Whisper on the Wind

‘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?’

Sooner or later she must come face to face with Marco Roselli; best she got it over with.

‘And watch him, Jonty, strutting over Martin’s land?’

‘He doesn’t strut, Mrs Fairchild.’ The reply was firm, yet without offence. ‘He’s called Marco and he’s my age – a good man with a horse-plough, too.’

‘He was fighting for them; with them.’

She fixed him with a stare, leaving him in no doubt that further conversation about the prisoner was at an end.

‘I’m sorry you feel as you do, Mrs Fairchild.’ His voice held a hint of the fatigue he felt. ‘Think I’d best be off. One of the heifers was a bit restless when I looked in on her; she’s due to drop her calf any time.’ A first-calving it would be, that could be tricky. Best he shouldn’t be too long away.

‘Goodnight then, Jonty. I hope you won’t be up all night. Thank you for coming, and for the milk.’ Her voice was more gentle, apologetic almost.

‘’Night. Tell Roz to have a good time.’

A good time! Hands in pockets he kicked out at the tussocky grass of the orchard. Roz had no time for civilians, now. No one had. Even in York, where a different assistant had served him when he called for the tractor spares, he’d come up against the antagonism. Foolishly he’d remarked on it to the middle-aged woman who stood behind the counter.

‘What do you mean, where is she?’ The reply was acid-sharp. ‘She’s gone to join the Air Force, that’s what. They’re calling-up women, now – or hadn’t you noticed, young man?’

Yes, he damn-well had noticed! He noticed it all the time and if he’d had any choice at all in the matter, he’d have joined the Air Force, too.

He hoped Roz didn’t get too deeply involved. Rumour had it that Peddlesbury had lost three bombers in as many weeks. Roz never did things by half. When she fell in love it would be deeply and completely and her grief would be terrible – if she’d fallen for one of the aircrew – if one night he didn’t come back.

There had been a lessening of Luftwaffe raids over England, he brooded, yet Bomber Command had doubled its raids over Germany. Stood to reason there’d be heavy losses.

Take care, Roz – don’t get hurt, love.

Roz swept into Ridings kitchen like a small whirlwind, scooped up her coat then placed a kiss on her grandmother’s cheek. ‘Bye. Got to rush. Don’t wait up for me,’ and was gone before Hester could even begin to warn her not to be too late back.

She made for the gap in the hedge, walking carefully through the orchard to the small, straight lane that led to the Black Horse inn at the top end of Alderby village. She and Paul often met at the back of the pub, though never inside it; she had no wish for her grandmother to learn about him by way of village gossip. Truth known, she admitted reluctantly, she wanted to keep their affair a secret for as long as she could, knowing as she did that this was not the time to take Paul home or even admit she was ‘going out with aircrew’ as Alderby gossip succinctly put it.

It was best, she was sure, that for just a little while longer their love should remain their own, if only to save herself from Gran’s gentle reminders of her lack of years and the folly of loving too deeply in time of war.

He was waiting beside the back entrance. She was able to pick him out in the faint glow from a starry sky and loving him as she did, the tallness of him, the slimness of his build, his very outline was as familiar to her as her own right hand.

‘Paul!’ She went straight to his arms, closing her eyes, lifting her face to his. ‘I’ve missed you.’ She always said that, but she did miss him. An hour apart was a day, and a day without him dragged into an agonized eternity. ‘Kiss me,’ she demanded.

His mouth came down hard on her own and the fierceness of it startled her.

‘Darling, what is it?’

‘Nothing. Everything.’ His voice was rough. ‘God, I love you. You know that, don’t you, Roz?’

‘I know,’ she whispered, her lips on his. ‘I know, Paul. But something is wrong. What happened last night? Let’s walk, shall we?’ She linked her arm in his, guiding him toward the lane. ‘Tell me.’

‘Sorry, darling. It’s – it’s Jock.’

Jock Ferguson, air-gunner. The tail-end Charlie who flew with Paul.

‘Where did you go last night?’

‘Stuttgart. It should have been a milk run, a piece of cake, but they were waiting for us: fighters, flack, the lot. We went in with the first wave and that’s why we got away with it, but the second wave really copped it.’

‘And Jock?’ Her mouth was dry. Paul’s tension was hers now.

‘A searchlight picked us up and Jock yelled over the intercom that there was a fighter on to us. Then he said something like, “Christ! It’s jammed. The bloody thing’s jammed!” Then nothing.’

‘Yes?’ She squeezed his hand tightly.

‘Skip told me to go to the tail and find out what was up – see if I could sort it.’

‘Jock was hurt?’ She pulled him to her, holding him tightly, feeling the jerking of his shoulders and the bitter dragging out of each word.

‘The turret was smashed – a great, gaping hole and Jock – hell, Roz, his face was – he was – Jock’s dead.’

‘Ssssh.’ She covered his mouth with her own, stilling his anger and grief. ‘I love you. I love you, Paul.’ It was all she could think of to say.

‘His gun must’ve jammed. He certainly didn’t fire it. He wasn’t eighteen, Roz. Not till next week. We were planning a booze-up for him. A kid, that’s all he was. A kid on his thirteenth op. It makes you want to jack it all in. He hadn’t lived, poor sod.’

‘I’m sorry, darling. I’m sorry.’ Not yet eighteen. Younger, even, than herself. ‘His mother?’ It was important to think of her, too.

‘She’s a widow, I believe, but they’ll give her a pension, I shouldn’t wonder. And they’ll have sent her a telegram by now then follow it up with the usual letter – full of platitudes it’ll be, and bloody cant. They’ve already packed his kit and stripped his bed. In a couple of days’ time there’ll be someone else in it and hoo-bloody-ray for Jock Ferguson.’

‘Was there a lot of damage?’

‘The rear turret’s gone for a burton; they’ll have to fit a new one, that’s for sure. Don’t know what other damage there was. We were last crew home and how Skip managed to get the thing down I’ll never know. We were all frozen. The heating was shot-up and the wind was coming in through – through where Jock was. We just climbed out and walked away from it when we realized we’d made it and left them to get Jock out. The CO was there, but he never said a word; had the sense to keep his mouth shut, thank God. They put rum in our tea, at debriefing – a lot of it, but it did nothing for me. Couldn’t sleep afterwards. Just kept seeing that turret. I’m a coward, Roz. I threw up, when we got out.’

‘No, Paul! You’re not a coward! Night after night over Germany; of course you threw up. What do they think you’re all made of – stone?’

‘That’s it. Stone. That’s what they’d like.’

‘Well, you’re not. You’re all of you flesh and blood. You should go to sick bay tonight and ask for something to help you sleep –’

‘Sick bay? Oh, no. One word, just one whimper, and that’ll be it. Rennie’s cracking up. Rennie’s got a yellow streak. LMF, that’s what his trouble is …’

‘Stop it! I won’t listen! You’re not a coward and you’re not lacking moral fibre!’

‘You try telling that to those bastards. You try telling them that for every steel-nerved hero in Bomber Command, there are ordinary blokes like me and Jock; blokes who are afraid sometimes, and afraid to admit they’re afraid.

‘Try telling the big brass that, Roz. They’d strip us of our rank. We’d be erks again. They’d send us some place where we couldn’t contaminate decent airmen and they’d stamp LMF on our papers. In bloody red ink!’

‘You’re shaking, Paul. You’re cold.’

She wanted to hold him, comfort him; tell him to give it time. She needed him to know that she loved him no less for admitting fear; needed him to realize that she understood the terror of take-off, of sitting dry-mouthed till that overloaded, overfuelled Lancaster was safely airborne.

She remembered that eleventh aircraft. It had been Paul’s, though she hadn’t known it, hadn’t realized they’d been fighting for height and praying the undercarriage hydraulics were all right, knowing that below them, down there in the smug safeness of the control tower, they’d already ordered out the crash crew, the fire engine and the ambulances.

‘Come with me, Paul?’ She saw the haystack ahead. Not that it looked like a stack – just a darker mass, the size of a small cottage. But only this morning she and Kath had cut hay from it to carry out to the far field and she had been happy and relieved because all the Peddlesbury bombers were back. Why hadn’t she felt Paul’s fear? Why hadn’t she been with that eleventh bomber every second of the time it took to land? Why hadn’t she known he’d been in need of her love? ‘We can shelter behind the stack – it’ll be warmer, out of the wind …’

She was coaxing him, speaking to him softly as she would speak to a child awakened from a nightmare. But a child could weep away its fears in its mother’s arms; a man could not. Paul could not, dare not weep. Paul could only live each day as it came, and count each one a bonus. For him and for all those like him, tomorrow was a brash, brave word, never to be spoken.

‘This way, Paul. Can you see all right?’ This way, my darling. Let me share the fear. Let me hold you and love you. Don’t shut me out.

Kath wrapped her pyjamas around the hot-water bottle then slipped it into her bed, wondering where the next one would come from should this one spring a leak. What would happen, she frowned, if the Japanese armies overran the latex-producing countries in the Far East as easily as they had taken Hong Kong? They wouldn’t, of course, but suppose they did? There’d be no more hot-water bottles nor tyres for lorries. And what about teats for babies’ bottles? But best she shouldn’t think about it – well, not too much. Leave tomorrow to take care of itself. She wondered if Barney had got her letter yet, and if it had made him happier about her being a landgirl. She hoped so. She didn’t want to cause him a single moment of worry when she was so happy. Because she was happy. To be happy in time of war was wrong, but there it was. Just to be here, in this attic, in this bedroom all her own was bliss enough. Already she had put her mark on it. A jar filled with holly stood on the window ledge, her picture of Barney stood atop the chest of drawers, her dressing gown hung on the door peg and her slippers – slippers Aunt Min had knitted from scraps of wool – stood beneath the chair at her bedside.

And at Home Farm things couldn’t have gone better, she sighed. She could almost drive the small tractor and could harness Daisy into the shafts of the milk-float. She could even muck-out the cow shed now without wrinkling her nose.

She wondered about threshing day. Mat had ordered the team, Grace said only this morning, and it would be arriving at Home Farm any day now. Threshing days, Grace told her, were very important, with everyone turning-to and giving a hand, and extra workers to be fed. Wheat, barley and oats were desperately needed; every bushel they had would be sold.

She switched off the light then opened the blackout curtains, gazing out into a sky bright with stars. Tonight had been quiet. No bombers had taken off from Peddlesbury. Somewhere out there in the darkness, Roz and Paul would be together.

Dear, sweet Roz. They had known each other little more than two weeks, yet she understood her so well, Kath sighed, opening the window, breathing in air so cold that it snapped at her nostrils and made her cough. But soon the days would begin to draw out, nights become less cold. Soon it would be spring and there would be daffodils and lilacs, the first rosebud, and –

The cry was sudden, fearsome and high-pitched. It cleared her mind of all thoughts save that somewhere, not very far off, an animal screamed into the night; a wild shrieking, blood-curdling in its intensity. Was some creature trapped and if it was, how was she to find it? Not a rabbit in a snare; something so small and weak couldn’t give out so terrible a cry. But what, and where?

Hurriedly she closed the window and with feet that scarcely touched the stairs, ran down to the kitchen.

‘Flora! Did you hear it? An animal in pain; such screaming! Come to the door. Listen!’

‘Pain?’ Flora Lyle laid down her pen and pushed back her chair.

‘Oh, yes. Quite near, it seems. Maybe it’s been caught in a trap. We’ve got to find it.’

‘And then what could we do?’

‘We’d let it go. It was awful. Listen. Please listen?’

She flung open the door and stood, ears straining, and it came again, that frenzied cry.

‘There, now! You heard it, too?’

‘Aye. I heard it.’ The Forewoman took Kath’s arm, pushing her back, closing the door. ‘I heard it fine. And yon creature’s no’ in pain, lassie; no’ in pain at all. It’s a vixen.’

‘A what?’

‘A she-fox; a female in season. She wants to mate, Kath. She’s no’ in any trap. Leave her be. There’ll be every dog-fox within miles have heard her. January’s the month for – well, for foxes and vixens.’

‘You’re sure?’ Kath’s cheeks flamed red. ‘But it was such a terrible sound.’

‘I’m sure. Vixens take their pleasures terrible serious, you see.’