Whisper on the Wind (11 page)

‘Hang on, Roz! Wait for me!’

‘It isn’t fair, Aunt Poll, me having to go back to school the very day the threshing machine’s coming to the farm. I’ll miss it all, and I wanted to help.’

‘Well, you can’t. School’s more important than threshing day and anyway, you’re too young to help. The law says you’ve got to be fourteen.’

‘But I’m big enough.’ Arnie’s bottom lip trembled.

‘Aye, I’ll grant you that.’ A fine, strong lad he’d grown into. ‘But not
old
enough, so you’d best eat up your toast and be off with you. You’ve got to learn all you can if you’re to get that scholarship.’

A place at the grammar school; Polly wanted it for him more than she cared to admit. Arnie was a bright boy, his teacher said. Given to carelessness sometimes, though that was understandable in the young, and too eager to be out of the schoolroom and away into the fields. But bright, for all that. If he’d only take more pride in his handwriting and not cover his page with ink blots and smudges, then yes, he stood a very good chance of winning a scholarship.

He’d look grand in that uniform with the striped tie and the green cap, Polly thought proudly, though where she’d find the clothing coupons and money for such finery she wished someone would tell her. But she would manage. She always had.

‘Eat your toast, lad,’ she murmured, ‘and don’t be so free with that jam. That pot has to last us all month, remember.’

‘Yes, Aunt Poll.’ He eyed a strawberry sitting temptingly near the top of the jar and decided to leave it there for tomorrow. ‘I bet you’ll be helping with the threshing. I bet you’ll be able to get a good look at that engine.’ Nobody told grown-ups what to do. He couldn’t wait to be a grown-up.

‘No, I won’t. Doubt if I’ll see it at all, noisy, dirty old thing. I’ll be helping Mrs Ramsden feed all those people, though how she’ll find rations enough for seven extra is a mystery to me.’ Grace Ramsden was proud of Home Farm’s reputation as a good eating place, in spite of food rationing. Like as not there’d be rabbit pie and rice pudding; good farmhouse standbys. Rumours had been flying, since the Japanese came into the war. No more rice, people said, and if their armies got as far as India, no more tea. Now the rice, Polly considered, folk could do without if they had to, but tea was altogether another thing. ‘And anyway, who’s to say for sure that the team’ll be coming today? Mat will have to wait his turn. There’s a war on, lad, don’t forget.’

‘I know, Aunt Poll.’ People said there’s a war on all the time these days, as if a war was something terrible. Wars weren’t all that bad, Arnie considered. They’d be a whole lot of fun if it wasn’t for people getting killed. It would be awful when it was all over and he had to go home. He liked being with Aunt Poll, having regular meals and regular bath-nights, and living in the country was a whole lot better than living in Hull.

He liked Aunt Poll a lot; she was better, he had to admit, than his mother. Not that he was being unkind to his real mother; it was just that he had to try very hard, these days, to remember what she looked like.

‘Do you think,’ he frowned, taking his balaclava from the fire guard where it had been set to warm, ‘that Mam’s forgotten where I am?’

‘Now you know she hasn’t. Didn’t she send you a card at Christmas with a ten-shilling note inside it? Of course she hasn’t forgotten you.’

No indeed, though she wished she had, Polly mourned silently. What was more, an action like that gave rise to suspicion, especially when such generosity had previously been noticeable by its absence.

But at least Mrs Bagley’s visits had ceased after that first year, for now she was on war work; on nights, mostly, though night-work could cover many occupations, Polly brooded, especially when a woman bleached her hair with peroxide and plucked her eyebrows, somehow managing to get bright red nail varnish and lipstick when most other women hadn’t seen such things in the shops for months. My word, yes. There was night-work and night-work.

Arnie pulled on his knitted helmet and its matching gloves. He’d been delighted to open the soft, well-wrapped parcel on Christmas morning. He wouldn’t mind betting that when he got to school this morning, he’d be the only boy with a khaki balaclava and gloves;
khaki
, like the soldiers wore.

He called ‘So-long, Aunt Poll,’ then ran out quickly before she could attempt to kiss him; kissing was for girls. Whistling joyfully he squinted up at the Lancaster bomber that flew in low to land at RAF Peddles-bury.

Smashing, those Lancasters were. Great, frightening things, with four roaring engines and two guns and bomb-doors that opened at the press of a button. He wouldn’t mind flying a Lancaster. Pity he was only nine and a bit, though with luck the war would last long enough for him to be seventeen-and-a-half. He crossed his fingers, frowning. Grown-ups got all the fun.

Climbing the garden fence he made for the long, straight drive and the beeches and oaks that stood either side of it like unmoving, unspeaking sentries. This morning he was taking the ‘field’ way to school, cutting behind Ridings and the pasture at the back of Home Farm, to pick up the lane that led to the pub and the school nearby. This morning’s journey was longer and wetter underfoot and usually taken in spring and summer only, but Arnie felt cheated to be missing the dirt and din of a threshing day and was determined at least to see the monstrous, huffing, puffing engine; to close his eyes with delight as it clattered and clanked past him, making the most wonderful, hideous noises.

Instead, he saw Hester Fairchild. She was standing very still, gazing at the ploughed earth around her and she looked up, startled, as he approached.

‘Arnie! Hullo! Taking the long way to school this morning?’

He gave her a beam of delight. He liked Mrs Fairchild; not because Aunt Poll liked her but because Mrs Fairchild liked small boys. She was always pleased,
really
pleased, to see him. And she didn’t look at him as if he were a nuisance nor speak to him in the silly voice grown-ups used when they spoke to children.

‘I’ve come this way to see if the threshing team has got here. Are you going to see it, too?’

‘No, Arnie. I came to look at the ploughing – to see how they’re getting on.’ She had come, truth known, because she knew the ploughs would be idle today; because Mat and Jonty and the Italian would be busy all day in the stackyard and she wouldn’t have to acknowledge a man she would rather were anywhere than on her land. ‘Shall we walk together as far as the house?’

‘All right.’ Arnie liked Ridings, too; liked it because it was big and full of echoes and hollow noises. He liked the big, painted pictures on the walls; pictures of people with serious faces, dressed in old-fashioned clothes and whose eyes followed him as he walked past them.

He dug his hands into his trouser pockets and matched his step to that of his grown-up friend.

‘Did you know,’ he confided, ‘there’s a boy in the village whose dad is abroad in the Army and yesterday the postman brought him a big box of oranges, all the way from Cairo.
Twenty-four
, there were. Can you imagine having twenty-four oranges, all at once?’

‘I can’t, Arnie. I really can’t.’ Not for a long time had anyone been able to buy oranges – except perhaps one at a time and after queueing for it at the village shop. Nor could children like Arnie remember the joy of peeling a banana, for that particular fruit had disappeared completely at the very beginning of the war. ‘Twenty-four oranges, the lucky boy! Never mind, Arnie. Perhaps someone will send you oranges from abroad one day.’

‘Nah. Not me. Haven’t got a dad, see? Well, I have, but not an
official
one. Stands to reason, dunnit, when I’m called Bagley and Mam says me dad’s called Kellygodrottim. Glad I haven’t got a name like that. Think how they’d laugh at school if I was called Arnold William Kellygodrottim.’ He’d do without the oranges, thanks all the same.

‘Just think!’ Hester’s voice trembled on the edge of laughter. What a joy of a child this was. Small wonder Polly adored him. ‘But I’m afraid you won’t see the threshing team. The driver won’t set out with such a big machine until it’s properly light. It’ll be another half hour before it gets here.’

She reached the orchard gate then turned to watch him walk away, raising her hand to match his wave, thinking how cruel life could be when an unwanted, carelessly-conceived love child like Arnie could grow up so straight and strong and delightful.

And I couldn’t give you a boy, Martin; couldn’t give a living son to Ridings. Nor, when our babe died, could I try again.

I’m sorry, my love. Forgive me. I didn’t know. Believe me, I didn’t know
…

The threshing team clanked into the yard on great, grinding, cast-iron wheels, spewing out coal-smoke, throwing mud in all directions.

‘
Good grief,
’ Kath gasped.

‘First time you’ve seen one?’ Jonty smiled.

It was. She stood still and wide-eyed, thinking so strange a contraption could only have come from an age that had known Stephenson’s Rocket. It was almost a steam-roller, yet with the look of an ancient steam train about it and it pulled a brightly painted contrivance behind it.

‘That’s the thresher,’ Jonty supplied, following her gaze. ‘They’ll back it up to the stack and the sheaves will be thrown down into it, into the drum.’

‘Y-yes.’ Kath frowned. ‘Does it work on electricity?’

‘Nothing quite so convenient.’ Jonty shrugged. ‘Look – see that big wheel on the engine beside the driver’s seat? It’s that wheel that connects by a belt to the thresher; and, roughly, is what drives it. And without blinding you with science,’ he laughed, ‘the straw comes out at one end, the wheat at the other and the chaff – the wheat husks, that is – drop down below it.’ He smiled again and his eyes, thick-lashed and blue, crinkled mischievously. ‘Got that?’

‘Yes. Well, I
think
so.’ My, but he was handsome. ‘You’ll let me down lightly, Jonty?’

‘I will. If you aren’t afraid of heights you can go on top of the stack with Marco. He’ll be feeding the sheaves down into the drum; you can keep them coming to him – okay?’

It wasn’t. All at once she was apprehensive, but she said she’d do her best – and thought how foolish she had been to worry about milking a cow, when, had she known about traction engines and threshing machines that day she volunteered for the Land Army, she’d have taken to her heels and run a mile!

‘We’ll be making a start soon, Kath. They’ve only to fix the belt, and then we’ll be away.’

‘What will Roz be doing?’

‘She’ll be seeing to the filling, most likely. There’s hooks at the back end of the thresher, for holding the wheat-sacks. Roz will watch them and tie them when they’re full; there’ll be a couple of big strong lads to hump them away.

‘Last time we threshed, Roz was on the chaff.’ Jonty grinned. ‘It’s a dirty job. The poor love was black all over by the end of the day. She didn’t speak to me for ages after.’

Kath laughed with him, biting back the words she longed to say; that if he truly cared for Roz, if he acknowledged what his eyes showed so plainly, then he would wait a while; be there if one day she should need him and the comfort of his safe, broad shoulders. She didn’t say them, though, because there was really no need, and anyway, it was no business of hers. But oh, if a man smiled at me the way Jonty smiled at Roz; if his eyes loved me the way his eyes loved her, Kath yearned, I’d be putty in his hands. If, she thought, dismissing such stupid thoughts, she were heart-whole and fancy-free. And not married to Barney, of course.

The thresher was belted-up to the traction engine, the drum rotated noisily. Beside it in the stackyard stood two carts; one for straw, the other to carry away the fat, full sacks of wheat. Roz stood to the rear, a pile of hessian sacks at her side and she waved to Kath who looked giddily down from the top of the stack.

‘Be careful,’ Marco warned. ‘Straw can be slippy. Be careful how you step.’

‘I will.’ Of course she would. ‘Tell me again? I just throw the wheat sheaves over to you and –’

‘That is so. And I shall cut the binding-twine, then throw them down, like so.’ Gravely, he mimed the operation. ‘It is nothing for worry. I show you how.’

The air was frosty and filled with scents of coal-smoke and dusty straw. Kath smiled at Flora Lyle who had come to help, and taken up her position beside Roz.

‘All right?’ Flora mouthed, and Kath lifted her hand in a reassuring wave.

‘Right!’ the engineer called. ‘Here she goes!’

Marco spat on his hands, rubbed them together, then lifted the first sheaf. Kath took a deep breath. This was better than working in a factory or on munitions. This was where she had always wanted to be; what she had always wanted to do.

She spat on her hands as Marco had done. This was it, then!

She was glad when eleven o’clock came for her arms ached and her mouth was dry with dust; already she had stripped off her pullover and unfastened the top button of her shirt. For the last thirty minutes she had been unable to think of anything but a glass of cool, clear water and the sight of Grace and Polly carrying jugs and a tray of mugs was more than welcome.

‘Slack off!’ came the cry. ‘Drinking time!’

‘Come.’ Marco held the ladder steady, indicating to Kath to climb down first.

‘Water, anybody?’ Grace called and Kath answered with a grateful ‘
Please
,’ closing her eyes, drinking deeply.