by Ruby Jackson
‘Don’t worry, love, me and Flora will get rid of everything. Now what you have to think about is enjoying Christmas Day. It’ll be like old times, won’t it? My Sally, if she can get here, and you and Rose; pity Daisy can’t come. First, the Watchnight Service, then home for cocoa. Fingers crossed there’s no air raid. But there won’t be, will there? Germans like Christmas same as us, don’t they?’
‘Course they do, Mrs Brewer.’ She would bring up the subject of the unwashed clothes after Christmas.
But, of course, before Christmas was over, they were found by the renting agent and sorted, by the indefatigable Mrs Brewer, into wearable and not wearable. After disposing of the worthless clothes, Mrs Brewer washed the others and donated them to one of the many groups desperately looking for clothing for refugees.
For the first time in their long friendship, the Petrie and Brewer families, which included Grace, had Christmas dinner together. The long-legged boys who had taken up most of the space at the Petrie table were never again going to gather together around that table. Young Ron was dead, and although Sam would, hopefully, come back one day, no one actually knew where he and sailor Phil were. Daisy was on duty, as was Sally, who had come home to wish her parents – and the unexpected Grace – a Merry Christmas, before returning to London. Entertaining the troops was of vital importance to the war effort. Rose Petrie and Grace tried to be all the others for the two sets of parents and everyone pretended that everything was lovely, as they thought of those who were not there and relived memories of happier times.
A few days later, Grace was back at the farmhouse in Scotland.
Her journey had been long, cold and tiring. She had returned no wiser about her background. Grace’s frustration had grown, as it had been quite impossible to examine the papers while standing in a crowded train or even when seated, often squeezed against either the window or the door. If she moved her arm even a little, in the hope of pulling out an envelope, it was likely that her elbow would jar the person beside her, who was suffering the same discomfort. She had been unable to examine them at the Brewer house. Oh, Sally and her parents would have left her in peace to read but better to spend the little time she had enjoying the love and friendship of this family.
Since she had been unable to tell the Flemings when she was arriving back, there was no one at the station to meet her. It was a long, cold walk back to the farm at Newriggs, and she was pleased to be carrying so little. She had worn her lace-up boots with the woolly linings and was grateful that her feet were comfortable. She walked along, aware that she was alone and miles from the farmhouse, but she was more conscious of danger from the skies than on the road. There were raids in this area – after all, it was no great distance from Edinburgh and not far from RAF East Fortune, a ready target for the enemy.
She fantasised about a steaming hot bath, but this was not Whitefields and there was no running hot water. Water for baths had to be heated on the open fire and on the cumbersome old iron range – which had to be ‘blackened’ regularly. The land girls were almost certain that their duties did not include domestic service – after all, there were scarcely enough hours of daylight in which to do their farm work – but, in the interests of harmony, had decided to take it in turn.
As Grace plodded along, her spirits drooped lower and lower. It was bitingly cold but not what regular farm workers called ‘too cold for snow’, and she doubted that she would reach the farm before snow began to fall. Just then, she heard a noise that cheered her instantly: the tinkling of a bicycle bell. She stopped, looked behind her and saw the two Polish land girls, Katia and Eva.
‘Grace, you are walking,’ Eva pointed out. ‘We have been in picture house for improve English. Why are you walk in cold?’
Grace was prepared to answer but the girls chattered to each other in Polish; their gestures told Grace that they were discussing her predicament.
‘We have solve problem,’ said Katia, thus disproving Mrs Fleming’s assertion that she did not speak English. ‘Bike of Eva is for man and has bar, so you will sit on bar and I will make go. Eva is not with strength of me and will make go this bicycle and carry also your … bag,’ she managed eventually.
Grace tried to protest but the girls were adamant and she found herself on the extremely uncomfortable bar, whizzing along the bumpy farm road. They sang together in Polish and, with Grace, in execrable English, and they laughed a lot, especially when Grace slipped off, as she did occasionally, but they did reach the shelter of the farmhouse much more quickly than she would have done on her own.
It was too late to boil enough water for a bath but there was a pot of a dish Mrs Fleming called stovies. Consisting mainly of potatoes – and in Mrs Fleming’s case, a small amount of leftover beef, including the scrapings from the bottom of a roasting pan – the dish was a godsend for farmers’ wives faced with the duty of feeding several hungry young people, as potatoes, and, in fact, all vegetables, were not rationed. Mr Fleming, like most of the farmers in the area, grew potatoes on his farm. Throughout the rest of a long, cold winter, Grace was to become used to ingenious ways of serving potatoes, although her favourites remained Mrs Fleming’s thick potato soup and the stovies. Eva and Katia complained that everything was sadly lacking in seasoning, and the more English – or Scottish – they learned, the more they were able to regale the other girls with mouthwatering tales of Polish food.
All the land girls liked the Polish girls. They knew little about them, apart from the fact that they were Catholics who had escaped from their ravaged country some time before. Gently, but firmly, Eva and Katia refused to talk about the escape, saying only that very brave people were involved.
Grace, who worried that she felt too sorry for herself, admired the girls’ courage. She watched them sometimes, wondering what it was that made them able to be so brave. Katia, the older girl, was tall and quite angular but with the most beautiful eyes – calm eyes that somehow told of great suffering. Her thick long dark brown hair was pulled back and tied firmly with a piece of coloured wool. Eva was like a fairy princess, with a rippling fall of pale gold silk, longer even than the taller Katia’s, and braided into two plaits, which she curled on the top of her head like a small crown.
Grace would never forget their humour or kindness.
Now she was grateful to find that no allowance was made for her bereavement. She could find no feelings at what was termed ‘your sad loss’ except some measure of annoyance that, even in death, Megan had told her nothing, and a nagging feeling of guilt that her sister had found her completely unlovable. She threw herself into her work, until she could think of nothing but discomfort, and mud and an aching back. The other girls, and especially the Poles, made friendly gestures, patting her on the shoulder if they passed behind her as they went to sit at the kitchen table, motioning to her to come closer to the fire. Occasionally, she found herself blessedly alone and she started looking at the papers she had thought might, just possibly, reveal something. Nothing. No birth or marriage certificates. No letters at all written in the twenties. Had there been letters that had been destroyed by Megan? But, if so, why? Had not one person been interested in the small Grace who had appeared in Dartford, possibly in the company of a nun, and had been taken in by the late Megan Paterson?
Oh, Grace Paterson, she chided herself, these poor girls from Poland don’t even know if their families are still alive and they take time to comfort someone they think is in mourning. She yearned to say, ‘I’m not, don’t worry about me,’ but she could not and determined instead to try to accept a situation she could not change.
Letters from Dartford arrived less than a week after her return, from Mrs Petrie, from Rose and from Sally. A few days after that, there was news from Daisy, bringing Grace up to date with her life. Joy and interest in the exciting things that were happening to Daisy carried Grace through the winter. She would have liked to write to Sam in the prison camp, via the Red Cross but, being too shy, asked Daisy to pass on her best
wishes.
It was a time of hard and often unpleasant work not aided by the weather. If it was not raining, it was snowing, and, although countryside covered in pristine white snow was pleasing to the eye, it was not so much fun for the girls. Katia and Eva made light of the snow; in fact, they found the constant complaints of a few of the girls quite amazing. It was winter and in winter there was snow.
‘And this is not snow much,’ said Eva, who then raised her hand above her head to show the others how deep real snow got.
‘And this we do well,’ shouted Katia, and she caught up a handful of soft powdery snow and threw it at Fiona.
‘Call that a snowball?’ countered Jenny, a small, round and usually quiet girl. ‘I’ll show you a snowball,’ and, for a few mad moments, all seven girls forgot the war and their worries and behaved like children.
For the next few gruelling months, there was little time for play as Bob Fleming and seven young women tried to get through the winter. The three jobs most loathed by the girls were clearing ditches, cleaning the byres and, the number one, universally hated – killing rats. Winter weather made the rodents even bolder as they tried to find food. Bob kept his few milk cattle indoors almost all winter and mucking out was an unending task. Standing thigh-high in filthy ice-cold water, shovelling out muck of all kinds, was both heartbreaking and backbreaking, even for the usually sunny Eva. Her pleasant soprano voice was heard all over the farm from morning till night but never when she was in a slurry drain.
‘There’s a grand cowboy picture on in the village, girls,’ Bobs Fleming said, hoping to cheer them up. ‘I wish I had spare petrol so’s I could take you, but the air base has promised to lend us some bikes.’
The land girls were unimpressed.
‘Cowboys chase cows, Mr Fleming. That’s farming. I for one have quite enough here without cycling in a blizzard to see more, no matter how scrumptious the cowboy,’ pronounced Sheila, the English girl whose own home was just over the border. ‘Now, if you promised me Rebecca …’
Even Eva and Katia had no interest. ‘We have learn “yippee” and “pardner”, so is all done.’
But an unexpected telephone call would soon take Grace into the rather uninspiring little grey village – and to the film.
NINE
‘Jack, I can hardly believe it.’
‘I’m very sorry about your sister.’
Mrs Fleming had been out of breath after climbing up two flights of stairs from the locked room that housed the telephone to the attic rooms where the land girls were billeted. She had shouted from the foot of the second staircase, hoping the girls would hear her, but they were all listening to Jenny’s wireless and laughing uproariously. ‘Sorry to interrupt the fun,’ she’d puffed, ‘but there’s a Jack on the telephone for Grace.’
‘Woo hoo,’ teased the girls. ‘Give ’im a kiss from us.’ But Grace was already halfway down the stairs.
Five minutes later, her heart pounding, from running up and down all the stairs, she returned to the bedrooms. ‘All right, all right,’ she answered their clamours, ‘Jack’s a chap I met at Whitefields and he’s coming up at the weekend – before he leaves for France.’
No matter how much pressure they tried to exert, she refused to say another word.
‘Well, then, tell us what dead bodies are in the telephone room.’
‘There’s no bodies. I didn’t really look at it, to be honest; it’s very tidy. I expect they keep it locked, in case we try to telephone Clark Gable.’
‘John Wayne.’
‘James Stewart.’
‘Roy Rogers.’
‘And Trigger.’ The names of favourite film stars, both two- and four-legged, made them forget the telephone call. Grace, naturally, went over and over in her head the few she they had been able to share with Jack.
‘What’s it like in the wilds of Scotland?’ Jack had asked.
‘Not so comfortable as the wilds of Bedfordshire, but lovely; really nice girls, especially two refugees.’
‘Whitefields is taking in refugees, too, not sure when they’ll arrive. Got to go, just wanted to remind you we said we’d write. See you soon.’
‘Yes, that’ll be lovely.’
What an unexpected event. Jack. Why was he coming to Scotland and was he or was he not going into action? It was all very exciting.
Two days later, her hair washed and styled by Eva, and with whatever make-up could be spared by each of the other girls applied to her pale cheeks and to her lips, Grace waited at the farm gates for Jack. She was wearing the fur-lined coat, which Lady Alice had insisted that she take, even though the issue overcoat had arrived, and she thought that, apart from her boots, she looked quite nice.
Jack certainly thought so. His eyes shone with undisguised admiration as he looked at her, but he quickly noticed several pairs of female eyes watching them both and, pretending not to have seen them, helped Grace into the car, waved in the general direction of the hidden land girls and drove off.
‘Actually, your friends made our meeting easier, Grace. I wasn’t sure what you expected. I do know what I wanted to do.’
Grace blushed a very feminine shade of pink. ‘It’s nice to see you, Jack.’
‘I should have written but her ladyship thought it might be better all round …’ He did not finish, and Grace, who would have liked to know what it was that her ladyship thought, asked about Harry.
Jack looked relieved. ‘How’s Harry?’ was obviously an easy question to answer. ‘He’s doing really well and the Whitefields have accepted responsibility for his care and treatment, which is absolutely splendid. The doctors say he should make a complete recovery, but his speech isn’t what it was and he certainly isn’t fit for manual labour.’
‘Poor Harry. Does he have family?’
‘No, no one. His wife died in childbirth over twenty years ago … the baby didn’t survive. He’s in a sanatorium. Mrs Love visits him; somewhat ashamed of herself. But tell me all about you.’
‘There’s nothing to tell. Can you tell me why you’re here and what you’re doing?’
‘Easy, I’m here to take you out for a meal and then we could go to the pictures if there’s a picture house. I haven’t seen a film in ages.’
Grace looked at his face as he drove. It was a very pleasant face but it looked like the face of a man who was avoiding the issue. ‘And you just happened to drive here from wherever you are.’
‘Sorry, Grace, I thought I had explained everything on the telephone. The earl got me into the ambulance drivers’ programme. I’ve been working with them and now I’m ready to set off. My unit is leaving … in a few days. In the meantime, we were given leave and Lady Alice told me I could go home to see my dad and my sister and, before I go south again, visit the Flemings, not to check up on you or the others – you will have regular visits from Land Army officials – but to pick up another delivery of venison. That’s why I have the use of this car. My people were impressed, I can tell you. I had asked about you several times but Lady Alice didn’t seem to want to tell me anything. No doubt, she thinks I’m a bad influence.’ There was a moment of silence. ‘She said … well, she said I’m too driven, too one-dimensional, whatever that means, but when I was leaving, she told me you were here.’
A bubble of pleasure began to swell inside Grace until she felt that she and it might burst. As if he understood, Jack moved his hand from the steering wheel and squeezed her hands, which were clasped together tightly in her lap. Even her shoulders seemed to burn with some previously unknown fire. She turned to look at him again and he smiled at her.
‘I want … no, are you hungry? We might not be able to find anything exciting to eat.’ He laughed and she laughed, too, spontaneously, joyfully. She felt she did not care if she never ate again – such a mundane thing to do, eating. She wanted, oh, what did she want? To sit in this car so close, so very close to Jack Williams and to drive on and on for ever.
But of course they did not. A minute or two
later, they were in the village and looking for a tearoom.
‘There’s one opens jist afore Easter, laddie, but besides the pub, that’s it. There’s a hotel for the golf just fifteen, maybe twenty, miles that way.’ The helpful passer-by they’d asked shrugged his shoulders and carried on.
‘I can’t take you to a pub, Grace, not in Scotland; it’s not the same as an English public house. Your reputation wouldn’t stand a chance if you were seen.’
They were both quiet, remembering the last time they had been together and worrying about reputations.
‘Do you like cowboy films?’
‘Love them; there’s one on in the village.’
‘Picture houses sell crisps and sweets. Miss Paterson, would you care to dine on potato crisps and fine chocolate while watching to see if Hollywood has managed to have a bad guy in a white hat being foiled by, wait for it, a good guy in a black hat.’
Grace smiled at him. ‘Sorry, that just wouldn’t do.’
The trailers for the next film to be shown in the village were running when, carrying their rather odd evening meal and still laughing, they found their seats in the one and threes, much grander seats than the ones Grace occupied when on her own.
Oklahoma Frontier, starring ‘the one and only Johnny Mack Brown’, was probably as exciting as any film of that type but, try as she might, Grace was aware only of the nearness of Jack Williams. Even through the thick sleeve of Lady Alice’s coat, she was aware of his arm. Every nerve end in her body was tingling and she had no appetite for the sweets he had bought for her.
Could I even taste the finest steak if one was handed to me?
She sensed Jack move and, the next minute, his left arm was resting on her shoulders. She tensed, and he whispered, ‘Is it all right? I just had to touch you.’
There was an extremely loud ‘Shush’ from somewhere in the seats in front and they laughed with surprise at the sound. Others in the row laughed too for the command had been so much louder than Jack’s quiet murmur and more like a sneeze than a word.
