Put Out the Fires

by Maureen Lee

  “It’s freezing!” he exclaimed. “I’ve lived here for twenty-five years, but I shall never become accustomed to Norfolk winters. I think I’ll go indoors and secrete myself in my study. If anyone wants to kiss me, I shall convince them they already have.” He extended his hand. “Coming?

  I reckon we’re well into nineteen forty-one by now. I don’t want any of my guests catching pneumonia. It takes Laura all her time to look after the healthy ones.”

  “I suppose I’d better.”

  He pulled her upright, but immediately released her hand. “Happy New Year, by the way.”

  “The same to you.”

  Kate was alone in the vast, untidy kitchen when Eileen entered in search of a cup of tea the following morning.

  “What happened to you last night?” she enquired. “I searched everywhere to wish you a Happy New Year, but you’d completely disappeared.”

  “I preferred to be by meself,” Eileen explained. “Did anyone else notice? I hope they didn’t think I was rude.”

  “Of course not! Nobody here gives a hang about that sort of thing. Anyway, Conor disappeared, too, but then he always does on New Year’s Eve.”

  “He was outside with me. We had quite a long talk.”

  Eileen poured tea out of the cracked, half-fullpot. “This is a bit cold. Is it all right if I make some more?”

  “Anything goes in this house, dear. The kettle’s about to boil for my coffee. Empty the pot and make a fresh lot. Would you like some bacon and egg? I’ll do yours with mine.”

  “No, ta. I’ll make some toast.” She cut a slice of bread and held it by a fork in front of the blazing fire. The kitchen was usually the only warm room in the house. “Where is everyone?”

  “Still in bed except for Conor. He lit the fires and went out for a walk. The young ones didn’t come back until a couple of hours ago. In fact, it was they who woke me up.”

  The kettle boiled on the peculiar looking stove that had its own fire glowing behind a thick glass door and Kate made herself a cup of coffee and poured water in the teapot. She cleared a space on the bare scrubbed table which was heaped with last night’s dirty dishes and began to eat.

  “What did you and Conor talk about last night?” she asked.

  Eileen found the butter dish amidst the mess on the table. “Life, I suppose,” she replied, adding rather sarcastically, “He was full of good advice. He told me I’d get over losing Tony in time. You’d think he was some sort of expert on getting over things.”

  “Well, he is in a way,” Kate said surprisingly. “Conor lost his twin brother in the last war on the very first day they went into battle. They were identical twins and had a special bond. He was bereft without Christopher. At the time he thought he’d never get over it.”

  “Oh!” Eileen felt uncomfortable. “I didn’t know.”

  Kate smiled. “How could you? I’ll tell you something else you didn’t know. Conor and I were childhood sweethearts. We were to be married when the war ended.

  Instead, after Christopher died, he called it off and a few years later he married Laura.”

  “But why?”

  “I’ve no idea,” Kate shrugged. “We remained great friends, but we never talk about the past. I told myself it was because he loved me too much, and was scared I’d be taken from him as his brother was. In other words, he was casting me out of his life before it could happen again.”

  “But he appears happy now, doesn’t he?” Eileen needed to know if Conor Kinnear was happy. It seemed important, she wasn’t quite sure why. Perhaps because it proved what he’d said last night was true. He’d never got over losing his twin, but the loss had come to take second place to other things in time.

  “Perfectly happy,” Kate assured her. “He loves Laura and his children, even if he does get them confused occasionally.

  Everything turned out well for Conor in the end.”

  “But not for you?”

  “No, not for me. Though I don’t know,” Kate mused. “I had a Christmas card from my eldest daughter, Celia.

  She’ll soon be eighteen and is starting to ask questions.

  One of these days perhaps I shall tell her why her mother left.” She smiled. “I’ve been happier than I’ve ever been at Dunnings, despite the longing to see my girls. You sort of live life on two layers and it’s the top layer, the immediate one, that seems the most important.”

  “Conor said that one day I would laugh and enjoy life again, but I can’t imagine that happening, not ever.”

  “It will, my dear, it will.” Kate leaned across the table and briefly held Eileen’s hand. “That’s enough deep thoughts for now. I think I can hear Conor coming back.”

  Conor entered the kitchen along with a tall, bluff, red faced man of about fifty in mud-stained boots and carrying a basket of eggs, still matted here and there with straw.

  They both nodded briefly at the women at the table.

  “Are you sure the Ministry have had their proper allocation?” Conor asked anxiously.

  “Yes, sir,” the man replied with an air of tried patience.

  “They’ve had their six dozen. This is what’s over.”

  Conor looked worried. “It doesn’t seem quite proper having more than our fair share.”

  “Well, you’ve got a lot of guests, sir,” the man said reasonably. He spoke with an attractive Norfolk burr.

  “I suppose I have.” Conor rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

  “But once my guests have gone, Ted, I want you to take the surplus to the local hospital.”

  Ted shuffled his feet and looked slightly annoyed.

  “That’s what I’ve always done up to now, sir.”

  Conor turned to Kate and Eileen. “The farm’s become a worry since the war began,” he complained. “We’re inundated with inspectors from the Min of Ag telling us what to grow and how much milk and eggs they want.

  Every time I eat a piece of meat, I worry that I’m breaking the law.” He turned back to the farmhand. “How’s the new land girl making out?”

  Ted’s red face grew even redder as he expostulated, “Bloody hopeless, sir, if you’ll excuse the language. She’s even worse than the last one and don’t know one end of a cow from the other. She was a typist back in Ipswich.” His voice rose in disgust. “A typist!

  Eileen longed to butt in in defence of the poor typist who’d come all the way from a town to this isolated place in order to do her bit. The girl had to learn, she thought.

  Ted had begun to complain even more bitterly. “Not only that, Mr Kinnear, sir, but now Bob’s had his call-up papers and he’ll be off in a couple of weeks. We’re going to have to get another of them damned Land Army girls.”

  “Oh, dear!” Conor looked crestfallen. “Never mind, Ted. You manage the farm wonderfully. No-one could do a better job than you.”

  Ted departed, slightly mollified, and Conor smiled.

  “Flattery will get you everywhere, it seems.”

  “I didn’t know you owned the farm,” Eileen said. She’d noticed it about half a mile away from the house.

  “I’m beginning to wish I didn’t,” Conor said, “but I don’t suppose there’s a hope of selling it at present.”

  After breakfast, Eileen wandered over the fields to the farm, a long two-storey red brick building which looked as old as the Kinnears’ house. The front garden was neatly tended, but when she pushed through the five-barred gate at the side, she found the vast rear a dreary sea of mud surrounded by a series of ramshackle sheds. Chickens pecked their way through the mud and one fluttered down beside her and hopefully pecked the toe of her boot. Pigs grunted, cows mooed, and a large dog eyed her balefully.

  She was about to depart hastily when she noticed the animal was tied to a stake.

  “What do you want?” A short stubby woman in a white overall had opened the back door and was looking at her even more balefully than the dog.

  “Nothing really. I just came to look at the farm. I’m staying
with the Kinnears.”

  “Huh!” The door was slammed shut without a word.

  “Isn’t she a bitch?”

  Eileen glanced round in search of where the voice had come from. A woman about her own age was leaning on the bottom half of a split doorway, the top part of which was open. “She was a bit rude,” Eileen said. “Who is she?”

  “Ted’s wife, Edna. Ted’s the farm manager. I’m afraid he’s gone into Norwich, if you’ve come to see him.”

  Eileen made her slippery way across the farmyard towards the woman, nearly falling headlong in the process. “I’ve never been on a farm before,” she explained when she arrived. “I just came to see what one looks like.

  I’m staying at the big house over there.”

  “Oh! So, you’re one of the upper crust, are you? And here was me thinking you might be the new land girl, though it would have been awfully quick.” She was an attractive woman, fine-featured, with long dark curly hair tied back with a blue ribbon. Eileen had never seen a member of the Land Army in the flesh before, either. Despite the rather mannish uniform - the Aertex shirt and tie, thick green jersey and felt hat worn at a jaunty angle on the back of her head—the woman managed to retain an air of elegance.

  “I’m not one of the upper crust,” Eileen informed her firmly, “I’m merely a guest, that’s all. Back in Liverpool, I’m a centre lathe turner, at least I was until recently. How are you getting on? I understand you’re new here.”

  The woman pulled a face. “Abysmally! I worked in an office until a month ago, and, like you, I’ve never been near a farm in my life. Ted doesn’t have any patience with me. He acts as if I’ve been sent to try him, not help him. You wouldn’t think I’d given up a well-paid Civil Service job to help feed my starving country.” She leant her elbows on top of the door and looked around her gloomily. “Isn’t it depressing?

  I had visions of lying in fields of sunkissed swaying corn and the smell of baking bread wafting from the farm kitchen.

  Instead, all I can smell is pigshit, and all I can see is mud.”

  Eileen smiled. “Perhaps you shouldn’t have come in December! As for the farm, I suppose it is a bit basic” In fact, the scene might well have been the same a hundred years ago. There was nothing to suggest this was the twentieth century; no trucks or tractors, no neatly paved yard or concrete buildings, merely the collection of tumbledown wooden shacks which looked as if they’d been stuck forever in their sea of mud. Conor Kinnear had clearly not thought it worthwhile to invest money in his farm. Even so, Eileen rather liked it, just as she liked all the scenery on this part of the Norfolk coast. It was completely natural and unspoilt, untouched by anything modern. “I’d better be getting back,” she said. She wanted to see Conor because she’d just had the craziest idea.

  “What’s your name, by the way?”

  “Peggy Wilson.”

  “I’m Eileen Costello.” You never know, she thought as she began to make her unsteady way out of the farmyard, if Conor went along with her crazy idea, she’d be seeing Peggy Wilson again pretty soon.

  Chapter 11

  A fist hammered on the bedroom door and Eileen shouted, “I’m awake.” The floor on the landing creaked under Ted’s heavy tread as he walked away. Eileen pulled the bedclothes around her shoulders and groaned. What she wouldn’t have given for a cup of tea first thing! The room was freezing, so cold it hurt to breathe and she touched her nose to make sure it was still there, in case she’d caught frostbite during the night. After a while, she sat up and lit the oil lamp on the bedside table and began to get dressed, struggling into as many garments as she could whilst still underneath the clothes. She’d no intention of getting washed; a quick splash of the face with the icy water in the pitcher on the washstand would do until tonight. As she pulled on a pair of knee-length woollen socks, Eileen wondered if she was completely mad to have joined the Women’s Land Army—not that she was a member yet. Her application was “in hand”, and would be processed swiftly under the circumstances, in that she was already working on the farm that would employ her. In the meantime, she was living in the farmhouse with Ted and Edna Wright—much to the latter’s disgust—and, until she got her uniform, wearing clothes borrowed from the Kinnears: drill overalls, long socks, several of Conor’s old jumpers and a lumpy sort of duffel coat.

  She’d approached Conor with her proposition on New Year’s Day, straight after her visit to the farm. He’d looked at her as if he’d never seen her before, as if they hadn’t had an intimate conversation about life and death the night before. He was in his study typing and seemed irritated by the interruption.

  “Have you spoken to Ted about it?” he enquired brusquely when she asked if she could work as a land girl on his farm in the place of the man about to be called up.

  “He’s gone to Norwich,” she explained uncomfortably.

  Perhaps she was disturbing the writing of a great masterpiece.

  “Of course, I forgot. I’ll have a word with him when he returns.” He turned back to his work and Eileen was dismissed, feeling slightly let down. She’d thought he’d jump at the idea. She sought out Kate to ask her opinion.

  Kate chewed her lip and looked doubtful. “It’s frightfully hard work, Eileen.”

  “Well, I’m used to hard work at Dunnings, aren’t I?”

  “Yes, but it’s entirely different sort of work; backbreaking, and rather lonely. You’re used to crowds and having your family around.”

  Which was exactly what Eileen didn’t want at the moment. “I think I’ll give it a try,” she persisted. “Even if Conor doesn’t want me on his farm, I can join the Land Army, anyroad, and work somewhere else. I don’t care where it is, though I like it round here.”

  “In that case, I’ll drive you into Norwich,” Kate said in a matter-of-fact voice. “If there’s a local recruiting office, Norwich is where it will be. I’ll make some enquiries on your behalf.”

  “You always seem to be doing that,” Eileen said wryly.

  “When I asked about getting divorced, you said, ‘I’ll make some enquiries on your behalf’.”

  “Did I?” Kate looked at her keenly. “I hope you’re doing the right thing. We’re not due to leave for a few days.

  Perhaps you’d like to think about it a bit more?”

  Eileen shook her head. “No. Me mind’s made up. To be frank, I don’t really give a damn what I do, but I’ve got to do something, haven’t I? All I know is, I don’t want to go back to Pearl Street, not yet, anyroad.”

  To Eileen’s surprise, Sheila didn’t seem the least bit shocked when she returned home to Bootle a few days later to collect some things and told her what had happened.

  “I’ve applied to join the Land Army, Sheil. I’m going to work in Norfolk.”

  Sheila looked as if she might cry. She took her sister in her arms and hugged her tightly. “I understand, sis, though I’ll miss you terrible. It was bad enough when you were only going to live in Melling.”

  “And I’ll miss you, Sheil.”

  Her dad was equally understanding. “Good idea, luv,” he nodded approvingly. “You need a change. But what about your house, just in case it doesn’t work out, like?”

  “I’m keeping the house on, Dad,” she informed him.

  Sheila was already back in Number 21 now that it was repaired. “There’s droves of people without a home to go to since the Christmas raids. I’ve been in touch with the Billeting Office and some other family is going to rent it for a few months until their own place is put right.”

  George Ransome had offered to store her personal possessions in his boxroom. Sheila would sort everything out once Eileen had gone.

  “Do us a favour, sis,” Eileen implored. “Take Tony’s things, his clothes and toys. I can’t bear to look at them.

  You can keep whatever you want.”

  “All right, Eil. I’ll keep the clothes, but not the toys. I’ll hand those into one of them Rest Centres. I’d only nag our kids soft in ca
se they got broken.”

  Before leaving, Eileen went to see Ruth and Jacob Singerman and apologised for leaving the responsibility for Dilys Evans entirely on Ruth’s shoulders. “How’s she coping?” she asked. “I hope you can manage on your own?”

  “She’s coping well,” Ruth assured her, which was the opposite of the truth. Dilys was growing more and more hysterical by the day, so much so, that when Ruth had visited her yesterday the landlady had complained as she was leaving, “She cries all day long. It disturbs the other girls and upsets my husband. Has she no family of her own who can help?”

  Ruth couldn’t very well explain Dilys’ family had thrown her out, else the woman would want to know why. “No,” she lied. “She’s all alone, an orphan.”

  The landlady looked sympathetic, but doubtful. “It wouldn’t be so bad if she’d let me help, but she locks the door and won’t answer when I knock.” She went on to ask when the baby was due.

  “About the middle of February,” Ruth guessed wildly.

  “She got her dates mixed up so she can’t be positive.”

  “You realise she won’t be able to stay once the child arrives? The other girls have to be up early for work and I don’t want their sleep disturbed by a crying baby. I did tell the woman from Dunnings that when she first enquired.”

  “I realise,” Ruth sighed.

  Eileen was saying, “If you have any problems, Ruth, get onto Miss Thomas. She’ll know what to do.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind.”

  “How’s your dad?” Eileen whispered as Jacob went into the back kitchen to feed the white kitten, which seemed to have grown considerably since she’d last seen it.

  “Much better, thanks. Almost his old self again.”

  “That’s good,” Eileen felt relieved. “I was dead worried about him when I was away.” As Jacob shuffled back into the room, she said, “I hope you don’t mind looking after Snowy for a while longer?”

  “Not at all, Eileen. In fact, I’ve grown so fond of him, I’m dreading the time coming when you’ll want him back.”

  “In that case, please keep him,” she said quickly. “Tony loved his kitten dearly, and I feel guilty about leaving him behind. He would have wanted you to have him more than anyone.”