The Archers

by Catherine Miller

  ‘And you are?’ said Doris to the girl, no, woman, no, girl, who stood by the boys.

  ‘Their sister.’ The teenager was evidently sick of her charges. She was dark and pert and fizzing. ‘And this is Wizbang. You’ve gotta find a home for him and all.’ She explained that the stick-thin mongrel was an evacuee. ‘He’s next door’s dog. Everyone in London’s killing their pets, the government said to, no rations to feed them, see?’ Her own father, the girl offered, had ended the family cat with a tin of red salmon. ‘Ironic, really, that was her favourite dinner.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’ Doris knew that an extra mouth to feed would be unwelcome. ‘And you, dear? I don’t have you on my list.’

  ‘I’m not an evacuee!’ the girl blazed. ‘Mum made me come along, to see them settled in, she’s up the wall about this so-called war. I’m fifteen,’ she said, with great emphasis. ‘I’m looking for a job.’

  Dottie plonked down her cardboard case and held out her hand. ‘All right, missus? Your fella away, is he? Mine’s in France. Or somewhere.’

  ‘Farmers can’t be called upon to fight.’ Every time Doris said that she tried to look grave, but she wanted to throw her hat in the air. She looked over the heads of the straggling little crew who were filing off the platform, looking for Jack. ‘Besides, my husband’s over the age limit.’ The generals only wanted men between eighteen and forty-one; Dan Archer was officially past it. ‘He’s doing his bit, though.’ There was a ‘bit’ for everyone to do, it seemed. Not doing your bit was tantamount to a war crime. ‘He’s very busy, setting up the local War Ag.’

  ‘The what?’ Dottie, who hadn’t much in the way of a chin and whose eyes were somewhat hard-boiled, screwed up her face.

  Doris explained, losing her audience early on, that the War Ag was a government-appointed local committee. They would see that the many, various, damn silly at times wartime farming regulations were implemented. ‘It stands for War Agricultural Executive Committee.’

  ‘’Ere,’ said Dottie, amused, her default setting. ‘With your old man running this War Ag and you being Billeting Manager, you’re like the king and queen of Ambridge!’

  Doris stood on tiptoe and spotted the funny little triangular khaki hat and let out a loud ‘Jack! Over here!’

  Jack’s shoulders sank. He flicked away his cigarette. He saw the girl. He straightened up. ‘Let me,’ he said, taking her rucksack and leaving Dottie with her enormous suitcase. He ignored his mother. He ignored the boys.

  ‘What’d you bring Glen for?’ Doris pushed at the dog’s snout. He adored Doris; she was the fount of all food, giver of scraps.

  ‘He ain’t listening, missus,’ said Dottie, rounding up the boys Peggy had left behind.

  Jack said, skipping to keep up with Peggy, ‘I’m Jack. Jack Archer.’

  ‘I’m very pleased for you,’ said the girl. She sighed and acquiesced. ‘I’m Peggy,’ she said. ‘Peggy Perkins.’

  ‘Lovely name,’ said Jack.

  Peggy rolled her eyes, and Jack thought what lovely eyes she had.

  * * *

  Only one potential host family turned up to Ambridge’s village hall to meet the evacuees. The one family Doris didn’t want to see. ‘Stan,’ she nodded. ‘Connie.’

  No nod back. The Horrobins were short on social niceties. Outliers by inclination, they flickered like shadows, mutating and changing, always taking the crooked road. ‘Crims,’ was Dan’s prosaic take. Doris couldn’t argue, but she knew Connie was also a victim. Married at seventeen to the hulking Stan, Connie had spent the last twenty years churning out children on nought pence a year.

  ‘You comin’ home with us and all?’ Stan sent his eyes on a leisurely tour of Peggy.

  Peggy said, ‘You’ll know me if you see me again, won’t you?’ and looked Stan up and down in return, with the clear message that her tour wasn’t so scenic.

  Doris fixed Stan with one of her stares. John had inched behind her. She felt the boy lean into her and she reached back to take his hand. ‘You sure about this, Connie?’ Doris held on tight to John’s hand. It was so small and hot in its mitten. She thought of the dejected Horrobin smallholding, the featherless hens, the cat who gave birth in Doris’s handbag the last time she was there. ‘You’ve your own to be getting on with.’

  ‘What you trying to say? You think I can’t look after ’em?’ Connie was pugnacious, her temper in direct contrast to her skin-and-bone build. Her youngest, Bert, four years old in a handknit, edged towards Billy and John.

  ‘We can’t play with you,’ said Billy. ‘You’re too little.’

  At the back of the hall, Jack snorted. He’d been told he could get home but no, he’d said, he’d wait and take Doris home. ‘Thanks, love,’ she’d said, amused at his sudden helpfulness, and aware it wasn’t her who inspired it.

  ‘How much do we get for ’em?’ Stan Horrobin, scowling around a roll-up, cut to the chase. ‘Ten and six for the first one, then eight and six for the next two, I heard.’

  ‘You heard right, but…’ Doris looked at the door. Where were the patriotic locals?

  ‘How much do them little ones eat?’ Stan sized up the two pipsqueaks. He poked Billy as if the boy was a sheep at the county fair.

  ‘Oi!’ said Billy and Peggy in unison.

  John began to cry. Quietly. Into the back of Doris’s coat.

  ‘What about me?’ Dottie was plaintive. She had been befuddled by the drive from Hollerton Junction, asking why weren’t there pavements, and was this really it, was Ambridge just a straggle of houses with no cinema and no dance hall and no nothing? ‘I’m two months gone. I shouldn’t be kept hanging around.’

  ‘You’re mine, dear!’ Mrs Endicott, round as a scone and quite as dense, hurried in from the cold. Her face, once the muffler had been unwound and the shapeless felt hat removed, was unmemorable except for its animation. ‘I’ll look after you until baby comes, if God spares me that long. With my delicate constitution I am always one bad herring away from death.’

  The hug that Dottie gave Mrs Endicott was tight and prolonged.

  ‘There, there.’ Mrs E was bewildered by the sudden sobbing. She patted the young woman’s narrow back. ‘Now, now.’

  ‘Don’t,’ gulped Dottie as she recovered, ‘let the sheep get me, will you?’

  ‘I give you my word,’ smiled her hostess.

  ‘Just some paperwork and you can all get along home.’ Doris was keen to get along home, too. She would have to get to grips with Brookfield, shake it and straighten it out; the stitching of the farm came loose whenever she left it. If there were two of her, two Dorises in doughty coats and tightly knotted headscarves, that would be good. To the Horrobins she said, ‘Are you willing to take Wizbang?’ She waved her clipboard at the dog, who was cowering. Or perhaps that was just Wizbang’s usual stance; he was a natural underdog. ‘He eats an awful lot,’ she added, watching the door and hoping for another local to turn up and offer for the Perkins boys.

  The door creaked open, and Doris’s heart rose. Jane Gilpin stood framed in the opening. Doris’s heart fell.

  ‘Do you need any help, Doris dear?’

  The Gilpin sisters could no more take in two boisterous boys than Doris could backflip across the Marmoleum. ‘Everything’s under control, thank you.’ Then, when Jane lingered, and the moment seemed to demand it, ‘Off somewhere nice?’

  ‘To see Denholm.’ Jane spoke in a rush. The awful flower on her awful hat quivered.

  ‘Just the two of you?’ Doris and Dan had watched the bachelor Denholm circle Jane with some kind amusement. Since his mother died, the village’s most dedicated bachelor needed someone to keep house for him.

  Jane was shocked by this question, as if Doris had hinted at bestiality. ‘He’s a gentleman, Doris!’

  If you say so. To Ambridge at large, Denholm was self-absorbed and poor company. And a little stained, as if he needed a good going over with a stiff brush.

  As the Horrobins grumbled and the boys chas
ed Glen up and down the stairs to the rickety stage where, many moons ago, Doris had played Juliet to Dan’s ad-libbing Romeo, Jane milked her moment. ‘Denholm may be about to ask an important question. Very important. The most important question of all.’

  ‘You mean…’ Doris cottoned on. ‘But Jane, you can’t—’ She was glad of Peggy’s sudden shout of ‘Oi! Boys!’ Poor Jane knew she couldn’t marry, and didn’t need Doris to point out why not.

  Jane went off to meet her destiny. Dottie went off on Mrs Endicott’s arm. Billy, John and Wizbang were officially signed over to the Horrobins.

  The war demanded much. It meant following orders, obeying baffling new rules. Doris found herself signing the form slowly, as if those extra few seconds would make time for the cavalry to arrive.

  Peggy was brisk. She squatted in front of her brothers. ‘Now you behave yourselves.’ She wiped noses and tucked in shirts. She belted John’s macintosh even tighter.

  ‘Me wellingtons hurt,’ he said. His voice was unfeasibly small, as if he was doing a music hall trick.

  ‘Wear two pairs of socks tomorrow.’ To Billy she said, ‘You look after your little brother, you hear?’

  The ten-year-old pulled a face. He disliked soppiness. ‘We’ll be all right, sis,’ he said.

  ‘Of course you will.’ Peggy looked at John for a long time, as if memorizing his face.

  It was Stan who put paid to the farewells. ‘Billy, Jim, get a move on,’ he said.

  ‘He’s John.’ Peggy straightened up. She laid her hand on John’s golden head. ‘He’s John, mister, you call him John.’ She lifted her hand. ‘And you look after him, right? Or you’ll have me to answer to.’

  Neither boy looked back as their new guardians took them out to the horse and cart Stan still used. Wizbang was almost abandoned. Doris whooshed him out of the door. Nobody was left behind on her watch.

  Peggy turned to Jack, who stood to attention in a way he never managed in Ripon. ‘So, you taking me back to the station or what?’

  * * *

  Her kitchen. Her fiefdom. Cabbage boiling and little Christine drying dolls’ clothes in front of the fire. Doris went from scullery to range to dresser, tying her overall tighter and pushing back her hair, and pulling together a robust meal.

  She pushed the Perkins boys from her mind. She would keep an eye. It would work out. There was much to do, besides wonder how long Jack would take dropping Peggy to Hollerton Junction. It was the men’s last supper, before they scattered. Her men. This time tomorrow, they’d be in uniform.

  ‘Your mum was good as gold.’ Dan Archer dried his hands on the wrong towel, his labours finished for the day. He wasn’t much taller than Doris. He was undistinguished. He was a template for Normal Man. Lovely eyes, though, if you looked harder. They were usually squinting through the curling smoke from his pipe. He put a hand, a paw, on her shoulder. ‘We’ll manage, love.’

  ‘Shush.’ Doris glanced over at eight-year-old Christine. This topic was not for childish ears.

  Dan tapped the side of his nose with his finger. Truth be told, he was in no mood to discuss his mother-in-law either; Lisa scared him, and that was not a nice thing to admit. He leaned back, folded his arms, unaware he was in his wife’s way, and said happily, ‘You should have heard the talk in The Bull last night, love. Stan Horrobin reckons the letter writer’s some other fancy woman of Alec’s, jealous of the newer model!’

  ‘Dan!’ Doris jerked her head in Christine’s direction a second time. ‘For heaven’s sake.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Dan sagged. Then perked up. Marvellous powers of recovery. ‘Have I time to stick up some fresh cardboard over that window before dinner? Now that I’m War Ag we can’t be contravening the blackout.’ He pushed Mother Cat off the draining board.

  Doris dithered behind him. She needed to get to the sink. She caught Mother Cat’s eye. Men, they both seemed to say.

  * * *

  Hollerton Junction was not romantic. Neither was Peggy. Yet, as they waited on the empty slab of platform, Jack wanted to kiss her. He wanted to bend her backwards like in the movies.

  Peggy was silent. She stared down the track. This gave Jack time to study her shining hair, and the headlamp gleam of her large eyes. He went for blondes usually, a taste nurtured by the aforementioned movies. He also went for easy, and this girl was anything but. Words that Jack rarely used occurred to him as he surreptitiously took in Peggy’s shape beneath her coat. Haughty. Imperial. Imperious? One of them. She was a queen, a gypsy queen, she was…

  ‘Eyes front, soldier boy,’ said Peggy.

  ‘I was thinking, like, if I’m ever up in London…’ A distant hoot. The train was drawing near. ‘Can I look you up?’

  ‘Why would a country mouse like you go to London?’

  The neat chug of the train grew louder. The engine formed in the dark.

  ‘The army might send me, or I might drive up there.’ They both knew there was nothing to drive; family cars sat idle on bricks. ‘Here, let me.’ Like a Frenchman, he opened the heavy carriage door, hoping she’d push down the window and lean out to him. Those movies again; they misled him.

  Peggy laughed as she jumped up the step. All was movement, steam, whistles. Her eyes glistened like an animal’s. ‘This is the last time you’ll see me, Jack Archer.’ She extended an ankle. ‘These shoes’ll never touch Borsetshire soil again.’

  She slammed the door. And Jack felt himself grow smaller and smaller as the train took her away from him.

  * * *

  Lower Loxley was a house of many windows, and many views.

  It was the sort of house, dignified, historic, that obligated its owners to offer a tour to guests. The view from Pamela’s desk, in the room they called the office, was always a highlight.

  Acres of green. And much of it owned by her husband’s family. Pamela had little time to relish its beauty, and besides, the morning’s drizzle turned the green to greige.

  Invitations to respond to. Cheques to write. An admonishment to Borchester council via the letters page of the Borchester Echo. Pamela’s pen was quick and sure, the double P’s of Pamela and Pargetter sword-swipes.

  Alec passed the window. He looked worried. His forehead had creased just after Christmas, and remained that way. Three weeks had seen off the bruising around his eyes – How clumsy of him to walk into the stable door! – but he still seemed damaged.

  Nobody would know he was two years younger than her. He sometimes teased her about that. Pamela felt her neck. A stroke, a checking motion. Still firm. And long.

  Pamela was a long woman. She had the unlikely limbs of a fashion illustration, and clothes hung just right on her. She had given up London for Alec – that’s how she put it – but she dressed as if on her way to drinks in Mayfair. Clinging green wool today, with a gathered neck and a fabulous brooch from a long-dead Pargetter.

  Whether or not he’s over the age limit, that man needs to be at war, thought Pamela as her husband knelt to kiss Hero. His black Labrador was a shadow, a spirit guide, and was kissed a lot. Pamela felt her own mouth with a forefinger.

  She wasn’t given to self-doubt. She wasn’t given to wondering whether she should be softer or warmer or sweeter. Does he want an actress? She rubbed harder against her lips; they were fashionably thin, like the rest of her. Does he want me to pretend to be what I’m not? Pamela slid a nail into her mouth and bit down hard.

  ‘There now,’ she snapped as she surveyed her ruined manicure. ‘Look what you made me do.’

  FEBRUARY

  The Archers rarely disagreed.

  They prided themselves on it, the way Mrs Endicott prided herself on her cherry tree and Stan Horrobin prided himself on never being sober during the hours of darkness. But today they disagreed.

  ‘It’s character-building.’ Dan sat at the table, frowning at War Ag paperwork. The cold morning was done, lunch finished, and Doris’s mum was napping, safe and quiet upstairs.

  ‘It’s cruel, is what it is,’ said
Doris, from the sink. ‘Yes, Dan, I know, I know, you grew up helping out at Brookfield, but there’s a difference between helping out and proper work.’ She’d put Phil to bed exhausted the night before; an eleven-year-old shouldn’t be spreading dung. Doris checked her tiny gold watch, an engagement present that never lost a second. It was ludicrously dainty on her wrist, yet had endured and survived decades of farm work and house work. It just kept going.

  She had half an hour before she had to go and pick up the new labourers at Hollerton Junction. ‘Mind you, Phil did well. Him and Dusty out there together.’ The horse had known what to do when the boy didn’t. ‘The ground’s perfect right now. This frost’s good for something, at least.’

  ‘Dusty’ll be retiring soon, if the powers that be have their way.’ Dan was offhand, totting something up with the stub of a pencil.

  ‘How’d you mean?’ Doris paused, her hands in water. Her hands were always in water.

  ‘Mechanization, old girl! The war’s bringing change. You remember the winter we had two years ago.’

  She did. Neither of them went any further; the word ‘bankruptcy’ was taboo. Dan had worked so hard to found the dairy herd, and they had come so close to losing it. Along with the house and their dignity. The war saved us.

  Now there’s a gristly bone to gnaw on.

  The government – the great They – needed to feed a blockaded nation. With the ports seizing up, They looked to the farmers, and paid them well. ‘For once!’ Dan liked to say. ‘And about time.’ But the equation bothered Doris; the government overpaid them for food, then swallowed the cost to offer it cheaply to the nation. It was an inducement; they deserved it, they worked hard, but it felt a little like profiteering.

  Whatever the ins and outs of it, the Archers – and Brookfield – were back in business; they had Adolf to thank for Doris’s new handbag.

  ‘I heard, on the War Ag grapevine, that Red House Farm’s already put in for one of the new tractors.’ Dan tried hard not to be prideful about his War Ag connections, but didn’t always manage it.