Gracie's Sin

by Freda Lightfoot

  ‘I say, just a lark, don’t you know.’

  The two girls spent the rest of the night cuddled up close in Gracie’s four poster, their weeping a combination of sorrow and laughter but all differences between them quite forgotten.

  As the days and weeks slipped by Lou and Gracie learned a great deal about the world they inhabited. They watched deer browsing, whole armies of ants going about their business, discovered where rare varieties of orchids could be found, watched kestrels soar and listened to the different voices of the wind in the trees. Even Lou could now distinguish the song of a blackbird from a song thrush, and could name the different species of owls.

  Gracie refused to discuss the air raid, thinking that if she didn’t talk about it, she could put the horror of it behind her. But the effect of it still lingered, so that she alternated from a highly strung nervousness to an almost philosophical fatalism. She did explain about the high expectations of her parents, the bigoted intolerance of her father, and the new understanding she’d reached with her mother. ‘I think that’s why I love this job so much. Because I can be my own person. At last.’

  ‘I know what you mean. I was doing useful work in the mill, but I only went into it because it was expected of me. Everyone in our family for generations back have been weavers, even before there were factories to put us in. Not that I ever knew a world beyond the factory gates. I like this world better. It’s grand is this. Hey up, look, there’s Mr Fox off on the razzle.’

  By the end of November their task was completed. Once more Lou requested a return to Cornwall, because when Gordon eventually returned it would be to Plymouth, so that was where she must wait for him. Typically there request was ignored. It was decided instead that although they had done their job well, their particular speciality in training had been in felling and no such jobs were currently available in the South-West. Therefore, they were to be sent north, to Grizedale Forest in the Lake District.

  ‘But that’s more than three hundred miles away,’ cried Lou in dismay.

  ‘Don’t worry. Knowing your Gordon, he’ll get himself transferred to a ship that docks in Liverpool,’ Gracie consoled her.

  ‘Do you reckon?’

  ‘I do, and at least we’ll be together,’ Gracie hugged her close. ‘But I do wish the others were with us too.’

  ‘Oh, so do I.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Agnes Sullivan, was a thin, well worn woman who rarely spoke a word, either to her husband or to her lodger. It was almost as if Rose were invisible, though she fervently wished at times that she was, certainly so far as the old farmer, whose name was Maurice, was concerned. If he wasn’t talking to her, endlessly relating tales about his lumbago, his pigeons, or how well his leeks were doing, he would watch Rose with fascinated interest. She would often pretend to be asleep as she sat by the fire after supper, so as to avoid those staring eyes, yet somehow his riveted gaze seemed to imprint itself upon her closed lids.

  They were certainly an odd couple and even though Rose had been at the farm for several weeks now, she still didn’t feel as if she knew either of them very well. Agnes spent much of her time knitting, and had no doubt embroidered the religious texts which adorned every wall. These were the only form of decoration in the bare room which served as both kitchen and living room, there being not a sign of an ornament, picture or piece of bric-a-brac anywhere; not even curtains at the windows, save for the paper blackout blinds.

  At seven o’clock Agnes would switch on the old crackling wireless and they would all sit and listen to the news in complete silence. They would hear Lord Haw Haw’s outlandish claims of imminent victory without comment, and listen with equal lack of expression to Winston Churchill’s rousing oratories. At least Rose learned something of what was happening in the outside world, which was the only way she could, since no newspapers ever appeared in the house.

  When the BBC announced that the Germans had been ‘hit for six’ she felt like jumping up and cheering though managed to restrain herself, largely due to Agnes’s sour expression of disapproval. ‘It will all be over soon, won’t it?’ she said, thrilled and yet oddly disappointed that this might very well be the case, long before she’d ever got around to joining the Timber Corps.

  Neither Agnes nor Maurice responded and a few nights later the talk was all of American advancements in North Africa so Rose could only conclude that Britain was as deeply entrenched in the war as ever. She half sighed with guilty relief and continued to dream and make her plans. Occasionally, Agnes would allow them to listen to the BBC Light Orchestra but nothing frivolous of any other sort was ever permitted. More often than not, once the news was over, she would reach forward and switch the wireless off.

  ‘Can’t we listen to ITMA?’ Rose would ask. ‘Tommy Handley is hilarious.’

  ‘Hilarity is the work of the devil,’ was Agnes’s response to this innocent request.

  At eight o’clock precisely, Maurice would pick up his bible and the old paraffin lamp, put on his cap and muffler and set off down the garden to the petty. This was the name they gave to the toilet, a small wooden shack situated in a bramble patch at the end of the kitchen garden, which held a tippler lavatory with a wooden seat, shiny from use, and with a pungent aroma. Rose had a vision of the old farmer enthroned while he read his prescribed texts for the day. It almost made her laugh out loud every time he set off, his expression one of deep contemplation. He would be gone for a long time, perhaps an hour or more as he no doubt also went to check on the animals and shut up the hens. During this period Agnes would fold away her knitting and set about getting herself ready for bed.

  She would remove her cardigan and blouse, unlace the pink cords of her corset and drape it over the back of her chair. Then she would stand at the kitchen sink in her skirt and plain shift, painstakingly wiping her hands and face with a wet flannel. Next she would roll off each stocking and wash her feet in the enamel basin. Lastly, she wove her hair into one long plait that hung down her back. The first time this ritual took place, she cast sideways glances across at Rose who interpreted these as an indication that she should do the same.

  ‘I’ll take my wash after you’ve finished,’ Rose said, not feeling inclined to make this a communal event.

  ‘You mustn’t wait too long. Maurice will be back soon.’

  Every evening Agnes would issue a similar remark, yet Rose resisted. At length, when her ablutions were completed, the woman would riddle the coals, put up the fireguard and retire to her bedroom, shutting fast the door. She never said goodnight, but would hand Rose a stub of candle and admonish her not to use too much hot water. ‘And don’t forget to shut the kitchen door properly, when you go back to the stable.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Rose would reply. The moment she was alone, Rose would leap up to shoot the bolt on the back door, so that Maurice couldn’t accidentally walk in on her. She would rush through her wash at record speed and make sure that she’d left the house long before there was any chance of his returning. Crossing the yard each night she’d imagine him prowling about somewhere in the dark. It always filled her with dread and she‘d dash up the wooden ladder to her truckle bed.

  The loft, which was more like a storeroom for accumulated rubbish, offered little in the way of comfort. The huge black spiders that hung from strings of webs festooned below the beamed roof gave Rose the shivers. And the smell was nauseous: a frowsty, musty scent of mouldy hay mingled with the ripeness of horse dung, overlaid by an indescribable aroma of dirt, decay and something more, something Rose was unwilling to put a name to. In the end though, it became unavoidable.

  Without doubt there were rats in the stable below. She would lie and listen to their squeals, together with the screams of the horses and the beat of their agitated hooves on the stable floor. One night she awoke with a start, quite certain that she was being watched, that eyes were peering at her through a crack in the trapdoor, though probably it was no more than the wind rattling the old boards, making it soun
d as if someone were about to creep in. Rose wedged a hoe through the handle, right across the door, just in case.

  She kept her few belongings in an old tin trunk which, with the lid closed, also served as a bedside table. Upon this, Rose put the night-light, set in a saucer of water for safety. Each night she lay between the rough blankets in the truckle bed and attempted to sleep, unwilling to blow out the candle which alone seemed to hold the unknown terrors of the night at bay.

  And as she lay there, alone in the dark, her thoughts would return to Cornwall on a wave of homesickness. She should never have trusted Eddie with Tizz.

  It’s just a dog, she would scold herself as she again woke, cold with sweat from a nightmare. Maybe the cry of an animal had disturbed her, one who could easily come to grief. Is it not the law of nature? Yet it made not one scrap of difference. Tizz had represented far more than simply a dog to Rose. She had been the only creature in the world, other than her two absent friends, who cared about her.

  If she thought of Eddie at all, it was to remember his bullying. He’d killed darling Tizz because he was jealous; vindictive and cruel, savouring the moment when he could take his revenge. And what he’d been about to do to her was unspeakable. He hated her. Now that she faced this terrible truth, Rose could recall incidents in her childhood when he’d often been unkind.

  He’d once urged her to skate on a frozen duck pond and she’d gone right through the ice. Fortunately the water hadn’t been particularly deep. On another occasion he’d deliberately hidden her favourite story book, Little Women. When it had finally been found, soaking wet under a tree, her mother had blamed her for being careless with it. Rose had attempted to protest her innocence, to no avail, and been left feeling confused, knowing she was not the culprit. She understood now that she’d been too trusting, too certain of everyone’s adoration of her to ever imagine her wonderful brother could have damaged it out of malice.

  She’d believed Eddie to be her true brother; difficult, moody, idle and often drunk yet Rose had thought that he didn’t mind looking after her, that he had her best interests at heart when all the time he’d been plotting the most damaging and heartless way to tell her the truth about herself. He didn’t love her. Never had. But at least now she understood why. Elizabeth and Sam were not her real parents at all, so even their love must have been tempered by charity. Eddie had said that her mother would have grown bored with her, if she’d lived long enough, and although Rose fought to resist this idea, the notion had taken root and grew like a canker in her mind. And now she was quite alone, save for the odd rustlings in the straw that she’d rather not investigate too closely.

  ‘Can’t you do something about the rats?’ Rose asked Maurice one day, driven to weeping with the terrible fear of being bitten in her sleep. ‘Put some poison down, maybe?’

  He made no reply, just stared at her long and hard but, a night or two later, Rose heard an unholy din coming from the stables below. It sounded as if the rats were having a riotous party, but whatever the farmer had put down must have done the trick. Thereafter, the nights were more peaceful, though how long this situation would last Rose didn’t care to speculate, any more than she could guess how long she would stay in this awful place. It worried her how she might survive in the unheated loft when the snows came. It might even fall through the holes in the roof onto her bed. But she must stay until she’d got paid for the work she’d already done.

  One night as she made her way to bed, shivering with cold as winter deepened, Rose heard a rustle in the undergrowth and jumped with alarm. Quickly, she lifted the lamp and swung it from side to side. ‘Who’s there?’

  And then she saw him, crouched by the door.

  ‘Oh, Maurice, you startled me. What are you doing lurking there?’ Heart pounding, Rose attempted to sound jauntily cheerful but her voice came out all squeaky and high pitched, shaky with fear.

  ‘I was waiting till it was safe to go in.’

  ‘Go in? Oh!’ Her face cleared and her heart slowed to a steadier rhythm. ‘You mean into the kitchen after our nightly wash. Oh, sorry, I didn’t think. Yes, it’s quite safe to go in now, thanks. Goodnight Maurice.’

  He didn’t reply but stood and watched her walk to the stable door. As she lifted the latch he stepped forward, put out a hand to stay her. ‘You’re a nice lass. I wouldn’t want nothing to happen to you.’

  Rosie’s heart seemed to cease altogether in its beating now, and she instinctively backed away, as alarmed by the compliment and what it might imply, as the veiled warning. ‘What do you mean? Why should anything happen to me?’

  ‘Do you like it here? P’raps you do. P’raps you don’t. But a nice girl like you shouldn’t be wandering about the countryside on her own. T’aint safe.’

  ‘Why do you say that? Why would I not be safe here?’

  ‘I’m not saying you won’t be. Only thought that p’raps you should go - while you can.’ Then he vanished into the darkness but his strange remarks, and the urgency with which he’d said them, remained with her like a chilling warning.

  Every morning when she woke, cold and aching in her uncomfortable bed, Rose would tell herself that she should leave, this very day. She’d wash her face in the bucket of cold water she kept in the loft, sometimes breaking the ice in order to reach it. She would constantly count the small amount of cash that she’d brought with her and kept secreted in the tin trunk. That was all she had in the world apart from the fifty pounds her mother had left her. Perhaps Maurice was right and she should leave, find a better place. Anywhere would be better than this. But Rose didn’t even know where the nearest town was, so couldn’t lay her hands on the money quickly. She didn’t even know where the railway station was.

  What a fool she’d been. She should have kept looking for a recruitment office, not taken this job in the middle of nowhere with absolute strangers, and all because she was alone and scared.

  Rose decided that she daren’t risk spending her precious hoard of coins, not even on a train ticket, not until she’d received some of her wages. She’d done a great deal of work on the farm for which she’d received no hard cash as yet, only her keep. Each and every morning she made a vow to stay only until she’d been paid, and not a day longer.

  With fresh resolve she set about all the myriad tasks set by the farmer’s wife, while Agnes herself did less and less, shutting herself in her room to read or knit a seemingly endless scarf. Rose’s first task each morning was to feed the fifteen calves. It was her favourite part of the day and she loved to sit with them, enjoying the warmth of their presence, finding comfort in their satisfied grunts of pleasure as they ate, even the soft sound of their breathing made her feel less alone. It was the only place she allowed herself to shed a few tears. Sometimes she felt as if they were crying with her.

  After that she would scrub out the dairy, then there were the beds to make, the sweeping, dusting, washing, ironing; the scrubbing and scouring of stone floors. Rose would like to have protested that she’d been employed to work on the farm, not in the house, but she dare not.

  When she’d finished in the house, she’d make up a sandwich, wrap it in a cloth and set off for the fields, weary before she even began, and spend the day cutting nettles, picking stones, spreading manure on a frozen field, or feeding and tending the few sheep and cows Maurice kept. After that it was back to the house for supper, more often than not something like cold pork and mashed potatoes, though once a week Agnes would make a huge stew which was intended to last them for days. Unfortunately, she always made it in the very same enamel bowl in which she washed her feet, which rather took the edge off Rose’s appetite.

  However much she consoled herself that the strange warning from the old farmer had been no more than well-meant advice, probably because Rose was so very young and alone, it left her more wary of him than ever. But for all her reluctance not to spend any time alone with him in the house, she couldn’t avoid him during the day. Rose dealt with these somewhat irrational
fears by keeping up a line of enforced, cheerful chatter. ‘Is this how you like the logs chopped, split into two?’

  ‘That’ll do nicely.’ Sometimes, he sounded almost genial, which made her even more fearful. Was he trying to ingratiate himself with her, gain her trust before he pounced!

  ‘I learned to use an axe by watching my friends. They were in the Timber Corps. Part of the Women’s Land Army, you know?’

  ‘Women are doing all sorts these days,’ he grunted, implying this was not, in his opinion, a good idea.

  Rose refused to rise to the bait. ‘Yes, isn’t it wonderful? Do you know anything about them? About the Timber Corps I mean. I’ve thought about joining myself. Do you think I should?’

  By way of reply, Maurice gave her a hard, interrogative, stare from under bushy brows which made her shiver. Then stroking the bristles on his chin, continued, ‘You’d have to ask Agnes ‘bout that. She’s the one who understands women’s business.’

  Agnes brusquely told Rose to put any daft notions of that sort out of her head at once. ‘You owe me at least another month’s work for the food I’ve put into your belly already, not forgetting taking you in off the road and putting a roof over your head.’

  Rose acknowledged this undeniable fact without commenting that the roof in question was only that of a stable, and leaked. Or that the food was diabolical, and there was still no sign of the agreed wages.

  Quite unexpectedly the thin lips curled upwards into the ghost of a smile. ‘I will admit that you’ve worked hard since you came. I’m reasonably satisfied. I get rid of troublemakers and time wasters pretty quickly but you’ve been a good girl. Yes, a good girl. No trouble at all.’ She reached out and patted Rosie’s cheek. ‘You deserve some reward for your efforts.’