They did not look up as she arrived, but one shouted, ‘That row, six inches apart, then single by hand.’
He was pointing and so Helen nodded, ramming the hoe in as they were doing, again and again, hearing it click against stones, feeling her hands growing hot and sore. Row after row was hoed, and lunch was taken at the edge of the field, quietly eating sandwiches which were squashed from being in her dungaree pockets, drinking tea which was lukewarm from the flask which had been banging against her leg all morning. After half an hour they were up again, finishing the hoeing, just doing the last ten rows, and then it was singling the clumps which they had left by hand – a hand which was blistered on the palms by now.
They knelt when their backs felt as though they would break, and then the mud oozed up into her knees and they also became sore, and Helen wondered if this was any bloody way to win the bloody war. She didn’t just think it, she said it, again and again, her fingers cold and muddy from picking and then she heard the laughter from the man in the next row and looking up she saw his gap-toothed grin.
‘Well, my old girl, I reckon as how it has to be the bloody way to win the bloody war, and soon the blisters will go. You’ll toughen up.’
Helen laughed and looked at her hands. She’d bring gloves tomorrow, there was no way she wanted farmworker’s hands for the rest of her life. She continued swearing but in her head this time.
John had told her to return at four and so she levered herself up and walked back, feeling the blisters on her heels now, waving to the men, still swearing in her head.
She had to fetch the cows from the pasture.
‘Just call, they’ll come,’ he said.
She did call but they didn’t come. She walked up behind and waved her hands but still they continued chewing the cud and now she was angry. Her feet hurt, her hands hurt, her knees hurt and Marian would never believe her when she wrote about this. She walked up to Daisy and shouted at her but she just slapped her tail against her sides and continued chewing without haste. Helen thought she looked like Mrs Vane and so she slapped her across the backside and now she moved and the others followed, walking sedately in single file and Helen shook her head at the feeling of success which coursed through her.
Dear God, she thought, a cow moves and it’s as though I’ve been given the crown jewels.
She had to try and milk Daisy again but it wasn’t until a week later that she achieved a frothing pail, stripping the udder, getting all the old milk out and milking slowly enough to draw out the fresh that Daisy was making at that moment. That evening she went home, her blisters drying and healing, and slept as though peace had been declared.
In April the Middle White sow had piglets and she brought Ed and the children up to see their short snouts. They stroked their floppy ears and soft skin, so unlike the mother’s. Chris asked when his pig, Helen, would have piglets and Helen laughed and said it depended when Mr Reynolds’s boar escaped into the orchard again. In April, the bombing missions began in earnest but Ed was safe. Grounded and safe but the shadows were in his eyes again.
In May he came to the farm and watched while she fed the calves in the small yard. They rushed up to her, pushing, mooing, and by now it seemed as though she had never done anything else but hoe, milk, weed, dig, feed calves. She put beet pulp and crushed oats into the trough, walking in deep straw, pumping up their water. She turned and pushed back her hair which was still curly but longer than it used to be and laughed. She was happy doing this work, loving this man, and she had not thought the war could ever bring anything but torment.
Helen forked hay into the racks, seeing some fall on the calves’ heads as they milled about, and then there was just the rustling as they ate. She walked back to Ed who was leaning on the wall, his arms crossed, his cap back, a piece of grass hanging from his smiling mouth and she kissed him, smelling the sun on his skin, feeling strong and fit. He pulled the grass from his mouth and kissed her again and again and she wanted him as she had done for weeks but could never tell him.
That evening he pushed her bike back along the road, his arm around her, pointing out the Nymph and the Tortoiseshell and she was impressed with his knowledge of English nature until he told her that Chris had educated him, last year. She laughed then and he leaned down and kissed her open mouth and the laughter died in her throat and she clung to him.
Ed held her chin in his hand and looked into her face and she knew that her eyes said the same as his and there was no shame or restraint in her. He kissed her gently this time before pushing the bike through a gap in the hedge into the hayfield where cornflowers, daisies and poppies grew, and they lay on the warm grass and kissed, their mouths opening and then they loved, slowly, deeply, and without memories intruding. Afterwards Helen lay and watched the scudding clouds, and smelt the rich hay which had been crushed beneath their bodies. It had been strange to be touched by someone who was not Heine but it had been beautiful. It was as though they had known one another since the beginning of time.
That night as Helen undressed, grass fell to the floor and she thought of his hands, so firm on her body; of his chest, so smooth, so tanned. She remembered the power of him, the pleasure of him, the words which had come from his mouth and from hers. I love you, they had said as they kissed.
He came as often as he could and the summer was warm. They grew to know one another’s bodies and to love so much. In the long summer evenings Helen laughed as Chris and Ed pitched and batted in the garden and then let her and Mary try. One day the girls beat the boys and they sulked until Laura brought out the cricket bat and said that they would have to play with this next time if there were any more bad losers.
In June the hay was harvested and Ed brought some men from the base to help with the carting and the raking because, he told John, they needed to be reminded that something existed other than high-altitude bombing, ack-ack, fighters who ripped bullets into their planes, their bodies.
Helen and the farm workers had cut and turned the hay in the early part of the week and now she and Ed and Mario led the carts, each holding four GIs and the farm workers. They moved from the farm across a field of beet and down the long lane leading to the hayfields where Helen had first lain with Ed, and she wondered if he remembered.
Above the clopping of the hoofs she heard him call, ‘It sure is a shame to see that grass go. I got kinda fond of it.’
Helen flushed and turned, shaking her head at his grin but laughing back. Rocket was slapping his tail at the flies and nodding his head, and Helen tightened her grip on his harness, leaning back into his shoulder.
‘Steady, old man,’ she breathed and hoped that Chris and Mary would be able to get out here after school.
They turned sharp left, calling ‘Here now’ to the horses as Helen had instructed and they were safely into the field, but Mario had to back Satin up and try again and on the third attempt he made it and his crew cheered, yelling that they hoped he was a better flyer than a cart driver, for Christ’s sake.
All morning they tossed hay up into the carts with forks while Helen stood in one cart, Mario and John in the others. She loaded from the outside first so that it would not overbalance when she took it back. Ed tossed hay up to her, his bare back glistening in the sun, his shoulders reddening. Her arms were bare and she felt the sun on them, on her head. There was a hay seed in her eye and he leaped up into the cart, pulling her lid down, easing the seed out with his handkerchief. She felt his breath on her face and his lips were so close but they did not need to kiss. They just smiled and he jumped down again and continued to pitch up the hay.
They carted their loads back at lunchtime but brought the wagons straight out again, eating a picnic the Americans brought from the base; chicken legs, hard-boiled eggs, cakes and beer, and John winked at her and said, ‘I’m glad you came to us, my old girl. Nice to have this manpower around, not forgetting the chicken legs.’
Helen laughed as the men cheered but she knew that on many farms the Americ
ans were helping, glad to work on the land, glad to be free of the war for a moment. She watched as the GIs eased themselves up from the ground, throwing a baseball to and fro, leaping and falling to catch it. There was laughter and shouting and they were like children but of course they were men, young men who could die tomorrow.
She lay down, her arm under her head, hearing the bees in the hedgerows behind them. The sun was bright on her lids, there was the smell of hay all around and she thought how much she loved England, its beauty, its smallness, its sameness, because she couldn’t bear to think of the war.
They worked all that day and the next but there was a different crew this time because the others had gone out on a dawn flight. She had heard them leave but knew each morning that it would not be Ed because the CO had kept his grounding official.
When the hay harvest was finished she limewashed the old cow-shed, now stained green and brown. She scrubbed the walls and then John gave her a bag of dry limewash and pails. She carried a small spray under her arm and mixed the lime with water. It puffed up into her eyes and caught in her throat and as she sprayed one wall her arm felt as though it was on fire from the pumping. But then Ed came and took over and they were both covered in lime, and Chris too when he came with Mary. He only sprayed half the wall because he was still not absolutely strong, and Helen watched him work and smiled.
In August they began the oat harvest and the wheat but Mario was not with them because he had not returned from a mission in July. The men laughed as before but there were deeper lines because the daylight raids were still not escorted deep into Germany and now there were so many and the losses were too great. ‘Too damn great,’ Ed said as they toiled home from the fields, their faces flecked with chaff.
In late August they went to Cambridge when he had a forty-eight-hour pass. Helen had asked Chris if he would mind but he had shaken his head and laughed.
They stayed in an old inn, climbing up twisting stairs, Ed having to lower his head beneath the beams. Their room had an old marble wash-stand with a rose-painted bowl and jug. There were floral curtains and a big bed and Helen was nervous because this was the first time she had been in a bedroom with Ed.
She watched as he unpacked, hanging his trousers in the wardrobe, his shirts too. She had always put Heine’s in the drawer. Helen walked to the window, peering out on to the narrow street. She mustn’t think of Heine, not here, not now. Heine had gone.
‘What about you, Helen? Are you going to unpack your grip now?’
She turned. It seemed too intimate somehow, to take her clothes out in front of him, to put them into drawers while he watched.
‘In a minute,’ she said, turning back to the window. She heard him move across the floor, the boards creaking beneath his weight. He put his arms around her from behind.
‘It feels kind of strange, doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘I had a girl in college, you know. We lived together for a year. I just thought of her then because she would never take her clothes out in front of me, or undress either.’ He kissed her hair. ‘I guess maybe you’re thinking of Heine.’
She turned and put her arms around him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I was but I’m not now.’ It was true, she wasn’t, because Ed understood and she smiled as he lifted her up and carried her to the bed.
Later they walked by the river in the cool of late afternoon, talking of Chris and how much fitter he was, of Mary who spent more time at Laura’s cottage than in her own billet. Of her sister who never came any more because she had an American GI and so she did not have time.
Ed hired a boat and they punted down the river, under bridges, laughing when he was almost too late dragging up the pole. She trailed her hand in the water, looking up at him as he pushed and pulled, lifting the pole from the water, hearing the water dripping back into the river. His arms were so strong, his body so lithe, his face so tired. The water was cold but she did not feel it, she only felt his arms as he had held her in that small room, his warm lips, and she smiled.
They ate at the hotel and the meal was frugal but it did not matter because they were impatient now, and that night Helen did undress in front of him. Her body was fit from the farm and her hands were not hard because she wore gloves and so she stroked his body and kissed his chest, his arms, his legs and held him to her.
In the morning they looked around the town and Ed took photographs of the colleges, but then handed his camera to Helen because she knew the angles to take. He wanted the sharpness of the shadows on the ground, the age of the buildings etched against the sky. She told him then of Claus and the business in New York and he nodded but said nothing.
They had lunch in a pub and as they walked in the afternoon along the river they watched other punters, other lovers, but none could love as much as they did, Helen thought, her hand in his. They walked in and out of the shadows, dragging their hands along the weeping willows, not seeing anyone else, only one another, and for a while the world stood still. But then they heard the straggling bombers return over to the east of the town and Ed grew quiet and that night he told her of his guilt at remaining on the ground but he did not tell her of his fear of being sent back into the air because they all had that.
Sunday was overcast but not cold and they walked again but Ed was quiet today and Helen too because tomorrow the war began again. They ate in a small café, watching the people going into the church, some women with hats and very few men, and that afternoon they sat on the bank while a mallard dived in the turgid water. A woman walked past, pushing a young man in a wheelchair. They were pale and thin.
Helen talked as they heard the wheels receding on the path but Ed’s answers were short and his shoulders were tense and he counted the planes which flew back over at four, not looking at her, and she felt a distance grow between them. As the last roared over he pulled her to her feet, hugging her, but his mind was not with her. She lifted her face for his kiss but he turned from her, walking to the bank, throwing a pebble and watching it bounce three times. Helen felt cold for the first time that summer and tried to push aside the hurt of his rejection, but could not and walked in silence to the car.
It was a silence which was not broken until they approached Greater Mannenham as the day was drawing to its end. Ed pulled in to the verge by the hayfield and took her hand and asked her to marry him, come back with him to Montana when all this was over. After all, she already had a business set up over there.
Helen sat looking up at him, into his eyes which were still dark. She looked beyond him to the field with the cut grass; she saw the leaves turning on the trees, the clouds thick and full of rain. She looked at him again, his brown eyes, the deep lines. She loved him, so much, so very much, but there had never been thought of a future, the present was enough. Hadn’t he learned that yet? The future was too dangerous. She did not dare to challenge the gods, to ask for more than she had. Couldn’t he see that?
She looked ahead. There was drizzle on the windscreen now blanking out the road. That is what the future was.
She turned to him then, pointing to the glass.
‘That’s the future. We have enough. Darling, we have enough.’
She gripped his hand. ‘Let’s keep what we have, we don’t need to talk of tomorrow.’ She held his hand to her face. ‘Don’t ask for too much.’
He pulled his hand away then, looking at her strangely. His eyelid was twitching. He looked so tired, so scared, and she reached for him again but he brushed away her hand, staring out to the fields at the side, talking in their direction, not hers. His voice was tense, taut. ‘It’s too much, is it? All you want is today, is it? I thought we felt more than that. I thought we loved one another.’
She looked at her hand. ‘That’s not what I meant. For God’s sake, Ed. That’s not how I meant it. You know that. Surely you know that. I love you. I love you so much.’
He turned and looked at her now but she couldn’t see any feeling in his eyes. She put her hand out to him, smiling because she could
n’t understand what was happening; where all this had come from. But he shook her off and reached for the ignition, starting the car, grinding it into gear, skidding the car off the verge on to the road.
‘I need you. I need to know you’ll always be there,’ he said.
Helen caught at his arm. ‘I will always be here for you. You know I will, but marriage is different.’ How could she tell him she was frightened she would kill him. Heine had died, hadn’t he? ‘I love you,’ she said but he shrugged off her arm.
‘Forget it, Helen. Just forget I said anything. Just for Christ’s sake forget what I said. Just think of the two nights you’ve had with a guy with cash in his pocket.’
The car was speeding down the road, swerving past a cyclist, hooting at a jeep and Helen clung to her seat, feeling as though she had been hit. How could this have happened?
‘You goddamn Limeys,’ he shouted, his hand hard down on the horn as another cyclist came out of a turning, but Helen knew he was shouting at her, not the old man and now she was angry because all this had taken the sun from the weekend and smashed it into darkness.
Helen watched the fields as they drove home, she didn’t watch him, couldn’t watch him, because it had all been too quick, all too sudden. Didn’t he understand that in the war you lived just for now because you never knew when another bomb would fall, when a telegram would come? Why didn’t he understand?
Chris didn’t understand either when she told him later that Ed would not be coming to see them again because they had quarrelled.
‘But he needs you, Mum.’
She knew that, but one husband had already died. Wasn’t that enough? But she didn’t say that to her son.
She said instead, ‘But it would mean living in a strange country.’
Chris said. ‘Dad did.’ His face was fierce and he wouldn’t look at her.
Helen replied, ‘I know.’ She didn’t say, ‘And look what happened to him,’ but that night in bed she tossed in the darkness of the blackout and again the next night and the next until two weeks had passed, filled with endless hours, minutes, seconds, and as dawn broke in mid September she knew that she was wrong. That she loved him and had let him down and would marry him rather than live without him or let him be alone. Other people married and did not die. He would not die.
Somewhere Over England Page 26
