Summer House

by Nichols, Mary

  ‘I might have had a hand in downing one or two, and they’re aeroplanes not planes.’

  ‘Our dad’s in the Navy.’

  ‘Good for him.’ He paused. ‘What have you been doing today?’

  ‘Mooching.’

  ‘No school?’

  ‘We went to school this morning. It’s only a titchy little school and we have to share it with the Beckbridge kids. They went this ar’ernoon. Next week it’s the other way about and we go ar’ernoons.’

  He smiled. ‘When I went there, I had to go mornings and afternoons.’

  ‘With Miss Elmfield?’

  Steve smiled, remembering the stern disciplinarian that was the village headmistress. ‘Yes. Does she teach you?’

  ‘Nah, we’ve got our own teacher, Miss Gosling. She’s nice, she takes us big ones. The little ones go in with Miss Wainright’s lot. Next year we’re going to sit the scholarship, but we don’t reckon we’ll get it. Ma says it’s a waste of time; kids like us don’t go to grammar school.’

  ‘You do if you’re clever enough.’

  ‘Which reminds me,’ Kathy said. ‘Have you done your homework?’

  ‘Can’t do it,’ Donny said.

  ‘Would you like me to help you?’ Steve asked.

  They looked at him quizzically, unsure whether he was bluffing. ‘You mean it?’

  ‘Yes, come on, let’s go and get it over with. When I was a boy, I always did the things I didn’t like doing first, then they weren’t hanging over me when I wanted to play.’ He began hopping back to the farmhouse on his crutches, a boy on each side of him and Boy hard on his heels. Kathy followed, smiling.

  Wounded or not, it was good to have Steve home. She hadn’t wanted him to join up but he had been mad on flying ever since he was a nipper and there was no holding him back. She worried about him, worried all the time. Whenever the BBC newsreader said, ‘Two of our aircraft did not return’, or ‘Six enemy aircraft were destroyed for the loss of one of ours’, her heart went into a spin. If she was in the middle of a meal, her appetite disappeared and she pushed her plate away, unable to continue eating. If she was sitting by the fireside knitting, she dropped her needles and imagined the horror. If she was ironing a shirt, she was in danger of scorching it until William spoke to her in his normal voice or one of the twins demanded her attention. She would come back to earth and get on with whatever she was supposed to be doing, but until Steve telephoned and she heard his voice, she was on tenterhooks. She supposed it was like that for every mother. How glad she was that William would not be called up. To have both son and husband in the firing line would fray her nerves to pieces.

  As soon as they reached the house, the twins fetched their homework books and a maths textbook and settled at the dining table with Steve between them. They had had to number the pages of the exercise books as soon as they received them, so there was no tearing out the middle pages to use for drawing or making paper aeroplanes. And they had to cover them in brown paper or wallpaper and write their names on the outside. Exercise books were scarce and not to be treated roughly. Miss Elmfield had even dug out the old slates the children had used donkey’s years before and brought them into use again to save paper. Kathy, smiling indulgently at their bent heads, went into the kitchen to prepare the evening meal.

  Living as they did on a farm, food was not a severe problem. Sugar, butter, cheese and tea were rationed, as were bacon and ham, but farmers were allowed to kill their own pigs under strict regulations. They had milk from their own cows and made their own butter, though again the regulations meant there was not an unlimited supply; the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries saw to that. Things like oranges, lemons, bananas and tinned fruit had disappeared altogether, but they had plenty of home-grown vegetables and fruit in season. She was lucky, Kathy thought; people who lived in towns were not nearly so well off. When the twins’ mother had come on that short visit, she had offered her a bag of vegetables, but the woman had turned it down. ‘Wouldn’t know what to do with them, duck,’ she had said.

  This statement was borne out by the twins, who had obviously not been familiar with fresh vegetables and had demanded fish and chips and cake. Katherine, to mitigate their homesickness, had obliged them by queuing up for an hour and a half for two pieces of cod and producing fish and chips, only to be told, ‘They’re not like the ones we get from the fish shop at ’ome.’ They’d enjoyed it in spite of that, but there was a limit to the number of times you could obtain fish and, besides, William said they must learn to eat what everyone else had. ‘Everyone else’ being William; their daughter Jennifer, who taught the infants at the village school; her elderly mother, who lived with them; the land girls, Meg Saunderson and Daphne Halligan; and now Steve. Josh lived with his wife in a tied cottage at the end of the lane that led down to the farm, and he was often given a dish of something to take home with him. She was glad that when William inherited the farm and its huge kitchen, he had also inherited the large pots and pans to go with it. She set to with a will, happy to have all her family round her.

  ‘I suppose it’s too much to expect that you’re home for good,’ William asked Steve over the meal, which was taken round the kitchen table. The schoolbooks still littered the table in the dining room. ‘I could do with some help around the place.’

  ‘Hey,’ Daphne said. ‘That’s what we’re here for.’ She was in her early twenties, dark-haired and brown-eyed, and had been totally ignorant of country ways when she first arrived. Having been born and brought up in a London suburb, the milk she drank, like that of the twins, had always come in bottles. Her mother had persuaded her that working on the land was the least dangerous job of those she was offered and so she had opted to be a land girl and wear their far-from-glamorous uniform. She was a willing worker and was prepared to try anything, even the milking, though the cows had frightened her at first.

  ‘I know that,’ William said. ‘And a fine job you’re doing, but it’s not like having a young man working alongside you.’

  Meg laughed. She was blonde and vivacious, the daughter of wealthy parents. She had chosen the Land Army instead of one of the other services because she was mad on horses and thought work on the land might afford her a chance to ride. It hadn’t turned out that way. Bridge Farm had been mechanised and the only horse in the stables was an ancient carthorse. ‘We look more like boys than girls these days,’ she said. ‘I never thought I’d end up wearing breeches and thick socks.’

  ‘I expect you look very glamorous when you dress up to go out,’ Steve said.

  ‘Thank you, kind sir,’ she said. ‘I could prove it to you, if you care to take me to the local hop on Saturday.’

  Steve laughed. ‘You’d know all about it if I trod on your toe, this plaster weighs a ton.’

  ‘Oh, I forgot. Sorry.’

  ‘Nothing to be sorry for.’

  He looked up as his sister breezed into the room carrying a pile of exercise books. She was eighteen months younger than he was but, in his eyes, cleverer. She was also very pretty with fair hair rolled up over a thin scarf, and clear blue eyes, which lit up at the sight of him.

  ‘Steve! You’re home.’ Jenny dumped the books on the dresser and ran to put her arms about his neck from behind and kiss his cheek. ‘I’m so pleased to see you. When we heard you’d been wounded, we were on tenterhooks until we heard you were OK. What happened?’ She left him to take her place at the table and her mother fetched her dinner from the oven of the kitchen range, where it was being kept warm.

  He repeated the tale of the bad landing. ‘What about you, what have you been up to?’

  ‘The usual. Trying to instil a little learning into reluctant children when they would rather be out playing. And coping with shortages. Look what we’ve had to do.’ She leant across and picked up one of the exercise books, which had been neatly cut in half. ‘Not enough to go round. We’ve even had to saw pencils in half.’

  ‘One of the twins told me you were teaching some
of the evacuees.’

  ‘So I am. It must have been a shambles getting all those children out of London. We didn’t get the school we were expecting and the ones that came lost half an infant class and their teacher, who were carried on to somewhere else, but we’re managing.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘You’d never believe we all speak the same language. It took ages for everyone to begin understanding each other.’

  ‘But you enjoy it?’

  ‘Yes. It’s rewarding to see the children’s faces light up when they suddenly see what you’ve been driving at.’

  ‘Is that all? No boyfriends?’

  Jenny laughed. ‘No time. What about you?’

  ‘No time. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair on any woman to tie her down when you never know what’s round the corner. Look what happened to Laura…’ He had told them in his letters about being best man for Bob, and how he had been shot down on the eve of the wedding. Since he had left Laura after Bob’s funeral, they had been keeping up a correspondence of sorts, though her letters revealed little of what was happening to her, what she was thinking or how she felt, and his were constricted by censorship. He’d go and see her on his next leave when he wasn’t hampered by the plaster and the need for crutches; he had promised Bob he would. He often wondered if Bob had had a premonition of disaster.

  ‘Poor thing. How is she coping, do you know?’

  ‘We write now and again. She doesn’t say much, but something like that must take a bit of getting over. I can’t forget it myself.’

  ‘Do you think there’ll be an invasion?’ His mother asked, changing the subject abruptly.

  ‘Not if I can help it. Hitler won’t come if he can’t beat us in the air.’

  The Luftwaffe had been hitting shipping in the Channel, Dover and the Kentish coast had been bombed continuously until it became known as Hellfire Corner and now they had turned their attention to airfields. The general consensus was that Hitler had to destroy the RAF before he could invade and so night after night waves of bombers came over and made huge craters in the runways, demolished buildings and any aircraft on the ground that had not managed to scramble into the air, killing and injuring ground staff as well as fliers.

  People nearby stood with their heads tilted upwards, hands shading their eyes, and watched the aircraft twisting and turning, firing at each other until one or the other was hit. They saw them spiralling towards the ground in flames. Some of the pilots bailed out and landed in trees or back gardens, or in the middle of fields where farm labourers worked. British pilots were cheered and carried shoulder-high to the nearest house to be bombarded with tea and cake, or taken to the pub where they were plied with beer while they waited for transport to fetch them back to their station. Enemy fliers were surrounded by belligerent workers, wielding whatever weapons came to hand, more often than not pitchforks, with which they threatened the men until the local bobby or a member of the Local Defence Volunteers came and took charge of them. Every night, news broadcasts told of enemy aircraft brought down and allied losses, though the more astute suspected the figures were doctored.

  ‘He’s having a good crack at it,’ his grandmother put in. Alice Cosworth was an older version of Katherine. Although her hair was pure white and there were more than a few wrinkles around her mouth and eyes, she was very regal and upright and nothing much escaped her. She remembered the time before the last war, the one fought, so they said, to end all wars. And what had happened? Another, even more bloody, and one where civilians were suffering more than servicemen. She was glad she was no longer young.

  ‘That’s defeatism, Gran,’ Steve said.

  ‘I’m only stating a fact.’

  ‘Then here’s another,’ Kathy said, getting up and gathering together the used plates. ‘It’s time the twins were in bed.’

  ‘But it’s still light,’ Donny grumbled.

  ‘Draw the blackout curtains. You’ll never know the difference. Now, clear up the schoolbooks and off you go.’

  It was a signal for everyone to disperse. Katherine and Alice set about the washing-up, the twins went reluctantly to bed, the land girls went to their quarters above the stable block, which had been refurbished into a snug little flat, and Jenny offered to drive Steve to the village pub for a drink. William had a small petrol allowance that just about kept the family Ford on the road.

  ‘Mum looks tired,’ he said, as they drove.

  ‘She is. We all are. And you are not immune. You are beginning to look old before your time. Is it very bad?’

  ‘Can be. We try not to think about it. The job’s got to be done.’

  ‘How long are you going to be home?’

  ‘Until this plaster comes off. I’ve been told to go to the local hospital to have it taken off, and then I’ve got to do a bit of exercise to get the leg muscles working again.’

  ‘And all the time you’re here, you will be itching to get back, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but don’t tell Mum that, will you?’

  ‘I won’t. You’ve changed, but then it’s hardly surprising. We are none of us the same as we were.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Underneath we’re the same. I’m the same Steve you quarrelled with as a child—’

  ‘The same one who rescued me from the river, covered in weed; the one who punched his best mate because he said something about me he didn’t like.’

  ‘A typical brother,’ he said laconically. ‘And many’s the time you’ve saved me from a beating.’

  ‘Dad never beat you. They were all empty threats.’

  ‘Childhood,’ he said. ‘All gone, but at least we had one. What sort of memories do you think those twins will have?’

  ‘Happy ones, I hope. Mum’s done her best for them. They cried every night when they first came. Donny pretended it was only Lenny, but I know he did too. They said they didn’t like the noises.’

  ‘It’s the middle of the country, what noises?’

  She laughed. ‘I think what they really meant was the lack of noise, or noises they could not identify: the occasional owl and a dog barking, which they insisted was a wolf; Dad going round checking the animals last thing at night and clattering about in the yard; cows lowing, pigs snorting; things you and I would never notice. But they’re miles better now, even manage to get up to mischief.’

  She drew up at the door of The Jolly Brewers, one of two pubs in the small village of Beckbridge. There was also a butcher, a blacksmith, a cobbler and a post office and general store, which sold everything from food to candles and accumulators for those who had a wireless but no electricity. You could buy a kettle, a length of rope, wooden pegs, blue bags for the weekly wash, soap, sweets, newspapers and comics, and, if you were registered there, sugar and cheese and other rationed foods.

  Inside the pub several customers were nursing a single glass of beer and trying to make it last. It wasn’t just the shortages; most of them had never had much money and an evening at the pub was for social contact, for grumbling and a game of darts, not serious drinking. Steve was greeted with cries of recognition and a grilling about what he had been up to and if he thought the RAF could outwit the Luftwaffe, to which he replied with a definite yes.

  ‘Spot of leave, Steve?’ Ian Moreton asked when he hobbled to the bar to buy their drinks. ‘Or are you home for good?’

  The man was in his mid-forties, with thin pale hair, a thin body, thin compressed lips and thin hands, but with the thinness came wiriness. He wasn’t particularly muscular, but he was strong and he could run fast enough when there was a bobby on his heels. He lived on what he was pleased to call a smallholding, which was in fact a very small cottage in a couple of acres, half of which was an orchard and the other half used to keep chickens and a couple of pigs. It had never provided enough of a living for him and his family of wife, son and daughter, so he supplemented his income with casual labour and trading anything he thought might have a saleable value. The idea of taking regular employment was anathema to him. The war, the short
ages and the blackout provided him with endless possibilities.

  ‘No, going back as soon as I’m passed fit.’

  ‘More fool you.’

  ‘Then perhaps it is just as well there are a few fools about or you might be sharing your bar stool with a Jerry.’

  ‘That’s right, you tell him,’ Joe Easter said. Joe had been landlord ever since Steve could remember, long before he had been old enough to come inside and buy a drink. ‘I’m sick of him leaning on my bar putting everyone off their beer with his long face.’

  ‘I can’t help having a long face.’

  ‘True enough.’ Steve winked at the publican, as Jenny picked up the glasses of beer for him and carried them to a table.

  Ian, who had been hanging around waiting for it to get dark, went round to the back of the pub and picked up a kitbag. Kitbags were innocuous enough, except when they clinked, and this one clinked very loudly. He held it close to his chest and set off down the road. He daren’t take it home. Joyce had nearly brained him the last time. ‘You’ll hev the police on us,’ she said, guessing he had purloined the stuff from the airfield where he had a job helping to maintain the runway. ‘Get rid of it.’

  ‘That’s just what I mean to do, but I’ve gotta put it somewhere ’til I find a buyer. You’d think old Joe Easter would be glad of a few extra bottles to put on his shelves, wouldn’t you.’

  ‘He’s got more sense. Askin’ for trouble, that’d be. You’re not hiding it here.’

  ‘No one’s looking for it.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘’Cos the crate got broke and there was glass everywhere and it was written off.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘I took some empty bottles from the back of The Jolly Brewers and broke them in the crate. After I’d taken out the whole bottles, o’ course.’

  ‘You daft lump, Air Ministry stuff is marked. The bottles i’n’t the same as the ones in the pub.’

  ‘They got better things to do than sift through a heap of broken glass looking for marks. Besides, there’s tons of stuff goes missing—’