Storm Clouds Over Broombank

by Freda Lightfoot

  ‘Course you’re committed, and he is to you. Don’t worry. He understands.’

  ‘Does he?’ Meg remembered the harsh words between them and wished she could feel as certain as Effie. She glanced about the breakfast table and wondered what right she had to complain. They were all safe and well. Lissa happily playing with the ever patient Rust. Effie healthy and fit, growing into a lovely young woman, reading the papers which recently had been full of what were being dubbed the Baedeker Raids.

  From May through into June, while the foliage thickened, the cold earth softened and the spotted coats of the new deer calves could be sometimes glimpsed in Brockbarrow Wood, many of England’s most famous historical cities had been under attack. Meg wept to hear of the terrible consequences of these attacks. They were at least safe here.

  This morning there was at least the joy of a letter from Charlie. She held the crisp blue envelope in her hand now, savouring the anticipation of opening it.

  ‘Families are trekking out of the cities each night and sleeping in the fields to keep safe,’ read Effie. ‘I don’t blame them. They won’t get bombed there.’

  Meg glanced at the picture Effie showed her. A weary group of people with smiles on their faces, carrying their entire belongings in parcels, trying to make the best of life. But if you looked closely, you could see their agony all too clearly behind the bravery. Plymouth, Bath, York, so many towns had suffered devastating damage. Whole areas of ancient buildings wiped out.

  ‘Those cities weren’t as prepared as London,’ Effie said. ‘Anyway, they thought the raids were all finished by the end of the blitz. Now it’s starting all over again. Do you think we’ll bomb Germany again?’

  Meg ripped open the envelope, anxious suddenly to read how her brother was.

  Charlie’s handwriting. She held a part of him in her hand. She smiled at Effie. ‘He’s all right. We should remember that however terrible it is to bomb cities, the real tragedy of war is its effect on each and every individual. War is a personal tragedy and we should never forget that. What matters is Charlie, and all the other Charlies. Every single family like that one in the paper, not just bricks and mortar, stone and slate, however precious.’

  There was no address at the top of the single sheet of paper, but Charlie’s happy voice came over loud and clear.

  ‘Is he still flying?’ Effie quietly asked.

  Meg nodded. ‘Says he’s fine. Doing a second tour, as he said he might. She started to read aloud.

  ‘He says “Feeling fine. Sue OK but don’t get to see her as much as I’d like now she is in the ATS. Well into Second Tour of Ops. The big one is coming up soon. Don’t want to miss it.”’

  ‘The big one? ‘What does he mean?’ Effie looked as troubled as Meg felt.

  ‘I don’t know. We must pray for him, Effie. Every night.’

  The young girl nodded, blinking furiously. ‘Oh, I do, Meg. I do. And Lissa does too, don’t you, sweetheart?’

  Lissa happily nodded, not understanding, and went back to feeding Rust with toast crusts.

  ‘He’ll be all right. Eat your breakfast while it’s hot, there’s a hard day’s work ahead, and I mean to churn some butter this morning.’

  Meg folded the letter and tucked it into her overall pocket. One day at a time, that’s all you could hope for in this war. Today, Charlie was fine, and Tam hadn’t got anywhere near the fighting yet.

  Meg was busily engaged in checking the feet of one of her sheep later that morning when Jeffrey Ellis called.

  ‘Got foot rot, has she?’

  ‘I don’t think so but I’m giving her a dab in the foot-bath, just in case. I think she’s only sprained it though.’

  Rust lay close by, nose to his toes, keeping a wary eye on the sheep just in case it should take any daft notion of escape into its silly head. Meg finished her task and opened the gate to let her go. The ewe hobbled off at a cracking pace to rejoin a very noisy, anxious lamb. Jeffrey Ellis laughed.

  ‘Someone’s been missing Mum.’

  She chuckled. ‘Lively as bairns they are. I love to watch them. Can I get you a cup of tea?’

  She was always ready to spend time with him these days. He’d been good to her, and to Lissa. Jeffrey Ellis had once seemed a lonely, careworn man. Now he was alert, alive again. All due to Lissa, no doubt about it. The child had given him a reason for living. He looked particularly fit and well this morning, showing signs of the handsome man he had once been in spite of the greying hair.

  ‘No thanks, I mustn’t stay. I know you’re busy.’

  ‘I’m thrang, as my father would say, but all the more ready for a break. Particularly on a lovely bright morning like this.’

  The June sun shone fat and yellow as if it were high summer. Somewhere in the distance a cuckoo made its two note song and wood pigeons hooted. A day for lovers, Meg thought, for cherry blossom and weddings. For a moment the keenness of Tam’s going pierced her heart so fiercely she had trouble catching her breath. But she must keep her heart and hopes high. He would be back, Effie had said so.

  Jeffrey Ellis grinned at her. ‘The searches have been done and your mortgage prepared. You only have to go in and sign the papers and it’s yours.’

  ‘Oh, it’s an omen! This lovely day, a letter from Charlie, and now my mortgage. I shall go right away, this very minute.’ She turned to run, then remembering Mr Ellis, leaped up and gave him a swift kiss upon his cheek. ‘Bless you,’ she said.

  Jeffrey Ellis stood and laughed at her excitement. ‘Now who’s acting like a bairn?’ he teased.

  Meg dashed into the house to find Effie and tell her she was off into town to see her new bank manager. Then she changed into clean slacks and pulled on a light sweater.

  Moments later she was out in the yard again. Rust came straight to her heels. ‘No, Rust. Stay here, there’s a good boy,’ she instructed the dog. He looked most put out, as he always did at being so abandoned. He lay down by the gate so that he could watch her go along the lane, and see her the moment she returned. He could also keep a guard on the house from this position, so no one would come or go that he didn’t know about.

  Meg watched this with amusement as she pulled out her bike. ‘Effie is inside making butter, aided and hindered by Lissa, of course. She’ll gladly put the kettle on, if you want that tea,’ she told Jeffrey Ellis, feeling guilty at abandoning him too.

  ‘Don’t worry about me. I won’t stop the good work. But I might pop in and just say hallo.’

  A stocky figure loomed into sight on the lane. ‘Oh no, what does Dan want? I really have no time this morning for my brother’s moans and groans.’ Meg grabbed her bicycle and dusted off the seat. ‘Tell him I was in a hurry, will you? Apologise for me,’ she begged.

  ‘I’ll tell him this is the best day of your life.’

  Meg grinned and was off, pedalling furiously along the lane. Oh, he was right. It was the best, by far. Not counting the times with Tam of course.

  Dan called to her, ‘Here, Meg, I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Later, Dan. Go and see Effie. She’ll make you a mug of tea if you ask nicely. I won’t be long.’

  As she reached the corner of the lane she turned to wave. Dan was glowering with fury but Jeffrey Ellis was still where she had left him, laughing, his hair glinting like silver in the sunshine. Most of all she saw Broombank, its white walls almost beaming with pleasure, windows blinking with delight at the promise of this new future.

  When she returned later that day, the paperwork all done, her mortgage secured, and a precious bottle of wine in her cycle basket to celebrate, she found the roof of her lovely home had been lifted off as if by some giant hand and placed, very neatly, in the next field. Half the walls, the ones that had taken the worst of the blast from the bomb carelessly dropped by a passing bomber, had fallen in. Just as Effie was stirring her butter with a rowan twig, to make it turn quickly and protect it from witches.

  Chapter Ten

  It had all begun as a gr
eat lark so far as Jack Lawson was concerned. Chasing Italian warships off Italy and sinking the ships which carried enemy troops and supplies, without too many British losses, was right up his street.

  But that had been back in March 1941. The feeling that it was some sort of game had ended by the summer of 1942.

  By the autumn, enemy submarines and shore-based aircraft started picking off British ships, one by one, like fish in a pond. In no time at all the Med was not a safe place to be and longer routes had to be taken around the Cape and through the Suez Canal to supply reinforcements for the men fighting in the Western desert. Rommel decided Suez was a place he coveted, and as far as Jack was concerned, he could have it.

  At the first sign of the enemy it was Jack’s task to man the antiaircraft guns while Len, his best mate, fed in the ammunition. They did their best, gave it all they had, firing in what sometimes seemed the forlorn hope of hitting one of those black shapes that swooped and dived, high in the heavens. Sometimes they’d be wet with fear, but mostly they kept their minds safely blank. Do the job and leave the thinking to those in fancy hats, that was the best way.

  Then a shower of shells lifted Len from his feet and nailed him to the deck. Jack grabbed the gun, rage burning so fiercely behind his eyes it took three men to wrench him free as he swung the gun round and round, firing indiscriminately, in more danger of killing someone on the ship than hitting an enemy plane.

  And so Jack Lawson lost his taste for war.

  Was it any wonder, he told himself, that by the end of that year he was less than thrilled to learn he’d been assigned to Special Boat Ops? His task was to row a small rubber boat under cover of darkness, carrying a select group of men whose target was a munitions dump on mainland Italy. That mission changed his entire war, perhaps even his life.

  He’d certainly been fleeing for his life ever since.

  He never learned what went wrong. The four men didn’t come back, simple as that. And when Jack attempted to return to his ship, the pathetic little boat had been shelled out of the water, fortunately before Jack had climbed into it. He’d been blown backwards on to the shore and supposed he should feel lucky to escape with only a broken shoulder even though the pain of it in those first few days had made him almost wish he was dead.

  But now he had Lina.

  The days that he had spent crawling and dragging himself through rough country were a blur in his mind. He’d probably spent Christmas on his belly somewhere, though he had no recollection of it. Only of the bitter cold, and the ceaseless pain.

  He remembered being thankful to find an area of peace and quiet, nursing his injured arm across the stony ground till he came to lush farmland on the edge of a small village. Somewhere in the distance could be heard the roar of guns, the skies lit with red every night to remind him of it, but here all was quiet.

  He saw a row of houses, a few shops, one of them giving off a most enticing aroma of fresh bread. It reminded him how hungry he was and he had made his way round the back of them, hoping for a chance to find some of the delectable stuff. Most of all he recalled his first sight of the barn, huddled in a ramshackle group of wooden buildings. He chose it because it reminded him so much of the one at Broombank, and when he’d seen Meg he’d been sure of it.

  Only it wasn’t Meg. This girl did not have Meg’s golden curls or her bright smile. This girl was dark, olive-skinned, and her lips were wider than Meg’s and a paler pink. She did smile occasionally but mostly she looked anxious and hurried.

  Most of all he remembered her hands. Soft and comforting, he had wanted to fold himself into those hands and cry like a baby. He hadn’t done so, of course. He was a man, wounded but still Able Seaman Lawson. Grown men don’t cry, however much they might hurt and feel the need to.

  ‘You are Breetish?’ she’d said to him that first day when she’d found him, and the relief of hearing his own language spoken to him so gently by this delectable creature turned his innards to water. Jack recalled with shame how he had emptied the contents of his stomach into the clean hay which she had packed about his battered body for comfort.

  But she hadn’t seemed to mind. ‘Do not fret, you are safe here. Stay quiet.’

  For all she was Italian and the enemy, he had believed her. She’d brought her brother, Giovanni, and together over the following weeks they had tended to his wounds, strapped the shoulder up and fed him as if he were a child when moving was too painful to contemplate.

  Now, at last, he was beginning to feel half human again. The strappings were off the arm and he was learning to use it again, anxious to repay her kindness and get out of this hot, musty barn. The snows had long gone, spring was turning into summer and the sun looked enticing. He wanted to be out in it, to feel the baking heat on his face.

  ‘Let me do some chores,’ he begged her now. When she pulled a face he grasped her hand and pulled her down beside him. She was bewitching when she pouted at him in just that way, one shoulder lifted beguilingly. No man could resist her. ‘I’m fit now, and bored silly with staying in this loft. I owe your family some labour if nothing else.’

  ‘My family are happy to help you. We are not fascist, you understand?’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘All Italians are not in favour of the new regime but we have to be careful, yes?’

  ‘You think I will endanger their lives? I wouldn’t dream of it.’

  ‘I know you would not intentionally do so. But it ees so very dangerous. You must stay here, where you are safe. I would have nothing happen to you.’

  When he would protest she set soft fingertips against his lips and Jack wanted to crush her to him, and take her then and there in the straw. Instead he smiled and kissed the fingers.

  He loved the way she wore her long, glossy black hair in a tumble of curls down her back, and the brightly coloured frocks. They looked as if she’d made them herself out of a selection of others that had been cut up for the purpose, as perhaps they had. Nothing matched, not the sleeves, nor the bodice with the skirt, but the patchwork effect was delightful and the flowing style clung to her body and rippled about her brown legs.

  She leaned over him to refill his water pitcher and he had a clear view of her breasts and nipples, enticingly dark.

  As if aware of him for the first time she looked directly into his eyes. It was a moment to savour, a moment when words were not needed. An understanding was reached and would, in the fullness of time, be acted upon.

  ‘You may come into the house thees evening for supper,’ Lina told him. ‘My father, he ees very strict. You will have to be the gentleman. Sì?’

  Jack gave her a lop-sided smile, one side of his face still bruised and swollen from his abrupt landing on the rocky shore. ‘Scout’s honour.’ She did not understand him and he felt obliged to explain but then she offered one of her rare, shy smiles and as he sat watching the dust motes settle after she had gone, he began to appreciate the extent of his good fortune.

  Jack spent the long hot summer doing odd jobs for Lina’s father. He told himself that he wasn’t really a deserter. He would willingly go back, only how could he when his ship had left long since? To wander about an enemy country on his own, looking for more British, would be madness. Besides, he enjoyed working at the bakery. Mr Ruggierri was teaching him how to mix and knead the bread dough.

  ‘You make good baker,’ he said in Italian, and Lina laughed as she translated for Jack.

  ‘He looks so Italian, does he not, Papa? With his black curly hair and charming smile.’

  At this, Papa frowned and started to scold, sending Lina away. ‘Good girl,’ he said sternly to Jack, in perfect English, wagging a finger.

  Jack smiled and agreed, anxious to keep the old man happy.

  Every moment they could they spent together, and Lina started to teach him a little Italian. She was so beautiful, so delightful to watch, the lessons were a joy and the summer passed speedily and pleasantly enough.

  Kath strode down the stre
et, a trail of GIs in her wake. ‘Aw, come on, hon. Have a cigarette.’

  ‘Sorry. Don’t smoke.’

  ‘How about chocolate? Everybody likes chocolate. Or I could put my hands on some real perty silk stockings if you like.’

  ‘So long as my legs aren’t inside them, that’s fine by me.’

  She smiled to herself. Verbal and sometimes very nearly physical combat with the American military had become a daily hazard since her posting to HQ three months ago. She’d been in many stations since Bledlow, but this one was proving to be the worst in many ways.

  Group Headquarters was a large, redbrick house situated on the edge of a small market town in Cambridgeshire. Whenever Kath walked through the ancient streets she felt a jolt of surprise that people still carried their baskets to market, wheeled babies in prams or rode their bicycle to college in the next town, just as if life was normal.

  But step through the blue-painted door and she became a Waaf again with a job to do, swallowed up in a sea of blue and brown uniforms. The latter, of course, worn by the American airmen who, to Kath’s way of thinking, were far too full of their own importance.

  She ducked now into a tea shop to avoid her latest pursuer and with difficulty found a seat in a corner farthest from the door. She ordered tea and a scone and pulled out her newspaper, hoping that here at least a rather new Corporal might find a few moment of peace.

  There was certainly none in HQ. The place buzzed with activity. Teleprinters spewed out their news from the many out-stations in the Group, Waafs operated switchboards, plotted weather charts and peered short-sightedly at strange-looking instruments. Middle aged men seemed to be absorbed with pins and flags and sheaves of paper which they wrote upon endlessly and carried back and forth for no apparent purpose.

  ‘Is this seat taken?’ Kath looked up to find that today she had happened upon one of the more stubborn type. Not only had this airman miraculously found a seat in an otherwise packed-to-the-door teashop, but it was at her own table. The cheek of the man!