by Pam Weaver
‘What are you lot doing here?’ the landlord roared. ‘Put that cover back on and clear off, the lot of you.’ The boys scattered. ‘You heard me,’ he said to Shirley.
‘Leave off, Cyril,’ said the other man. ‘Can’t you see you’re scaring the poor girl half to death?’
Shirley took a deep breath, and although she was trembling inside, she squared up to him and said, ‘I’m not leaving here until my brother comes back out.’
The landlord grinned. ‘I take that back, Vince. This little lassie has some real pluck.’ He turned to Shirley. ‘You’re one of them ’vacuees, ench you? Where do you live? I shall have a word with whoever’s looking after you, cheeking your elders and betters like this.’ He looked at Vince and winked.
‘Oliver’s Farm,’ said Shirley, her face burning. ‘And I’m sure Mr Oliver won’t care tuppence.’
The landlord threw back his head and laughed.
‘Oh,’ said Vince, ‘you’re the girl with the simpleton brother.’
Shirley put her hands on her hips, her eyes blazing. ‘No, he’s not,’ she said angrily. ‘Just because he’s a bit different doesn’t mean he’s stupid.’
‘Feisty little madam, isn’t she?’ the landlord said good-naturedly. ‘I think you met your match there, Vince.’
A couple of seconds later, Tom backed out of the drain. His jacket was filthy from touching the walls, and his shoes were caked in mud and slime. He straightened himself up painfully. ‘I didn’t really want to go down there, Shirl,’ he said. ‘And when you get near the middle, it smells awful.’
Vince kicked the cover back into place. ‘If you’ll take my advice, you’ll stay away from there.’ His tone was a lot more conciliatory.
Shirley and Tom stared after him as he headed up the hill towards the Avenals.
‘Look, sonny,’ said the landlord, ‘you don’t have to do everything those boys tell you. If you get any more trouble from them, you come straight to me, all right?’
Tom nodded. Shirley began brushing his clothes with her hand. ‘You should have asked me first. Don’t let them talk you into these things.’
The landlord turned to go. ‘And don’t take any notice of Vince Carter either. He didn’t mean to be offensive. He’s got a lot on his mind, that’s all.’
‘Thank you, mister,’ said Shirley and, grabbing Tom’s arm, they headed back to Oliver’s Farm.
CHAPTER 9
Shirley watched for the post for nearly three weeks until the reason why her mother hadn’t written suddenly dawned on her. It was the address! She hadn’t sent her mother her address. How daft she’d been. Shirley had been imagining the worst – that Florrie was too ill to write, or even that she was dead. She’d withdrawn into herself with her dark thoughts, but she hadn’t said anything to anyone. She told herself her mother would never forget her, and of course she hadn’t. She simply didn’t know where Shirley and Tom were! Tom was in the stable grooming the horses, which gave her a golden opportunity to write to Mum in private. Shirley closed the door of their bedroom and sat herself down with the second of her four postcards.
To be truly honest, she was feeling a little better about being here. Janet was friendly and chatty, and a couple of days ago they had spent a lovely time together. They both talked about their past lives, but not in depth. Shirley wasn’t ready to share everything with her just yet. Janet knew Shirley and Tom lived over a shop and that her father had run off with another woman. Shirley told her how hard her mother worked and that the strain of it had made her ill. She’d even found herself telling Janet what it felt like having a twin like Tom.
‘I feel really lucky that I was born normal,’ she confided. They were getting apples ready to store in the loft of the barn for winter. ‘But sometimes I feel a bit guilty about it too.’
‘Don’t be,’ said Janet. ‘He’s happy enough.’
‘Mr Oliver shouts at him all the time,’ Shirley remarked.
‘But Tom loves being with the animals,’ said Janet. ‘For him, that more than makes up for it.’
Shirley nodded. Janet was right. Tom did seem to have a gift with animals. The percherons responded to him, and he enjoyed mucking out the stables and grooming them. They were called Darby and Joan, and from the very first week they were here, he’d mastered the skill of harnessing them as if he’d been doing it all his life. Tom’s strength meant that he could handle the heavy milk churns and bales of straw as if they were no trouble at all, and he couldn’t wait to get home from school to throw himself into his chores.
As for her past, Janet told Shirley that she had been brought up by her father and her father’s new wife after her own mother had died when she was six.
‘My stepmother never liked me,’ Janet said. ‘We rowed all the time, until she kicked me out.’
The small orchard had several apple trees, but they weren’t in very good condition. They were all varieties of Sussex apples, and Janet seemed to know a bit about them.
‘That’s because one day when Gil was out, I asked one of the old boys in the village to come and identify the varieties,’ she told Shirley. ‘This one is the Egremont Russet. They say this apple was first grown at Petworth and they named it after the earl. It’s an eating apple. Lovely, very crisp and they will last until Christmas.’ Janet saw Shirley’s look of confusion and chuckled. ‘Petworth is one of the big country houses around here,’ and putting on a posh accent, she added, ‘Country seat and all that.’
Shirley laughed. This was a totally different world from Canning Town.
The Alfriston apple was slightly larger. Janet explained that it was a cooking apple and was sometimes a bit sharp to the taste. ‘If we can keep it away from the rats and mice, this one will keep until the spring.’ The final apple was the Forge, another cooking apple. It was pale green with a tendency to turn slightly orange-coloured. Each totally unblemished apple was put into a newspaper twist and placed side by side, but not touching, in a straw-lined crate. Shirley quite enjoyed ‘laying the apples down’, as Janet called it. When Janet began to talk about her days in service and her marriage to Mr Oliver, Shirley, an incurable romantic, wanted to hear all about their courtship, but Janet wasn’t very forthcoming about that.
It was an odd relationship. Although they were man and wife, the pair of them seemed to live very separate lives. They skirted around each other all the time. They never kissed or held hands. They never went out together or had friends over for a meal. Even when they were working in the same place, like the milking parlour, they were oblivious of each other.
Now that she was alone in her bedroom, Shirley pulled the postcard towards her and wrote the address of the farm on the correspondence side. It didn’t leave a lot of space for her news, so what should she say? Should she tell her mother about the terrible room with the blanket wall that she and Tom shared? Should she mention all the hard work they had to do? Thanks to Janet, she had been spared having to work in that horrible, smelly milking shed ever since that first weekend, but she was still expected to be a virtual skivvy in the house. She was sometimes asked to do the washing, and the ironing. Then there was the dusting and sweeping, the apple-picking and storing, and lifting spuds in the field . . . No, she’d better not tell her mother all that. It would only worry her.
First, she asked how her mother was; then she told her that Tom was loving the farm and that she, Shirley, had come top in the essay-writing competition at school. As a result, her new teacher wanted her to take an entrance exam for teacher-training college. When it came to putting their code on the card, two kisses seemed about right. Shirley wrote the address of the shop on the right-hand side of the postcard and slipped it into her school bag. She would post it on the way to school tomorrow.
The dog was barking and Shirley heard raised voices. When she looked out of the window, she saw Mr Oliver yelling at a man in a smart blue suit. The man didn’t look very old, but he did look important because he carried a leather case. He had brown curly hair and was e
very bit as good-looking as the film star Gilbert Roland. Tom was still in the stables, and Janet was somewhere in the house. Shirley opened the door and peered outside.
‘If you think I’m going to be dictated to by some wet-behind-the-ears, snotty little toad like you,’ Mr Oliver was shouting, ‘you’ve got another think coming. Now, get off my land.’
By this time, the dog was nearly demented. As she saw its slavering jaws and bared teeth, Shirley couldn’t help thinking that it was a good job it was held back by the chain.
‘There’s no need to be abusive, Mr Oliver,’ the man said patiently. ‘And turning me away won’t change anything. There’s a war on and the Ministry of Agriculture is encouraging all farmers to grow more. According to this inspection’ – he held up a piece of paper – ‘you’ve already been informed that your farm is underproductive.’
‘What happens on my land is my business,’ Mr Oliver snapped. ‘I run my farm the way I want to.’
The newcomer stood his ground. ‘I also believe the Milk Marketing Board are not satisfied with the level of your milk production or your milk-parlour hygiene. Quite frankly, Mr Oliver, your farm needs a thorough overhaul.’
Mr Oliver looked as if he was about to burst a blood vessel. ‘I don’t have to stand here and listen to this,’ he yelled. ‘People have been working this land the same way for six generations.’
‘That’s just the point,’ said the man. ‘What was good enough for the Victorians isn’t good enough for today.’
‘How dare you!’ Mr Oliver spluttered. He advanced towards the man in a menacing way.
The man put his hand up defensively. ‘But we can change all that, Mr Oliver,’ he said. ‘We want to come alongside you. By working together, we can help you to make this farm more productive.’
By this time, the barking dog was hysterical with rage, and Mr Oliver was standing so close to its quarry that the two of them were almost nose to nose. ‘I remember what the government did in the 1920s to people like my father,’ he snarled. ‘Ever heard of the Great Betrayal? No, I don’t suppose you have. That was when jumped-up city types like you took away the subsidies given to farmers during the Great War and the wheat and corn markets collapsed.’
‘Mr Oliver—’ the man began again. He was still backing away, until he tripped over a raised stone on the path and stumbled. Fortunately, the gate saved him from an actual fall. Conceding defeat, the man went through the gate and closed it behind himself.
As if to prove a point, Mr Oliver took up a position leaning on the bars.
‘You haven’t heard the last of this, Mr Oliver,’ the man called out. He walked to his car and opened the back passenger door. Throwing his brown case inside, he said defiantly, ‘I shall be back.’
‘And the next time, I shall set the bloody dog on you,’ Mr Oliver growled.
As the man drove off, Mr Oliver shook his fist in the air and shouted after him, ‘Remember that old saying “A Sussex man will not be druv”? Nobody tells me what to do. Nobody.’
He turned and saw Shirley watching him through the crack in the door. ‘What are you staring at?’ he demanded.
Shirley panicked and slammed the door shut.
Boredom was the worst part of being ill. Quite early on, Florrie realized that she had to find something to do during the long hours, but the question was, what? The nurses weren’t very keen for her to knit, and neither was she, especially when she discovered that the wool fibres made her snuffly. She tried a little beadwork but didn’t enjoy it very much. She enjoyed doing crosswords, but Florrie was the sort of woman who liked to be productive, and crosswords were only an indulgence. What she wanted was a new skill – with something to show for it at the end. The patients sometimes helped each other. There was an opportunity to learn another language when it was revealed that Mary Dolman spoke French, but Florrie quickly discovered that she didn’t have an aptitude for learning languages. Another patient offered her lessons in watercolours and tatting, but she found it easier to paint the sheets than the canvas, and she had no patience at all for tatting.
The biggest setback with learning a new skill was that everything had to be done in bed lying down and with as little effort as possible. She was still only allowed up for a couple of trips to the toilet each day. The one thing she did have was plenty of fresh air. The windows were wide open no matter the weather, and as the winter months drew on, Florrie only wanted to snuggle down under the covers all the time.
The thing she enjoyed doing the most came about quite by accident. Someone had given her a newspaper. It was pretty dog-eared by the time she got it, because just about everybody else had already read it. As it lay on the bedcovers waiting to be put in the bin, she remembered how when she was a child, her father used to fold paper into shapes. He was clever enough to make birds and flowers of all shapes and sizes. She struggled to remember how it was done, but three or four afternoons later, Florrie had managed to fold a half-decent paper rose. It took several more days to perfect it, and when she showed it to the girls and the nurses, they were very excited. It seemed like everybody wanted one.
‘You should do them in pretty paper,’ said Tina.
So Florrie wrote to Betty asking her to send some from the stockroom in the shop, but it was a long time coming, so a couple of the nurses brought in some old present-wrapping paper and Florrie tackled her new project with great gusto.
She had made some new friends. Edna had left in September, but Tina was still on the ward. She had left two small children behind. Because there was no one to look after her children, they had been sent to Dr Barnardo’s. Florrie really felt for her. If her own problems were hard, life seemed to have dealt Tina a particularly bitter blow. Her husband had been killed in a car accident during the first few days of the blackout, and as her babies were only small (a year old and two and a half years old), she was terrified that they would forget her.
‘You don’t think they’ll put my kids up for adoption while I’m in here, do you?’ she’d asked Florrie one day.
Florrie had said, ‘No, of course not,’ but when Tina turned her head away, she and Edna had shared a look of concern. It was a terrible thought, but in these troubled times, it was quite possible. Some children, like her own, had been evacuated to the country, but the papers were full of children being sent to Crown dominions in far-flung places such as Canada, South Africa, Australia and even New Zealand! Newspaper pictures of these little waifs with their luggage labels on their coats, waving goodbye from the railings of some huge ocean liner, were enough to tug at anyone’s heart-strings. They might be safe from bombs and bullets, but popping over for a weekend to see them was impossible, and how on earth would their parents manage to afford to get them back again once the war was over?
A woman called Jill came to occupy Edna’s bed. During the first few days, she spent a lot of time crying. She didn’t do it openly, but everyone recognized the glassy-looking, puffy red eyes and the wobbly chin firmly set in one position so that she wouldn’t lose control. Florrie knew exactly how she was feeling; in fact, they’d all been there. Jill’s husband had been called up and was part of the British Expeditionary Force in France. She wouldn’t have known that except that one of his mates let it slip. He’d ended up on a charge and was in the glasshouse at Colchester for giving away information that might be useful to the enemy.
The first air attack on the country came in October, when German war planes fired on ships in the Firth of Forth in Scotland. Now that it was really happening, they put the wireless on each evening and listened with a mixture of dread and horrible fascination for news of the outside world. Once the news programmes were over, the BBC went back to its usual deadly-dull diet of light music, gramophone records and Sandy Mac-Pherson playing the organ, with the occasional bit of first-aid instruction thrown in for good measure.
When the monthly visiting time came round again, Florrie was surprised and delighted to see a familiar face walking down the ward towards her.
‘My pleasure,’ said Doreen, twirling round for her friend to admire her from all angles. She put her hand to her mouth in a confidential manner. ‘I only wore it to get a seat on the train,’ she whispered. ‘It’s amazing what a uniform will do for a girl.’
They both laughed.
Her friend was carrying a small holdall, and to Florrie’s great delight, she opened it to reveal lots of brightly coloured paper – everything from tissue paper to patterned wrapping paper to wallpaper. ‘The tissue is from me,’ Doreen said. ‘The factory is closing down for the duration.’
Florrie was horrified. ‘But what will people do for corsets?’
‘As it turns out, people have stopped buying corsets,’ said Doreen, ‘and anyway, the government have requisitioned the factory to make parachutes.’
‘Does that mean you’ll be going to join your mother in Coventry?’
‘Absolutely not,’ said Doreen emphatically. ‘I’m staying to do my bit. I’ve joined the WVS and am being trained in first aid and fire-watching. If the war goes on for some time, I’m thinking of getting another job, or I might even join the WAAF.’
Florrie’s eyebrows shot up. She’d never heard Doreen be so decisive before. ‘Why the WAAF?’
Doreen looked thoughtful, as if considering the question. ‘Because they’ve got an even nicer uniform,’ she said, and they both giggled.
Doreen fished around in her handbag. ‘Betty gave me something else for you.’ She held up another postcard. ‘It came yesterday.’
Florrie took in a breath. While she read it, Doreen pulled up a chair and made herself comfortable. When she looked up at her friend, Florrie was a bit teary. ‘Sorry,’ she said.