by Jenny Holmes
‘Today he is in the hospital hut. He has not eaten.’ Lorenzo studied Una closely, taking in the desperation in her eyes, which eased slightly as she took in these last few words.
‘Oh then, he has a temperature – a stomach upset, maybe?’ It couldn’t be serious because she’d seen Angelo jump down from the truck with her own two eyes and then run to join the others. How many days ago had it been since the prisoners arrived? Three; yes, three.
Lorenzo shrugged and drew smoke into his lungs.
‘Poor Angelo,’ she murmured. She was on the point of asking which hut housed men who were sick when Lorenzo threw down the cigarette and pointed over her shoulder.
‘So he is here after all. I go,’ he muttered as he retreated with silent footfall.
Una spun around to face the man she’d longed to see, through nights of not sleeping and the web of days spent dreaming of this moment. He was as she’d imagined: smiling and walking towards her, opening his arms. She gasped and ran to meet him. His arms were around her just as she’d pictured, his cheek against hers as she hugged him back.
She sighed as he released her. ‘Oh – oh!’ Joy, joy – to be with Angelo, to touch his lips with her fingertips, to see in his eyes how much he loved her still.
He was as before. They were the same together; he taller than her, with browner skin, blacker hair, holding her close. She nestled against him and it was as if he’d never been in Scotland but had been here with her all the time.
‘This … I do not believe …’ Lost for the English words, he came out with a rippling stream in his native tongue – amore, piccola, tesoro … He held her as if he would never let her go.
Coming to her senses, she gently pushed him to arm’s length. ‘How are you feeling? Lorenzo said you were poorly.’
‘I see you,’ he whispered. ‘I am happy.’
Was he paler than before, and perhaps thinner? But then the work in the shipyards had been gruelling and less healthy than labouring outdoors in the fields, so this was hardly surprising. ‘We don’t have much time before the sentry begins to wonder where I’ve got to,’ she went on hurriedly as her feelings bubbled over in smiles and sighs. ‘I’ve kept all your letters and I never take this off, even at night.’ She held up the gold cross round her neck – his parting gift on Christmas Day as the lorry had pulled out of the yard of the Blacksmith’s Arms.
He’d leaned out to press the crucifix into her cold palm. He’d closed her fingers over it. ‘Take! … I write. Every day, I write … Ti amo, mia cara.’
He smiled through tears. ‘Carissima, you love me – this is true?’
‘Cross my heart.’ Without shyness, she placed his hand where he would feel its strong, rhythmical beat.
She was soft and warm, full of life. How could he not kiss her and hold her as if she was the most precious thing in the world? After all, she belonged to him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘Grace! Grace!’ Bill flung down his hat on the kitchen table then ran to the foot of the stairs. ‘Where are you?’
She came in from the back yard where she’d been watering her pots of parsley and mint. ‘Here I am. What’s up?’
‘It’s Jack!’ His eyes shone with excited disbelief. ‘There’s good news! He’s in Italy, in a camp. The Italian navy picked him up. He’s alive!’
‘Oh, Bill, that’s marvellous!’ She took his jacket and hung it over the back of a chair then sat him down and demanded details.
‘The telegram came through earlier today. Esther delivered it to the Hudsons in person. News spread like wildfire around the village. The blast didn’t kill him – somehow Jack managed to get off the ship in one piece.’
‘How did you find out?’
‘From Mum. She telephoned me at the workshop. Honestly, Grace, I couldn’t credit it. She had to repeat it three times.’
Grace reached across the table and held his hands. ‘What did the telegram say?’
‘Not much – just bare facts. Jack’s a prisoner of war. He’s held near Rome, according to Mum, in a big camp where they plan to send hundreds of our boys captured at Tobruk. He’ll be in good company.’
He paused for breath and Grace squeezed his hands tight. ‘I wonder how long he was in the water before he was picked up. At least it’s warm in the Med, that’s one good thing.’
‘Yes. We don’t even know if he was wounded. But Jack’s tough – he’ll come through this all right, I know he will.’
She nodded. ‘There’ll be doctors in the camp. It’s near Rome, you say?’
‘North east of the city.’ Bill sagged forward and let out a long sigh of relief. ‘We just have to get through these next few months until Jack and all the other lads are released and sent back home for good. Russia’s holding on to Sevastopol and we still have Suez. Hitler’s not getting it all his own way.’
Grace was silent. They were yet to see the ‘light which shines over all the land and sea’ that Mr Churchill had promised them late last year and so far the dreadful bombing raids over Germany that Edgar was involved in had not weakened the enemy – in fact, the opposite: the so-called Pact of Steel powers were seemingly poised to take Egypt. And then, further afield, there was Hong Kong and Burma, not to mention the struggles in India.
‘We will come out on top,’ Bill vowed. ‘Before long, we’ll put Jerry in his place.’ Raising his head to seek agreement, he saw doubt in her eyes instead of certainty. ‘That’s what they’re saying on the news bulletins – that we’re well on the road to victory.’
‘Fingers crossed.’ Grace would sometimes note the silences on the news rather than the statements that the politicians regularly spouted. What about the damage to Canterbury, Bath and Coventry, for instance? There’d been no mention of that after the German bombardments, nor any attention paid to the recent back-pedalling in Libya. ‘I’m just sorry that it’s taking so long. And it must feel awful for Jack, being taken prisoner along with all the chaps who scrapped so hard in the desert. He’ll be pretty cut up.’
Bill frowned. ‘You can’t talk like that. To win this war we all have to look on the bright side, otherwise we might as well throw our arms up now and surrender.’ He resented the shift of mood and wanted to pull their attention back to his best friend’s lucky escape. ‘Anyway, I wouldn’t be surprised if Jack tunnels his way out of this camp before too long. He’s not the type to sit on his backside.’
‘A lot of them do try to escape – so yes, I wouldn’t be surprised either.’
Something was bothering Grace but she couldn’t put her finger on what. Perhaps she was just tired after three days at Home Farm, weeding and rat-catching, milking and haymaking late into the evening, until tonight when she’d finally put her foot down and clocked off at teatime for a change.
‘He’ll be up and at ’em – unlike me.’ Bill carried on with his train of thought, pulling his hands away and clenching his fists. ‘Sometimes I wish …’
‘Wish what?’
‘That I didn’t have to tinker around with tractors all day long.’ He broke free abruptly then went to look out of the window where he saw Maurice closing and locking the door to his workshop. The green paint was peeling and there were weeds growing up through the cobblestones in the shared yard. ‘It’s not what an able-bodied bloke should be doing when there’s a war going on.’
‘The powers that be don’t think that,’ she reminded him. ‘And it stands to reason – we need to make sure our farm machinery is in good working order to keep the war effort going. That’s the way everyone looks at it.’
He shook his head without turning round. ‘But if I was Jack or Edgar, I could hold my head up better. As it is …’ He shrugged then tailed off again.
In a sudden rush of sympathy, Grace joined him at the window. Maurice was opening the back doors of his van, whistling as he loaded a wooden crate containing car parts. There were only a few years separating the two men but the mechanic’s waistline was already thickening and the bald patch on the top o
f his head did nothing to improve his baggy, down-at-heel appearance. ‘You’re not comparing yourself to Maurice?’
Her probing question opened the floodgates and three years of pent-up frustration poured out. ‘When it comes to it, where’s the difference? Not much, as far as I can see. Except that Maurice is a one-man band whereas I have three mechanics working for me, which frees me up to swan around in a suit and tie, drumming up new business.’
‘So you’d rather be in navy uniform, standing in the bow of a boat waiting for a low-level bomber to drop torpedoes on you?’ Aware that her exasperation would push them further apart in this their first disagreement of married life, frustration still got the better of her. ‘What’s got into you, Bill? I’ve never heard you talk like this before.’
‘No, but on the quiet I’ve felt rotten ever since war was declared. I’ve known people were looking sideways at me, judging me. Why wasn’t I volunteering? What made me so special?’
‘I’m sure they haven’t been,’ she protested. ‘Everyone knows that what you do is important.’
Bill ignored her. ‘And if Dad had still been here, or if he hadn’t had his bad heart, I would have volunteered as soon as war was declared,’ he vowed. ‘I’d have chosen the army and I’d have been proud to serve.’
‘And what about me?’ Where did she feature in this alternative version of events? Grace’s stomach twisted into a knot as she waited a long time for him to reply.
Stony faced and standing by her side without reaching out to her, he stared across the yard. ‘I’d still have married you.’
‘Then I’d have run the risk of losing a brother and a husband.’ It was selfish and she was ashamed the moment she spoke the words. But men had no notion of how it felt for the nation’s women to snatch envelopes off the doormat the moment they fell through the letter box, desperately hoping for a letter from their loved ones addressed in familiar handwriting, dreading the official telegram that would change their lives utterly.
His frown deepened and the gap between them widened. For the first time they would go to sleep that night without any loving caresses. ‘I’m just saying,’ he muttered. ‘It bothers me; that’s all.’
‘Well, Joyce – thank you for writing back to me and I’m sorry if my last letter came as a shock. I promise that I’ll be on best behaviour this time.’
She smiled briefly then read on in the quiet of the common room. All the others were already in bed and the old building settled and sighed towards a midnight silence.
‘I’ll stick to what I hope will interest you. First off, I’ve been sent to the barber’s for my compulsory short back and sides, all over and done with in a minute and a half, start to finish. Last weekend we went for a refresher course in navigation and Morse code. I spent the Sunday evening back at base building a valve radio for use in the billet. Then I did my washing the Rinso way.
‘There – how’s that? I’m sure you’re glued to the page and can’t wait for the next instalment.’
Dressed in her pyjamas and curled in one of the big leather armchairs, with the window standing open and moon and stars reflected in one of the tall panes, Joyce’s imagination carried her off into an unfamiliar men’s world of barber’s chairs and shaving cream, dot-dot-dash and the hum of valves and smell of molten solder.
‘Seriously, though, there were many evenings prior to that when I was on operational duty, with no time for building radios or doing laundry. My name showed up on the battle order for five nights on the trot, Monday to Friday. Dicing tonight, as the saying goes. We get a briefing beforehand and a report from the Met officer, Navigational officer and Intelligence officer in that order. There’s usually time for a few hours’ kip before we fly out. Once out over the bomb line, we have to watch out for night fighters and try to avoid enemy flak coming up from below, doing our best to keep out of range of the searchlights.
‘On the Wednesday night, something daft happened. We were instructed by Control to maintain height and turn two degrees east, steady away. There was an unidentified aircraft close behind us but we were not to alter course or speed. Bugger that, we thought (pardon the French) and we took evasive action. But guess what – Jerry had locked on to our wavelength and we spent the next five minutes exchanging fire and flinging swear words at each other in a mixture of German and English – bloody hilarious! (Again, excuse the language.)’
She smiled a second time then sighed. This follow-up letter from Edgar, so different from the first, echoed the tone of her own reply but she found herself disappointed. It could have been from any one of the thousands of RAF pilots currently in active service to any friend, male or female, left to serve on the Home Front; a letter in which they made light of the horrors of warfare and gave nothing away. There were only a few sentences towards the close that lifted Joyce’s spirits.
‘At the end of this week I’ll have finished my current tour and will be due five days’ home leave. I’ll be more than ready, believe me. So, Joyce, if you can stand to be seen out and about with me with my newly scalped haircut (which will have grown a little by then), perhaps you’ll agree to come out for a drink. Shall we say on Monday the 29th at half past seven? If you agree, I can drive out to Fieldhead. A yes from you would be a real pick-me-up. With very best wishes, Edgar.’
‘Yes please, Edgar.’ She wrote back without hesitating in forward-sloping, even handwriting. ‘I’ll be very happy to meet you when and where you say. I look forward to it very much. Love from Joyce.’
Of all the work places they were regularly sent out to, Brigg Farm had quickly become Doreen’s favourite. She got on well with the normally snappy, acerbic Roland Thomson for a start.
‘Now then,’ he called out to her with unaccustomed breeziness when she cycled into the yard with Una and Kathleen on the last Thursday in June. There was a drizzle in the air and little breeze to shift the heavy clouds clinging to the horizon. ‘I hope you’re ready to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in.’
‘Always!’ she replied, propping her bike against the stable wall. ‘What have you got in store for us today, Mr Thomson? I hope it’s not thinning turnips in the top field like last time.’ That had been a nasty, back-breaking job – down on their knees for hours on end, with sacks over their heads to keep off the rain.
‘No, I want two of you down in Low Field, loading hay on to the wagon; the other one can lend a hand further up the hill, bringing in the spring lambs.’
‘Us and whose army?’ Doreen demanded, nudging Una when she spotted a tell-tale army Land Rover parked across the yard. Young Neville went to cadge a cigarette from the driver, who leaned his rifle against the wall while he offered him a light.
‘Who do you think?’
‘Would it be our Italian friends, by any chance?’
‘Bull’s-eye,’ Roland confirmed.
‘Una, the lambs will be your job for the day.’ Kathleen winked at Doreen. ‘Hayricks, here we come!’
The Tommy with the packet of cigarettes strolled across to join them. ‘I have to walk up the hill with coffee for the Eyeties,’ he told Una. ‘All the gear is in the back of the Land Rover. You can help me carry it.’
Things were working out perfectly and Una beamed at Doreen and Kathleen. In fact, she’d spent the last week more or less in a state of ecstasy, boldly inventing more reasons to visit Beckwith Camp and wangling secret assignations with Angelo. As the days went by she found that the other prisoners and even some of the guards would turn a blind eye whenever she left her bike at the gates and slipped out of sight.
Today, however, might turn out to be the first time that they would spend the whole day together. And even if he wasn’t part of the group, she would surely be able to get a message to him to arrange their next meeting.
‘It’s a pity it’s not a better day,’ the Tommy observed as they slung bulky canvas satchels over their shoulders then set off up the steep, stony hill at the back of the farm. There was the chink of tin mugs and the slosh of coffee inside
big vacuum flasks as they walked. ‘My name’s Cyril, by the way.’
‘Una,’ she replied.
Cyril recognized her as the regular visitor to the camp. ‘This has made your day, eh?’
‘What – walking out with you?’ He was a jaunty lad, about the same age as her youngest brother, Geoffrey, and she felt able to tease him.
‘You should be so lucky,’ he joked back. ‘Anyway, I don’t think my sweetheart back home would be too happy about that if she found out.’
Una asked his sweetheart’s name – Mildred – and all about her. She was eighteen and lived in Northgate and they were engaged to be married.
‘When?’ Una asked as they toiled up the hill past a limestone outcrop and over a ridge. A low mist clung to their faces, cutting down visibility to twenty or thirty yards, so that they could hear sheep bleating in the distance but could see no sign of them until they descended into the next valley and a new, mist-free vista opened out.
‘The sooner the better.’ Everything about Cyril was raw and eager – his voice and his smile, the way he strode out into whatever the future held. ‘Mildred’s mum is the only thing stopping us. She says we should wait a couple of years. I’m working on Mildred to make a stand and do it sooner – in secret if we have to. Once we’ve signed on the dotted line, her mother can’t argue.’
Una paused and inhaled deeply. Ah yes, now she could see the sheep scattered over the hillside: ewes with their heads down to graze the short, sparse grass; lambs doing what lambs did – running and springing straight up in the air, racing to tug at their mothers’ teats then skip off again.
Cyril waited for her to catch her breath. ‘Who are you looking for? No, don’t tell me – let me guess.’
Una’s face grew more serious. So far she hadn’t spotted the party of prisoners who had been sent to herd the sheep. ‘Is he here?’ she asked anxiously. ‘I mean Angelo.’
‘I know who you mean. And yes, your luck’s in. I brought him and his pal Lorenzo and a couple of others. But you know what the Eyeties are like – they’re a lazy bunch so they’re probably taking a quick kip while they think no one’s looking.’
