.
Yet he was the enemy.
Gracie was still struggling to find a way to put all of this into words when she heard the hoot of a lorry. Lou jumped to her feet.
‘It’s here. Come on. We’ll have to leave this heart-to-heart till later.’ As Lou started to scramble aboard, she chanced to glance up and met an unexpected, grinning face.
‘Are ye still struggling to climb aboard, Mason? It’s lang past time you learned to be a bit more athletic.’
Lou let out a squeal of joy. ‘
Jeannie!
I don’t believe it. What are you doing in this neck of the woods?’
‘Awch, what d’you think we’re doing here, girl? We’re the new Lumber Jills. Didn’t they tell you we were coming? Gi’e us your hand, or we’ll be all day waiting for ye to get a leg up.’ Jeannie and Lena each took one of Lou’s arms and hoisted her aboard, much to the amusement of the refugees who were doing their best to understand what was going on.
‘Oh crikey, I don’t believe it! Lena too. I’ll go t’ bottom of our back yard wi’ clogs on. I never thought to see you two here.’ They were bouncing about in the back of the lorry; hugs, tears and laughter all round.
Gracie stood in the road, staring up at them, bemused but grinning from ear to ear. ‘Perfect. Just perfect. You are staying, I hope?’
‘Away wi ye lassie. Course we’re staying. Didn’t I say you wouldna get rid of us that easy. We found out where ye both were, put in a request - a very forceful one I’ll have ye know - to join you, and here we are. End of story.’
Lena turned up her coat collar, shivered dramatically, and asked in her most plaintive tones, ‘It felt like summer down south. What sort of weather do you call this?’
‘Awful!’
‘Lake District weather.’
‘And the mud?’
‘Even worse than Cornwall.’
‘Oh dear. I’m not sure I shall be able to cope.’
‘Good old Lena. Don’t ever change, will you? We love you just the way you are.’ And they were all laughing and hugging each other all over again.
‘All we need now,’ Gracie said, as she was hauled aboard alongside them, ‘are Tess and Rose. I think of Rose often. I wonder how she is, and if she’s still in Cornwall. I do miss her. Tess too, of course.’
‘Awch aye, Tess would soon sort this driver out, the way he rolls into every ditch and pothole on this damn road. I swear he nearly pitched us in the drink before we even got on that dashed ferry. As for Rose. Open yer eyes, girl. What d’you see?’
Gracie glanced into Lou’s grinning face, and then from the depths of the lorry emerged a familiar figure. ‘I don’t believe it. Is it really you?’
‘It was last time I looked,’ Rose said with a grin. ‘Same old me.’ But the moment she stepped forward into the light, Gracie saw at once that it was not the same old Rose at all.
The squad were delighted to be back together and worked all the harder as a result. Their first task was to plant larch and Scots Pine close to Esthwaite Water. They measured one spade length plus one foot, then put in a sapling. Three acorns were placed between each one. These would take longer to get established but the faster growing soft wood would shelter them through the early years.
For Lou and Gracie, planting was a welcome change from all the measuring and felling they’d been doing of late, and it felt so good to be with the other girls again. There was much joshing and joking, and they all sang happily as they worked, just as they had used to do in Cornwall.
Yankee Doodle Dandy
was this morning’s favourite, as they’d all been to see the film starring Jimmy Cagney. They also sang more patriotic songs such as
There’ll Always Be an England
, or one of Vera Lynn’s numbers. Lou swore that Jeannie could sing
Bluebird
every bit as well.
‘Dinna talk so soft,’ Jeannie would say, nonetheless flattered.
The sound of a car on the road below made them all lift their heads, curious to see who it was. It was large and military with all the windows blacked out. The girls recognised it at once as one from the PoW camp.
‘Someone being taken to London for interrogation,’ Lou said, with satisfaction. ‘Should’ve kept his nose clean, shouldn’t he?’
Gracie felt a stab in her heart akin to fear as she stopped work to watch the progress of the vehicle. Could it be Karl Meinhadt? Were they taking him to another camp for being so brazen as to look her in the face, or because she’d given him a peppermint for his cough? His cough! Perhaps he was ill and being taken to hospital. She almost wanted to take issue with Lou over her lack of sympathy for the prisoners, instead she said, ‘Why would they want to interrogate anyone? What secrets could any of them possibly be privvy to, locked up in that place?’
‘Somebody planning an escape maybe? The state of the enemy submarines. Who knows?’ Lou shrugged her shoulders, tucked up a lock of hair that had fallen loose and, with a weary sigh, hunkered down to drop a handful of acorns in the trough she’d dug. ‘I hope nobody’s counting these blooming things, because I’m not.’
Alf wandered over to check why they’d stopped working. ‘You lasses short o’ summat to do?’ he asked, in his usual pithy tones.
‘We work because we want to,’ Rose quipped. ‘Not because you order us to.’
‘Hoity-toity!’
Not for the first time since she’d arrived, Gracie cast an anxious glance over in Rose’s direction. She was every bit as beautiful, for all she’d ruthlessly tamed the long, black tresses by cutting them all off. Now curled close about her head her hair had a wild, tousled quality that, far from detracting from her beauty, made her look even more sexy. Yet she seemed somehow more fragile; the lines of her young face harder and more finely drawn, the sea blue eyes smouldered with a brittle edge to their piercing brightness. Rose had said little since she’d arrived, but it was clear, to Gracie at least, that something had occurred which had damaged the young, innocent girl.
Drat this war, she thought. That was the real enemy. Not Karl, simply because he was a German and therefore on the opposite side; but the war.
Alf was certainly not oblivious to Rose’s undoubted sensual appeal and didn’t in the least seem to mind her cheeky response. He was actually chuckling, as if he found the remark amusing. ‘Nay, you young lasses wouldn’t last long wi’out a man to call the tune. Just like them PoWs, thee needs watching.’ Jerking his head in the direction of the departing car, he continued, ‘That fool’ll be sorry he ever crossed them. Like that other one, a year or two back. He rattled them good and proper. Stepped out of the military vehicle what fetched him, and not only told his guards that he knew where he was, but how far it were to Windermere and Kendal, which lakes provided steamer trips, and even how much it cost for a cream tea in Grasmere. He’d been in the holiday business afore the war, apparently. Worked for some big hotel or other.’ Alf let out a great guffaw of laughter. ‘Mind you, he should’ve kept his trap shut. They bundled him back in t’car and took him off someplace else. Silly bugger.’
All the girls had a good laugh at this, enjoying the tale. Gracie and Lou exchanged a speaking glance. It wasn’t like Alf to be so chummy. Could it really be Rose’s smouldering new look which had loosened his tongue, or did he have some other purpose? All was made plain with his next words.
‘It’s happen part of a search patrol. They say there’s a prisoner loose.’
‘Loose?’
‘Aye, an escapee. So before you lasses gets into thee beds tonight, make sure you take a good look under it. Who knows what thee might find there.’
‘Do you think Alf was serious?’ Lou wanted to know, as the pair of them prepared for bed later.
Gracie was standing at the open window, shaking her dungarees outside, to make sure she’d brought no spiders home. ‘Who can tell? He was certainly in a more jovial mood than usual. Perhaps it was just Alf’s warped idea of a bit of fun to scare the living daylights out of the new girls. He’d get a lot of satisfaction out of doing that.’
Kicking off her slippers, Lou scrambled into bed, pulling the sheets up to her chin and stretching her aching muscles with a long moan of relief. ‘Lord, I’m tired. We worked hard today. No doubt tomorrow Alf will be calling himself a hero, claiming to have caught the blighter single handed.’ She chuckled.
Gracie climbed in beside her then quietly asked, ‘What do you think about Rose? Does she seem - different to you?’
‘In what way?’
‘I’m not sure. She just seems harder somehow, and yet...’
‘More fragile? Yes, I do see what you mean.’ Lou was thoughtful for a moment. ‘Almost as if she’s been badly hurt. Do you think she has? She’s not said much about where she’s been, or what’s happened to her since we last saw her. Has she told you anything?’
‘Not a word.’
‘You don’t think she’s found a fella, do you?’
‘Not Rose. She’s too young and innocent by far.’
‘She’ll be eighteen before too long, surely. You were young and innocent yourself once, and look at you now, being courted by our lovely Adam. Oh, what was it we were talking about? Something about some other secret admirer?’
‘Don’t be silly. You must have misheard. I’ve no admirer, secret or otherwise. And Adam isn’t courting me.’ Gracie kept her face turned away as she carefully filled her glass with water, so that Lou couldn’t see the colour which came into her cheeks. She’d regretted that remark, ever since she’d made it, and had no intention of attempting to describe the unforgettable look which had passed between herself and Karl, or how she’d dreamed about him since. She always thought of him by name now, never as simply a PoW. ‘You’re the one who pulls in all the talent. Though a chap might soon change his mind if he was forced to sleep with you and listen to your snores night after night, as I am.’
‘Cheeky! I don’t snore.’
‘Really? Can you hear yourself while you’re asleep then?’
‘Anyroad, chaps who share a bed with me, don’t get much chance to sleep.’
‘Chaps is it now? Plural. Oh, I see, you make a habit of it, do you? Wait till I see Gordon. There will be fisticuffs then.’
‘Only joking, only joking.’ And giggling, the pair finally settled down, said their good nights, and were instantly asleep.
Gracie wasn’t sure what had woken her. She was certain that her alarm clock hadn’t gone off, and it was still pitch black outside. But something must have disturbed her as she still felt heavy with sleep. Then the sound came again. A great clanging noise. Strangely familiar.
Lou’s voice came to her out of the darkness. ‘
My God!
That sounds like someone has just knocked the tin bath off the wall in the back yard.’
‘Who d’you think it is?’
‘It couldn’t be the missing prisoner, could it?’
‘Oh my godfathers.’ Gracie was out of bed in an instant, her feet searching for her slippers, boots, anything, while her hands floundered about seeking matches to light the candle on the bedside table.
‘You’re not going out to look?’
‘I must.’
‘Wake Adam. Let him go.’
‘I’m not scared of an escaped PoW. He’s probably even more frightened than me.’
‘Don’t you believe it.’ By this time Gracie had her greatcoat on over her nightie and was making her way along the landing. Lou was right behind her. The pair crept downstairs, each clinging tightly to the other.