Always I'Ll Remember

by Bradshaw, Rita

‘Not here though.’ Abby motioned with her head at Clara who had gone to sleep clutching a bag of roasted chestnuts in one hand and a Union Jack in the other. She smiled at Winnie and the others as she said, ‘I’m ready to go home. How about you?’

  ‘More than ready.’ Gladys eased her aching feet back into her boots, wincing as she did so. Abby gently woke Clara and they all walked back to the lorry parked behind the parish church.

  They didn’t say much on the way back to the farm. Abby knew Rowena was anxious to see Mario and her driving reflected this as the lorry skidded and raced through the night. Clara, now thoroughly wide awake, had trouble staying on the straw bale, and Winnie was hanging on to Joy like grim death. The baby, however, thought it was great fun, clapping her dimpled hands and gurgling with laughter.

  They all felt relieved when they reached the farm in one piece. They could see the faint glow of an oil lamp from the barn where the three men were ensconced, and as Rowena scooted across to see Mario, Abby, Winnie and Gladys made for the house. On entering the kitchen they all came to an abrupt stop, Gladys actually bumping into Winnie who was in front of her.

  ‘The wanderers return.’ Vincent was sitting on one of the kitchen chairs with his slippered feet propped on the table, a steaming mug of cocoa at the side of him and a plate of Gladys’s ham and egg pie on his lap. He took a bite and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Gladys, after her initial shock, rushed forward to hug him. He didn’t rise or respond to his mother’s garbled, tearful greeting.

  ‘I’ll get you something hot to eat, lad,’ she said. ‘Leave that pie.’

  He stared at them all for a full ten seconds before saying, ‘The pie is fine. Sit down, all of you.’

  ‘Oh, lad, lad, to know you’re safe. I’ve prayed for this day.’ Gladys was dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief. ‘Every night I’ve prayed you’ll come home.’

  ‘Then you’re the only one who has.’

  ‘No, no, lad,’ Gladys said awkwardly when there was no response from the others. And then she added, ‘Look, Vincent, you have a daughter, a little lassie and as pretty as a picture. What do you say about that then?’

  ‘The same as I said before I went.’ His eyes shifted to the baby who, young as she was, sensed the atmosphere and began to whimper in her mother’s arms. ‘She’s nothing to do with me and I’m not being stuck with another man’s flyblow.’

  ‘You rotten liar!’ Winnie stepped forward, her eyes blazing, but Abby caught her friend’s arm, pulling her back. There was something more here, something she didn’t quite understand. It was as if Vincent had planned this moment for maximum effect, his being here when they all got home.

  She stared at him. ‘When did you get back?’

  ‘Back? Back in England? Back in Yorkshire, or back here in my home?’

  The emphasis on the word ‘my’ told her she was right. Vincent was playing some nasty little game of his own as only he could. She said nothing, and after a second or two he drawled, ‘I’ve been back in England a month or two. Caught a few pieces of shrapnel in the last assault we were engaged in, as luck would have it, although you’ll be relieved to know I’m fit now.’ After raising mocking eyebrows, he continued, ‘As to Yorkshire, I’ve been in the vicinity long enough, shall we say.’

  ‘Long enough?’ It was his mother who spoke. ‘What do you mean, lad? You’ve been here and you’ve not come to see me, to put my mind at rest? You must have known I’ve been worried to death about you. You . . . you know your father and Nicholas have gone?’

  ‘I know.’

  For the first time since coming into the house Gladys raised her voice. ‘Is that all you can say? Your father and brother are dead—’

  ‘Don’t upset yourself, Mother.’ He didn’t look at Gladys but kept his eyes on Abby. ‘I didn’t want to come here until I knew where I stood, that’s all. And now I do. I own the farm, the land, every stick of furniture . . . Need I go on? The solicitor was very clear. My dear father had been very clear. The farm has been in the family for generations and that is the most important thing, did you know that? Of course it was meant to go to Nicholas, in which case I was to inherit nothing, a big zero. But if anything happened to big brother then second best would do, namely me. You,’ he turned to Gladys who was standing with her hand pressed against her lips, ‘get nothing.’ His lips curled. ‘Caring, wasn’t he, your wonderful husband.’

  ‘Don’t you speak about him like that,’ Gladys said shakily, and then, as Abby put her arms round her and led her to a chair, she added, ‘Whatever he did, he’d have done it for the best.’

  ‘Whose best? Mine? Yours? I don’t think so.’ He pressed his lips tightly together but his eyes betrayed his resentment. ‘The only thing that mattered to him was the farm. You, me, even Nicolas were expendable.’ He took another bite of pie which he chewed and swallowed. ‘But it’s worked out very well. For me, that is. For you too, if you want to stay. As for you,’ his eyes came to rest on Abby again, ‘you can get out this minute.’

  ‘What are you saying? Abby and the others have worked their fingers to the bone for this place, and Winnie . . .’ Gladys choked to a stop. ‘Winnie and your child—’

  ‘I have no child,’ he cut in before she could say more. ‘And as for her,’ he glanced at Abby, ‘she’s always been working for her own ends. Oh, I had her number long ago. Do you think that one,’ he gestured at Winnie, ‘would have had the gumption to say the child was mine if this one hadn’t put her up to it?’

  ‘You are the father of Winnie’s bairn but, praise God, Joy only takes after her mother.’ Abby’s voice had risen and no one heard the scullery door open, but then Rowena hurried into the kitchen.

  ‘Mario said Vincent was here,’ she said breathlessly.

  ‘Mario?’ Vincent’s eyes narrowed. ‘Cosy, aren’t we?’

  ‘I asked Rowena to check that the men had carried out the duties I left them,’ Abby said quickly. She sensed it wouldn’t be a good idea for Vincent to know of the relationship between the youngest Italian prisoner of war and her friend at this point. ‘And it’s not a question of being cosy. It would have been ridiculous for us to call the men by their surnames. A farm doesn’t work like that.’

  ‘Now you’re preaching to me about how to run a farm?’

  ‘You would have had nothing to come back to if we weren’t as capable as any man.’

  ‘You want thanks?’ He stared at her, unblinking. ‘Thanks. Now get out. As for you two,’ his cold eyes flicked over Winnie and Rowena, ‘you can stay if you toe the line or else you can get out right now with her.’ He smiled. ‘VE Day means more for some than others, doesn’t it?’

  She was right, he had planned this to happen on this particular day. He’d probably been thinking about it and plotting for weeks, envisaging how his little moment of victory would turn out.

  Abby stepped right up to him. ‘You might own this farm and be nicely set up,’ she said grimly, ‘but under the skin you’re just a bit of scum. Your father was a good, hard-working man and there’s not a nicer woman than your mam, but you. I can understand perfectly why your father didn’t want you to have any part in the handling of this farm. He knew you through and through, didn’t he? And even without meeting your brother I can see why he was the apple of your father’s eye.’

  She had scratched the sore place which had stung from his boyhood. Vincent moved suddenly, shooting to his feet, his face as black as thunder. Whether he would have actually tried to hit her, Abby wasn’t sure, but immediately Winnie and Rowena were at her side.

  For a long moment things remained still and tense, and then Vincent ground out, ‘I want you off my land within ten minutes or I’ll treat you like the vermin you are and take a gun to you.’

  ‘And go to prison for the rest of your life? I think not,’ Abby said scornfully. ‘Everyone knows we’ve kept this farm going when you skedaddled. You wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. But don’t worry, I’m leaving, but not now, not in the middle
of the night. I shall go when it suits me, in the morning.’

  ‘Aye, and I’m going with her,’ Winnie growled, ignoring Gladys’s little gasp and cry of, ‘No, Winnie, no. You can’t take Joy away.’

  ‘Make sure it’s early.’

  ‘It will be. I don’t want to breathe the same air as you.’

  ‘Thought you’d fallen on your feet here, didn’t you?’ Vincent said bitterly. ‘Toadying round my father, making sure you knew all the ins and outs. I know, I know. Thought you were sitting pretty, with her,’ he nodded his head at his mother, ‘eating out of your hand. But you’ve caught your toe. It wasn’t her everything came to, but me.’

  ‘It takes a nasty mind like yours to think like that.’ Abby saw his cheek jerk with a movement like a tic at her tone of contempt, but neither of them said anything more as Rowena took one of the oil lamps and they all left the kitchen and its two occupants. They climbed the stairs to their room without a word being spoken.

  In the bedroom Winnie deposited Joy in her bed just as she was, and the baby was asleep in seconds. They all plumped down on their beds in various stages of numbness. There was a short period of silence before Abby said, ‘You don’t have to leave too, Winnie. Gladys would make sure you were all right, what with Joy and everything, at least until you’ve decided what you want to do.’

  ‘I know what I want to do, lass,’ said Winnie fiercely, ‘but I’d be had up for it and I’m not going down the line for that callous blighter. No, I’m leaving with you and I hope it lands him in a mess because he won’t manage with just four workers.’

  ‘Three.’ Rowena managed a watery smile. ‘I’m coming with you. How could I stay after the way he’s talked to you tonight?’

  ‘But what about Mario?’ Abby said at once. ‘And it would mean Gladys is here by herself. Think it over, Rowena. I don’t expect either of you to cut off your noses to spite your face.’

  ‘Sorry, but it’s all for one and one for all.’ Rowena turned to Winnie, and she nodded agreement. ‘I couldn’t work for that little worm anyway, disgusting individual. Once everyone’s asleep I’ll creep down and have a word with Mario. I’ll find a job somewhere round here so we can still see each other, even if we have to meet after dark in the lane or somewhere. What are you two going to do?’

  ‘For now I suggest we all try and get some sleep.’ Abby knew she’d evaded the question but the truth was she didn’t know where to go from here. She had Clara to support, and now there was Winnie and the baby because Winnie couldn’t go home to her father’s house. She had thought her friend was set up here but that clearly wasn’t going to be the case. And even Rowena was weighing on her. It was all very well for Rowena to say she would pick up work, but with the men coming home from war it might not be that easy. She rubbed at her aching forehead and then said again, when the others didn’t move, ‘Come on, let’s get some sleep. Rowena, set the alarm for a couple of hours away so you can be sure Vincent’s asleep before you go to see Mario. When you come back, set it for five, OK?’

  So saying she shooed the others into changing into their nightclothes and within minutes silence reigned, apart from the small grunts and snuffles Joy always made in her sleep.

  Abby must have gone to sleep straightaway because when she awoke in the dead of night she had no recollection of lying awake. She sat bolt upright, the idea which had blossomed whilst she’d been asleep causing trickles of excitement up and down her spine. Rowena was back and fast asleep, and after feeling her way cautiously across the room Abby reached the little chest of drawers on top of which the oil lamp was placed each night. After lighting it, she peered at the alarm clock. Three o’clock. And it was freezing.

  Shivering, she left the lamp burning and padded across to where she’d left her work clothes in a heap after changing into her best ones for the VE Day celebrations. She dressed swiftly, looped her hair into a ponytail and then sat down on the bed, her mind examining and dissecting the idea. It could work. It really could. But she had to get things straight in her mind before she woke the others.

  Half an hour later she shook Winnie and Rowena awake, leaving Clara asleep. When the other two were sitting bleary-eyed and shivering on the bigger bed with Abby, she whispered, ‘Listen, I’ve got an idea what we could do when we leave here. All of us, together.’

  ‘It’s half-past three!’ Winnie’s voice was too loud and she moderated it when she added, ‘Couldn’t it have waited till morning?’

  ‘No. I want to tell Gladys before we leave.’

  ‘Let’s hear it then.’ Winnie gave a yawn wide enough to swallow her tonsils. ‘We’re all ears.’

  ‘The Farmers Weekly has been saying for ages that even when the war finishes there’s going to be a massive world food shortage, right? The market’s going to take years to recover, but according to the government they’re committed to growth and self-sufficiency for British agriculture. The Minister of Agriculture himself has said that allotment holders and gardeners and nurserymen can’t afford to slack, and that it’s likely even flour and potatoes are going to be rationed in the coming months and years. People have got to think home grown.’

  ‘So?’ Rowena’s yawn was more delicate than Winnie’s.

  ‘So what’s to stop us starting our own business? A kind of nursery? I know seeds and plants are hard to come by but we’ll beg, borrow and steal what we can’t buy. The government’s saying the next few years are going to be even tougher than during the war because once Japan’s taken, America’s likely to stop its supply of Lend-Lease goods so we’ll lose all sorts of things we’ve had previously. If we get a big enough place we could grow cereals and potatoes and sugar beet too, and have a covered part where we’d sell seeds and plants and give advice to the ordinary householder with a garden.’

  Winnie and Rowena were sitting up straighter now. ‘You don’t mean a farm then?’ Winnie said.

  ‘No, not really.’ Abby paused. ‘You know the smallholding that’s for sale on the edge of Fylingdales Moor that Gladys was on about, the one where the lady’s husband died and their sons were killed in the war? That’s got some fields attached to it and a great big greenhouse, Gladys said.’

  ‘But how could we get it?’ Winnie asked. ‘I mean, they’re not going to give it to us, are they?’

  ‘We’ll buy it.’ Abby grinned into their astonished faces. ‘We’ve all got a bit put by. Being stuck out here with nothing to spend our wages on, we didn’t have any option, did we? If we put everything together it might be enough for a down payment and then,’ she shrugged, ‘we’ll borrow the rest.’

  ‘Borrow it?’

  ‘From a bank or a building society or something. They lend money to people for houses, why not this?’

  Winnie stared at her friend. Abby came from the same neck of the woods as she did and folk didn’t buy houses there. They rented them. They worked their fingers to the bone most of their lives and ended up with nowt to show for it whilst the landlords got rich. ‘How long have you been thinking of this?’ she asked faintly.

  Abby paused. She had to be honest. She couldn’t pretend this was something she had thought through for some time. ‘It was Vincent who gave me the idea actually,’ she said, a gurgle of laughter in her voice. ‘Although he’d be heartbroken if he knew! It was when he said about me knowing all the ins and outs. I do, we all do. We know as much as any man and we can work as hard as any man too. We can. And with me doing all the forms and letters and reports since Farmer Tollett died, I know about that side of things too.’

  ‘But putting all our money into it.’ Winnie swallowed deeply. ‘If it failed ...’

  ‘It won’t fail. I won’t let it.’ There was a glint in Abby’s eye that Winnie recognised of old. ‘Look, you can’t go home the way your da is about Joy. Rowena’s become another black sheep, and I . . .’ She paused. ‘I don’t want to go back. This way we can all stay together. The four of us. Sorry, five counting Joy. Maybe even six if Gladys wanted to come in with us rather tha
n stay here with Vincent.’ And at Winnie’s snort of disbelief, Abby added, ‘She might, you know. She worships Joy. I’ve lost count of how many times she’s said she always wanted a little girl.’

  ‘She wouldn’t leave here, her home.’

  ‘It’s not though, it it?’ Rowena put in soberly. ‘It’s Vincent’s now.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Abby nodded. And Vincent wasn’t the sort of man to be content with just his mother for female companionship. Now he owned the farm he would be after getting himself a wife, maybe even the blonde he’d been seeing before he left the area.

  ‘What do you think?’ she said. ‘We could make enquiries today while we find some rooms to rent until we know what we’re doing. Do I mention it to Gladys? Are you with me?’

  Winnie glanced at Joy in the flickering lamplight. The baby was lying with one dimpled hand cupping her cheek, her long lashes resting on smooth cheeks. She took a deep breath. ‘Aye, we’ll give it a go.’

  ‘Rowena?’ Abby said.