by Juno Dawson
Margot scoffs.
‘OK, maybe I don’t know exactly what’s happening in Sarajevo, but I know it’s bad,’ I argue. ‘The news is horrible and ugly and bleak, so I’m going to do everything I can to make something pretty.’ I point at the baking mess on the counter. ‘I can’t personally cook up world peace or whatever, but I can do mind-blowing fairy cakes and just maybe they’ll make people that little bit happier so they won’t want to go out and blow each other up.’ I triumphantly lick a bit of batter off the wooden spoon.
That shuts her up. ‘She’s got you there, Mum.’ Mum grins.
Margot pouts. ‘Well, now I’ve truly heard it all. Saving the world, one cupcake at a time.’ Maybe I’m seeing things, but I swear a tiny suggestion of a smile twitches in the corner of her mouth for like a second before it falls away again.
I watch Crimewatch UK with Mum and Margot, although Mum falls asleep halfway through. I’m not surprised – there were no good murders this month. Margot and I help her into bed and then I shut myself in my room.
What kind of girl wants to be a fool? What a witch. The diary is where I left it under my pillow. I know the right thing to do would be to return it to her at once and pretend I hadn’t read any of it, but now I’m curious as to what happened after she arrived on the farm. Often, I think, the right thing to do is also the most boring. And there has to be something incriminating in here.
The irony that we both got uprooted from London against our will and transported to the very same farm is not lost on me – the mystery is why she’d come back to the dump, presumably out of choice, fifty years later. I tuck myself under the covers with the diary, leaving only the bedside lamp on.
I’ve already committed the cardinal girl sin of reading someone else’s diary, so I don’t see the point in stopping now.
Saturday 18th January, 1941
Well, a fine start my journal-keeping got off to. I was planning to write every day but, needless to say, as I’ve gone to my bed each night, I’ve been asleep the second my head touched the pillow. A combination of manure-ripe air and hard labour, I suspect. I have aches on top of aches.
My first two days on the farm have been punishing, which I suspect was Ivor’s intention. I rather made a rod for my own back, didn’t I?
The days start when the cockerel crows at dawn, for all of us. Even little Jane is expected to help out at breakfast. I met my fellow evacuees on the first morning. Jane is an adorable Botticelli-cherub-faced girl with moon eyes and chubby cheeks. She’s from Liverpool and I do so adore the accent. Peter is a wiry, ruddy-faced boy of ten from Portsmouth.
Over Christmas, the schoolhouse in Llanmarion flooded when a pipe froze and burst. As such the children haven’t yet returned. So while Jane helped Glynis in the kitchen and around the farmhouse, Peter and I were expected to help Ivor: letting the sheep out, mucking out the horses, collecting eggs (although Jane enjoys this task). Peter is already a dab hand at milking the cow and showed me what to do.
Oh, it’s a ghastly process, rolling and pinching the fleshy teat, firing the milk into a steel bucket. It became painfully obvious on the first morning that the clothes I’d brought are woefully inadequate. I returned to my room after breakfast to find that Glynis had left some lumpen woollen trousers, jumpers and checked blouses for me to borrow. I pinned my hair back and wrapped a headscarf over it, every inch the land girl I’ve seen in the newsreels.
Now this is queer: not long after breakfast, a car arrived for Glynis and she was driven away without explanation. The same happened yesterday and again this morning. When I quizzed Ivor as to where she’d gone, he snapped she’d gone ‘with the women’. I’m still none the wiser. How peculiar! I vow to get to the bottom of it.
It is clear to me that the farm is a lifeline to the village. Rations are every bit as tight, but out here borrowing from the land is far easier than in London.
From very early morning people come, often on foot, to trade for hardy winter vegetables – potatoes and parsnips. I was regarded with keen interest – word had travelled that there was a new evacuee girl on the farm. What a spectacle I must have been – covered in muck and milk and in Glynis’s manly garb!
The rest of my first day was spent on the vegetable patch rather than on the fields. I suspect it’s too early in the year for there to be much to harvest. Ivor isn’t designed for stealth and I was aware of his constant supervision as I worked. I shan’t lie, it was a hard drudge – scraping at the frozen soil on hands and knees, trying to unearth potatoes with a trowel – but I was damned if I was going to let Ivor know how cold and miserable I was. No, instead I whistled the jauntiest version of ‘Oh When the Saints Go Marching In’ that I could muster.
Exhausted and with every inch of my arms aching, I collapsed into bed after a mercifully hot bath. Already my hands felt calloused, Ivor would no doubt be thrilled to observe. He won’t hear me complain however; I won’t give him the satisfaction.
I’d only been in bed a moment when I heard a low, morose mumbling. A more foolish girl would think the room haunted. I sat up straight and listened intently. Someone was crying. Poor little Jane!
I’d brought my gown and slippers from home and put them on before venturing onto the landing. I could hear Glynis and Ivor talking downstairs, but the noise was coming from the next room. I popped my head around the door and saw Jane sitting on Peter’s bed. Peter’s head was buried in his pillow. ‘Peter’s sad,’ Jane said.
‘Peter? What’s wrong?’
‘I want to go home,’ he said without looking up, his words muffled.
Now, I’m no nanny, but it was a fairly clear diagnosis of homesickness.
I sat on the edge of his bed and rubbed his back awkwardly. It’s at times like this that I most notice I’m an only child: I simply don’t know how to behave around children. ‘There, there,’ I said, improvising. ‘Of course you do. We all do. We’re all a very long way away from home.’
Peter turned to look at me, his eyes red. ‘The man on the wireless said there’d been bombs over Portsmouth.’
‘Oh, Peter, you mustn’t worry. Your mother knows to get to a bomb shelter, doesn’t she? She’s no fool.’
‘But what if—’
‘Nonsense! Tomorrow we shall write to her. We’ll tell her how brave you’re being and make sure she’s well. We’ll tell her what fun you’re having on the farm too so that she won’t unduly worry.’
‘Peter can’t write, Miss Margot,’ said little Jane.
I wondered what his life must have been like back home for him not to be able to write at his age. ‘Very well, then you shall dictate, Peter, and I shall write.’
That seemed to perk him up somewhat. ‘Can we? Do you promise?’
‘Of course. But we must go to sleep now. We all have an exceedingly early start.’
‘I can’t sleep,’ Jane said.
I gritted my teeth. I’m not sure I was ever destined to be a babysitter. I remembered my old nanny, Martha. What would she do? ‘Jane, do you perhaps have a favourite book? You may have one story before bed as is customary.’
Jane dived off the bed and ran to the bookcase, returning with Peter Rabbit.
‘That says Peter,’ Peter said proudly.
‘Yes, it certainly does. Now, are you both comfortable? Lie down and close your eyes so you can imagine the story better …’
Within minutes they were both sound asleep and I soon followed them to the land of Nod.
On Saturdays, there is a farmers’ market in the town square. We helped Ivor and Glynis to load up the truck before squeezing onto the back, clinging to crates of veg as we bumped down the uneven roads.
It was my first look at Llanmarion beyond the farm and it was no less than breath-taking: The swooping valleys and snow-capped hills, a darling hump bridge over the rushing river. I resolved to take some photographs and send them to Mother with a letter at the first opportunity.
The market itself was set up on a village green based around a m
emorial to those lost in the last war. I couldn’t help but think of those men like Daddy who had survived those horrors only to head into the mire once more, shoulders square, heads high but with a certain disquietude in the eyes.
This time, unlike last time, they knew what they were marching into. Last year I witnessed a conscription train leaving Victoria station – the songs, the masculine camaraderie, had a bit of a rictus grin, knowing, as they did, that many of them were boarding a one-way train.
I shuddered. Mother once told me if you dwell too much on what’s really happening in the world you’d go quite insane, and I think she’s right.
The market was bustling and we got to work on the stall. Glynis’s home-made jams were especially popular, although how they make any money when she gives so many jars away for free is anyone’s guess. After a couple of hours, Glynis suggested I go for a walk to get my bearings. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘You’re not a slave, Margot. Go meet some people your own age.’
I was happy enough on the stall, but was also curious to see if there was anyone else from London in the village. I wandered aimlessly around the market, enjoying the freedom. People were jolly enough and made a little go a long way. There were slices of eggless cake and a tea urn steaming away. I chatted to some of the people I recognised from their visits to the farm.
The local postmistress, Myfanwy Jones, collared me at the tea stall and told me I must meet her daughter and niece. I took my tea and she frogmarched me to where the two girls were feeding pigeons with the crusts of a crab-paste sandwich.
Bess is a jolly little thing with an infectious giggle, while Doreen is a strikingly pretty girl of about my (real) age, who’s come up from Southampton to be on the safe side. ‘You must be Margot,’ Bess said cheerfully, playing with her knitted mittens. She had chubby cheeks, rosy from the cold. ‘We’ve heard all about you! What’s it like up on the farm?’
‘It’s fine,’ I replied, now feeling conspicuous in my Harrods coat. The smart tailoring and jade wool was in stark contrast to Bess’s shapeless grey overcoat. I suddenly thought my attire ostentatious and made a note to not wear that coat in the future. ‘Jolly hard work, but I can manage.’
‘Why don’t you girls get to know each other?’ Mrs Jones said.
‘We’ll look after her, Mum!’ Bess said. She waited until her mother was out of earshot. ‘Come along, Margot,’ she said gleefully. ‘Let’s see if we can find the boys!’
Together we went via a stall serving hot soup, where the chap was only too happy to serve three pretty girls with a wink and a smile. ‘Oh, I could never work on a farm,’ Doreen said, blowing on her broth to cool it. ‘All that mud and hay. No chance!’
Bess scrunched her nose. ‘It can’t be much worse than working in the laundry at the hospital, can it?’
‘Is that what you’re doing?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Mam said we had to help. It was either the hospital or the infant school …’
‘And we chose poor, wounded soldiers over little children!’ Doreen said. ‘I thought I’d meet a nice fella, but all we do is wash blood – and worse – out of sheets!’ Bess collapsed into giggles as we wove our way across the green looking for somewhere to sit awhile.
A terrier had got loose from his leash and some younger children were chasing him through the crowd. I saw Peter taking control of the situation and felt a swell of pride – even after a few days I feel like he is the closest thing I’ve ever had to a little brother.
‘Whereabouts is the hospital?’ I asked, making polite conversation. I don’t expect Bess and I would have been friends ordinarily, but I very much appreciated her company now.
‘Oh, it’s the old insane asylum,’ Bess said with authority. ‘It was closed for years, but now it’s an auxiliary hospital for the troops coming in from Cardiff or London.’
‘I wouldn’t want to be there at night,’ Doreen said, eyes wide. ‘It gives me the willies during the day.’
Bess smiled. ‘Well, if you really want a scare, we should go up to Margot’s farm …’
‘What do you mean?’
Before Bess could reply, a young man yelled at us from the war memorial. ‘Oh look!’ Doreen exclaimed. ‘There they are!’
A group of boys were sat at the memorial’s stone base, drinking homebrew ale from one of the stalls. They barely looked old enough. The first was all swagger and golden hair, parted dead centre like an oiled feather. ‘Bore da, ladies! Who’s this then, like?’ On him, the accent wasn’t as charming somehow, coarse as sandpaper.
At once Doreen flustered, hands flying to her head to revive her ebony ringlets. ‘Hello, Bryn! This is Margot. She’s staying at the farm.’
Bryn turned to his friends and smiled a wolfish smile. I’d met peacocks like him in London and remained unimpressed by their feathery displays. ‘Nice to meet you, Margot. I’m Bryn Davies, Owen’s lad.’
‘Who, sorry?’
‘Owen Davies,’ Bess added quickly. ‘The mayor.’
‘Nice to meet you,’ I said. I offered my hand to shake, but he scooped it up to his lips and kissed my gloved knuckles. I hope my grimace at least partially resembled a smile.
‘What are you little ladies up to?’
‘Nothing!’ Doreen said too quickly.
‘Why don’t you join us?’ He gestured to their makeshift bench.
‘No, thank you,’ I said politely but firmly. ‘I have a sitting condition, as do all the women in my family, so I shall have to stand, or better yet, leave.’
The joke was completely lost on him. ‘Aw, come on, ladies! Dad says we can drive into town for the pictures if you fancy it?’
‘Oh yes, please!’ Doreen and Bess chorused.
‘What about you, Margot? I’ll let you sit in the front.’
‘Oh, I doubt there’d be room for all of us.’
I smiled again but had no desire to spend a minute more than was necessary in Bryn’s company. Handsome, certainly, but too keen by far on his own flavour.
‘The lads won’t mind, will you, lads?’ He turned to his companions, whom I confess I had more or less ignored, assuming they were cut from the same cloth as Bryn.
One was a tall, rugged boy with a meat-pie face who looked a lot older than he was; the second was a rather beautiful, slightly younger boy with blond hair and freckles and the last was the first Negro I’d seen since I arrived in Wales. I assumed he was a fellow evacuee.
‘I don’t mind. I’ll just go home,’ the freckled one said. I asked Bess later and learned he is called Andrew and his Negro friend is Reg.
‘See?’ Bryn grinned. My skin crawled. ‘Plenty of room.’
Another thought occurred to me. ‘If you’re old enough to drive,’ I asked, ‘why aren’t you enlisted?’
At once Bryn’s face fell. ‘I’m a reserve,’ he said sulkily and the way he spoke made me instantly wonder what the real reason was. ‘Anyway, you coming or not?’
‘I should really get back to the farm. There’s always so much to do.’
Bryn’s sneer returned. ‘You know Tan-Y-Pistyll Farm’s haunted, don’t you? Well, the forest is … You heard the voices yet?’
‘What?’ Doreen asked, horrified. I myself have never been prone to gullibility.
‘It’s true!’ Bess said, giggling again. ‘It really is! Everyone knows to stay out of the forest at night.’
‘What nonsense!’ I said, suddenly feeling the bite of the cold. ‘I’ve never heard such tripe.’
‘Never heard of the mari-morgans then?’ Bryn postured, devouring the attention. ‘They might look like beautiful girls – well, except for their pale blue skin and silver hair – and they sing oh-so sweetly, but once you’ve followed them into the water, they’ve got you forever.’
‘What? Like sirens?’ I couldn’t help asking. Father has told me all the tales of the sea.
‘Something like that,’ Bryn went on. ‘They live in the forest stream. There’s a cave behind the waterfall, you see. People go in … and never
come out.’
‘My dad heard the voices once,’ said the tall one, who I learned is called Bill Jones – no relation to Bess; half of Wales is called Jones.
‘You must think me a fool!’ I said, noting Doreen was spellbound by the story – or by the young man telling it.
Bryn looked to his friends. ‘That’s the thing with you city dwellers. You come to Wales thinking it’s like England. But it isn’t. We have our ways here, ways you don’t understand.’
I smiled. ‘I tell you what, Bryn – how about you stick to your ways, I’ll stick to mine, and never the twain shall meet?’
‘If you don’t believe me, come into the forest with me. I’ll show you.’
How impertinent! ‘No, thank you!’
‘Ah, come on! We’ll all go.’
‘We could take a picnic!’ Bess said, clapping her hands.
‘It’s January!’ I said. ‘What kind of savage takes a picnic in the middle of winter? We’ll catch our deaths.’
‘We’ll wrap up nice and warm! It’ll be fun.’ Bess looked a little hurt and I felt guilty at once. ‘Oh, the forest is so beautiful, Margot. If we stay together and if we get home before dusk, it’s quite safe, I promise.’
Oh, sweet, hopeful Bess. Such warmth of spirit is rare indeed and I didn’t want to wound her feelings further. ‘Well, perhaps. We shall have to see if the weather’s dry.’ I didn’t suppose there was anything improper about going into the woods with young men if we went as a troupe. I hoped Bryn might be deterred.
‘Will you join us, Reg?’ Bess asked, her voice suddenly squeaky.
Reg was hardly paying attention to the conversation, kicking a ball idly between himself and Bill. ‘What? The forest? Yes, erm, I’ll have to check with my family of course … but I’d like to.’
Bess smiled broadly. ‘Wonderful. I do hope you can!’
I said nothing, but Bess couldn’t have been more apparent in her affection.
So we have made vague plans for tomorrow, Bess excitedly planning what to bring and Doreen keen to ensure Bryn would accompany us. Hopefully, he’ll turn his attention to her – she’s certainly fairer than I.