Beneath a Frosty Moon

by Rita Bradshaw

  They had changed trains twice, and it was four o’clock in the afternoon when they arrived at their final destination which turned out to be a small market town deep in Northumberland. Hot and tired, the children were formed into a crocodile and marched out of the train station and along a lane to a field, clutching their suitcases and gas masks and wearing their now bedraggled luggage labels.

  Cora and Wilfred kept the younger four children close to them, and although Cora was hoping the selection process wouldn’t be a repeat of the cattle-market of the year before, her worst fears were soon justified. The prospective foster mothers were waiting for them, and although Cora heard one of the adults say the hosts shouldn’t be allowed on the field at all, they soon invaded the space. They walked about, picking out what they considered the most presentable or suitable specimens before harassing the billeting officers for the registration slips which were essential if they were to get the necessary cash for food and lodging from the government.

  As this was farming territory, it soon became clear to the children that boys of eight or nine and upwards were the most popular choice. Therefore it was something of a surprise when two women approached them, one looking at Cora and saying, ‘You four sisters then? Want to stay together, do you?’ at the same time as the other lady said to Wilfred and Horace, ‘I can take you two.’ And when Cora nodded, the woman pursed her lips before adding, ‘I dare say I can stretch to four.’

  Cora and Wilfred stared at each other, the same thought in their minds. It was the best they were going to get and much more than Cora had hoped for.

  ‘Cora?’ Wilfred’s voice was low.

  She answered the unspoken question by nodding as she said, ‘Look after Horace, won’t you,’ and to her brother, ‘You behave and do as Wilfred tells you, all right?’

  The woman who was taking Wilfred and Horace said kindly, ‘Don’t worry, lass, you’ll all meet up at school every day and Stone Farm is the next one to ours so you won’t be a million miles away from your brothers.’

  Cora didn’t bother to correct the lady’s assumption that both Wilfred and Horace were her brothers; she just nodded and smiled. At least she and Maria and Anna and Susan could stay together which was better than last time, and Horace was with Wilfred.

  She looked again at her benefactor. The other woman was small and fat with rosy cheeks, the way she had always pictured farmer’s wives to be, but the one who was taking them was tall and thin with sparse brown hair pulled tightly into a bun at the back of her head and sharp features. Swallowing hard, Cora said quietly, ‘Th–thank you.’ The other foster mothers were selecting one child or at the most two; they were lucky this lady was prepared to take them all.

  ‘That’s our horse an’ cart over there.’ The woman pointed to a big brown animal standing patiently in the lane some distance away. ‘An’ I’m Mrs Burns.’

  The four girls stared at the horse. They had seen others in fields out of the train window but at home the only ones they came across were the rag-and-bone man’s animal and the coalman’s, both of which would bite given half a chance. Mrs Burns’s horse appeared twice as big.

  ‘You go an’ wait while I sort things out with the billeting officer an’ I’ll be across shortly,’ Mrs Burns went on. ‘There’s some bales of hay in the back of the cart for you to sit on.’

  Cora nodded. For better or worse they had a new home and whatever was ahead of them they could face it together. Anna and Susan were huddled in to her and Maria was standing slightly behind her, and now she said briskly, ‘Come on, the lot of you, pick up your suitcases. We’re going for a ride.’

  Wilfred stood, his arm round Horace’s shoulders, and watched as the horse and cart holding Cora and her sisters trundled off. This had turned out better than he’d expected. Cora’s farm was close to theirs and he was with Horace. He smiled down at the younger boy as he said, ‘All right?’ and Horace grinned back at him.

  Their lady came bustling across from where she had been talking to the billeting officer.

  ‘Come on then, lads,’ she said brightly. ‘I daresay you’ll be wanting your tea?’

  ‘The farm where the girls are going,’ Wilfred said as he and Horace walked with the woman towards a similar horse and cart to the one Cora had disappeared in. ‘Have they got other evacuees there already?’

  ‘Two little lassies, I think, lad.’

  Better and better. Wilfred flexed the tense muscles in his neck. He’d been wound up like a spring all day wondering who Cora would be billeted with and whether there would be any lads around. Last year he had made sure Cora and Maria came to where he was staying when the Rileys threw them out in the daytime and that had been fine. Of course, Godfrey Taylor had had his eye on her then but his host family had been more like the Rileys and there had been no chance of the girls going there for a meal.

  Godfrey Taylor. Wilfred’s lip curled. He’d given him fair warning to stay away from Cora but Godfrey had just laughed at him. Well, he wasn’t laughing now and his days of muscling in when they were walking home from school and hanging around her all the time were over. One little push was all it had taken.

  He climbed into the back of the cart with Horace and they settled themselves on a straw bale, chatting with the farmer’s wife who had introduced herself as Mrs Croft. She was a motherly sort but could talk the hind leg off a donkey, and he let her and Horace natter on as he gradually relaxed more and more.

  Aye, he thought, raising his face to the sky, he’d been surprised how easy it had been to send Godfrey into the path of the tram but then he’d been following him for weeks off and on, making sure he was never seen and waiting for an opportunity like the one that had presented itself that day. A swift push from behind on a crowded pavement and then he had melted away. No one had noticed him, not with Godfrey screaming and the blood and mayhem. A ‘little runt’ Godfrey had called him, the last time he had warned him to keep away from Cora. Well, one of the advantages of being a little runt was that no one noticed him – he could be practically invisible when he wanted to be.

  Wilfred smiled to himself. Who was the runt now with half his legs gone? No one was going to take his place in Cora’s affections, he’d make sure of that. She was his. End of story.

  Chapter Three

  The summer evening was glorious. The still air was heavy with the perfume of the hundreds of dog-rose bushes lining the country lane, and the blue sky above the trundling cart echoed to the cries of swallows as they circled, dipping and rising on the wing, hawking for flies and small insects. The area was much more countrified than the small town near Bishop Auckland where Cora and the others had been billeted the previous year, but also further away from her mother and home, and for this reason Cora was blind to the natural beauty as they bumped along.

  They had travelled for a few minutes in silence before the farmer’s wife spoke from her plank seat at the front of the cart. She didn’t turn as she said, ‘You’re lucky I took the four of you – no one else would have done. You know that, don’t you? I did you a good turn, especially in view of the two youngsters not being good for much. You two older lassies will have to work twice as hard to make up for your sisters once you’re home from school and at weekends. There’s always too much to do on a farm and not enough hours in the day, and since our farmhand went off to war and his wife and family moved to stay with her parents, I’ve had my work cut out and so has Farmer Burns. Rob used to do the work of two men.’

  Cora turned her head and stared at the back of Mrs Burns’s tight, upright body. Without thinking, she said, ‘Why didn’t you choose boys to help then?’

  There was a moment’s pause and immediately Cora knew she’d said the wrong thing, even before the farmer’s wife said sharply, ‘You an’ your sisters would have been in a fix if I had, miss.’

  ‘Oh, I know,’ Cora said hastily. ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘Like I said, I did you a good turn and I expect some gratitude.’

  ‘I’m sorry
, Mrs Burns, and I am grateful, we all are, and we’ll work hard, I promise.’

  ‘I should think so an’ all.’ There was another pause and then the farmer’s wife went on, ‘We’ve already got two lassies from last year, and my husband don’t hold with lads and lassies in the same house, all right? Not respectable, see?’

  ‘Yes, yes, Mrs Burns.’

  ‘With the government making us plough up pastureland for food crops and then the frost and heavy snow all through January and February meaning we lost the winter wheat, it’s been a trial all round, I can tell you. The cows and pigs and chickens still need to be fed, don’t they?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Burns.’

  ‘Potatoes and carrots and leeks don’t jump out of the ground by themselves, and the wheat won’t harvest itself come August either. Ploughing, weeding and hoeing, dung-spreading and hedges to trim and ditches to clear out, it still all has to be done, war or no war. Milking the cows and making cheese and butter, that’s not going to be done by one of these ministry types who sits on his backside all day, is it?’

  ‘No, Mrs Burns.’

  ‘No, that’s right. So there’ll be no larking about and you’ll do whatever you’re asked to do whether you like it or not. That’s if you want to stay together. The littl’uns can feed the hens and collect the eggs an’ such and clean the coops – there’ll be stuff for them but not heavy work – but you two older ones look fit and strong enough to muck in. Enid and Maud’ll show you what’s what.’

  Cora and Maria looked at each other and Maria was biting her lip to stop herself crying. Suddenly the Rileys didn’t seem so bad after all.

  It was another half-an-hour before the horse turned off the dusty lane and passed through two big open wooden gates onto a farm track. They had journeyed through several hamlets, the last one, some minutes ago, being the largest and boasting a cluster of stone cottages, a small church, several shops and some other buildings. Mrs Burns hadn’t spoken for a while but as they’d trundled through she had pointed to a brick-and-timber building saying briefly, ‘The school.’

  As they approached the farm in the distance, the fields either side of the track were full of grazing cows, and then they reached the farmyard, which had a large stone barn forming one side of a courtyard of other farm buildings under mossy mellow-tiled roofs. On the far side of the yard an archway through the buildings led Cora’s eyes up a long, straight path to the heavy front door of a three-storeyed farmhouse which was much larger than she had expected. They scrambled quickly out of the cart, clutching their suitcases and gas masks; Mrs Burns was already walking towards the archway. As they followed her, passing an octagonal stone structure in the centre of the yard, its walls perhaps three feet high with big, age-bleached oak uprights supporting the tiled roof, Cora realized where the terrible smell was coming from. The structure was used for storing dung from the cow houses surrounding the cobbled yard. This, combined with the run of corrugated-iron pigsties with their own small yards which had been built on the outside of the farmyard, with one of its walls forming the back of the sties, made the stench overpowering to their uninitiated noses, and little Susan was heaving by the time they’d left the yard.

  ‘I don’t want to stay here.’ Susan clutched hold of Cora’s sleeve, her bottom lip quivering. ‘I don’t like it.’

  Neither did Cora but she couldn’t very well say so. Her voice low but fierce, she whispered, ‘If you want to be with the rest of us you have to stay here and you don’t want to be somewhere on your own, do you? It’s a farm – you’ll soon get used to the smells and it won’t smell so bad inside. If you start carrying on, Mrs Burns will send you back to the billeting officer and you could end up anywhere. You heard what she said – no one else would take the four of us. They didn’t last time, did they?’ And at Susan’s small forlorn shake of the head, she added, ‘Come on, you’ll feel better when you’ve had your tea.’

  Mrs Burns didn’t enter the house by the front entrance but followed the path round to the side of the building, and as the children filed through the door which she’d opened they found themselves standing in an enormous, stone-flagged kitchen. The biggest iron range Cora had ever seen took up a large part of the far wall with built-in cupboards either side of it, and a huge number of pewter pots and copper pans filled shelf after shelf. Two deep white sinks stood under two windows and these had a long wooden table between them, but the main table was in the centre of the room. A great wooden chair with fancy arms was positioned at the head of it, and down its two sides were eight-foot-long wooden benches.

  Cora stared about her in awe. This one room was far larger than the whole of their downstairs at home and held everything, and more, that she could imagine a kitchen would need.

  ‘This is the kitchen,’ said Mrs Burns, as though it wasn’t perfectly obvious, ‘and through there –’ she pointed to an open doorway – ‘are the back rooms. The scullery and larder first, then the wash house with the copper and sinks, and beyond that the salting house and the dairy. The copper has to be filled using buckets of water from the pump – all the water for the house comes from our well. That’ll be one of your jobs. Enid and Maud have been doing it but I daresay you can do it every other day between you. Wash day is a Saturday and we need plenty of boiling water then. There’s a door out of the dairy into the rear yard, so you don’t have to bring pails of milk through my kitchen. Understand?’

  They all nodded dazedly, trying to take it in.

  ‘None of you venture into the parlour or dining room or Farmer Burns’s office at the front of the house without permission. I used to have a girl from the village who came to do the cleaning once a week but she’s hightailed it off to a munitions factory somewhere, so Enid and Maud take it in turns. You two older ones can do that an’ all so it’ll be once a month for each of you. There’s four bedrooms all told but the top floor’s not used. Your bedrooms are in the attics and aren’t reached by the main staircase.’ So saying, she opened a door into a long narrow corridor. ‘That’s the door into the main house,’ she said, pointing to the end of the whitewashed passageway, ‘and there’s the staircase to the attics.’

  They looked at the steep narrow winding staircase in front of them. It looked unwelcoming and forbidding.

  ‘Enid and Maud have one room and you’ll have the other one, all right? There’s a bed big enough for you two older ones and the littl’uns can have the smaller one. Take your things up and put ’em away and no dilly-dallying.’

  In spite of the whitewashed walls the corridor was dark once Mrs Burns shut the kitchen door behind her after ushering them into the passageway, practically shoving Susan out when she was a little slow. They stood for a moment, and then Cora said, ‘Come on, follow me. Maria, you come last in case Anna or Susan slip on these steep stairs. Here, give me your suitcase, Susan, and Maria, you take Anna’s.’

  They climbed the worm-holed wooden treads carefully, up and up until they came to a kind of tiny landing, a narrow slot of a window casting a meagre dusty ray of sunlight over the bare floorboards. There were two doors in front of them but when Cora opened the first one she saw the little room held one bed with rumpled covers and some clothes in a heap on the floor. Shutting it quickly, she said, ‘That must be Enid and Maud’s.’

  The second room was larger, its slanted ceiling joists coming right down to the top of the small window which was only a couple of feet from the floorboards. One bed was slightly wider than the other but both were really only singles, and apart from a dilapidated small chest of drawers that looked as though it had been cobbled together from different types of wood and a row of pegs on one wall, the room was devoid of furniture.

  Cora walked over to the bigger bed and plumped down. The flock mattress didn’t give an inch. Nevertheless, the sheets and blankets were clean and although the eiderdown was old and patched in several places it looked thick and warm. As did the one on Anna and Susan’s bed.

  Forcing a bright note into her voice, she said, ‘We
ll, isn’t this nice, our own room where we can be together. Mam’ll be pleased when I tell her we haven’t been split up and that Horace is with Wilfred.’

  ‘It’s hot and stuffy in here.’ Maria wrinkled her nose. ‘And fusty.’

  ‘It’s summer, what do you expect?’ Cora had already noticed the window didn’t open. ‘And in the winter you’ll be glad it’s snug and warm.’

  ‘I don’t like Mrs Burns. She nearly pushed me over.’ Susan had begun to snivel. ‘I want Mam.’

  So did she, oh, so did she. ‘Mam sent us here to be safe and we can’t go back till the war’s over so we’ve got to make the best of it.’ Cora’s voice sounded flat now.

  ‘She’s going to work us every minute we’re not at school, Mrs Burns, isn’t she?’ Maria said quietly. ‘She’s got it all worked out. That’s why she took the four of us, not out of the kindness of her heart.’

  There was no denial from Cora, only a downward movement of her head.

  ‘And she probably wanted only girls ’cause she thinks she can bully us better than boys.’

  ‘You don’t know that, Maria, and don’t put ideas in the little ones’ heads. Listen, the three of you. We’re here and here we remain unless Mam sends for us, and she’s not going to do that until any bombing is over. If any of you play up you won’t go home to Mam but to someone else, and you’ll be on your own. We can look after each other here – I’ll look after you, all right? And you heard what the lady said who took Horace and Wilfred, their farm is next to this one and we’ll see them at school every day. Things could be a lot worse, believe me. And there’s always plenty to eat on a farm, don’t forget that. Everything’s going to be fine, you’ll see.’