by Roland Moore
Another option was that someone else had snaffled them for their own Christmas dinner. That wouldn’t be beyond the realms of possibility but who in the close-knit community of Helmstead might do such a thing?
Joyce reached the line of trees at the rear of the farmhouse. An empty coal bunker stood derelict and forlorn, its stained dark interior sucking the light in this corner of the garden. Joyce looked around. An eerie stillness permeated the morning air. She felt a sudden unease – as if her mind was finally succumbing to the one thought she was desperately trying to shut out.
What if the German airmen had taken them?
Joyce ran from the garden and burst into the kitchen of the farmhouse. She planned to tell Esther about the chickens and the lack of any signs of it being a fox that had taken them. But instead she was confronted by two sombre-faced women sitting at the kitchen table, turning to look anxiously as she entered. Esther was sharing a pot of tea with Lady Ellen Hoxley, resplendent in her blue suit. Esther had put out a plate of the oat biscuits she was saving for Christmas day. They were untouched. Joyce knew that something was badly wrong. But what? It must be something to do with the airmen …
They spotted Joyce and a look of sadness came her way.
What was it?
It must be something else, something more personal. Joyce heard herself saying, ‘No, no, no, no’ repeatedly, but the voice was in her head, an anxious internal monologue to ward off the awful, inevitable news that she sensed was coming.
‘I’m afraid to tell you,’ Lady Hoxley began.
‘Sit down, lovey,’ Esther offered.
‘No, what is it?’ Joyce asked, desperate to know.
No, this couldn’t be happening.
There was only one thing in her life that meant anything. There was only one thing that this could be. And they were telling her to sit down. They were telling her to brace herself.
Even before Lady Hoxley said it, Joyce knew that John was dead.
She didn’t register anything as she slumped to the floor against the kitchen cupboards, shaking her head in blind refusal. Tears came, but they felt like someone else’s. Joyce saw the women’s faces as they crouched over her, hands on her shoulders, their voices of concern distant and muffled.
She barely realised that they’d helped her to her feet and gently coaxed her towards a chair. A green-blue utility cup of light brown tea was clinked in front of her. Joyce watched the ripples in the tea. She tried to focus on what Lady Hoxley was saying, but she only caught fragments, as if her brain was trying to shut it out. She didn’t want to hear the words. They wouldn’t be true if she didn’t hear them.
A house fire in Leeds.
John was asleep inside.
No, this was so unfair. He’d survived all the death-defying bombing missions when he was in the RAF. He’d survived getting shot down over enemy territory. He’d survived escaping occupied France. And after that trauma and the sleepless, desperate nights it had given Joyce, he’d been demobbed and found work at the neighbouring farm. He should have been safe!
A house fire.
It felt like the blackest and sickest joke Joyce had ever heard. She felt numb and empty as Esther showed out Lady Hoxley and then helped Joyce upstairs to her bedroom. Joyce sat on the bed, crying. She didn’t feel the real pain that she knew would come later. At the moment, it was a shaken disbelief.
Yes, they must be wrong.
Maybe she could go to Leeds tomorrow and find out.
‘It’s unlikely you’d get a train so close to Christmas,’ Esther looked consolingly, and Joyce realised that she’d been talking out loud. What else had she said? It didn’t matter.
‘If Fred was here, he might be able to drive you, at least some of the way. But you can go as soon as the trains are running again. In a few days, eh?’
Esther held her hand and asked her for what seemed like the hundredth time if she needed anything.
‘Only John.’
‘I know. And if I could do that for you, I would. You poor thing.’
Sometime later – Joyce wasn’t sure whether it was minutes or hours – Esther left her and closed the door behind her as quietly as she could. Joyce sat on the bed, her eyes red and her heart torn apart. She realised that she was holding the telegram in her hand. How long had it been there?
We regret to inform you that John Fisher died in a house fire on the morning of twenty-first December. Stop.
And that was it – the bald statement that confirmed the end of his life. A kind, vibrant and funny man. The love of her life reduced to a few lines of typed text. Joyce saw him walking down Friday Street in Coventry with his sandwiches in his hand, turning his head back to smile at her. She remembered seeing him amid the crowd of workers at the factory on the day they found the unexploded bomb. She remembered the trip to Birmingham on business. She remembered so many times.
He was the rock that had always been there for her.
And now he was gone.
Some days change your life forever. Moments played out in the blink of an eye rewriting the path you’re on.
Joyce registered the silence of the house. Was it night? Then she noticed the light still coming through the curtains. No, the silence was because it was just her and Esther in the house.
She stared at the words on the telegram, until they became meaningless letters. After a time, she folded the paper in half and put it in the bedside drawer. Other letters were kept in an old cigar box and the telegram sat on top of John’s latest letter from a few days ago; a few inked words still visible. Joyce ran a finger over the letter and imagined him touching it. She closed the drawer.
Joyce got to her feet. Her legs felt unsteady, but she forced herself to head to the bathroom. She closed the door and looked at her red eyed face in the mirror. She felt so tired, so sick of this war with its random cruelties.
She splashed cold water on her face and dried herself with the small hand towel near the basin, feeling the coarse fabric against her skin. When she turned off the tap, she thought she heard movement downstairs. She pictured Esther in the hallway, looking up at the sounds of Joyce moving around.
Joyce knew what she had to do.
She had to keep going.
Joyce Fisher had always kept going, in spite of whatever life threw at her. She was a survivor, whose nature had been forged by the need to make sense of the awful things that were happening in the world. Joyce couldn’t give up. Everything had to happen for a reason. When she’d lost her mother and sister in the bombing of Coventry, she’d clung to the war effort, in a desperate need to find something to make sense of it all. Joyce was fully aware of how she could sometimes sideline emotion and at least fake the image of the fighter with the stiff upper lip.
Inside she may be crumbling, but outside she looked – what was the word that everyone used? – Stoic. Joyce wasn’t certain what it meant, but she assumed it referred to the steel in her heart.
Joyce looked in the mirror. Stoic. Strong but broken inside.
‘I have to keep going.’ She told the woman in the mirror. ‘Mum would want me to keep going. Gwen would want me to keep going. And John …’
Her voice faltered. She soldiered on.
‘I’m doing it for them until this war is over. Yes, that’s what I’m doing.’
Joyce straightened up her pullover, pulled a stray lock of hair from her face and left the bathroom.
‘There is hardly anyone there!’ Siegfried was almost laughing. He didn’t know why he was laughing. He didn’t find it amusing. It was just that he had been so tired, scared and full of hysteria that his emotions were coming out as laughter. It had been the release of any response, even one that didn’t fit the circumstances. He still felt foolish not being able to control it.
Emory frowned at him. He continued to tear meat off the chicken leg. Siegfried noticed that his commander’s burnt arm was dangling at his side. He supposed that it hurt Emory to bend it too much, but he didn’t know for sure as the older
man rarely confided how he was feeling. The most he’d see would be a wince on Emory’s face.
Siegfried persisted in outlining what he had found. ‘I saw one woman. She nearly caught me taking the chicken. In fact, I’d have got both if it wasn’t for her. She opened the farmhouse door and I heard her.’ He laughed again. ‘Sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’
‘You’re cracking up.’ Emory glared at him with barely concealed contempt. ‘You’re feeling desperate.’
‘Aren’t you?’ Siegfried struggled to stop his laughter. The more it felt inappropriate, the harder it was to curtail.
‘I’m keeping a clear head. Eat more. It will stop you laughing like a fool.’ Emory proffered the rest of the chicken. Despite their best efforts at cooking it, some of the meat was still pink. But the taste of the warm meat had revitalised him in a way that he couldn’t have imagined. It was easier to think now, his thoughts less muddled. Even his movements felt more coordinated. He ripped off a wing from the carcass, inspected it for signs of being uncooked and then bit into it.
Emory seemed to wait for Siegfried to calm down before asking him to tell him more about the farmhouse he’d seen.
‘So I saw one woman. But the others had gone.’
‘There can’t just be one woman there.’
‘That’s all I saw,’ Siegfried insisted. ‘It’s the quietest one we’ve come across, I promise you. Not just in being out of the way, but in terms of having the fewest people.’
Emory brushed at a blob of chicken fat that had fallen on his business shirt. ‘We have to be sure.’
‘What choice do we have? They’ll find us unless we find a safe place, won’t they?’
Emory nodded. He knew that they were running out of time. He stood up and brushed the detritus of the meal from his suit. Siegfried tossed the rest of the chicken carcass into the ditch by the road, stamping out the embers of the fire as he did so. The two men collected up their sparse belongings. Emory checked the pistol, and they headed off back to the farmhouse.
‘I don’t know if I’ll go to the farm tomorrow,’ Connie called up the stairs at the vicarage to where Henry was getting changed. She didn’t wait for a response before continuing. ‘I mean, you’d need me to help, wouldn’t you?’
Henry appeared at the top of the stairs, adjusting his dog collar after having a wash. ‘I’ll be fine, honestly. There are so many people volunteering it’ll be a problem finding them all something to do.’
‘Couldn’t I come to the hall and help out? I could be in charge of rationing out the roast potatoes.’
‘You shouldn’t be exerting yourself.’ Henry brushed past her and went into the living room so he could check his appearance in the mirror. ‘I think you should go to the farm. Joyce and Esther will be pleased of the company.’
‘Alright then, if you insist.’
‘They may even raise a glass to our lord,’ Henry offered a cheeky grin.
There was a knock at the door.
Connie went out and opened it. Lady Hoxley was standing there in her blue suit, a sombre look on her face.
‘Hello. I’m afraid something dreadful has happened to Joyce’s husband.’
At Pasture Farm, Joyce watched the bowl of carrot soup go cold in front of her, a thick film forming on the surface. Esther was busying herself by the butler’s sink, although Joyce knew that nothing needed doing, especially now it was the two of them. She knew the real reason was Esther’s awkwardness about the situation and not knowing what to say. What could she say? Instead she kept it to normal, functional topics.
‘You should eat something, lovey.’
Joyce shook her head. She was trying so hard to carry on, but the wind had been knocked out of her. The telephone rang in the parlour. Esther wiped her hands on her apron and headed off to answer it. Joyce could hear her voice as she spoke on the telephone, hushed tones, full of concern.
‘She’s not said much. I don’t know whether she wants to talk or not, to be honest.’
Esther stopped talking, obviously listening as the person on the other end spoke. Then she continued. ‘Poor love, I’ll tell her. Bye, then.’
Joyce registered the clunk of the receiver hitting the cradle, followed by Esther’s footsteps as she entered the kitchen. Joyce was vaguely aware that she returned more slowly than she had left. Was Esther in no rush because it was more bad news?
‘Connie mentioned she’d come tomorrow to see you. She’s so sorry and sends her love.’ She squeezed her shoulder.
Joyce nodded. She was thinking about John getting on the train at Helmstead Station. He’d looked so dashing. That was the last time she’d seen him. She wished she could have stopped him going to Leeds. It all seemed so wrong, so meaningless.
Maybe he wasn’t dead.
Maybe they’d made a mistake.
Yes, she’d go to Leeds as soon as the trains were running, and she’d find him. It would all be some dreadful mix up. She knew that it was hard to keep track of everyone in these times, and that mistakes were easily made. She remembered that woman in the village that Mrs Gulliver told her about. What was her name? It didn’t matter. But anyway, that woman had got a telegram telling her that her son had died, and it turned out it had been wrong. Yes, they’d got it wrong then, hadn’t they? After being distraught for two days she realised the name of the soldier had a different middle initial. It wasn’t her son.
Joyce rode her train of thought, desperate that it might be true. The telegram didn’t mention whether John’s brother had died, did it? It didn’t even give an address.
Esther registered the change in Joyce’s face. There was a light in her eyes that hadn’t been there earlier, and she was biting her lip as she concentrated on the possibilities.
‘What is it, lovey?’
‘There’s been a mistake. There must have been.’
Esther nodded slowly. Joyce wondered if she didn’t want to give too much credence, too much hope to her. But yes, she nodded. So that meant she must agree to some extent. That’s what a nod meant.
‘After Christmas, I’ll go up there. Find out.’ She crossed to the window and looked out. Magpies were swooping over the yard, keen to scoop up any remnants of grain.
‘Yes, all right,’ Esther nodded her consent.
The tone told Joyce that Esther didn’t believe what she was saying. She was humouring her. But Joyce didn’t care if Esther didn’t fully buy into her idea. She knew it was a possibility, a slim possibility. And any vague glimmer of hope to get her through the next few days until she could get a train would be a good thing, surely? Joyce felt exhausted.
‘I might go and have a nap.’
Esther nodded, scooping up the untouched bowl of soup from the placemat. She took it over to the stove and tipped the contents back into the pot. Waste not, want not. Esther washed up the bowl, throwing Joyce a warm, pitying smile as she left the room. Joyce supposed that Esther had dealt with the aftermath of telegrams like these many times in her role as warden.
Joyce resisted looking at the telegram a final time before sleep. She took her shoes off and rested on the eiderdown, feeling the rough hem of the fabric on her fingertips. Sleep came surprisingly quickly.
Chapter 8
It was early evening by the time that Joyce woke.
She felt groggy, her eyelids heavy and her mouth dry. A fingernail had snagged on a thread of the eiderdown. Carefully she extracted the cotton. Her nail had a rough groove in the end. She swung her legs out of bed and yawned. She padded out of her room over the landing to the bathroom. Inside she idly picked up the nail scissors from the bathroom cabinet and went to trim her nail.
There was the pounding of someone coming up the stairs quickly. Maybe it was Esther with some news! Yes, maybe they’d discovered the mistake and sent news while she was asleep. Joyce hurried out to the landing, the scissors still her hand. But it wasn’t Esther that greeted her.
A young man in overalls was running towards her. His desperate eye
s and dirty face were surrounded by matted blonde hair.
Who was he?
It didn’t matter. He shouldn’t be on the stairs and there was something threatening about him.
Instinctively, Joyce went to go back into the bathroom so she could lock the door. But the man was too near. He blocked the way back with his hand, forcing her to take a step away from the bathroom door. Joyce brought the scissors up like a dagger and tried to ram them into his shoulder. He grabbed her hand, twisting it back so she dropped the makeshift weapon. The scissors clattered to the floor and the man kicked them away. He held her tightly, pushing her fingers back to force her to her knees. His eyes looked even more desperate now.
‘I’m not going to hurt you!’ He was shouting but his face looked scared. He was doing a good job of hurting her. ‘You stupid woman!’
‘Who are you? What do you want?’
‘Calm down, calm down!’ He gripped her. ‘Please!’
She assumed it was a gesture of trust that he relaxed the pressure on her fingers. Joyce was slumped against the wall from where he’d forced her to kneel. She rubbed her fingers. Suddenly she thought she knew who this man was.
The hint of a German accent; cropped hair.
Oh no!
She had to get away.
‘Now, we’re going to go downstairs. Nice and slowly.’ Beads of perspiration were dappling the man’s brow. He took a step backwards to allow Joyce to stand up.
Slowly she got to her feet. She knew what she was about to do but hadn’t had time to process whether it would be a wise course of action or not. That was best.
She made out that she was brushing herself down and composing herself, watching as the man took a step towards the top of the stairs. Then she seized her moment – and pushed him as hard as she could. The man lost his footing and seemed suspended in mid-air for a split second before tumbling backwards down the narrow staircase. He somersaulted halfway over before getting caught against the bannister. It broke his fall and stopped him reaching the bottom with the same momentum. Having fallen on his back, the man was momentarily stunned by what she’d done. Joyce didn’t wait for him to regain his composure. She knew about the element of surprise and how important it was. She leapt down the stairs, jumping over him as quickly as she could. He tried to grab her leg, but she was too fast.
