by Jenny Holmes
Just then a black-and-white collie cut across the green slope and started to snap at the heels of one of the ewes, which raised its head then tottered unwillingly towards its two lambs, bleating loudly. The dog stayed low to the ground, ears pricked, intent on pinning down and holding the sheep.
Then two men appeared, dressed in the familiar grey uniforms. Una’s heart skipped a beat as she recognized Lorenzo and Angelo. At the same moment they noticed her with the soldier. They exchanged a few words before they split apart – Lorenzo to carry on working the dog and Angelo to set off in her direction.
‘No need to say anything – three’s a crowd.’ With an exaggerated wink, Cyril made himself scarce.
Una put down her satchel then ran down the slope. Before she knew it, Angelo’s arms were around her and his lips against hers, bringing that swooning sensation she felt at every embrace.
For a while no words were spoken. It was enough to kiss and lean in close, to breathe each other in.
So warm, so gentle. He was everything she’d ever dreamed.
So small and beautiful. Her eyes shone with love.
She saw tears form in his deep brown eyes and gently brushed them away. ‘You’re not sad?’
‘No – happy.’
The exact timbre of his voice, like no one else’s. The way a lock of his thick black hair curled down over his smooth forehead.
There was space all around them – a misty sky and green slopes folding into each other all the way to the horizon. They ignored the barking of the dog in response to Lorenzo’s high whistle.
Una gestured towards the satchel perched on a rock further up the hill. ‘We’ve brought coffee. I’ve been sent to help with the lambs.’
Angelo wrapped his arms tight around her waist. ‘My wish is true.’
‘Shall we tell Lorenzo and the others to stop for coffee?’
‘After.’ First they must smile and kiss again and again.
‘Hey up!’ It was Cyril’s voice that broke them apart. He still carried his rifle but he’d put his satchel alongside Una’s and now shouted down the hill. ‘This is getting out of hand.’
Angelo blushed and let go of her. Una laughed out loud. ‘Don’t mind him.’ She grinned. ‘He’s only jealous.’
But the mood was broken and as if by magic, two other prisoners materialized from behind one of the great, mossy slabs of rock that littered the slope while Lorenzo settled the dog to guard the huddle of sheep then joined them. Soon everyone sat cross-legged in a circle, tin mugs at the ready, while the flask of coffee was handed from one person to the next.
Una sat close to Angelo, exchanging smiles and listening to the rapid flow of Italian between the prisoners. Every so often, Cyril’s blunt tones cut across the running rivulet of foreign sounds – ‘nice weather for ducks’ as the drizzle turned to rain, ‘bloody things’ when two ravens swooped down to peck at the jam jar containing sugar for the coffee. The birds flapped and squawked then flew off when Lorenzo tossed a stone in their direction.
Angelo noticed that Una had no coat. He took off his short grey jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders, leaving him in a thin white shirt that was soon soaked by the rain.
‘Blimey!’ Cyril raised an eyebrow but made no other comment. Like flipping Walter Raleigh with his cloak, he thought. Mildred would never expect that sort of treatment from me. She wouldn’t get it either.
When the coffee was drained, Lorenzo was the first to stand. He looked to the heavens and smiled as he pointed to an area of cloud that had thinned, allowing a weak sun to shine through.
‘Time to get a move on,’ Cyril declared as he got up and dusted himself down. ‘Let’s round up the sheep over the brow of the next hill. Lorenzo, I’m putting you in charge. Una and I will stay here and collect the coffee cups.’
Back at Brigg Farm, Doreen and Kathleen rode on the back of Neville’s cart to the hay field in the valley. They perched with pitchforks across their laps on top of a pile of folded tarpaulins, ready to cover the ricks at the first sign of heavy rain.
‘We’re all right so long as it doesn’t chuck it down,’ Neville called over his shoulder. ‘We can work on in this.’
Kathleen tilted her head back to feel the warm dampness on her cheeks. She enjoyed the swaying rhythm of the wooden cart over the rough track and the sound of Major’s hooves clip-clopping along.
‘When you say “we”, I suppose you mean me and Kathleen.’ Doreen had got the farm lad’s measure the first time she met him. ‘Not that I’m calling you work-shy, young Nev!’
‘Quite right – I’m a busy man.’ With a self-important flick of the reins he urged Major on down the track. Hawthorn hedges in full bloom obscured the view of fields to either side. ‘In fact, later on this morning I’ll have to leave you girls to it and nip off to see to other business.’
Kathleen laughed merrily. Doreen prodded him in the back with the blunt end of her pitchfork. ‘Ooh-er – other business!’ she echoed, while Kathleen broke into an old Harry Champion song.
‘“Any old iron? Any old iron?” What are the words? Something about, I wouldn’t give you tuppence for your old watch and chain?’
Doreen hummed the tune. ‘That’s about it, eh, Nev? You and your old horse and cart have entered the rag and bone trade.’
‘Mock all you like,’ he sulked, turning into a sloping field where hand-built hayricks awaited them. ‘You’ll be laughing out of the other side of your faces when you see me waltz your little friend Poppy off in a taxi to Northgate on Saturday night.’
‘A taxi!’ Kathleen cried in astonishment as she jumped off the back of the wagon then immediately attacked the nearest rick with her fork.
‘All the way to Northgate!’ Doreen too got stuck in to the morning’s task. ‘Are we sure this hay’s not too damp?’ she checked with Kathleen.
‘Neville’s the boss,’ came the reply. ‘You heard what the man said – we have to work on until it pours down.’
Which it did after less than an hour’s pitching, when the cart was only half full. The heavens opened and the girls were quickly soaked to the skin.
‘Quick – tarpaulins!’ Kathleen told Doreen to grab one side of a canvas sheet. Together they covered what was left of the first rick before sprinting on to the next.
‘Come on, Nev, lend a hand!’ Kathleen insisted. ‘This hay is meant to see Major through the winter. It’ll be ruined if we don’t watch out.’
So they hauled and lifted as a threesome until the job was done. Then the girls insisted on a lift back to the farmhouse to wait for the rain to ease.
‘Giddy-up, Major!’ Doreen climbed up beside Neville and seized the reins. Before long they were clip-clopping up the lane with her in the driving seat. They arrived in the farmyard smiling but looking like drowned rats, according to Roland, who told them to take shelter in the hayloft while Neville unharnessed Major and he went into the house to make a pot of tea.
‘Two sugars for me, please!’ Doreen called after him.
‘You’ll be lucky.’ Kathleen discovered a wooden crate hidden under a heap of hay in a corner of the loft and sat down. It was only now that she realized just how wet she was – the corduroy fabric of her breeches clung to her thighs and her hair was plastered to her head.
Doreen took off her red headscarf and wrung it out. Then she tipped her head forward and shook out her dripping curls.
Down below, they heard Neville telling Major to stand still while he removed his harness. Then there was another voice that they couldn’t quite make out.
‘That doesn’t sound like Mr Thomson coming back with our tea.’ Doreen glanced down into the yard. ‘Look who it isn’t!’ she said.
‘Hmm.’ Kathleen joined her and spotted Alfie wheeling his bike across the yard. There was a crate tied to the back of the saddle so she watched for a few seconds as he undid the straps then she tutted and went back to sit on her box without commenting.
Doreen, however, thought there was more fun to be h
ad. She emerged on to the top step and stood, hips tilted at an angle, one hand placed lightly on her waist, waiting for Alfie and Neville to look up at her. When they did, she gave them plenty of time to study her statuesque pose.
Noticing that her wet cotton shirt and corduroy trousers outlined her figure perfectly, Alfie immediately took up the challenge. ‘Hello, Doreen – that’s quite an eyeful!’
‘Why, hello to you too, Alfie. I take it that you’ve decided not to ignore me today.’ She went down the steps languidly, with a provocative pout in his direction.
He grinned in an insinuating way then offered his hand for her to jump down the last two steps. ‘When did I ever ignore you?’
‘Last Saturday,’ she reminded him. ‘In the pub car park. You were too busy with your fancy friends to bother with the likes of me.’
Alfie glanced quickly at Neville, who seemed to take the hint to wheel Alfie’s bike out of sight, round the side of the stable. ‘Don’t be fooled; they’re not fancy and they’re not my friends.’ Tapping the side of his nose in a knowing way, he slid her arm through his. ‘Anyway, I came into the Blacksmith’s Arms with you, didn’t I? I don’t call that ignoring you.’
‘Yes, you warmed up after a frosty start,’ she remembered. ‘You bought me a drink, right under Donald’s nose, as I recall.’
‘You didn’t say no, though, did you?’ He raised his eyebrows and pinched her arm lightly, appreciating her smooth, damp flesh, warm to the touch.
Seeing Roland emerge from the house complete with loaded tray, she withdrew her arm and led the way. ‘Tea up!’ she called to Kathleen and Neville. ‘Mr Thomson, is there enough in the pot for an extra cup? Alfie has cycled all the way from Home Farm. The poor chap needs to wet his whistle.’
By midday the rain had stopped and herding the sheep and lambs resumed. Up on the fell, the four POWs and Una worked all afternoon to round them up. As they began to bring the flock down to the farm, Cyril gave her and Angelo the job of staying back to check for strays.
‘Don’t spend too long looking,’ he advised with a knowing smile. ‘You know what they tell Little Bo Peep in the nursery rhyme – leave them alone and they’ll come home …’
‘Wagging their tails behind them!’ Convinced by now that her happiness was infectious, Una mouthed a lively thank-you. She recited the whole rhyme to Angelo then explained its meaning. ‘“Wagging” means wiggling – like this.’ She shook her slim hips from side to side and made him laugh. ‘Do you have any children’s rhymes where you come from?’ she asked.
He thought a moment then took her hands and swung her round as he sang some strange words. ‘“Giro, giro, tondo … Casca il mondo. Casca la terra, tutti giu per terra!”’ On the last line he pulled her down on to a patch of long meadow grass with golden buttercups and pale milkmaids.
‘Let me guess what it means,’ she laughed as she clasped her arms around his neck. ‘“Everything turns, the world falls down …” Then what?’
‘“The earth falls down, we all fall down!”’
‘Like “Ring a Ring o’ Roses”!’ The same rhythm, the same actions. But rolling slowly with Angelo down the slope and with the blue sky turning above them, her mood shifted without warning. ‘The world won’t end, will it?’ she asked in a small voice. ‘You don’t suppose that the war will alter everything and there’ll be no getting back to where we once were?’
Struggling to understand, Angelo pushed her hair back from her face then stroked her cheek. To him it was like a shadow coming over the sun. ‘Do not be sad.’
‘I won’t,’ she promised. But she couldn’t escape a sudden, sharp awareness that everything was temporary – the petals of the buttercups were easily crushed, clouds would obscure the sun, rain would fall.
‘Daft things!’ Doreen had no patience with the hundred or so sheep and lambs bleating loudly in the stone fold next to the tumbledown sty where Lady M and Roland’s other pigs were housed. The sheep stumbled and crashed into each other in their struggle to find a way out. ‘They sound silly and they are silly. That’s all there is to it.’
‘I don’t hear you complaining when you’ve got a nice, juicy lamb chop on your plate.’ Ever since Alfie had put in an unexpected appearance, Kathleen had been subdued. The girls had drunk their tea then gone back to the hay field and carried on pitching without asking Neville the whys and wherefores of Alfie’s visit. Now, though, as she and Doreen sat on the hayloft steps waiting for Una and Angelo to come down off the fell, Kathleen had to decide whether or not to open up the topic that had been bothering her all afternoon.
‘Don’t talk about food – I’m famished!’ Doreen couldn’t work Kathleen out. Sometimes, she was the life and soul of the party – at Grace’s wedding reception, for instance, when she’d danced right through to the end. But at other times, like now, she seemed flat and deflated. ‘What is it? Have you had bad news about a sweetheart?’ she asked.
Kathleen leaned back against the warm wall and shook her head. ‘No bad news. No sweetheart.’
Doreen rolled her eyes. ‘You’re kidding. I expected you to have at least two or three on the go.’
‘At the same time?’
‘Naturally. You can have the pick of the bunch with your looks. What did you do in Civvy Street, by the way?’
‘I was a hairdresser in Millwood.’
‘That fits. I mean, you’ve got nice hair. Is it permed or were you born with those curls?’
‘Natural. How about you?’
‘Hand on heart? The waves are natural but the colour isn’t. I wanted to make changes after I got the telegram about Bernie.’
‘Your fiancé?’
‘That’s the one. Changes, starting with my hair. That sounds like nonsense, doesn’t it? The man I was to marry snuffs it so I dye my hair brunette. But that’s me, take me or leave me.’
‘It’s not nonsense,’ Kathleen argued. ‘And I understand. Anyway, blonde isn’t my natural colour either. By rights I’m mousy brown.’
Doreen laughed then busied herself by taking out a cigarette and lighting it. ‘We’ve got more in common than I thought.’
‘You don’t say. And while we’re having a heart-to-heart, you might as well know that I went out with Alfie Craven a while back, when we both lived on Union Street.’
‘Never!’ Doreen’s answer was accompanied by a fleeting but piercing glance at Kathleen’s face through a puff of blue smoke. ‘I take it you don’t want him back?’
‘No, never in a month of Sundays.’
‘That’s all right then.’
‘Do you want to know why I dropped him? No, don’t bother answering – I’ll tell you anyway. It was for two reasons. First of all I learned that he’d been in prison.’
‘What for?’ Doreen’s attention was now firmly fixed.
‘Grievous bodily harm. It involved a knife – that’s all I know for certain. And that he made a lot of enemies when he was in gaol and that he got out after three years.’
‘Blimey. Does Ma Craven know?’
‘I haven’t a clue. I wasn’t too keen on him after I found that out, but I might have considered him a reformed character and given him another chance if it wasn’t for the second thing.’
‘Let me guess – he was married.’
Kathleen remembered the exact moment when she’d learned this secret from a customer who knew someone who knew the wife, Maureen. ‘With two nippers – a boy and a girl, apparently. He called himself Alf Watkins back then, so it was a big shock when he showed up in Burnside and I made the connection. I would’ve kept it to myself, except I’ve noticed the way he is with you.’
‘And you want to stop me from getting my fingers burned?’ Doreen stubbed out her cigarette then flicked it to the ground. ‘Ta – I appreciate it.’
‘Stick with Donald – that’s my advice.’
‘I said ta.’ Pressing her lips together, Doreen turned her back.
‘Because a leopard doesn’t change its spots,’ Kathlee
n insisted.
From her high vantage point Doreen spied Una and Angelo walking down the hill hand in hand. She jumped down the steps and hurried to fetch her bike, ready for the off. ‘At long last, here they come – love’s young dream!’
CHAPTER TWELVE
A blast of fierce heat struck Grace’s cheeks as her father opened the furnace door then used a pair of heavy pincers to shove the curved blade of Joe Kellett’s broken scythe deep into the glowing embers. She listened absent-mindedly to the sounds that had been part of her childhood – clinking metal and gusts of wind forced through bellows – accompanied by the smell of hot iron and choking fumes that caught the back of your throat as you breathed them in.
Cliff cocked his head sideways to peer into the furnace. ‘I take it Joe wants his scythe back straight away?’ he growled.
‘Yes, he told me to wait until you’ve finished.’ She glanced outside, wrinkled her eyes against the sunlight and was able to make out a regular customer leading his horse into the yard. ‘Neville’s here with Major. Were you expecting him?’
‘No and I’ve only got one pair of hands,’ her father grumbled. ‘Tell him he’ll have to wait.’
‘I don’t suppose he’s in any hurry.’ Neville was taking his time to tie Major’s lead rope to an iron post before he sauntered in to announce his business.
Cliff raked more red embers over the rusty blade, his face glistening with sweat. ‘This is the last time I can fix this; the steel’s all but worn away. Joe needs to shell out for a new one, tell him.’
‘I will, Dad.’ Grace was enjoying the breather from hard labour that her visit to the smithy had afforded. She’d left Una and Brenda slaving away in Joe’s ditches, digging up weeds and mud from the clogged channels. While her father got on with the repair job, she strolled outside to have a word with the newcomer.
Neville ducked under Major’s head and walked slap into Grace.
‘Good grief – what happened to your face?’
‘It’s nothing,’ he muttered gruffly.
