Philip, crouching under the hedge, watched the tractor as it crawled to and fro, and smelt the paraffin fumes on the air. Now and then he heard Charlie’s voice, calling out to Mrs Shaw, and heard her laugh as she answered him. But he could not hear what they were saying. They were too far away for that.
He was moving along the hedge, peering through the tangled thicket, when suddenly a pheasant flew up and went drumming away towards the woods, uttering its harsh kok-kok-kok! Startled, Philip turned and ran, putting his hands over his ears; he hated the noise the pheasants made; it went through his head and made it hurt. He ran away from it, down to Stant.
‘Where have you been?’ Linn asked.
‘Oh, just playing,’ Philip said.
‘Not on the railway line, I hope?’
‘No, I went up to Slipfields,’ he said.
Linn took two plates of sausage and mash from the oven and put them on the table. She and the boy sat down to eat. They never waited for Charlie now, for she never knew when he would be in.
‘What did you go to Slipfields for?’
‘No particular reason.’
‘Did you see your uncle there?’
‘Yes, but I didn’t speak to him.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘He was busy, that’s why.’
Linn reached for the teapot and poured out the tea. She put the boy’s cup in front of him.
‘What was your uncle doing?’ she asked.
‘He was driving the tractor,’ Philip said.
‘Did you see Mrs Shaw?’
‘Yes, she was riding behind the drill.’
Philip, with his knife and fork, was playing with his mashed potato, smoothing it over again and again until it looked like an igloo, he thought. Now and then he glanced at Linn: quick little glances, darting at her, out of the corners of his eyes; and there was something in his face ‒ some slyness in the way he smiled ‒ that suddenly filled her with irritation.
‘I do wish you wouldn’t play with your food! Why can’t you eat it properly?’
‘There’s no need to take it out on me,’ the boy muttered, half to himself, ‘just because you don’t like her.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing,’ he said.
‘If you were talking about Mrs Shaw, I’ve never even spoken to her.’
‘You don’t like her all the same.’
‘Get on with your dinner,’ Linn said.
By the time he had bought his kite, the weather had changed and it was wet.
‘You can’t fly a kite in the rain,’ Charlie said.
‘Oh yes I can!’ Philip said.
But the kite when wet soon slumped to the ground and its coloured panels were smothered in mud. Philip washed it under the pump and took it indoors to dry by the fire. He then went out to play in the barn, where Charlie had rigged up a swing for him.
The kite as it dried fell against the stove and bits of burning wood and cloth dropped to the hearth and burnt holes in the mat. Linn, who was upstairs making the beds, smelt the burning and hurried down. She stamped out the smouldering bits on the mat and, snatching up what was left of the kite, thrust it into the open stove. At that moment Philip returned. He saw and gave a great howl of rage. ‘Rotten cow! You’ve burnt my kite!’
‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that, after what you’ve done!’ Linn exclaimed. ‘Such a stupid, dangerous thing! You might have set the house on fire!’
‘I wish I had!’ Philip cried. ‘I wish this house had been burnt to the ground!’
He turned and rushed headlong out again and stayed away until it was dark. By then Charlie was in. He spoke to the boy with severity.
‘I hear you’ve been calling your auntie names.’
‘What did she do? She burnt my kite!’
‘You burnt that kite yourself, my lad, by putting it too close to the stove.’ Charlie was standing on the hearth. He pointed to the black-edged holes in the mat. ‘Just look at the damage you did down here and think how bad it might have been if your Auntie Linn hadn’t found it in time.’
Philip, avoiding Linn’s gaze, came and looked at the holes in the mat. He touched one with the toe of his boot and its charred edge crumbled into dust.
‘Well?’ Charlie said, still severe. ‘What’ve you got to say for yourself?’
‘I’ll pay for a new one if you like.’
‘And where will you get the money from?’
‘I can write home and ask for it.’
‘Now you’re being silly,’ Linn said. ‘No one expects you to buy a new mat.’
‘All your auntie expects,’ Charlie said, ‘is that you should say you’re sorry to her.’
Philip shifted inside his clothes. His glance flitted quickly up to Linn’s face and then down at the mat again. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered, and folded his lips.
‘I should think so too!’ Charlie said. ‘If only you’d listened to what I said about flying that kite in the rain, none of this would have happened, you know.’ He reached out and ruffled Philip’s hair. ‘But there you are. It’s over now. You’ve said you’re sorry and that’s that.’
‘Come along, Philip,’ Linn said. ‘Your tea has been waiting this half hour or more.’
Later that evening, when the boy was in bed, Charlie talked to Linn about him.
‘The trouble is, he’s too much alone. He doesn’t seem to make friends at school and we are a bit cut off up here. If we had another evacuee ‒’
‘One’s quite enough, thank you! I’ve got enough to do as it is.’
Linn was writing a letter to Robert and Charlie was doing his War Ag returns. They sat at the table with the lamp between them.
‘I think it’s all wrong that we should have an evacuee foisted on us when we’re so busy with the farm.’
‘It’s only the same for everyone.’
‘What about your friend Mrs Shaw? She hasn’t got evacuees. Why is that, d’you suppose?’
‘I don’t know,’ Charlie said. ‘Mrs Roper called on her but nothing ever came of it. I suppose it’s because she’s all alone.’ He turned over a form and frowned at it. ‘It seems rather a pity to me. A kid would be company for her up there, and she’d make a good foster-mother, I think.’
‘From what you’ve said about Mrs Shaw, she can’t even look after herself, let alone a child as well.’
‘I may have said that. I don’t say it now. She copes pretty well, considering.’
‘Yes, with your help.’
Charlie sat still, watching her. He tried to read her closed face.
‘I know you don’t like my going there but surely with things the way they are ‒’
‘Since when has it mattered what I like? Not for a long time past, I think.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ he said.
‘I suppose you’ll say it’s no business of mine if you work yourself to a standstill?’
‘The autumn work is all done now. Life will be easier till the spring.’ Again he watched her as she wrote and, knowing it was a letter to Robert, he said: ‘Did you tell him Daisy had dropped two calves? It’s part of her war effort, you tell him that. Daisy was always a favourite of his. He’ll be glad to know she’s doing her bit.’
‘I’ve already told him,’ Linn said.
She wrote to Robert every week, filling page after page with news of the farm, but she had not heard from him for over two months and it worried her, a constant pain, eating away at her heart and her mind.
‘I don’t even know if he’s alive!’ she would say whenever she posted a letter. ‘Anything might have happened to him!’
Then, one day in early December, three letters arrived at once: only the briefest notes, it was true, barely covering one page each; but to Linn they were Robert’s presence itself; she saw him in the room with her and heard his voice in the few pencilled words.
‘Things are beginning to hum now and it’s nice to be doing something worthwhile,’ he wrote in the last of the three letters. ‘I can’t
say much but you will be getting news soon and it will be worth hearing I hope. When you hear it, think of me!’ And, in a postcript, Robert wrote: ‘Remember that billy-goat we had? Remember what Charlie called him that time? Well, he’d feel at home where I am now.’ These last words were underlined.
‘Billy-goat? What does he mean?’ Linn said.
Charlie read the postscript again.
‘I called that old goat Moses once.’ He looked at her with his slow-spreading smile. ‘I reckon our Rob’s in Egypt,’ he said. ‘This is his way of letting us know.’
Before long there was news coming through of the British offensive in North Africa. Charlie got his atlas out and showed her Egypt on the map. He put a little pencilled cross at Sidi Barrani, on the coast.
‘That’s where it’s humming and that’s where he is! “Doing something worthwhile”, he says, and he never spoke a truer word! They’re giving the Eyeties what-for out there and it seems they’ll soon have them on the run!’
Then another letter came, even briefer than the others.
‘Everything’s fine. I’m fit as a flea. But time is going on wheels now and I’m as busy as an eight-day-clock so don’t worry if you don’t hear from me for a while. Best wishes from the billy-goat. Happy Christmas! Toodleoo!’
Linn was torn between pride in her son and fear at the dangers she imagined for him.
‘Happy Christmas!’ she said, with a catch in her voice. ‘What sort of Christmas will he have, poor boy?’
Philip, coming into the kitchen, saw the letter in her hand.
‘Was there any post for me?’
‘No, not today,’ Charlie said. ‘You had a letter only last week.’
‘Yes, but I’ve written home since then.’
‘Well, give them time,’ Charlie said.
Outside in the chicken-ground, afterwards, Philip helped to collect the eggs.
‘Why was Auntie Linn crying?’
‘Was she crying?’
‘You know she was.’
‘Well, she’d heard from our Rob, you see. He’s away in the war and it worries her.’
‘It’s not only that.’
‘What is it, then?’
‘It’s her time of life,’ Philip said.
He had written to his mother asking if he could spend Christmas at home.
‘You have not been to see me yet. Why don’t you come? I don’t like being stuck in this place. I want to come home and have Christmas with you. Send my fare and I’ll come on the train.’
But his mother, when she answered his letter, told him he must stay where he was.
‘We are still getting air-raids. You are safer where you are. It is very kind of Mr and Mrs Truscott to have you, so be a good boy and don’t play them up. I will soon be sending you a parcel for Christmas.’
Philip put the letter into the stove and Linn, who had watched him reading it, saw the emptiness in his face as he poked it down among the coals.
‘Perhaps after Christmas, in the new year, your mother might come and stay,’ she said. ‘You must write and say we’re inviting her.’
‘No. She won’t come. I know she won’t. She wouldn’t want to leave my dad.’
The boy, having watched his letter burn, dropped the poker into the hearth. He came to the table where Linn was making pastry.
‘She wouldn’t like it here, anyway.’
‘Oh? Why not?’
‘Well,’ he said, and gave a shrug. ‘No proper lav. No bathroom and that. She wouldn’t like it. She’d have forty fits.’ He went to the window and peered out, wiping away the steam from the glass. ‘My mother’s not used to that kind of thing. She couldn’t stand it for five minutes.’
‘In that case you’re right and she’d better not come.’ Linn took a piece of dough from her bowl and began kneading it vigorously, pushing at it with floury knuckles. She glanced now and then towards the boy.
‘Is that what you tell them when you write home? About all the things that are wrong with the place?’
Philip was looking out at the rain, pretending not to hear what she said. Suddenly he turned away, muttering something under his breath, and she watched him climbing the stairs to his room. His sullenness taxed her patience at times. She could never get near him, try as she would, and often his cold, sharp, critical gaze made her want to box his ears. Charlie could talk to him easily enough but her own efforts at friendliness only seemed to rouse his contempt.
Philip, in the bedroom above, stared at the books on the chest of drawers. They had no interest for him whatever. Their titles made him curl his lip and inside, as he already knew, their contents were dull and dry-as-dust. ‘Elementary Physics.’ ‘Meteorology for Beginners.’ ‘Lives of the Great Astronomers.’ He took out this last, which was old and well-thumbed, and turned the pages listlessly.
He carried the book to the window-recess and reached for his box of coloured crayons. On a blank half-page at the end of a chapter he drew a purple barrage-balloon and all round the margin he drew falling bombs. There were very few pictures in the book and these poor few were black-and-white. He coloured the stars in a diagram of the Great Bear and gave Tycho Brahé a blue moustache. A printed caption caught his eye. ‘Tycho Brahé, with Johannes Kepler, was one of the great astronomers of his time and contributed much to our understanding of planetary motion.’
‘So what! Who cares?’ Philip said with a sneer.
Just before Christmas the weather turned cold and there was some snow. Charlie took a horse and cart and went up to the woods at the top of the farm. Philip went with him and helped to collect the dead boughs that lay about everywhere on the ground. Charlie sawed them into logs and Philip threw them into the cart. They then drove across to Slipfields and Mrs Shaw met them in the yard.
‘I’ve brought you the logs I promised you.’
‘Yes. So I see. You’re very kind.’ She reached up and helped the boy to the ground. ‘And you’ve brought Philip to see me.’
While Charlie unloaded the logs, tipping them out on to the cobbles, she and Philip ran to and fro, picking them up as they tumbled out, running with them to the door of the shed, and hurling them in as far as they could. Laughing and breathless, they raced each other, stumbling over the wet rolling logs, picking up one or two at a time, sometimes snatching at the same log and running with it to the shed door. Charlie leapt down and joined in the game and the logs went hurtling faster and faster, thump, thump, thump, until they were all safely stowed in the shed.
‘Phew! Am I puffed!’ Philip said. He pressed one hand against his side. ‘Cripes!’ he exclaimed. ‘Haven’t I got a stitch!’
The boy was crimson to the ears and his cap was tilted over one eye. He looked up at Helen’s bright laughing face and saw that her nose was smudged with dirt.
‘Hoo! Look at you! You’re all dirty!’ he said.
‘Where?’ she asked.
‘On your nose!’ he said.
‘There, is that better?’ She rubbed her nose.
‘No, you’ve only made it worse!’ Philip shrilled with laughter again. ‘Oh, I’ve got such a stitch!’ he said.
Helen removed his cap from his head, smoothed the hair from his hot forehead, and replaced the cap tidily.
‘Come indoors, both of you, and I’ll give you a hot drink,’ she said.
Philip and Charlie followed her in. She gave them cocoa in big brown mugs and opened a tin of ginger biscuits. Philip took one and dipped it into his hot cocoa, holding it there until it was soft. Charlie sat smoking a cigarette, watching Helen across the room.
‘Well, it’ll soon be Christmas, eh?’
‘Yes, another three days, that’s all.’
‘I’ve been wondering,’ Charlie said, ‘whether you’d come and spend it with us?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t think that would do at all.’
‘I hate to think of you up here, all alone in this lonely place.’
‘I’m used to it. I d
on’t really mind.’
‘Yes, but at Christmas!’ Charlie said. ‘What are you going to do with yourself?’
‘I’ve got my wireless-set,’ she said, ‘and I’ll have a good fire, thanks to you.’
‘You’ll need it if the forecast’s right. They say we’re in for a hard spell.’
‘Don’t worry about me. I’m all right.’
‘Well, I can’t make you come, I know.’ He drank his cocoa and put down his mug. ‘Philip and I had better get on. Poor old Smutch will be feeling the cold.’
Helen went with them to the door. Philip bounded across the yard and climbed up into the cart. He sat on the seat and took the reins.
‘I saw your wife one day last week,’ Helen said in a quiet voice. ‘We met on the bus going into town.’
‘Did she speak to you?’ Charlie asked.
‘No, just nodded, that’s all,’ Helen said. She looked at him: a straight, steady look. ‘I don’t think she likes your coming here.’
‘Why, that’s nonsense!’ Charlie said. ‘It was her idea in the first place that I should come and give you a hand.’
‘I think she’s changed her mind since then. I think, perhaps, you should keep away.’
‘If I kept away it would still be wrong! There’s no way of pleasing her nowadays!’ The words burst out of him, bitterly, and he looked away, feeling ashamed. ‘Take no notice of me,’ he said.
‘I’m right, then, in thinking she doesn’t approve?’
‘Oh, it’s not you, it’s everything! Whatever I do, it’s never right! That’s nothing new. It goes back years. Long before you ever came.’
‘Is it really as bad as that?’
‘Sometimes it is,’ Charlie said. ‘Sometimes I feel ‒ Oh I don’t know ‒’ He stood staring across the yard, watching Philip in the cart. ‘I suppose I’m being unfair in a way. It’s her son, you see, he’s away in the war, and she worries about him all the time … Then there’s our young Philip there … He rubs her up the wrong way sometimes …’
‘Charlie, I want you to look at me.’
He turned towards her, his face well-schooled.
‘Well, what is it? I’m looking!’ he said.
‘I want you to look me straight in the eye and tell me I’m not the cause of it all.’
Seedtime and Harvest (The Apple Tree Saga Book 5) Page 25
