Always in my Heart

by Pam Weaver

  ‘And then he’s got to go to court,’ said Shirley.

  Janet nodded. ‘And the police tell me there’s no chance of him coming home before the trial. They don’t take kindly to government officials being threatened with a shotgun.’

  ‘And we’re looking at a month or six weeks before he goes to trial?’ said Shirley.

  ‘I guess so,’ said Janet. ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘And if he’s found guilty,’ said Shirley, ‘what sentence will he get?’

  Janet shrugged. ‘I dunno. Six months? A year?’

  ‘I think it could be a lot longer,’ said Shirley.

  ‘Who cares?’ said Janet dismissively. ‘I’ll be long gone.’

  ‘That’s just it,’ said Shirley. ‘You don’t have to be.’

  Janet’s expression soured. ‘I have to keep my daughter safe.’

  ‘So long as he’s not here,’ said Shirley, ‘she’s perfectly safe, and so are you.’

  Janet looked taken aback.

  ‘You could bring this farm back from the brink,’ said Shirley.

  ‘Why would I want to do anything to help that pig?’ Janet said angrily.

  ‘The person you’ll be helping is yourself,’ said Shirley. ‘There’s money to be made in this farm, and by the time Mr Oliver comes out, you and Lucy could have enough to make a real start somewhere else.’

  Her friend still wasn’t listening. ‘But why should he reap all the benefits of my hard work?’ she said indignantly. ‘What if he comes after us?’

  ‘He won’t,’ said Shirley. ‘Yes, the farm will be a going concern, but we both know he’d want to go back to the way things were. It’ll be heading downhill before you know it, but why should we care? And as for chasing after you, he’ll be far too busy trying to keep the officials at bay.’

  Janet lowered herself back down into her chair and looked thoughtful. ‘Why should you care?’ she said. ‘You don’t even like farming.’

  ‘But Tom does,’ said Shirley. ‘I reckon if he got a reputation for being a good worker, there’s a real possibility that he’d be taken on by somebody else. I want him to have that chance.’

  Janet’s expression broke into a slow smile. ‘You’ve got an old head on those young shoulders of yours, Shirley Jenkins. How on earth did you come by all this?’

  ‘I mulled it over and tried to think what my mother would say,’ said Shirley. ‘I have to leave school at Easter. If I join the Land Army, I could stay on too.’

  ‘You’re too young,’ said Janet. ‘You have to be eighteen.’

  ‘I can look eighteen,’ said Shirley. ‘And Tom already does. That’s half his problem. People think he’s much older than he is.’

  Janet pulled a face. ‘They’d check your papers.’

  ‘I asked Miss Smith about it and she told me the farmer checks the paperwork,’ said Shirley. ‘Do you think you could make a mistake about my age? People lied about their age in the First World War. Why not now?’

  ‘And here’s me thinking you were a sweet little innocent schoolgirl,’ Janet teased, ‘when all the time you’re nothing more than a scheming little madam.’ She laid her hand over Shirley’s. ‘All right. You’re on. Let’s do it.’

  * * *

  A week later, Shirley threw herself down in the kitchen chair and pulled off her headscarf. ‘Well, at least we got a few things right.’

  The three of them were exhausted. They had spent most of the afternoon with Mr Telford walking around the farm. He had been unequivocal in his criticism of what they were doing, but he had been encouraging rather than condemning. In every case they could see that he was absolutely right, and once he’d gone, they’d still had to finish off the outside jobs.

  Janet took the casserole out of the oven. Knowing that they’d be tired at the end of the day, while Janet fed Lucy that morning, Shirley had put tinned corned beef with haricot beans, cabbage, a leek, vegetable stock and herbs into a large dish. All they had to do was place it in the range oven for forty-five minutes before they needed it. By the time Shirley had finished in the milk parlour and laid the table, Lucy had been fed again. Everybody had a wash and the meal was ready.

  It had been an eventful couple of days. Before Mr Telford’s visit, some men from the dairy had turned up. Shirley could tell straight away that they were in some kind of trouble. The man in charge, Mr Swan, was rather curt in his manner.

  ‘Who is responsible for the milk churns?’

  ‘I am at the moment,’ said Janet. ‘Usually my husband does them, but he’s in hospital. Why?’

  Mr Swan consulted his paperwork. ‘How long have you been doing them?’

  ‘Since last Wednesday.’

  He tapped a page with his fountain pen and his colleague looked over his shoulder, nodded.

  Janet frowned. ‘Would you mind telling me what this is all about?’

  ‘You’ve only got eight cows,’ said Mr Swan, ‘and yet our records tell us that for some time your churns had an average of twenty-seven gallons of milk in them. There is no way you could get that much milk from eight cows.’

  ‘There must be some mistake,’ Janet said faintly.

  ‘We did a routine test,’ said the second man. ‘The milk was diluted.’

  Shirley was aghast. ‘What? How?’

  ‘One sample had fifty-seven per cent added water and the other twenty-six per cent,’ Mr Swan went on. Janet opened her mouth to say something, but he stopped her with a wave of his hand. ‘However, since last week your returns have dropped considerably.’

  ‘That’s what put us on to you,’ said the other man.

  ‘Since then you’ve been sending approximately seven and a half gallons to the dairy,’ said Mr Swan, ‘a figure far more consistent with the yield of eight cows.’

  ‘In other words,’ Shirley piped up, ‘you know we have nothing to do with watered-down milk.’

  ‘If you were involved,’ said Mr Swan, ‘the dairy would have refused to deal with you and you would have been blacklisted. Nobody in this area would take your milk.’

  Janet looked anxious. ‘I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.’

  ‘Now,’ said Mr Swan, ‘if you tell me where Mr Oliver is, I shall issue him with a summons.’

  Janet and Shirley had watched them go with a sense of relief. ‘Thank goodness they could see we were the innocent party,’ said Janet. ‘If they’d stopped taking the churns, we’d have been jiggered.’

  Since Mr Telford had told them he’d help, the three of them concentrated on making the farm look as efficient as possible before his visit. It was added pressure for Shirley. She had less than a week before her exams and she wanted to spend as much time as she could swatting up. She did her fair share of work, but Mr Telford still found plenty of things that needed changing.

  ‘It’s better if you have all the cows facing the same way when you milk them,’ he said. ‘Empty pails and those full of milk left in that narrow passageway between their backsides risk contamination.’

  Shirley could see the sense of that at once. If a cow defecated, the buckets could easily be splashed.

  ‘And keep those cats out of the milking parlour,’ said Mr Telford. ‘I saw one balancing on the edge of a pail to drink. Just remember the last thing it may have done,’ he added with a grin. ‘Perhaps killed a rat or had a nice lick of its pussy bottom.’

  Shirley shuddered at the thought.

  Having all the cows facing the same way meant rearranging the milking shed. That took time, and clutter that had been simply piled up because Mr Oliver couldn’t be bothered to put it in its proper place had to be moved. Once they’d created eight empty stalls down one side of the shed, Tom promised to sweep it out more thoroughly the next day.

  Mr Telford complimented them on their method of milking and singled Tom out for a special commendation. He also suggested that when the milk was taken to the cooler, the weight of each pail should be recorded against the name of the cow. ‘That way,’ he explained, ‘you
’ll know how productive each one is.’

  Although it would take a little longer, it sounded like good sense to Janet. Gilbert never knew what a cow’s yield was. He’d just say, ‘She gives a good pail full’ or, ‘She only gave half a pail today.’

  Before it got dark, they walked the fields with Seth Roberts. The winter had been harsh, but already the days were getting slightly warmer. Mr Telford advised them to begin drilling oats and barley.

  ‘If Tom puts on the ’arness,’ said Seth, ‘I can manage to walk behind the ’orse.’ Just the thought of being active again made him look years younger.

  ‘If you mend the fences round the orchard,’ said Mr Telford, ‘you might consider keeping a few pigs. You’ll need a permit, of course, but it would mean fresh meat for yourselves. The government will want half. I know it seems unfair, but as a country, we have to make ourselves self-sufficient.’

  When they got back to the farmhouse, their heads were reeling with facts and suggestions, but they were still enthusiastic.

  ‘Did your husband always manage this farm on his own?’ Mr Telford asked.

  Janet shook her head. ‘He used to have a labourer. Reuben Fletcher, he was called, but he was before my time.’

  ‘So what happened to him?’

  Janet shrugged. ‘Moved on to pastures new, I suppose.’

  ‘I shall recommend that you get more help,’ said Mr Telford, ‘and if you can billet your workers, so much the better.’

  ‘I can’t believe how helpful you’ve been,’ said Janet. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’ll face opposition,’ said Mr Telford as he turned to leave. ‘The farmers around here will be certain that because you are a woman on her own, you can’t do it, but I advise you to listen to old Seth. He’s been on the land all his life, and although he may be a bit old-fashioned and his arthritis slows him up, he’ll give you sound advice.’

  Janet shook his hand vigorously and Mr Telford smiled. ‘I’ll come back after the Easter holiday,’ he told them. ‘Any problems, tell me then and I’ll see what I can do.’

  Janet nodded. That would be the beginning of April. The last thing he had done before he left was to arrange for the billing to be transferred to Janet. Oliver’s Farm was now her responsibility, so he’d suggested she write to her husband and ask him to put the bank account in her name while he was away.

  They ate their meal eagerly, then sat back to relax for a while. Shirley yawned. She still faced taking another look at her school books before getting ready for bed. Her gaze fell on the mantrap hanging on the wall. ‘I really hate that thing,’ she said.

  ‘So do I,’ said Janet. ‘And d’you know what, I think we should change the sleeping arrangements in this house. Why should you and Tom stay in that freezing-cold room when there is a perfectly good room upstairs?’

  Shirley blinked in surprise. ‘Mr Oliver will go crazy.’

  ‘Mr Oliver isn’t here,’ said Janet. She pushed her thumbs into the armholes of her floral cross-over apron and grinned. ‘I’m in charge now.’

  ‘How shall we do it?’ said Shirley eagerly.

  ‘I’ll go into Gil’s room with Lucy,’ said Janet. ‘It’ll have to be spring-cleaned – it smells like a fox’s den in there. Tom can sleep on the landing where I am now, and you can have Elizabeth’s room.’

  Shirley took in her breath. Was she really going to be allowed to sleep in that lovely room? She could hardly wait.

  Tina wasn’t at all well. Florrie woke up to the sound of whispered voices coming from the other side of the screen. It was still dark. The big clock on the wall said ten to five. She could hear the nurses pulling together to haul Tina back up the bed, but it did little to help her laboured breathing. A short while later, the nurses wound the bed up so that it was supported on its big wheels, and a few minutes after that, Tina’s bed was wheeled out of the ward. When the screen was taken away, Florrie stared grimly at the empty space where her friend’s bed had been.

  Tina had always struggled with her illness. She’d had the same treatment as everyone else, but people like Edna had gone home for Christmas, and Jill had improved. Even Florrie had made progress, but Tina only seemed to get weaker. About an hour later, when the early morning tea trolley came round, everybody stirred to begin the new day.

  Florrie drank her tea, then collected her washbag and towel, and headed for the bathroom. Everyone made polite conversation, but nobody remarked on the big empty space. They didn’t need to. While all of them hoped and prayed that it wouldn’t be long before Tina was back on the ward, they knew the score. She’d be in a single room on a constant supply of oxygen. She might even be in an iron lung. Experiments were showing that the machine used to help those with poliomyelitis could also help TB patients.

  Florrie and the other women washed in silence. When they came back to the ward, no one felt much like conversation. Jill was doing a puzzle. Florrie went to join her. It was then that Florrie noticed a piece of paper on the floor behind her locker. By pushing her locker and balancing over the side of her chair, Florrie managed to reach it. She was lucky not to get caught straining herself or she would have been in trouble. When she finally managed to look at it, she knew it was Tina’s. It was the photograph, the one Tina had shown her of her two little girls.

  Pulling on a cardigan, Florrie made her way down the ward. If anyone asked where she was going, she would say this was part of her exercise. The isolation cubicles were at the end of the ward. Each door had a small window that was covered by a sliding door. There was no one around. Florrie peeked through the first window. Empty room. On the other side, a woman was doing her exercises with the nurse. She sat in a chair with the nurse opposite and together they lifted their arms and put them down again.

  The third door had the shutter across the window. Florrie slid the wood across silently. Tina was sitting bolt upright in bed with a rubber oxygen mask over her nose and mouth. Her skin was grey, and it was obvious that she was struggling to get every ounce of breath into her lungs. Florrie pushed the door open and slipped inside. As she reached her bedside, Tina opened her eyes.

  ‘Hello, love,’ Florrie said cheerfully. She held up the photograph. ‘You dropped this.’

  Tina’s eyes were fixed on the faces of her little girls, but she didn’t move. It was only then that Florrie realized she didn’t even have the strength to lift her arm and take it. Florrie held the picture in front of Tina for a second longer, and then she tucked it under the fingers of Tina’s hand, which was resting on top of the covers. ‘Now, you hold on tight,’ she whispered.

  Tina’s fingers fluttered slightly as if she was caressing the picture.

  ‘I’d better go,’ said Florrie, squeezing her arm gently, ‘or I’ll be for the high jump.’

  On impulse, as she stood up, Florrie leaned over and planted a gentle kiss on Tina’s forehead. Tina didn’t speak, but a solitary teardrop fell from the corner of her eye and rolled along the rubber strap of the mask.

  Outside in the corridor, Florrie leaned against the wall and struggled not to cry. Damn this disease. It was merciless. It was cruel. It was bloody unfair.

  CHAPTER 19

  Janet was right: Mr Oliver’s room stank, and when they pulled back the bedcovers, they couldn’t believe the colour of his sheets.

  ‘I’ve no idea when he last changed them,’ said Janet, putting them into a pile with her fingertips. ‘He never lets me in here.’

  ‘I shall be worn to a frazzle by the time we finish this,’ Shirley joked. She was going down to the village later this evening. Although she had no money, the village-hall committee had decided to join a scheme whereby films were shown in the hall. It wasn’t quite the same as going to the cinema, but it meant everyone could see a fairly new film closer to home. It was only a shilling to go in, and that included a cup of tea in the interval. Granny Roberts had told Shirley they were looking for someone to help with the teas. Whoever did it would get in free. Shirley had already done it a couple of times
. She had to go in early to put out the cups and light the gas under the big kettles. She would miss a bit around the middle of the film while she brewed the tea and then did the washing-up, but she could usually pick up the story, so it didn’t matter too much. Tonight, they were showing an Alfred Hitchcock film called The Lady Vanishes and she was really looking forward to it.

  It took them a couple of hours of hard work to get the room into a habitable state. Months of cobwebs and dust had to be swept away, and they even had to empty a brimming chamber pot they found under the bed. At one point, they started a pillow fight but had to stop when one popped open and feathers went everywhere. They worked hard, and once the windows were cleaned, it made the room a lot lighter, but the curtains fell apart as they were taken down to be washed.

  ‘I shall have to put a blanket over the rail until I can make some new ones,’ said Janet. ‘Any light here on the hill will have the warden biking up to the house in no time,’ and they both laughed.

  There was something in the corner covered by an old blanket. Janet pulled it off to reveal a small suitcase. She threw it onto the bed and opened it. It appeared to be empty.

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ said Shirley. ‘That’s my mum’s suitcase.’ She examined it carefully. ‘Yes, there’s the scribble picture Tom did when he was about six. He got into a lot of trouble for that. And that nick in the fabric happened when the buckle on my shoe got caught on it when we went to stay with Auntie Doreen.’ She looked up at Janet with a puzzled expression. ‘We never brought it with us, so what’s it doing here? Did my mother come to see us?’

  Janet shrugged. ‘I haven’t a clue,’ she said, ‘but if she did, I never saw her.’

  ‘So how did it get here?’ Shirley ran her fingers along the pocket on the side and pulled out a lipstick with a small luggage label attached. All my love, Mum xx. It wasn’t her mother’s writing. For a second or two, Shirley panicked. Had something happened to Mum? Was she worse? Had she . . . She hadn’t . . . No, no, of course not. Of course she hadn’t died. She’d written them that letter only a few days ago. Shirley swivelled the lipstick. It was a pretty shade of raspberry pink.