‘How long will she …’
Edie trailed off. The bird was still looking at her with those piercing eyes, and it struck her that what she’d been about to ask was rather personal. But Jack knew what she meant.
‘In the wild they live ten or fifteen years, usually,’ he said. ‘Pepper might manage longer, with me to look after her.’ He reached into his pocket for a handful of seeds and held them up to her. ‘Here you are, Pep. If you’re a good lass and eat it all up, I’ll bring you some nice wriggly maggots for your tea.’
Pepper didn’t need telling twice. She wolfed down the seeds and gave Jack’s ear an affectionate nibble by way of thanks. Then, deciding she could no longer tolerate the thick blue pipe smoke wreathing the air around her master now there was no more food on offer, she spread her wings and soared back to her perch in the rafters.
Jack hadn’t been lying when he’d said turning soil took brawn. Edie struggled on manfully for the first hour, but eventually she was forced to admit defeat and Jack set her to chopping brambles and clearing away rocks and stones so he could dig in with his shovel. That was easier but it was still hard work, and by the time she settled down to picking Brussels sprouts in the greenhouses, Edie’s body was aching all over. She’d been bent double for so long that when she finally came to straighten her back, she howled with pain. Not to mention that every living thing on God’s green earth, flora and fauna, had taken it upon itself to bite or sting any exposed area of her flesh.
‘Two more days of this!’ she said to Tilly as she drank her cocoa in the kitchen that evening.
‘There’s some liniment in the bathroom cupboard. You’re welcome to help yourself.’ Tilly wrinkled her nose. ‘Just the smell of it’s enough to make me feel ill. My bedroom stank of the stuff when I was with the Land Army.’
Edie flinched as she tried to cross her legs and a spasm of pain shot through her knee. ‘Thank goodness I’ll have a few days to recover before I start at the farm next week.’
‘I don’t envy you farm work at this time of year. Not to frighten you, but if you think you’re tired now, just wait until you start lambing.’
‘Is it that bad?’
‘Wicked. Mornings so cold you feel like just stamping your feet will break a bone. Fingers cracked and red-raw. Aching in every muscle, working from dawn until dark …’
Edie groaned. ‘Did you have to tell me?’
‘Oh, it’s not all bad,’ Tilly said, smiling. ‘There’s nothing like seeing a new lamb bond with its mother for the very first time. And you’ll sleep like a baby at the end of each day.’
‘If I can still bend to lie down,’ Edie muttered.
Chapter 6
Edie’s first day at Larkstone Farm came all too quickly.
She’d been looking forward to a four-day holiday after her first few days working on the estate, with nothing to do but explore the local area, rest and read. She had all sorts of plans for visiting the lake and the village, and perhaps seeing if Tilly would accompany her to the cinema in Kirkton. The two women had quickly become good friends.
But after three days of country air and hard work, Edie managed to do very little on her days off other than sleep. She felt far too sore for walks or bicycle rides – her only trip outside was to attend church. Before she knew it, it was Monday and she was once again clearing brambles with Jack on the estate.
‘It will get easier,’ Tilly promised her as they sat together in the kitchen. ‘It just takes a little time for your body to adjust.’
Edie groaned, rubbing her aching hip. ‘Easy for you to say; you’re used to this way of living. I never felt more like a townie than I do now. And tomorrow’s my first day at the farm. I don’t suppose I’ll be able to walk by the time Saturday comes around.’
Edie started work at Larkstone Farm at 6 a.m., which meant she was woken by her alarm at the ungodly hour of 4.30 a.m. By the time she’d dressed and had a bite of breakfast, it was half past five and she needed to be on her way.
The Land Army had seen to it that she was provided with a sturdy black bicycle – luckily she had learnt to ride one as a child, taking turns with Susan on an old boneshaker Alfie had discovered among someone’s rubbish and fixed up for the three of them. So then the only challenge was going to be finding her way to the farm along winding, unfamiliar country roads that were, since they were all taken down the previous year, completely absent of any road signs that might point her in the right direction. Still, it was only two miles from Applefield Manor to Larkstone Farm: ten or fifteen minutes’ ride. How hard could it be?
‘Damn it!’ Edie muttered as she braked in front of a five-bar gate.
She was sure Larkstone Farm was meant to be at the bottom of this road. A man she’d asked for directions the last time she’d taken a wrong turn had said first left after the whitewashed cottage. But this couldn’t be it. There was nothing in any direction but fields and hills – no farmhouse, no workers, no sign of life at all other than the sheep. There seemed to be a hundred times as many sheep as people in this godforsaken part of the world.
Edie glared at the one currently staring at her through the gate.
‘All right, you, where have you hidden the farm?’ she demanded.
The sheep blinked at her, urinated noisily, then wandered off.
She was now fifteen minutes late for work. Not a very auspicious start to her first day. Edie propped her bicycle against a drystone wall, cursed as she stepped in a very fresh-looking pat of sheep muck, and fumbled in her breeches pocket for her directions.
Straight on past Robin Cottage, third left …
Third left. Not first. That must have been what the villager said. Had she really forgotten her father’s voice so thoroughly that the local accent should sound so alien?
She touched a guilty finger to her watch chain, then mounted her bike and retraced her route.
Finally Edie arrived at the track flanked by fields that matched the description on her directions. She hadn’t even started work and she was already tired, irritated and up to her knees in mud – not to mention other, less savoury types of countryside dirt. She dismounted, looked around at the placid Herdwick sheep and their lambs grazing in the shadow of the fells, and wondered where she was supposed to report for duty.
No sign of the farmer, but there was a farmhouse with some outbuildings at the end of the track and a few barns dotted across the fields. She was just hesitating, trying to decide where this Samuel Nicholson was most likely to be found, when a voice hailed her.
‘Good day to you! The new girl, yes?’
Edie looked around to see who had spoken and found herself face to face with a lean man in his mid-twenties, protected from the intermittent drizzle by a long macintosh made of what looked like barrage balloon panels. His skin was deeply tanned, with curling, jet-black hair and slumberous dark eyes that twinkled merrily.
He crushed underfoot the cigarette he’d been smoking and held out a hand.
‘Yes,’ she said in answer to his question, shaking the proffered hand. ‘I’m the new girl. Edie Cartwright.’
His mouth flickered as he took in her bedraggled appearance. ‘You look as though you have been hard at work already, Edie Cartwright.’
‘I, er, had a bumpy ride over. Are you the farmer?’
He laughed. ‘Most certainly not. My name is Luca. Just a skivvy, the same as you.’
His English was very good but there was a strange formality in the grammar, and the distinct lilt of a foreign accent. European, maybe Free French or …
‘Oh!’ Edie said, suddenly remembering what Mrs Hewitt had told her about the Catholic church Mr Nicholson had set up for his Italian POW labourers. ‘So you’re …’
‘The enemy,’ Luca said, grinning. ‘I’m afraid so.’
Edie tried not to stare. She’d never met an enemy alien before. She glanced behind her, wondering if anyone had seen them shake hands, then quickly back again before Luca noticed.
‘Ah, Miss Car
twright,’ he said, still smiling broadly. ‘No need to be frightened. We’re not so different from anyone else.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be ill-mannered. It’s just I’ve never, um … I don’t travel a great deal,’ she finished lamely.
‘I’m nothing more nor less than a man, Miss Cartwright. A doctor, in my own country – a far better doctor than I am an airman. I was shot down on my first mission.’ He sighed dramatically. ‘It was highly embarrassing. My mother had much to say on the subject when she wrote to me.’
‘Um, yes. I suppose it would be … embarrassing,’ Edie said, feeling a little dazed. She was finding it hard to read Luca’s expression. He looked amused, but also sort of … sad? Haunted? Angry? She couldn’t tell. Perhaps it was because he was a foreigner. Maybe they didn’t show their feelings in the same way English people did.
‘Well, it does no good to cry over spilled milk, as they say,’ he said. ‘God never intended me to be a warrior; only a healer. I’ll take you to Sam. He posted me here to peel my eyes for you.’
‘How many of you are there here?’ she enquired as she wheeled her bicycle along the dirt track behind him.
‘What “you” are you meaning? Other workers? Or other prisoners?’
‘Er, workers.’ Was that what she’d meant? Edie wasn’t sure, but it sounded the politer question.
‘Six, and now you make it seven. Two more Land Girls, a young man from the village, Sam – the farmer – and Marco and I from the camp.’
‘Are there a lot of your men working on farms?’ Edie had never heard of prisoners of war doing work outside their camps before.
‘No. Marco and I are among the few,’ Luca said. ‘There has been a terrible shortage of labour here. Most of the young men have gone to war, and these country villages have so small populations. So, a handful of us who are considered politically benign are sometimes loaned out as agricultural workers, or to work in the mines and quarries.’
‘Don’t you have a guard or …’
‘At first when we worked here, they would send a few soldiers from the Kirkton Home Guard to watch us. Now the men seem to have decided they have more important things to do than play nursemaid. They know we would not try to escape.’
‘Oh.’
He glanced over his shoulder. ‘Try not to be afraid of us, Miss Cartwright. We are not fascists. Just people who want an end to this so we can go home to those we left behind.’
‘Yes. Yes, I know that.’
‘Ah, but do you? When I first arrived here, I was forced to open my mind to the idea that these so-called enemies my government had made monsters of were men and women no different than ourselves. You may find now that you have to do the same.’ He stepped forward to knock at the farmhouse door.
‘I’m not prejudiced, honestly,’ Edie said. ‘I suppose I might be a little naive. I’ve not been out in the world much.’
He looked at her for a moment, then smiled. ‘Well in that case, Edie Cartwright, I’m glad to make a new friend.’
She returned his smile. ‘So am I.’
‘How is the other young lady?’ he asked while they waited for Sam Nicholson to answer the door.
‘Young lady?’
‘You are lodged at Applefield Manor?’
‘That’s right,’ she said, frowning. Young lady – he couldn’t mean Prudence?
‘The cook,’ he explained.
‘Oh, of course. Tilly worked here too, didn’t she?’
‘Miss Liddell, yes. She was a good worker, we were sorry to lose her. Does the baby grow healthily?’
Luca asked the question quite casually. It seemed that not everyone around here found Tilly’s pregnancy to be so very scandalous. Perhaps in Italy, where people were said to be more passionate than the buttoned-up English, such things weren’t considered shocking at all.
‘As far as I know,’ Edie said. ‘She certainly looks blooming and glowing and all that.’
‘I am very glad to hear it.’
‘Did you know her well?’
‘We were good friends, yes.’ He put his hand into his pocket and slipped a soft disc wrapped in brown paper into Edie’s hand. ‘Here, give this to her when you return home. Only a little goat’s cheese I was able to trade for at my camp, but I believe it will do her and the baby some good. And that is on the orders of her Dr Bianchi, be sure to tell her. She must eat it all herself and not share even a bite.’
‘Thank you,’ Edie said, putting the cheese in the covered basket on the front of her bicycle. ‘I’m sure she’ll appreciate that.’
‘Ah, here’s the boss,’ Luca said in a low voice as they heard the door being unlatched. ‘Now you mustn’t mind him, Miss Cartwright. He can sometimes be a little asciutto – oh, what is the English? – a little … curt, but he is a good man in his heart.’ The door opened, and he smiled at his employer. ‘Here is your new girl, Sam, with shining morning face.’
Sam Nicholson didn’t say anything, but he ran his eyes over Edie’s slight frame and let out a ‘humph’ of irritation.
Luca glanced between them. ‘Well, if I am not needed then I shall go help Marco feed the pecora in the pens.’
‘Yes, go,’ the farmer said. ‘Thank you, Luca.’
Luca disappeared, leaving Edie staring up at the looming, glowering figure who now filled the door of the farmhouse. Instinctively, she took a step back.
‘Um, it’s Miss Cartwright,’ she faltered. ‘I’m … new. That is to say, I’m your new girl. The new Land Girl, I mean.’
The man stared at her for a moment before deigning to speak.
‘Aye, so you are,’ he said in a deep, harsh voice. ‘What kept you? We’ve been at work half an hour.’
‘I, um … I got lost.’
Sam Nicholson wasn’t what Edie had expected, and yet in some ways he was everything she’d thought he would be.
He certainly didn’t look like she’d expected him to. Edie had been picturing someone in his sixties, a typical northern farmer: craggy-faced, patched red from the sun and purple from the rain, probably in a cloth cap with a sheepdog at his heels. Sam Nicholson had none of those things, except perhaps a dog, judging by a doggy sort of smell that seemed to hang around him.
For a start, he wasn’t sixty. Neither the rough, sandy stubble that covered his jaw and chin nor the frown on his brow was enough to disguise his youth. He couldn’t be much over thirty years old – perhaps less.
His face wasn’t purple either, or craggy. It was actually rather a fine face, weathered from outdoor work but nevertheless high-cheekboned and delicately featured. The eyes that peeped from under his furrowed brow were clear, intelligent and a deep, piercing blue. He reminded Edie of an illustration in a copy of Robinson Crusoe she’d owned as a child.
No, he didn’t look as Edie had pictured him, but in another sense he was exactly what she’d been expecting. Sullen, suspicious, unfriendly – like so many of the people she’d met here. She wished Luca had stayed with them. The warmth and wry humour exuded by the young Italian were a tonic compared to the Sams and Jacks and Prudences of her new life.
Sam made her think of the mountains that dominated the local landscape. Beautiful in a terrifying sort of way, but forbidding, dangerous – and definitely not to be approached.
‘We won’t tolerate tardiness here,’ he growled. ‘Since it’s your first day I’ll let it pass, but next time it comes out of your wages.’
‘It won’t happen again. As I said, I got lost.’
‘Where’ve you come from then?’
‘Applefield Manor. I know it’s not far, but, um, I got some bad directions and –’
‘I meant, where do you come from in the country?’ he said, with a roll of his eyes that told Edie he clearly believed he had an idiot on his hands.
She flushed. ‘Oh, I see. London.’
‘Aye, I thought as much.’
‘My father was from Kirkton though,’ she added quickly. ‘Originally, I mean. He’s dead now.’
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She wasn’t sure why she’d told him that. Why should she care whether this surly farmer thought she had a right to be here or not? Her blush deepened, and she let out a small cough. Nerves made her throat feel tight.
‘We work hard here,’ Sam informed her. ‘We’re used to graft in this part of the world.’
‘Yes, I have been told.’ Three times since she’d arrived a week and a half ago, in fact. Did she really look like such a loafer?
She coughed again, more deeply this time, and took out a handkerchief to cover her mouth.
‘Not sick, are you, London?’ Sam asked.
‘No. Just hay fever,’ she said hoarsely. She pulled herself up to her full height, recalling what Tilly had said about not letting Sam bully her. ‘Pardon me, but is there a reason people around here keep telling me what hard workers they all are?’
His mouth twitched. ‘Perhaps we worry your sort haven’t got what it takes to keep up with us.’
‘Townies, you mean.’
‘Women.’ He pointed out a distant field, where several human figures were mingling with the resident sheep. ‘You’re up there clipping out this morning. The others will show you what to do. Tell Ava Gardner to finish what she’s doing and come back here. I need her help moving the yows in top field.’
‘Right.’ Edie thought it was probably wisest to work out which of her fellow Land Girls might answer to the name Ava Gardner when she got to the field. She certainly didn’t want to spend any more time with Sam, or the enormous chip he seemed to have on his shoulder.
‘Off you go then,’ Sam said.
She flushed. ‘Um, sorry, but have you got a – anywhere I could powder my nose?’
Edie's Home for Orphans Page 5