by Ruby Jackson
‘Oh, there you are, Grace. Why are you dawdling? Come in. I have a message for you and there’s news I want you to tell the others.’
A message? Grace seemed to feel her heart, or at least some internal organ, lurch unpleasantly, but she followed Lady Alice into the house.
‘Sit down on the window-seat; it’s padded and therefore comfier than the wooden ones.’ Lady Alice walked across to the stone fireplace, where a small fire burned and a coffee pot stood on an iron trivet. There were two cups and saucers on her desk and she poured coffee into both. ‘There’s an enticing smell, don’t you think, Grace?’ she asked as she handed Grace one of the cups.
Surprised, Grace said nothing but waited until her employer was seated and had picked up her own cup. ‘Very,’ she said, ‘although I think I’ve only ever had Camp coffee.’
‘Poor you. So far, I haven’t been quite so desperate. I’ll get straight to the point. Arnold Archer has been arrested, and, I’m sorry, but this time you will have to appear in court. I’m not sure about Eva; it’s perfectly possible that every word of English she’s ever learned will drain out of her at the thought, poor girl, and I’d quite like to spare her such an ordeal – we have no real idea of what these Polish refugees have experienced – but it’s up to the police. I know you’ll help her as much as necessary, if it comes to that, and there’s Katia, such a brick. But the other matter refers to you. Your Sam rang late last night; he’s on his way up to see you – don’t spill coffee on that carpet, please.’
She stopped, waiting until Grace had rescued the cup. ‘You are pleased, Grace. I told him we’d give him a bed for the night. He can use the rooms Jack and old Harry used. He didn’t want to, of course, very proud and I like that, but …’
She did not finish her thought and Grace had a shrewd idea of what she had been about to say and liked her for it. Sam, Sam coming up. Was it possible that he drove? No, the old van surely would never make it. He must have taken the train.’
‘Mr Tiverton rang first. It was lovely to speak to him again. Sends his best, of course. Then Sergeant Petrie came on and said he was being given a lift; some military vehicle and he asked very nicely if he could interrupt your work.’
Grace smiled. ‘That sounds like Sam, Lady Alice. He’s thoughtful and kind, very kind.’
‘You do want to know when to expect him?’ She took Grace’s lowered head as an answer and continued: ‘He hopes to arrive about four, military needs not withstanding, whatever that means. You should be at the house about that time, no matter what you are doing, Grace, and Mrs Love will give you a pot of tea in the kitchen. She will remain. Hazel will come in and take Sam to the rooms where he will spend the night. Then he will rejoin you, and if I may suggest, the two of you might enjoy wandering around the grounds until your evening meal is ready. You and Sergeant Petrie will have a tray in the little office; that will give you some privacy but, I’m sorry, Grace, I have asked Hazel to return at nine. You need your sleep and there’s a wireless in Sam’s quarters.’
‘I don’t know how to thank you, Lady Alice.’
‘Don’t be silly. I’m thinking only of our returned warrior. Now off you go and do try to get some work done.’
Grace thanked her and walked as calmly as she could from the beautiful room with its splendid paintings and heavy carved furniture. It was called an office in this twentieth century but, she was quite sure, it had once had a much lovelier name. She skipped a little with excitement. Sam was coming to talk to her. Why? Oh, Sam, he could not have gone to all this trouble to tell her that now, some weeks since they had walked in the Dartford park gardens, he no longer saw her as his ‘lovely Grace’.
She looked up at the sky. How blue it was in this lovely time of late spring. Her simple, little watch told her that she had spent too much time with Lady Alice. She was supposed to be planting seed with Hazel and Esau and she would not have anyone think that she expected special treatment. Grace ran.
Hazel and Esau accepted her late arrival in their usual manner. ‘Let’s get on with this, Grace. I’ve had that inspector telling me the government expects even more acreage under the plough; we’ll be planting wheat in holes in dry-stone walls next. Could you get your plough and start trying to make something of those verges leading to the estate cottages?’
That was a surprise. ‘Of course I can start ploughing on those narrow strips, Hazel, but who’s going to do the harvesting if there’s anything to harvest? The nettles and brambles will strangle everything before it has a chance to sprout.’
‘Would you give in to government inspectors, Grace?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Good. Now plough the verges – that’ll keep them happy – and we’ll try to deal with the weeds.’
Grace went off and worked hard all afternoon losing all track of time. The verges were almost impossible for a small girl to plough. She was not nearly strong enough to force her plough through the earth, the weeds, the great strong roots of brambles and other plants. Her back breaking, her hands almost raw, she was startled by a familiar voice. ‘Grace, it’s me, Sam. Where are you?’
She turned, her heart seeming to swell in her body, joy, in place of blood, coursing through her veins, and looked for him but, although she heard vague noises, Sam was nowhere to be seen. As loudly as she could, she called, ‘Sam!’ The strange noises stopped and there, on the other side of the stone wall, was Sam, every bit as real and solid as he had been in Dartford. A barber had been busy on his hair, which was now as soft and fair as it had ever been, that stray lock falling over his forehead as it had always done. She started to run towards him.
‘Don’t come over the wall, Grace, love. I’m afraid I’ve been well and truly welcomed to “England’s green and pleasant land”.’
And then they were laughing, for Grace could smell exactly what had welcomed Sam.
‘Not a good shortcut to take; we put the cows in that field after milking yesterday,’ said Grace, as she looked over the wall to where Sam stood, up to his ankles in a cow pat.
‘Have you the faintest idea how long it takes to get my shoes as clean and shiny as the shoes of a sergeant in the British Army should be?’ Sam looked at her, giving her what she was beginning to call his special smile, and bent again to his task. ‘I’ll wipe it off with grass, but I think your friends will smell me coming a mile off.’
‘We’ve all stepped in them, Sam. It’s a sort of baptism of fire. We land girls cheat, though.’
He looked down at her tall black Wellingtons and back at his one pair of civilian shoes, and laughed. ‘This is not what I thought I’d be doing when I finally found you. Quite a walk from the house. It’s a really big place, isn’t it?’
Grace was still hearing the interesting words about what he expected to be doing. ‘If you’re not climbing over from your side, I’ll climb over from mine, Sam, but I think you can see this is a nice grassy field, not a sign of a cow anywhere.’
Sam bent down and pulled off his shoes and, shoes in one hand, he looked over the wall and then vaulted into Grace’s field. He scraped the soiled shoes against thick tufts of grass, before straightening up. ‘Well, it’s very nice to see you at last, Grace Paterson.’
Even shoeless, he towered above her. For a second, she was afraid, not of Sam but that she would not see in his eyes what she dreamed of seeing. She looked up and, her heart full of love and her eyes shining with happiness and love, threw herself into his outstretched arms. They stood for some time, saying nothing, simply holding each other, each feeling the other’s heartbeat. Grace, scarcely daring to believe that she was actually in Sam’s arms, was the first to break the spell. ‘You’ll get pneumonia, Sam Petrie, standing in your socks.’
‘Small price, Grace. Come on, though. That Mrs Love said she’d have a nice cup of tea ready for us and I bet she’ll have newspaper I can use to clean off these shoes.’ Seeing permission in her eyes, Sam bent again and kissed her, very gently, on her soft lips.
Hand in hand, Sam hobb
ling occasionally as his stockinged feet landed heavily on a stone, they walked back across the estate towards the house.
‘You’ll never get newspaper, Sam; we save every bit of waste paper we can get our hands on, but Mrs Love’ll have an old duster she can spare. Better not bring them in the kitchen; you’ll be really welcome but the smell won’t.’
Most of the other land girls who had been able to leave their tasks, had hurried in from the fields, supposedly to have a five-minute break but really to take a good close look at Grace’s friend. ‘And very nice, too,’ was the general consensus. Also, ‘He’s ever so tall,’ or, ‘There’s something really nice about fair-haired men,’ and even, ‘But why is he suddenly popping in; she didn’t know he was coming?’
‘He is pretty to be Polish,’ Eva assured them, but Katia was harder and told everyone, ‘This is not business of us.’
They were disappointed when Mrs Love, seeing the unexpectedly large group of girls who had found time to pop in for a short break, suggested that Grace and Sam take a tray of tea and bread and butter into the small office, where she intended to serve their evening meal, leaving the other land girls in the huge kitchen to think romantic thoughts.
‘Do go and remind Grace to leave the door open, Liz; girls can’t be too careful,’ said Mrs Love.
‘But Mrs Love? They’re in love; can’t they have a few minutes?’
‘They can have fifteen,’ said Mrs Love brusquely, as she measured out a reasonable quantity of last year’s apple-and-bramble jam, ‘but with the door open. And anyway, what makes you think there’s anything between them. He’s her best friend’s brother, that’s all.’
‘Oh, how dull.’ Susie comforted herself with a small extra spoon of jam. ‘There was a wedding at the first farm I was on down in Somerset. Everyone was invited and we saved up for months to rent her a wedding dress from a real bridal shop in London – no need for coupons – and we had masses of cider, and fruit cup, and music and dancing in a clean barn. Took us hours to clean the floor, mind you, and almost the same after the wedding.’ Susie finished by saying, ‘There’s some people as shouldn’t ought ever to touch cider,’ leaving the girls to deal with the pictures and situations her chatter had created in their heads.
‘Sounds fun, Susie,’ said Connie, earning herself a smile from Liz. ‘Oh, they’re coming back. Pretend we hardly even noticed they weren’t here.’
Sam carried the tray, which he set down beside the great stone sink. He looked as if he was all set to start washing dishes.
‘Just leave those, Sam, waste of water to start when, in five minutes, there’ll be more, and, besides, you’d best go and clean those shoes.’ Mrs Love turned to Grace, who was looking rather subdued. ‘All right, Grace? There’s cleaning rags in the wooden box in the pantry. Give Sam two of those and tell him I’ll get rid of them when he’s done.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Love,’ said Grace, quietly, as she walked out, leaving the others to look at one another and wonder about the change of atmosphere.
TWENTY
Grace stood watching as Sam cleaned his shoes. She was sure that she knew what he was going to say and she did not want to hear it. The silence stretched between them as Grace struggled to find things to say that would keep him from telling her.
‘You must meet all the girls, Sam; they’re all terrific. It’s almost like being with Daisy and Rose and Sally. The Polish girls are my favourites.’
She continued to chatter, telling him about the crashed plane and the wounded Polish pilot. ‘I think Eva, she’s the one with the golden hair – and a golden voice, actually – well, I think she really likes him, the pilot, I mean. He said he had been rescued by angels. She does look like an angel. Won’t it be nice if – well, she’s a refugee and has no family.’
‘We have to talk, Grace,’ he said gently. This won’t go away. I’m being allowed to rejoin my regiment. The medics say everything is functioning properly and so there’s no reason to keep a man who’s fit for duty, doing nothing useful all day long. I needed to tell you to your face, sweetheart, not in a letter. I asked them. They called me in and had doctors of all sorts question me, examine me inside and out, and I’m fit for duty, and I’m pleased, really pleased.’
Grace listened to him, each word he uttered seeming to strike her as the hammer strikes the nail. She felt that she might very well come apart at the seams. Despite his letter, she had never seriously considered that Sam might return to active service. Had he not done enough for his country, more than enough?
‘You won’t go back to the war. Please, Sam, your mother won’t cope.’
He walked over to where she stood beside the little telephone table, her arms wrapped around her body as if, indeed, she feared that she might fall apart. ‘There, there, my little love,’ he said as he held her stiff, resisting body in his arms. ‘You’re not thinking, Grace, not with your brain, you’re not. I’m a soldier; it’s all I’ve ever been, since I was sixteen years old. Fourteen years, little love, it’s what I do, what I’m good at.’ He kissed the top of her shiny brown hair. ‘Relax, my Grace. Come sit down here with me. No need to be tense, sweetheart, it’s me, Sam, and I want to tell you when it got through my thick head when I knew that I was in love with Grace Paterson. I suppose I loved her since she landed at my feet in the playground, but being in love with her? That’s a whole different thing.’
She relaxed but decided that she would not make it easy for him. ‘Mrs Love went to a lot of trouble to make this tea.’
‘And we can sit and chat over the teacups and think of all the things we’ve missed.’
Wrong thing to say.
‘And will miss again and again if you go back to the war, Sam.’
‘My little brother’s dead, Grace, and only God and the British Navy know where Phil is. Can you really see me in the front room eating home-baked scones instead of doing my bit to end this madness?’
She cried then. ‘You’ve more than done your bit. You fought, you were wounded, imprisoned. Dear God, Sam, from the little I’ve heard, it seems you walked across Europe and back again.’
He lifted his arm as if to brush all such trivialities aside. ‘One day, I’ll show you Italy, the farms I worked on, the contadini, that’s the country folk, I lived with. It’s the most generous of countries, Grace. You can’t believe the beauty, and the people, a few ears of corn in the storeroom and they share it with a hungry stranger. There was a girl, a small girl with lovely soft brown hair. She reminded me of you, although her eyes were brown, not blue-grey or grey-blue. Her parents had this small stone house and, believe it or not, a cow shared it with them.’ He smiled. ‘Helped keep us all warm in the winter.’ Obviously deep in memories, he stopped and, then again aware of her presence, started talking again.
‘They hid me from German patrols, Grace, they let me take shelter in their loft. They fed me and, in return, I worked with Aldo in the fields. I learned all about foraging for food in the woods – mushrooms, truffles, nuts and berries – and I worked his little bit of land. The things that man could get to come up from fairly inhospitable soil. Would you believe, tomatoes grew outside? I’ve never tasted anything like them, unbelievable. All the men of the area helped one another out with seeds and cuttings, and the women and children worked, too. I found myself getting closer and closer to … I almost said “Grace” there. Her name is Lucia. One blistering cold January day, we were all in the woods trying to collect firewood and I remember thinking how glad I was that she was there. My heart lurched. Daft thought, that, but it’s certainly what it seemed to do and suddenly everything made sense. She’s Lucia, I said to myself. She’s lovely but she’s not Grace.’
He hesitated as he looked down into the eyes that he had dreamed of in his darkest moments. ‘And I’m in love with Grace.’
Grace felt herself trembling. She tried to stand up and he reached out to help her and, for a long moment, they stood looking at each other.
‘I love Grace,’ Sam said. ‘I
’m in love with Grace.’
She could feel tears trembling on her eyelashes. ‘Oh, Sam, do you mean it?’
In reply, he drew her into his arms and kissed her. They were not the gentle tender kisses he had dropped on her lips before, but a kiss that grew in passion as, with no thought of Jack or anyone else, she responded to him.
Eventually, he drew back. ‘Since I was about fourteen, a little girl with soft brown hair, a very pretty face and the sweetest, giving nature, that girl has held a special place in my heart.’
Grace lifted her head and was almost dazzled by the intensity of his look. ‘But you never said, never wrote …’
‘A soldier waiting for the war he didn’t want but knew was coming? What right has he to tie down a lovely girl? And remember that I only realised that my feelings for you were stronger than just a brotherly affection when I was an escaped POW, relying on the kindness of a family of poor Italians scraping a living in the Italian Alps.’
‘When you came down to visit me, I could hardly breathe for loving you. You had to be free to choose, Grace, to look for the special someone.’
She relaxed and leaned forward so that his body supported her. ‘I had already found him, Sam.’
He held her close and Grace had never felt so safe, so cherished. How could she have mistaken the feelings aroused by Sam’s body so close to hers with the feelings that she had experienced when being held by Jack. She should have waited. She knew that now. It was a girl desperate to feel loved who had responded to Jack. His arms about her, as surely her mother must have held her, had made her feel cherished and safe.
But she had made a mistake and had suffered for it and she feared that she might still have to pay.
‘Sam, are you saying that you love me, that you want …?’ She stopped. How could she be bold enough to ask?’
He took her in his arms again. ‘Marriage, Grace, that’s what I want, but not with any available girl, but with wee Grace Paterson, who took on the chin everything the world threw at her and never complained.’
