‘Alice, I love you. Did I ever tell you that?’
Chapter 14
On the Thursday morning, Jess got up early as Sky had promised their installer would arrive at any time between 7 AM and 1 PM. To her surprise, two engineers arrived in two different vans at ten-thirty. One to install the broadband and one to install the satellite dish.
Wade was in his mid-twenties with a broad chest, a thick neck and mop of red hair. He flexed the muscles in his arms as he smiled. He was obviously proud of his gym physique. Gordon was older, in his late thirties; he sported a paunch, his hair had grey flecks around the temples.
Jess set them both up with coffee and biscuits before they started work. While the installers were having a chat about recent difficult jobs, a large van pulled up and two more men arrived on her doorstep with the new bed, mattress and free, bonus bedding. With the aid of a twenty-pound note, Jess persuaded them to carry Alice’s old, rusty-spring, bed and mattress down the stairs and dump them at the side of the house where she covered them in the plastic that the new items had arrived in. Making a mental note to ring the council and have them disposed of, she went back into the house just as her mobile rang.
‘Jess? It’s Bradley Wilson.’
‘Hello, Bradley, is there a problem?’
‘No, no, nothing like that,’ he replied. ‘I was, erm, well, I was wondering if you would like to have a run out for lunch on Saturday. My treat… only if you have time that is, I know you must be frightfully busy, I just thought…’
‘Thank you, I’d love to come for lunch,’ said Jess. ‘It’s a good job the offer wasn’t for today, I’m up to my neck in installers, deliveries and kitchen quotes.’ She looked out of the front window as she heard a vehicle pull up. ‘Speak of the devil, the Robin’s man is here. I’ll have to go.’
‘Would twelve o’clock be too early? I have a surprise for you. I’ll come to get you at the farm.’
‘Twelve is fine… bye, Bradley, sorry, got to rush.’
The Robin’s Kitchen rep’s name was Harry, a forty something man wearing jeans and a thick striped shirt. He stepped into the kitchen armed with an armful of brochures and designs. Dropping them onto the huge oak table, he looked around in wonderment.
‘Blimey, this is a blast from the past.’ He turned a full 360 degrees taking in the old 1930s cabinets and work surfaces. ‘If you still had the old range in here you could open it as a museum.’
‘I know,’ replied Jess. ‘I feel a bit guilty about ripping it all out if I’m honest.’
Harry opened a cupboard door, sniffed inside, then closed it again.
‘You have got a bit of worm in the units, so it’s probably a good thing to let them go.’ He bit his lip. ‘I think I have just the thing to replace it with.’ He selected a brochure and opened it to a retro style kitchen with white units and solid oak worktops. There was even a double width range with a grill, two large ovens and a six-burner hob.
Jess looked at the brochure, then around the kitchen. ‘It is beautiful. But it looks very expensive too.’
‘It’s not the cheapest on offer, but…’ he did the full 360 turn again, ‘this kitchen deserves it.’
Before he could go into full sales mode, Jess laid a hand on his arm.
‘Could you measure up for it. I’ll have a word with my financial advisor and see what I can afford.’
Harry pulled out his tape measure and Jess walked back through to the lounge where Wade was testing the new router with a program on his work computer.
‘Almost done,’ he said brightly. ‘Would you like me to log you onto the router before I go? I always like to test the customer’s computer is working before I sign off.’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ said Jess, picking up her laptop and handing it to him. ‘My ex teaches I.T. at Uni but I’m hopeless. I can use the programs I need, but that’s about it.’
Wade looked around.
‘You mean you live in a big old place like this, all alone? That must be a bit scary at times. The creaking of timber in the middle of the night and all that.’
‘Oh, I’ve only just moved in,’ replied Jess with a laugh. ‘I’m hoping for less by way of nocturnal noises now my new bed has been delivered, the old one used to pop springs all night.’
‘Really?’ Wade gave her a leer.
Jess decided to leave the comment hanging in the air and looked over his shoulder at her laptop screen. ‘It’s logged on. My email just updated.’
Wade got to his feet and began to wander around the room holding the laptop in front of him. ‘I’ll check you can get a good signal everywhere before I go, save you having to order a Wi-Fi booster later. I’ve got one on the van if we need it.’ He walked to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Okay if I go up?’
Jess nodded.
Ten minutes later, Jess walked upstairs to find Wade sitting on her new bed, typing furiously on the laptop. She stood by the bedroom door and coughed. Wade jumped as though he had been given an electric shock. He recovered his composure immediately.
‘Made me jump… Nearly done. The signal wasn’t great in here, so I’m just optimising the Wi-Fi.’
‘Sorry,’ replied Jess with a little laugh. ‘Optimise away.’
Wade finished typing, then carrying the laptop in front of him again, walked around the bedroom, watching the screen closely. At the doorway he stopped. ‘Excuse me, I just need to do the landing.’
Jess moved out of the way and the engineer walked slowly out. ‘I’ve already done the other bedrooms, what’s in here?’
He stopped at a heavy, white painted door.
‘The attic,’ Jess replied.
‘Am I all right to go up? If you get a signal there, you’ll get one anywhere.’
Jess nodded. ‘The door at the top is locked though.’
Wade opened the door and stomped up the bare wooden steps.
‘There’s a very good signal here,’ he called.
‘Fabulous,’ said Jess as his heavy, boot clad feet stomped back down again. He pointed back up the stairs.
‘Try it inside the attic. These Q boxes are very powerful.’
‘I erm, don’t intend to spend a lot of time in there… not just yet anyway…. It’s a bit creepy,’ she confided.
‘You never know, you might want to turn it into a home office one of these days,’ he replied.
Jess shuddered at the memory of the short time she had spent in the loft, shook her head and standing aside to allow the installer to get by, she closed the door behind him.
Back in the lounge, Wade placed the laptop carefully on the lion’s foot coffee table, filled in a log sheet and passed it to Jess to sign.
‘All done. I’ll leave you a card in case you need anything, I’m a freelance installer, not tied to Sky, so I can drop in whenever I’m needed.’ Wade handed her a copy of the log sheet with the business card, and let himself out. Jess stood on the doorstep while he loaded his tools into his van.
‘Look, erm, Jessica, was it? If ever you feel lonely, or if you fancy a drink one night, just give me a ring.’ He grinned and with a cheery, ‘have a lovely day,’ he climbed into his van, reversed into the lane and with his radio blaring, sped away.
Half an hour later, Gordon, the satellite installer called her in for a quick demonstration of her new Q box service.
‘I usually do the lot,’ he said, ‘I was surprised to see Wade here too.’
‘They might have sent him out because of the remote location,’ said Jess. ‘I don’t know when the phone line was last tested.’
‘Oh, I’m not complaining,’ Gordon replied. ‘Less work for me. I can get onto the next one now. I think it’s an admin cock up though.’
‘Well, I’m not going to complain either,’ said Jess. ‘I’m just happy to have everything up and running so quickly.’
After Gordon’s departure, Jess walked through to the kitchen to find Harry picking up his brochures. ‘I’ll leave you this one,’ he said, pointing to the one
he had shown her. ‘The quote is on top. Just ring if you decide to accept and we’ll set things in motion. It will take a few weeks to get the stuff made, installation should only take a few days.’
Jess picked up the quotation and whistled.
‘Phew, you were right about it not being cheap.’
‘You get what you pay for. The new one will last you for many a year.’
Jess showed him out, then made lunch and settled down on the sofa to test out the newly installed satellite TV channels. She logged into her Netflix account, saved the details, then watched an episode of The Crown, while she ate her lunch. Sam texted as she was eating.
How’s the installation? Are we Netflixed up yet?
Watching The Crown as I type, replied Jess.
I’ll nip over on Saturday afternoon with wine.
Oops, sorry, I’m out on Saturday with Bradley, my lawyer. He’s got a surprise for me.
I bet he has. Sam sent a wicked devil emoji.
Jess snorted. I think you’re confusing me with someone who has little control over their underwear.
Go for it, Missis, he sounds delicious.
Jess smiled as she ended the messaging session with a wink emoji.
Speak later, need to organise house warming before the new kitchen is installed.
Jess, as a writer, refused to use the shorthand text method and Sam knew that it annoyed her so kept it to a minimum herself.
After lunch, Jess checked her emails, downloading the contract for the new magazine articles and replying to the responses to the queries she’d sent out. Walking through to the kitchen she picked up Alice’s memoir from the table and skim read a couple of entries, before picking up her notepad and scribbling, Sept 1939 across a new page. She sat down at the table and began to make notes as she read.
September 1939
At eleven o’clock on Sunday September 3rd 1939, I opened up the kitchen for the farmworkers to enable them to hear an historic speech from our Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, or The Undertaker, as Amy had renamed him. Not all the lads worked on Sundays, some were rostered to tend the animals, milk the cows etc and I called them in when I heard the BBC inform us that there was going to be a speech of national importance.
We had been edging towards war for the entire year and Germany’s invasion of Poland a couple of days before had made the prospect an inevitability. As we waited for the broadcast, my thoughts went back to the autumn of the previous year when the same man joyfully waved a piece of paper at the cameras whilst declaring, ‘Peace for our time.’ I wondered if he had brought a scrap of worthless paper with him this time around and what was written on it? ‘Bugger!’ must have been a distinct possibility.
Amy’s nickname was perfectly suited. The scrawny man with the scrawny neck and the old-fashioned, turned-over collar, wouldn’t have looked out of place marching solemnly in front of a hearse.
The few whispered conversations ceased as we heard his voice over the airwaves.
I am speaking to you from the cabinet room at 10 Downing Street. This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.
There was a bit more, mainly relating to Hitler’s warlike mentality, but we didn’t really take that in, the first part of his statement said everything we needed to hear. We were at war with Germany again, even though we were promised that the 14-18 conflict had been the war to end all wars.
Amy pushed her empty tea cup across the table.
‘Well, the undertaker has just assigned another few million people to an early grave. There has to be better ways to advertise your business.’
No one laughed.
Barney, our foreman gave his thoughts.
‘Levity aside, Amy, this has been coming. Hitler is a nasty piece of work, and it really is high time someone stood up to him. We could have done it last year, but I understand that we weren’t ready to take him on back then. I’m not sure we are now; I think we might have to try to persuade the Americans to come in again or we could be in trouble.’
‘Thank goodness for the channel,’ said Benny Tomkiss, one of the younger workers. He pointed vaguely towards the Kent coast from which any attack would surely come.
Miriam, a non-practicing Jew, whose father had spent the majority of his life working on our farm, waited for a few seconds of silence before adding her tearful thoughts.
‘I’m so pleased we’re finally telling him he can’t just do what he wants. Last year, cousins of mine were thrown out of their businesses, their homes and their jobs, just for being Jewish. Do you all remember what they did on that bloody Kristallnacht? I’m so worried about them, I haven’t had a letter since February. The Nazis are sending Jews to work camps where they are used as slave labour. How any so-called civilized society can allow this to happen is beyond me. He has to be stopped before millions of people are slaughtered just for belonging to the wrong religion.’
No one seemed to be able to look at Miriam as she delivered her tear-filled statement. We had all heard the rumours of Jewish people being hounded out of their homes and exiled to concentration camps throughout Germany. The newsreels at the cinema had shown graphic images of Kristallnacht. The vast majority of the British population were horrified by the news reports, but there were some, even in our small town, who seemed to blame all that was wrong with the world on the Jewish race.
I turned off the radio, thinking that as head of the farm, I ought to say something. My father would no doubt have delivered a rousing speech, saying we were all in this together and it was up to each and every one of us to do our bit to ensure that Hitler was defeated. Sadly, as a nineteen-year-old mother, I wasn’t up to delivering rousing speeches.
‘Firstly, I have to say that we all knew this was coming, sad and shocking as the actual announcement was. Secondly, I’m sure the government will announce soon that the farming industry workers are in a reserved occupation. The country will still need to be fed and our troops will need their ration packs so none of you will be forced to join up if you don’t want to. I will however, understand completely if any of you feel you have to do your bit for King and country and you can go with my blessing, but please, if you can, wait until the recruiting offices are set up. We’ve still got the corn harvest to bring in before you go.’
I let out a deep sigh.
‘Damn Hitler, damn Mussolini, and damn Stalin.’
As the lads drifted out into the yard, I sat down at the kitchen table thinking about the past year.
The farm had done well. The wheat crop had been as good as it ever had been and we’d had a bumper crop of piglets and lambs too. The new milking parlour/barn had enabled us to house thirty cows through the bad weather and the extra animals meant that our milk production had quadrupled. The electric pumps meant that milking was now a one-man job and Miriam’s little butter and cheese enterprise had expanded. There had been a wedding in March when young Benny married his childhood sweetheart, Emily.
Martha was now a toddler with a mission to explore every inch of the farm. Her inquisitive nature was only matched by her temper if she was stopped from going into places she wasn’t allowed to go.
Our relationship still bordered on indifference. She put up with me if she was in the mood, but no amount of encouragement or proffered bribes could get her to spend time with me if didn’t feel like it. Her vocabulary wasn’t great yet, but Mama, one of the easiest words to say, was the word she used least.
Since January, I had been accompanying my best friend Amy to the local picture palace to watch the latest Hollywood exports. To my delight and embarrassment, my movie star lookalike, Rita Hayworth, appeared in more and more of the movies on offer. I looked like Rita; my rolling shoulder length cur
ls made the similarities almost photographic. We were so much alike that the owner of the picture house, a Mr Wallington, even offered to pay me to stand outside the cinema greeting prospective movie goers whenever one of her films was on show.
Future wise, I knew that financially, the farm would be better off. The government tended to look after us during times of conflict. They would almost certainly subsidise the crops and give us more money per ton for producing it. That wouldn’t necessarily transmit to farm worker’s wages and if we lost any of our men to the fighting, we might have to recruit from the elderly residents of the town, then again, the local factories would almost certainly switch to war production and that would mean the skills of the town’s women and elderly men, would be much sought after.
I could never understand the government’s attitude to farm workers. On the one hand they wanted them working at home producing for the country, but on the other hand, they were reluctant to pay them a little extra in order to keep them in our fields instead of fighting in foreign ones.
Amy, as a mill worker, wouldn’t be allowed to leave to do any other work. Her skills would be needed in the manufacture of uniforms, parachutes or anything else the forces might require.
‘I do hope this thing doesn’t go on as long as the last one,’ she said, sipping at a fresh mug of tea. ‘I promised myself I’d be married before I was twenty-five and there will be a severe shortage of eligible bachelors once this bloody war gets going.’ Amy was just coming up to twenty-two.
‘You’ll be all right if the Americans do come in,’ I replied. ‘Imagine Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart turning up at an army camp nearby?’
Amy rested her chin in her upturned hands and sighed.
‘Imagine,’ she said.
Chapter 15
On Friday afternoon, Jess sat on her new bed with her laptop and queried a couple of magazine editors with ideas for articles before typing up the notes she had made whilst reading Alice’s 1939 memoir. Yesterday evening she had begun to formulate the outline of her novel and had made some brief character notes.
The Legacy: Trouble Comes Disguised As Family (Unspoken Book 2) Page 9
