by Angela Huth
Dear Barry
I can’t ask you to keep up all the bicycling any more and it wouldn’t be much fun in the woods this wintry weather, we’d catch our deaths, and anyway it’s difficult me slipping off so much even though Stella and Ag are kind and cover for me. So I think we shall have to call it a day. It was good fun. When it comes to telling grandchildren about wartime romances I shall say, well there was Barry …
Nah! Soppy, that last bit. She wouldn’t put that. Love and good wishes at the end, though: she didn’t want him to think he’d been nothing more than a bloody good shag.
In the past week, there had been much meal-time talk about the end of the war. Now that America had joined the fighting, Mr Lawrence seemed to think there was some hope it wouldn’t drag on too long. Prue herself thought such speculation pointless. She agreed with Ratty, who declared much worse was to come before victory. She had no wish to think about the future. She was happy – despite the cheerless rain and cold – with each day as it came: tough work, long hours, plenty of good hot food, and odd moments of reward in Robert’s dingy bed. He was something of a mystery, Robert, Prue had often thought in the past week: no matter how passionately they made love his skin never warmed up. Quite a challenge, that. One day she’d like to be responsible for replacing his corpse-like temperature with a warm pink glow (Prue giggled to herself at the thought). She liked his company, too: dry little phrases, their academic references usually way over her head, shy little compliments, quaint little jokes. And the way he stroked the bridge of her nose when he was being very serious about the war or something. He said the bridge of the nose was an erogenous zone. Perhaps it was among academics, she had replied, but she could think of more erogenous places in the opinion of ordinary folk. All the same, she didn’t try to stop him – tickle tickle tickle with his cold little finger.
‘You’ve done well, Prue,’ said Mr Lawrence.
Prue turned to see him at the door of the cowshed, appraising her work. Rain ran thickly down the raw-coloured runnels of his face. Swift as balls of mercury they slid down the creases of his neck. ‘Not exactly my finest hour, Mr Lawrence,’ she said, pleased, ‘but I’m getting on.’
At times like this, it occurred to her, there was a darn sight more reward in being a land girl than there was in hairdressing. In fact – it had crossed her mind several times – when the war was over it might be worth trying to find her millionaire somewhere in the country, rather than in Manchester.
‘You’re not half as daffy as you look,’ said the soaked Mr Lawrence, smiling.
Joe was avoiding her. This Stella noticed within a few days of their evening at the pub. At first she thought it was her imagination, and he was avoiding everyone. Certainly he seemed less forthcoming – the others had observed and remarked on that, too. Perhaps two days of the beautiful Janet’s company had caused his despair, suggested Prue. Ag’s view was that no end to the war in sight depressed everyone. But Stella knew it was neither of those things. It was something to do with her. She had inadvertently acted in some way to offend or annoy him, but could not imagine what it was she had done.
In the cold and gloomy days of early January, Stella puzzled over Joe’s behaviour. It was definitely her he singled out for the cold shoulder (she noticed a hundred small occasions) and the worry of her unknown misdemeanour was beginning to blight the days. She would have liked to confront Joe: ask him what had happened, clear the air. But he was not an easy man to confront. He had become more and more elusive, always the one willing to undertake jobs far from the farm that could be done alone. Stella watched for her chance. But, as the dreary days dragged by, it did not come.
On the afternoon that Prue was assigned the unenviable but dry task of whitewashing the cowshed, Mr Lawrence asked Stella to take the milk churns to the village. Usually, this was a task he undertook himself. But the persistent heavy rain had taken its toll on the old roofs. There was a leak in the laundry room: water had poured down on to a basket of Faith’s ironing. Repairing the tiles was urgent. Mr Lawrence apologized to Stella, said if he caught sight of Joe he would ask him to give a hand.
Stella, setting off for the field to catch Noble, leaned against the heavy slant of the rain. A dour mass of dark cloud was low in the sky, releasing no chinks of light to play among reflections. And yet the puddles in the lane dappled with inky blues and muddy pinks as Stella splashed through them. In the leafless hedges dishevelled sparrows cowered, unsinging. The thrumming of the rain would sometimes switch into an adagio passage, giving hope it would soon be stopping altogether. Then, like a tease who knows not when to stop, it would fall prestissimo again, defying all such silly hopes. The persistence of such weather had affected Stella’s spirits.
Noble sheltered under a tree, darkened by the rain. He came at once when Stella called. She removed her sodden glove and gave him half a carrot, snorts of warm breath agreeable on her cold hand. In the next field she could see the drenched figure of Ag; sou’wester falling over her eyes, throwing mangolds from the trailer behind the tractor on to the ground. The cows were hustled round her in a selfish crowd, a black and white puzzle whose individual pieces, at this distance, were indistinguishable.
Ag waved. Stella waved back. Ag had been much more cheerful since Desmond’s Christmas card. Strange how thin a hope the human soul can survive on, Stella thought, gripping the soaking rope of Noble’s halter. She and the horse sloshed their way through the long grass back to the gate. If Ag ever did secure this almost non-existent love, surely the stuff of fantasy, Stella would remind her of this rainy afternoon, January 1942, when she, Stella, had been quite convinced nothing would ever happen with Desmond. And with Philip? In his last letter, he had said that when he went to London he was going to buy her a ring. Then they would be engaged. Then they would be married. Then they would live together ever after. Wartime bride and groom. Romantic stuff. But happily? Stella supposed so, in some ways.
She tethered Noble to a post in the barn, made several journeys to and from the tack-room lugging the heavy harness. Her hands, wet and cold, worked inefficiently. She struggled to do up the hard old straps. She tugged at the stubborn leather, determined not to be beaten and have to call for help. As finally she led Noble towards the shafts, a thought came blindingly to her. It came with such terrible clarity that for a moment she was forced to lean against Noble’s damp withers, bury her head in her arms so that she could be submerged in blackness. The suspicion that had been nudging her for some weeks, that she had kept at bay, had suddenly stormed her fragile defences. It was Philip, not the weather, that caused her dejection. The sprightly love she had felt for him when she came to the farm, which had protected her in the many bleak moments that manual labour produces in all those who would rather be engaged in some more intellectually creative activity, was gone. Absolutely gone. She was fond of him, respected him … she would marry him: but she was not in love with him. And, as she had so often said to Prue and Ag, what is the point of life if you are not in love?
Stella moved back at last from the warmth of the horse’s body. She looked again at the swathes of rain that billowed across the yard. There was only one thing to do. The only antidote to any kind of unhappiness, her father used to say, was work. She must apply all her energies, all her concentration, on work: do her bit for her country to the best of her ability. She must remember that, while thousands of girls were suffering the premature death of their loved ones, her fortune was to be loved by a good man who, thank God, was still alive. The thought of Philip being killed sent a spasm of guilty horror down her spine … Should he be spared, she would make a good wife. Learn to come to terms with the kind of love, based on friendship and affection, that, buffed by marriage, lasts. She realized, as she tried to persuade Noble to reverse himself between the shafts of the milk cart, how young and silly she had been, hoping that the froth of love she felt so quickly for Philip, and others before him, was the stuff of permanence.
There was a helping hand, suddenly,
on the bridle. Joe muttered a few magic words to Noble who instantly obeyed. The inexplicable discord with Joe was the other reason for her unusual depression, though minor by comparison. She looked up at his grim face, veiled by water that poured off the brim of his waterproof hat. Perhaps there would be a chance to confront him, discover what had caused his hurtful behaviour.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘I’ll give you a hand with the churns.’
When they had secured the shafts, Joe led Noble over to the milking shed, where the streaming silvery churns stood in a line. He swung each one easily into the cart, signalling to Stella not to help. She climbed into the driving seat, sat waiting. Joe, to her surprise, when all the churns were loaded, joined her. He looked at his watch.
‘I’ll come with you. Give you a hand the other end. They’re buggers when they’re wet.’
Stella relinquished the driver’s seat.
They clattered out into the lane. The rattling of the churns, Noble’s hoofs, and the drumming rain, made an orchestra of sweet sound. Branches of vapour drifted from the hedgerows, ghostly extensions of the hedges themselves. For all the discomforts of the wet and cold, Stella found herself enjoying exposure to such weather. She was awed by the mercilessness of the rain. She was fascinated to find so familiar a journey made unrecognizable by the gauzes of mist that filtered through it.
In no time, Joe unloaded the churns on to the wooden platform from which they were daily collected. The rain fell harder.
‘Think we should shelter for a moment or two,’ he said. ‘This’ll pass.’
He urged a reluctant Noble on a few yards, halted under the oak tree beside the gate to the church. There, they were protected from the main force of the rain, although it still managed to fall between the intricacies of bare branches. Joe, hunched on the seat, let the reins fall slack on Noble’s back. He stared ahead at the cascade of water battering the dark stone of the cottages opposite, oblivious, it seemed, to Stella’s presence.
‘Joe? Joe, what have I done?’ Stella broke a long silence between them. ‘You’ve been so distant, since that night at The Bells. Did you mind my singing?’
She watched his profile carefully. Even in the poor light under the tree his skin gleamed with running rain. Drips trickled from his eyebrows to join drips falling from the brim of his hat in a squiggling journey down his cheeks. He frowned, causing a rush of more drips to scurry down the bridge of his nose. His dark waterproof, silvered with rain, creaked as he turned towards her.
‘No,’ he said, ‘you haven’t done anything. I liked your singing. You’ve a lovely voice.’ He paused, sighed. The slight hunching of his shoulders caused another flurry of water to scuttle down his arms. ‘I suppose it’s just the thought of the long year ahead. Dark. Getting ill with asthma. The not knowing. The suspense. The waiting. The waste, for everyone. The utter waste.’
Stella, half appeased, half believing him, gave no time to the weighing of her next words.
‘But you’re just the same to Prue and Ag. It’s only to me, I feel … I’ve felt you’ve changed. Unfriendly, somehow.’
‘Really?’ He shifted further round so that Stella could see both his eyes. The irises were the same colour as the rain, flecked with light. He gave her a curious look that quickly wafted away, light as a flake of ash in a breeze. ‘Am I?’ Then he turned away.
‘You must know,’ said Stella. ‘It’s not my imagination. There must be a reason, beyond the doom of war we all feel.’
‘Maybe.’ He went on staring at the rain ahead, falling so hard it bounced back off the road only to fall again. ‘If that’s so, and I dare say it is, then I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be unfriendly.’
Stella was aware of the effort he made, then, to remedy things. He turned to her again with a teasing half smile.
‘I could, I suppose, come back at you. Where’ve all your spirits gone? You’re neither so dreamy nor so happy, seems to me. But I could be wrong. People’s shifting moods, in a war, are almost impossible to keep up with. Hopes chasing fears: strain of broken rhythms, traumas, upheavals from the norm … What’s happened to you?’
Stella shrugged. Now, dozens of tiny streams ran down her own sleeves.
‘Perhaps a case of mistaken identity of a feeling. Perhaps I’ve been in love with an idea, instead of a reality …’
‘Ah. That.’ Joe looked as if he was attempting to concentrate very hard on the weather. ‘Doesn’t look as if this is going to ease up. I think we’d better brave it. I should be helping Dad with the roof.’
But as he picked up the reins, a cyclist came into sight. Head down, miserably hunched over the handlebars, his waterproof glinted dully as the feathers of a wet crow. ‘That’s Barry, isn’t it?’ said Joe.
The airman rode towards them, stopped at Noble’s head. He raised his sodden forage cap, looked at them enquiringly. It wasn’t Barry, but a man of similar physique: shaven head and ruddy countenance.
‘Could you tell me where I could find Prue? Prudence? Hallows Farm?’
‘Half a mile down the lane,’ said Joe, pointing. ‘We’re going there. Can we give her a message?’
The young man bit his lip. He squeezed and released the handlebars of the bicycle several times, as if to some private rhythm. Tapped the ground with his heavy black boot.
‘She was a friend of my friend Barry. I came to tell her he was … was shot down night before last. I thought … I thought she’d want to know …’ He replaced his soaking cap. Stella thought she could distinguish tears among the raindrops on his cheeks. ‘If you’re going back there, if you know her … I’d be grateful. My name’s Jamie Morton, should she want to get in touch. At the Camp.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Stella.
‘Buggeration!’ screamed Prue, when Joe told her Barry was dead.
She picked up a tin of whitewash and slung it at her newly painted wall. ‘That’s what I think of this bloody war. It’s come here, now. It’s hit here!’ She dropped on to a milking stool, thrashing her heart. Began to sob. ‘Poor Barry! He was so brave. He told me he hated night flying. I think he knew he was going to die. Oh God, he’s the only person I’ve ever known to die…’
As she buried her head in her hands, the yellow satin bow slumped in her sad curls. The toes of her white-streaked rubber boots were turned inwards: so often there was a childlike innocent look about Prue, thought Stella, for all her superior experience. She put a hand on the shaking girl’s shoulder.
‘You just cry,’ she said. ‘That’s the best thing.’
‘I just hope the same thing doesn’t happen to your Philip …’
Joe quickly picked up the tin of whitewash. ‘Marvellous job you’ve done in here,’ he said. ‘Finished on time, too. Why don’t we all go in and have some tea?’
Any approval from her employers affected Prue deeply. Her wails stopped for a moment. She looked up, her stricken face a grid of running mascara.
‘Heavens, you two – drowned rats! Whatever have you been doing?’ She sniffed, brightening. ‘Well, at least there’s one good thing. I hadn’t sent my farewell letter. I was planning it only an hour ago. So he died not knowing it was all over between us. I’m glad of that. Because he was a funny boy, Barry: I think he loved me.’
She stood, gave the faintest smile. The three of them made a dash through the rain to the house. When they had changed into dry clothes, and Prue had repaired her face, they gathered round the kitchen table with mugs of tea.
‘I can’t quite believe it,’ sniffed Prue, who had exchanged her wet yellow bow for a new black one. ‘Barry. One moment you’re with someone. The next moment they’re dead – and for what? This bloody, bloody war …’
A couple of silent tears fell from her naked eyes, dampening the long soft lashes which, devoid of mascara, glistened. She wiped them away with an impatient hand, cocked her head towards Joe.
‘This friend of Barry’s, Joe, who broke the news – what did you say his name was?’
&
nbsp; ‘Jamie Morton. He said you should get in touch, if there’s anything you want to know.’
‘What was he like?’
‘Sad, and soaked to the skin,’ said Stella.
‘I must write to him. I’d like to know … where it happened. I’d like to thank him for his trouble.’
She gave such a minor smile that her dimples were only just stirred into action. As Stella and Joe both recognized, and acknowledged with a private look, even in the darkness of Barry’s death Prue, with her resistant spirit, saw the light of some possibility in his friend, Jamie Morton.
* * *
That same afternoon of unforgettable rain, Ratty was at home making an attempt to celebrate his wife’s birthday. He had given her a card in the morning; at tea-time he produced a present made bulky with many layers of newspaper beneath the final wrapping – a sheet of paper decorated with holly, left over from Christmas.
Edith, never a gracious receiver of presents, tore impatiently at the string.
‘What’s this, then? Who said I wanted my birthday remembered? I’m past all that sort of thing.’
Nonetheless, she scrabbled through the paper like an excited child. Eventually she found the present, a small porcelain robin perched on a porcelain tree stump. Edith had always had a fondness for robins, though no interest in other birds. Ratty had made several difficult journeys to local towns in search of the robin in his mind. He had been pleased to find it at last, dusty in a junk shop – lifelike little fellow with a bright eye, especially attractive for its bargain price of sixpence. He anticipated Edith’s pleasure – stupidly, as he later reflected. He should have remembered there was nothing in the world he could give her that would please.
Except, curiously, the paper.
Edith picked up the robin with a sniff of disdain, put it on an empty shelf (previous home of saucepans) and said not a word.