‘I love you, I love you,’ he said, reaching for her and as she sank beneath his kiss she thought of Yvonne and wondered how her mornings were.
She dressed at last, knocking on Chris’s door but he was up, and as she ran down the stairs she heard him talking in the kitchen to the woman who had welcomed them to Little Fork last night; the woman who had taken her in her arms and held her close, saying that her son loved her and she did too. Ed’s father had kissed her cheek and smiled, then picked up his pipe again and puffed before looking at Chris and saying that he needed a few more vittals inside him and then he’d pretty soon lick the hired hands into shape.
Mom, as she insisted on being called, cooked waffles and passed them thick corn syrup, followed by steak for breakfast and Chris looked at his mother and then ate until it was finished, drinking coffee while Ed laughed.
The black stove threw out heat though the spring morning was not cold, but fresh, the frost and snow all gone as April drew towards its end.
‘So,’ Ed’s mother said, sitting down with them, pouring more coffee, her plump face pink from the heat of the stove, her grey hair caught up in a bun. Ed’s eyes were the same as his mother’s, Helen thought, looking from one to another and she felt good to be here amongst his people, but so far, it was not her home.
‘So, there’s no work for you today, Ed, your pop says. You’re to look after this little family of yours, and look after them good.’ She was shaking her finger at her son who dodged and grinned at Chris.
‘We’re going into town,’ he said, levering himself up from his chair stiffly since his back and his left thigh were still not fully mobile. ‘Thought I’d show Helen the place, get a few clothes for them both because there’s this hotpot supper at the house behind the drug store on Friday.’ He smiled at Helen. ‘It’s kind of a welcome shower.’
Helen looked up as she stacked the plates. ‘A shower?’
‘That great kid of mine means a party I guess you’d call it. It’s just that a few folks said they’d like to meet “this girl from England” and I thought it would get it all over and done with and then you can get on with your life.’ His mother wiped her hands on her apron smiling at Helen. ‘That’s what you all need, you, Ed and Chris. Just to be allowed to get on with your lives the best you can.’ She turned and walked to the sink with the dishes, waving Helen away and calling to Ed.
‘Just get your new wife downtown to the store to pick up some books for her to read when she’s feeling kind of lonesome for England and then on to Joanie’s for some clothes. But before that, maybe you should show her the house.’
Ed put his hands around Helen’s waist, pulling her down on to his lap. His laugh was the same and his body too. His lips as he touched her neck were gentle and she smiled at Chris who was lifting his eyes to the ceiling and drumming his fingers on the table.
‘Shall we get into town first, Ed?’ he said. ‘And then, when we get back can you show me the horse you said I could have? Mum and I have been learning to ride on John’s old mare for the last year you know.’
‘Is that so? Well, you kept that kind of quiet in your letters, didn’t you, Mrs McDonald?’
He laughed and kissed her forehead and Helen remembered the falls she had taken as old Betsy had trotted up and down, up and down, and how she thought the world had taken a tumble when she had been lurched into her first canter.
Ed squeezed Helen and let her rise, holding her hand as they walked to the door, slapping Chris on the shoulder.
‘Come on, cowboy.’
They drove down the narrow road which ran alongside the creek edged by muddy banks and interrupted by clumps of willow. Helen looked out either side of the truck towards the mountains. Those to the west had snow on them which, Ed told her, remained throughout the year. Those to the east had been whipped into towers and turrets by the winds which swirled around the range day after day without respite.
‘We get our ravens here too,’ he told Chris. ‘Some real mean storms blow in but towards the end of the summer I guess.’
There was mud on the road and tracks leading to fields where hay was beginning to grow and he looked at Helen as they passed and both were remembering the first time they discovered one another’s bodies. Ed told Helen that the roads were always like this in the spring because there was so much snow.
‘When it thaws it makes one hell of a mess,’ he said. ‘And it makes it kind of slippy to drive. Now, you must remember that when I teach you because you’ll need to learn out here. It’s not like England with buses and trams.’
He drove on, showing them where he had skidded off the road when the first snows had come after he had just learned to drive. He pulled in to show them where his pop said his great-grandfather had first pitched his tent, down on the bank of the creek.
‘My great-grandfather settled here because it looked so like his home. He had come from the lowlands of Scotland and ran sheep here because it was all he knew about. He kind of bought up the other homesteads.’
They sat quietly for a moment and Helen thought of these people coming so far and staying to build a farm and a family and felt less alone.
He started the engine again, slipping it into gear, showing her what he was doing and it was not so very different to the old van which John had insisted she drove round with the hay in the hard winter of forty-five.
In the town he drew up and pointed to the railroad shipping pens to the left of the station where they would bring the sheep in the autumn.
‘Who was here before the settlers?’ Chris asked, peering through the window at the swallows’ nests which hung beneath the eaves of the few stores in the street.
Ed drew into the side of the road, checking his mirrors, pulling the steering wheel over before stopping. ‘The Crow Indians. They hunted across here in the early days. There was wild turkey, all manner of things then, or so pop says.’
‘Where did they go?’ Helen asked climbing down from the truck behind Chris, looking up and down the street, wondering if this really was all there was to Little Fork.
‘Across to the long-grass prairies over the Missouri River,’ Ed replied, touching his hat to the two old men who had chairs at the open hotel door. ‘Hi, Jack, Tim. This is my wife straight out from England. And her boy, Chris.’
‘Hello,’ Helen said and smiled. The men nodded and sucked on their pipes, their faces wrinkled and their hands gnarled.
‘Couldn’t find no nice clean girl over here then, Ed?’ Jack said and Helen felt cold and turned, walking on, hearing Chris come up behind and then Ed who took her arm, his lips thin. ‘Ignore ’em, honey. They are the only two likely to be sour. Nothing’s ever right for them.’
But it had been said and Heine had had to live with that all the time, hadn’t he? Even the dress which Ed bought her with a long zip instead of buttons which she had never seen before and the shirt and thick trousers for riding could not brush the words aside. She watched him walk ahead of her into the grocery store, leading her to the books beyond the shelves which were stocked to bursting in a way that Helen had not seen for so long. She longed to see his rolling walk back again but for now it was pushed away by the stiffness of his injuries. Oh God, there was so much that was different, but last night in bed it had been the same. She must hang on to that; and there had been no dreams for him. But then, they had not slept.
That afternoon they saddled up three horses and rode out to the house which was being repaired for them. It had been built by his grandfather, Ed told them, out of pine logs from the slope above them and had two bedrooms but would be big enough for now though it would not be finished until next spring. They stood and looked but somehow it wasn’t her house, though it had windows and a door. There was no roof, just bare rafters which looked pale against the seasoned pine of the old walls. She smiled at Ed.
‘It’s going to be splendid, isn’t it, Chris?’
Chris nodded and then urged his horse on up the rutted track and his hoofs sucked and sl
urped at the mud.
The horse was gentle beneath Helen and she felt confident while Ed pointed out the cabin hundreds of feet up the slope where the sheep herders based themselves in the summer and where you could hide from the world in the winter. She watched his hands as he pointed, his face which she loved, and she pushed the words of the old man and Heine’s pain away because her husband was here and therefore Little Fork must become her home.
The next day she sat in a chair in the lounge looking through the window at the men hurrying from the bunk-house to the lambing sheds. She saw Ed walking stiffly to meet them, his hat sat back on his head as he nodded to his father and sent one of the men into town. He had taken Chris with him, saying that Helen had done too much for too long but she was restless and walked around the room, smoothing the settee covers, flicking open books and then shutting them. The newspapers were there but held no news of England, only of America.
She walked into the kitchen and baked alongside Mrs McDonald who told her how ill Ed had been, how bad the nightmares were until he knew that Helen was coming.
‘That’s when I knew I loved you, my dear. I feared for him you see. I didn’t know what was in his head, why he screamed out like he did. We haven’t been in the war, out here. How can we know? But you know. You’ve been through it.’
Helen put her arm round her shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, he’ll be fine. He’s such a good man.’ She mixed the flour with the butter, squeezing it through her fingers, wondering how long she could keep the darkness out of Ed’s eyes. She rolled out the pastry, shaking flour on to the board, wanting to be busy, but using her body, not just her hands because there was too much time to think about how little she really knew of the horrors, the reasons for the dreams. And how could she help unless she knew?
‘I guess you might like to come down and take a look at the creamery, honey,’ Mom said.
They went after lunch, a large meal which was served in the kitchen to the men and the family. No one spoke very much as they crammed food into mouths then left, busy, purposeful, and Helen wanted to be with them, but instead walked with Mom down across the red shale track towards the bunkhouse and beyond. There were no flowers, no colour and Helen thought of the daffodils and tulips at Laura’s but then she must not think of things that were English.
It was damp in the creamery and her hair hung limp as she asked questions, shouting to be heard above the clatter of the churns and machinery. She saddled up her horse at four and rode out across the edge of the hayfields, missing John and the horses, missing the hoeing, the weeding, the feeding, and so the next morning she rose with Ed, pulling on her riding trousers and shirt and going with him to the lambing sheds because, she told him, she had come to America to be with him, not to get in his mother’s way.
He looked at her, then stooped and kissed her hard, calling to Chris to come too and roll his goddamn sleeves up or his mother would beat them both to it.
All day they worked because the lambs were coming thick and fast. In the lambing shed board pens about four feet square stretched row upon row and the bleating and curses of the men mingled with the smell of iodine, manure, wool and alfalfa. Helen’s hair hung in her eyes and Ed threw her his bandana to tie up around her head. Chris stayed with her, watching the lambs nuzzle the sheep, pointing out ones which were not suckling, then climbing into the pen with his mother to work the teats to make sure that the milk was flowing before putting the lambs on to suckle.
Again and again Helen did this and the heat in the shed built up until sweat poured down her body but this was work she understood and for the first time since she had left England she felt at ease. Ed called to Chris and showed him how to stamp the ewe and lamb with the same number to show that they belonged to each other.
After a lunch eaten in haste and with little conversation as they had done in the English fields they were out again, though this time Helen went with Ed to the pasture where they had to wrestle the ewes into the jugpen pulled by horses and then take them back to the shed. The sheep fought and Helen tussled them, holding them firm or snaring them by the hind leg with a sheep hook to snake them in backwards.
That night Chris and Ed tallied the numbers. It was mid April and now they had numbered over a thousand head of sheep and his father laughed and winked at Mom.
‘I guess we got a good bargain, didn’t we, Momma?’
That night Ed made love to Helen and it was not gentle but filled with passion as hers was and later she whispered, ‘I need to work alongside you, my love. We have had too many hours taken from us.’
He kissed her and said, ‘I love you and hate every second away from you.’
The next day a lamb died and Ed showed Helen and Chris how to skin the dead lamb, snipping four small leg holes and a head hole. Then he took a twin from another ewe, fitting the skin to the lamb.
His hands were smeared with blood and Chris looked away. ‘Now you have to present this to that ewe over there. The one whose lamb has died. She’ll accept it in a coupla days because she’ll recognise the smell as her own.’ He nodded at Chris and Helen. ‘You got that?’
Helen nodded and Chris too but he was pale. Later Helen found a dead lamb and called Chris to grab one of triplets from a pen higher up. He did and then watched his mother do a job he felt he could not attempt and later that evening he went and put his arms around her and said, ‘I love you, Mum.’ But what he wanted to say was, I respect you. You are so brave and so strong and I don’t know what I would do without you and I wish I could accept my German part but I can’t.
On Friday they went in the car to the house behind the drug store taking two casseroles with them to place on the table as Ed’s mom said they must. Mrs McDonald introduced Helen to the younger women first and they were kind and friendly and kissed her when the British would just have shaken hands. They also heaped presents on them for the new house.
They talked of Ed as a child, how he had fired arrows at targets and missed, breaking the drugstore window. How he had ridden his horse down the main street on Independence Day, firing his pop’s old gun. Helen looked across at him as he talked to a ring of men, throwing his head back and laughing, his arm on Chris’s shoulders and she loved him more than ever.
Two of the women talked of working in factories during the war, of leaving home while their men served in the forces. They spoke of how small the town seemed now. Of how they had been hated by the men in the factories and feared by them because of their abilities. They put their hands on Helen’s arms.
‘I guess it must be the hardest thing in the world, to come over to another country. It was sure bad just moving to a bigger town,’ Susie said, her blonde hair swept back in a pony-tail, her blue eyes sympathetic. ‘Come see me sometime, anytime.’
Though their heads ached the next day from too much to drink they were up at daybreak as usual because lambs did not stop being born to accommodate a hangover, Helen groaned, as she pulled on her trousers. But now she felt as though she had a friend in the small town and that made her feel safer somehow.
In the evening she wrote to Germany to try and find Frau and Herr Weber and Chris watched her but said nothing. They packed up a parcel of tins to send to Laura and Mary and next year Mary was coming, they decided, even if they had to go and fetch her, because Helen was looking forward now.
In June the mosquitoes were rising from the creek and the sheep had to go through the gate and be counted but Chris was not here during the day now because he had gone into the town along from Little Fork where the High School stood and he talked of pitching and batting, chewing gum as he did so. He handled the work well and liked the kids, he said, and Ed and his father chuckled when Helen told him to take that disgusting stuff out at once.
Chris lay in bed feeling the heat of the summer which he had never before experienced. Life was good but he missed Mary. He had not thought he would quite so much, but there was a difference between these kids and those back home. These ones were fresh and bright-eyed
and knew nothing of bombs and death. He was thirteen and he did. He knew its sounds and smells.
He lay with his hands behind his head. Mary had written to say she would come next year, definitely, and Laura too, and he wanted to show her the jackpines, the creek and his horse, Sorrel. He wanted to show how he could lasso a calf, hauling back on the rope. He wanted to show her the calluses on his hands.
Would she like his friends? Roy with the broken tooth because he was a fighter; Ted with his red hair. And what about the coach who said he’d make a great batter one day? He turned over in the bed. Gee, it was hot. He lifted the sheet, waving it up and down.
The coach was German but nobody minded. He should tell them he was too, but he couldn’t and he didn’t know why. Chris turned over towards the window. He needed to tell. He knew he did but he couldn’t because he hated the Germans. He still hated them.
In mid June Helen and Ed drove with Mom and Pop to the High School game because Chris was playing. Helen sat in the stand and watched the girls dancing at the edge of the pitch, heard the school band and ate popcorn which Ed handed to her in a cardboard carton. She wanted to wave to Chris when he ran on to the field and the supporters stood and cheered their team but she did not. She just watched and wondered at how American he had so easily become and how English she still was.
She watched the battle between the pitcher and the batter, heard the screams and cheers as runs were scored and home base was reached. She listened as Ed explained that each team had nine innings and that each team’s inning lasted until three men had been put out.
‘The visiting team is always the first to bat,’ Ed’s father told her, roaring as another run was scored then groaning as a batter hit an infield fly.
Helen didn’t understand but shouted when Chris hit a homer and scored a run and the rest of the team went wild.
‘I showed him how to hit that, Christ almighty. I told him,’ Ed said, grabbing her and kissing her and she laughed, feeling free tonight, and happy. She looked along the rows of people watching, seeing their faces, hearing their voices drawling and American, but not seeming as strange as they had two months ago and she settled back for the rest of the evening. She would write her monthly letter to Claus tomorrow and he would laugh at all this.
Somewhere Over England Page 34
