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"I've engaged someone for part-time in the garden. It's that Andrew Maclntyre. He's only on four days over at Tarrant's so he'll do at least two days for me, and likely get through as much in that time as the others did in a week. I won't say I would have taken him if there had been choice of ... Why, Grace ... I' As the cup fell out other hand to the floor with a clatter and she fell over sideways she heard his voice echoing as if through a gigantic empty hall, " Why Grace! Why Grace!

WHY GRACE!

"

In June 1939 Grace gave birth to a son; he had blue eyes and features that could be traced to neither Andrew nor Donald nor herself. If at this early stage there was a resemblance to anyone it was to her own father. The birth left Grace quieter inside and changed her still more. It intensified her feelings for Andrew, it created a passionate love for the child, and strangely enough created in her a tolerance towards Donald. She called him Stephen.

She had the baby at home for reasons best known to herself, and she did not stay long in bed after the birth but was up and actually had taken a walk in the garden by the ninth day. It was a Thursday and the nurse had put the baby in the pram under the porch, and Andrew Maclntyre, who was mowing the front lawn, came and looked at the child. He looked at it for a long time, and then he smiled at its mother. On 3 September war was declared, and Grace hardly noticed it except that it brought to her a fear for the safety of her child. But for that and the fact that Andrew had now to take a full-time job at Tarrant's which after all was a blessing in disguise for it deferred his call- up she might have ignored it altogether. Her life was wrapped around the child to the exclusion of apparently everything else. That the vicar's wife took no active part in the village's stand against this war passed unnoticed.

The vicar's wife wasn't strong and having a baby had taken it out of her more than somewhat.

As far as the duties of a parson's wife pertaining to the parish were concerned Kate Shawcross filled that bill. And this, too, passed without comment. Kate Shawcross was a wonderful organiser.

Everybody knew that and in this time of crisis was glad of if. Kate went to the extent of seeing to the arrangements in the cellar below Willow Lea. Andrew Maclntyre had constructed some wooden bunks in the cellar, also a cupboard for holding stores. Miss Shawcross saw to a carpet being laid, bedding being brought down, first-aid equipment put ready to hand, candles and matches in case of emergency . two boxes of matches, for the vicar was naughty, he was always walking off with matches . she even soaked dozens and dozens of news papers into a horrible pulp with which to seal the cracks in the boards that had been nailed over the ground level window of the cellar. "In case of gas, you know."

When the first air-raid warning sounded over the village Grace did not have to be told to remember her drill. She did not know whether it was a practice or a real warning, but she grabbed up the child and flew with him down into the cellar. She did this almost nightly for the first fortnight of the war and nothing happened. From this time onwards she had ceased to fly, but on the sound of the air-raid warning she would gather up her belongings and the child in an unhurried fashion and make her way downstairs.

Donald was the centre hub of the village administration, and during these first few days of fevered tension he acted more like a general than a parson. Each evening found him at the ARP post in the school-room, where he was second in command to Colonel Parley. If the colonel was on duty from six to ten, Donald took over from ten to four.

From time to time the air-raid warnings sounded and excitement ran high.

But in the weeks that followed, things, not only in the village but apparently in the whole country, settled down like a monotonous routine, and for everyone, with the exception of Kate Shawcross, life in the schoolroom became slightly boring.

It was the first Christmas of the war and Aunt Aggie was coming to stay. Aggie rarely came to the house, and Grace was more than a little surprised that she had accepted the invitation to stay over Christmas.

Besides the reason that she wanted to see Aggie and talk to her there was another reason that made her visit doubly welcome. She knew her Aunt Aggie would look after the child and enable her to see Andrew for a while. There was no-one in the village she could call upon to stay in the house while she went out where could she say she was going in a blacked-out village? It was weeks now no, months since she and Andrew had even touched hands. They had glimpses of each other, they spoke at times, but the world of the village was looking on. If it hadn't been for the child, life would have been unbearable.

That night when she had first heard that Andrew was coming as part-time gardener and had fainted, Dr. Cooper had kept her in bed for two days, and during that time she had been tormented by a number of different feelings, not least among them that the situation would take on something of indecency if Andrew came here to work. And the question kept coming to her: why had he done it? Why had he placed them both in such a position? She didn't get the answer to this until she had stood in the greenhouse looking at him. It was quite in order for the vicar's wife to go down and speak to the gardener, quite in order, and no-one could hear what she said to him in the greenhouse.

Besides which, the all-round view would have shown anyone's approach.

The only thing she had to be careful of was her expression, she had to veil her desire.

She had learned to do this when speaking to Andrew, but on that day she had looked at him with her heart in her eyes as she asked, "Why have you done this, Andrew it will be unbearable?"

"Not more than not being able to see you for days on end ... perhaps weeks on end later on."

"But, Andrew, we'll give ourselves away."

"I won't." He kept looking down on the box of soil, his hands moving slowly over it.

"I told you that I could love you without seeing you or touching you, and that's true, but when he asked me to take this on it seemed like a gift. It was too good to pass over."

"But I'm afraid ... " Don't be afraid. " He lifted the box up and as he placed it on top of a number of similar ones he said, " I'll stay on as long as you do.

When you're ready to leave just tell me. "

Andrew knew her feelings with regard to the child bearing a name. He, like her, knew that Donald would never divorce her. He would have given a great deal to see her away from this house; not that he was jealous of Donald, there was nothing to be jealous of to him Donald was like a huge drum with a pea rattling inside, he despised him. It was Grace herself he was thinking of, and in this particular his conscience would trouble him, for was he not the real reason why she stayed put.

They worked out a simple means of signalling when they were to meet in the quarry. If the loop wire was removed from the staves that leant against the oak near the gate, then he would be waiting for her. Very often in the early days of her pregnancy the loop would be off but she couldn't get away. Donald would be in or someone would have called, so therefore the vicar's wife would not take her stroll out through the bottom gate and quietly along the field and up through the wood. One moonlight night as she entered the wood on her way to the quarry she bumped into someone in the shadow of a tree, and she only stopped herself from collapsing in fright on the sound of the well-known voice.

It was Ben Fairfoot; he had held her arm as he repeated, "Why, ma'am, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I wouldn't have scared you for the world. I'm sorry, ma'am, I'm sorry."

She was so shaken by the encounter that she could not go on.

"I was just taking a stroll, Ben."

Poor Ben. On no account had she been able to persuade him to take the cottage at Culbert's Cut. There could only ever be one garden for him, and he had been walking round it . on the outside. He had not asked her where she was going, anyone else might have done so.

Then there was the night that she had slipped out feeling safe because Donald was taking a meeting in the village hall, only on her return to find David Cooper in the house.

"You've given me a scare," he said.

"Where have you been, out in the dark?" And then he had looked at her shoes, at the mud around the rims. He had been puzzled, for it hadn't rained for days.

When you played a game like this you had to be careful; there were so many things you had to be careful about. Parson's wife or no parson's wife, people had the way of putting two and two together. Yet there still remained the fact that the name 'parson's wife' was like a banner held up to advertise morality. She wouldn't have believed it had she not experienced it. She could stop and talk to different men in the village and no wrong thought of it, but had any other woman been seen indulging in this way, then the heads would have got together and the tongues would have wagged. But as the parson's wife she was merely helping her husband to bring men to God.

It was laughable really, but she never allowed herself to laugh over it.

Now that Andrew, with every minute of his time taken up at Tarrant's, no longer came to do the garden and odd jobs, the quarry was their only means of contact, and their meetings were arranged by a few casual and enigmatic words while running into each other in the village or thereabouts. One such meeting had been arranged for the night after Boxing Night and Grace prayed it wouldn't snow, for apart from it being almost impossible to do that climb in the snow there would be the matter of footprints.

But on the night after Boxing Night Donald unexpectedly stayed at home.

He had a slight cold and he made this the excuse for evading the duty attending the men's meeting in the schoolhouse, and as it wasn't his night to be on duty in the ARP section his con science apparently wasn't troubled. Grace, in a turmoil of disappointment and agitation, knew that the cold was but an excuse to remain in the house and give him further opportunity of showing off his parenthood to Aunt Aggie.

All through Aggie's visit he had carried, played with, and talked incessantly to the child. He had even insisted on bathing him, which ceremony Aggie did not give herself the pleasure of watching. It was as if he was yelling at her, "Well, isn't this proof? No matter what she told you, you can't get over this." He played the father in such an outsize way that Aggie's teeth became continually on edge. His voice at this moment was floating down the staircase, and when Grace, on her way to the kitchen to get the baby's bottle, passed her in the hall, Aggie's eyes turned upwards in their sockets as she exclaimed, "I don't know how you stand it. Does this go on all the time?"

Grace smiled.

"Not so much, not at such a high pitch. It's for your benefit."

"Yes, I thought so."

There came a ring at the kitchen-door bell and Grace turned from the stove, the child's bottle in her hand, to answer it, and when she saw Andrew's tall figure framed in the dark, her hand with the bottle went involuntarily to her mouth. She glanced quickly round before saying,

"Come in."

"I have a message for ... for him."

She closed her eyes for a moment, then said, "Oh. Oh, I see." She walked to the other side of the table, it was safer at this distance.

He was still looking at her as he said, "Mrs. Rolland, the shepherd's wife, she's dying. I was passing along the road and he was waiting for me. He asked me if I would take a message to the parson and the doctor. His wife had taken a turn for the worse."

"Poor thing. She's been ill for some time, hasn't she? And away up there all alone. Yes, yes, I'll tell him." She talked of the sick woman but she wasn't thinking of her, and as she was going from the table she looked round at him and murmured under her breath, "Wait."

Andrew waited. He stood stiff and straight with his cap in his hands, and when in a few minutes Donald swung into the kitchen he answered the vicar's, "Oh, hello, Andrew' with a plain " Good evening'. He never addressed him as 'sir'.

"You have brought a message from Mr. Rolland. Do you think she is dying?"

"He seems to think so."

"Dear, dear. Well, I must go ... yes, I must go right away." He turned round as if looking for his things, and as Grace entered the kitchen Andrew said, "I took the same message to Dr. Cooper. I told him I was coming on here. He said he would wait for you."

"Good. Good. I don't fancy a bicycle ride over the fells tonight.

Good . good. Get on the phone. Grace, and tell him I'll be there in a few minutes. And by the way' he turned to Andrew 'you can't have had any tea."

"No, but that's all right."

"Oh, you must have a cup of tea or something after coming all this distance out of your way. Now it's no problem, just wait a minute."

On this Donald disappeared beyond the green baize door, and Andrew did as he had been bidden for the second time he waited.

In a few minutes Donald reappeared, he was tucking a scarf into his overcoat.

"She won't be a minute, just giving the nipper his bottle or handing the job over to her aunt." He jerked his head and laughed. He was treating the gardener to his line of jocular equality which he found had a two-fold use: it put ordinary folk at their ease, but at the same time kept the picture of the upper stratum from which he addressed them in the forefront of their minds. This he accomplished with his voice: his words were ordinary, yet the tone in which he delivered them was anything but.

Andrew said nothing, not even when Donald gave him a hearty "Goodbye, then' before going into the hall again. He merely inclined his head.

But when he heard Donald's voice calling upstairs from the hall he shut his eyes for a moment and repeated to himself, "Goodbye, my dear."

There came the sound of the front door banging, and a few minutes later the kitchen door opened. But it was Aggie who entered.

"Well. Hello there," she said.

"Hello."

Oddly enough Aggie had not seen Andrew since the morning in her office fifteen months ago, and she was surprised at the difference in him.