Anna pouted, but then her sunny nature drove away the brief moment of petulance. She put her feet to the ground and slowed the swing even more. Jumping up, she ran to her parents, pushing her way between them, and linked her arms in theirs.
Mother and daughter were remarkably alike, with black, curling hair and smooth skin. But their most outstanding feature was the colour of their eyes: a dark blue, almost violet. Most people, meeting them for the first time, could not help remarking on the unusual, yet beautiful, colour.
As they arrived at the back door of the farmhouse, May’s mother, Rosa, met them.
‘Perfect timing.’ The plump, placid-faced woman beamed. ‘Tea’s ready.’
They sat down at the huge kitchen table, with Luke Clayton at the head whilst his wife sat at the opposite end.
‘The news isn’t good,’ he began as he carved a huge piece of boiled ham and passed plates around the table.
‘Help yourselves to potatoes,’ Rosa said. ‘Now, Luke, I don’t want any talk of war round my table, thank you. And certainly not in front of the child.’
‘I thought everything was all right now, Dad,’ May put in, ‘since Mr Chamberlain came back from Munich last year.’
The two men exchanged a sober look.
‘That agreement, or whatever it was, wasn’t worth the paper it was written on,’ Luke grunted. He turned to smile at his granddaughter. ‘That enough ham for you, lass?’
‘Yes thank you, Grandpa.’ Anna smiled at the weather-beaten face with its deep lines, at the snowy white, bristly moustache that tickled her when she kissed his cheek.
Ken turned towards his wife and touched her hand lightly. ‘It was in all the papers yesterday. Hitler has marched into Czechoslovakia.’
May gasped and the colour fled from her face. ‘You mean there’s going to be a war?’
Again the two men glanced at each other.
May’s voice rose. ‘Tell me. I want to know.’
‘Now, now, love,’ Rosa said, passing the vegetables. ‘Don’t get all het up about things that don’t concern us.’
May rounded on her mother, anxiety making her speak sharply. ‘Of course it concerns us, Mam. If there’s a war, Ken might have to go.’ Then, as if contradicting herself, May grasped her husband’s arm. ‘You won’t, will you?’ Clinging to any hope she could think of, she said, ‘Besides, you’re too old, aren’t you?’
Ken cleared his throat and glanced round the table in embarrassment, wishing that his father-in-law had not raised the subject. ‘There’s talk of more recruits being sought to join the Territorials. I – I thought I might volunteer.’
May gave a little squeak and covered her mouth with her hand, staring with wide-eyed disbelief at her husband. ‘Whatever for?’ she whispered. ‘Why do you want to go and do something like that?’
Luke sniffed. ‘Well, if you’d take a bit of advice from an old soldier who was daft enough to volunteer for the last lot—’
‘Aye, off you went to war and left me with May to bring up. She was only six when you went,’ Rosa began, wagging her finger across the table at her husband. Then she smiled. ‘Mind you, I was that proud of you the day we came to wave you off. Marching away to serve your country.’ She shook her head, remembering. Tears filled her eyes as she murmured, ‘And then, all them medals you got—’
‘Well, I don’t care about uniforms and medals,’ May declared. ‘I don’t want Ken to go. He might not be as lucky as Dad.’
The unspoken words lay heavily in the air.
‘Aye,’ Luke said softly. ‘I was lucky to come back and without serious injury, an’ all. I know that.’ He turned towards his son-in-law. When Ken had first started courting his daughter, Luke had not been at all keen on the young man. Ken Milton was a city lad, with no interest in the country or the farm. With an only daughter, it had been Luke’s dearest wish that May would marry a local farmer who would take on Clayton’s Farm in the future. But May had been drawn to city life, though how she could enjoy living in those crowded streets, which were never quiet day or night, beat Luke. Yet now, as he looked at his son-in-law, Luke felt a fondness for the lad he had not known before. Ken was a good husband to May, Luke acknowledged that. And together they were bringing up a lovely daughter, Anna, who was Luke’s pride and joy.
‘Don’t volunteer, lad. That’s my advice.’ Grandpa Luke’s face was unusually grim. ‘Patriotism is all very well and I’d be the first to defend me country from attack – even at my age.’ He shook his head. ‘But volunteering gets a lot of good fellers killed. Wait till you ’ave to go and not afore. Wait till they send for you.’ His tone was grim as he added, ‘’Cos believe me, they will. If it really comes to war, they’ll have to bring in conscription – just like they had to last time.’
Anna’s wide-eyed glance went at once to her father’s solemn face as he rose from the table. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m afraid if it does come to war, I shall go.’
At the sound of May’s startled gasp, Anna turned to see that her mother’s face had turned deathly white.
On the bus home, her parents scarcely spoke to each other. Her mother looked out of the window and her father stared straight ahead. Sitting on the seat in front of them, Anna shivered. The pleasure of the day had turned suddenly cold.
Throughout the summer, preparations for war continued in earnest. Plans to evacuate children from the cities into the countryside threw May into turmoil again. ‘Not from Lincoln. Surely they won’t bomb us?’
Ken shrugged. ‘It’s a possibility we’ll have to face. There’s a lot of industry in Lincoln that’ll be involved in war production, I don’t doubt. We could easily be a target. But promise me, Maisie darling, that you’ll go out to the farm. You and Anna.’ Maisie was Ken’s affectionate pet name for his wife, used only in their private moments together or when, as now, he was trying to win her round to his way of thinking.
May pulled a face. ‘I suppose so,’ she agreed reluctantly. ‘But I thought I’d got away from all that when I married you. Wearing wellies all day and mucking out the hen house. To say nothing of milking those horrible cows.’
Despite his anxiety, Ken smiled. ‘Is that all you married me for? To get away from the farm?’
May laughed and teased him. ‘Of course it was. Didn’t you know?’
They were sitting on the battered sofa in front of the plopping gas fire, their arms around each other. Anna was safely asleep upstairs and the two adults could talk freely without fear of frightening her.
Ken’s arm tightened about May’s waist. ‘If I do go, I just want to be sure you and Anna are safe, that’s all,’ he said.
‘Well, there’ll be plenty of work for us all to do,’ May said wryly. ‘Dad was saying only last weekend that the government are offering to pay farmers two pounds an acre to plough up grazing pastures to grow more crops.’
Ken nodded. ‘They’re worried that food imports will be at risk if there is a war.’
‘But two pounds an acre, Ken. That’s a lot of money.’
Ken laughed softly. ‘Like your dad always says, “It’s an ill wind—”’
May was not to be diverted so easily. ‘Why don’t we all go? If you work on the farm, you’ll not have to go to fight.’
Ken shook his head. ‘May, please try to understand. I want to do my bit.’
People in Britain tried to carry on life as normally as possible, yet everywhere they were reminded of the threat hanging over them all. Houses continued to be built, the King and Queen embarked on a tour of North America and people still went on their summer holidays. Yet news filtered through of Hitler’s treatment of the Jews in Germany and rumours began that he had set his sights on Poland. By the end of August war seemed inevitable. Clutching their gas masks and perhaps a favourite toy, thousands of tearful children began to be evacuated from the cities and towns into the safety of the country.
When the day came for Ken to leave, the railway platform teemed with men in khaki. Dotted amongst them were wo
men in flowery dresses, wiping tears from their eyes and clinging to their menfolk’s arms.
Anna stood with her parents, holding tightly on to her mother’s hand. She was afraid of getting separated from them and being lost amongst the crowds.
‘You do understand, May, why I have to go?’
‘I still can’t understand why you won’t at least wait for your call-up papers – like Dad said.’
Anna heard her father sigh. ‘We’ve been through all that,’ he said, sounding weary. And they had. Even Anna knew that because she’d heard them arguing in their bedroom at night, trying to keep their voices low so that she would not hear. But always the arguments would end with the sound of her mother crying.
May was trying to be brave now. Her mouth was trembling and tears brimmed in her eyes and threatened to spill down her cheeks, yet she was still trying her best to smile. ‘It’s just – just – I don’t know how I’m going to cope without you.’
‘I know, love. But you must be strong for Anna’s sake too.’
‘But I’m not strong, am I?’ Her voice was muffled against him. He did not answer but drew her close and then held out his arm to Anna to enfold her in a bear hug too. ‘You must look after each other. And promise me, May, if we get any bombing in Lincoln, you’ll go out to the farm? Go and stay with your parents. Anna can go to the village school. They take them right up to leaving age there.’
May nodded.
‘Oh, Daddy.’ Anna turned her dark, violet eyes up to look at her father. ‘Are there going to be bombs?’
‘I’ll not lie to you, love. There might be. But we might be lucky in Lincoln. They’ll be making for the bigger cities rather than here.’
It seemed a forlorn hope and the two adults both knew it. Ken was trying to make light of it for Anna’s sake. He didn’t want to frighten their ten-year-old daughter. The fact that he was leaving them and that they might have to leave their home in the city had been enough to give the imaginative child nightmares already.
As the train whistle blew, May clung to Ken. He bent and kissed her hard, murmuring, ‘Oh, Maisie, my darling Maisie.’ Then he was sweeping Anna into a bear hug again and she was crying against the rough serge of his coat. ‘Don’t go, Daddy. Please don’t go.’ But with one last, desperate kiss he turned from them both and was gone, lost amongst the throng climbing aboard the train.
When May and Anna returned home, the terraced house was strangely quiet without him. It took May days to stop automatically laying a place for her husband at the table and every night Anna went to stand by Ken’s chair to say goodnight, only to stand staring down at the empty place.
Halfway through his training, he had a precious forty-eight-hour pass and then, later, a longer leave. The day before he had to return to his unit, Ken told May quietly, ‘This has been what they call embarkation leave. I’m to be posted abroad when I get back.’
May buried her face against his shoulder and asked in a muffled voice, ‘Do you know where?’
‘No, love. I don’t.’ Ken said no more. Rumours had been rife around the camp before he had left, but no one knew for sure. And even if he had known, he would not have told May. Now he murmured, ‘Don’t tell Anna till I’ve gone. Please, Maisie.’
It was bad enough having to tell the wife he adored, but to see his beloved daughter’s stricken face was more than he could bear.
It was not how he wanted to remember Anna.
Ken Milton was amongst the first British troops to arrive in France in the middle of October. At the same time, a general call-up of men over twenty years of age started and May said mournfully, ‘Your daddy would have had to go now anyway.’ She scrunched up the newspaper and turned to Anna, plastering a bright smile on her face. ‘Perhaps he was right to go. First to go, first to come home, eh?’
Ken had been wrong about one thing. Children were not evacuated from Lincoln but brought to the city from other places deemed to be at far greater risk.
‘Your teacher’s asked us to take an evacuee,’ May told Anna. Biting her thumbnail, she said, ‘There’s thousands arriving on the train from Leeds. It’s not that I don’t want to help – of course I do – but I think we ought to go out to the farm. It’s what Daddy would want us to do. We’ll go to Grandpa. He’ll look after us.’ May shuddered. ‘I hate us being here on our own.’
The protest from her daughter that May had expected – probably hoped to hear – was not forthcoming. Secretly Anna was delighted. She loved her grandpa Luke and she loved the farm.
The following day May locked up the house, glancing back as they turned the corner at the top of the road. Would they ever see their home again? she was thinking, but she kept these thoughts to herself, trying to make their evacuation to the country seem like a holiday. Dragging three heavy suitcases, they caught the bus from the city centre which passed through the village close to the farm. Then they walked the last few hundred yards down the lane.
Rosa came out into the yard, her arms held wide. ‘“It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good”,’ she quoted and laughed loudly. ‘See, if it wasn’t for the war, we wouldn’t be having you come to live with us for a while, would we?’
May glanced at Anna. Missing her husband and now having to leave her city home were causing May grief, but Anna pulled her hand from her mother’s grasp and ran towards her grannie, arms outstretched.
‘Can I feed the hens for you and c’lect the eggs?’ she gabbled excitedly.
‘Course you can, lovey.’ Then, catching sight of May’s doleful face, Rosa said kindly, ‘Now, come along, May. This horrible war will soon be over and Ken will be safely back home. But in the meantime,’ she said with a chuckle, ‘I can’t deny that it’s lovely for Grandpa and me to have you here.’
Anna flung her arms around her grandmother’s ample waist and pressed her cheek to the woman’s comforting warmth. ‘Oh, Grannie, I do love the farm and being here with you and Grandpa. And if only Daddy were here too, it would be perfect.’
Above the girl’s head, mother and grandmother exchanged a solemn glance.
Thirty-Two
‘Anna, this is Jed Rower.’ Luke pointed with a gnarled finger towards the youth standing awkwardly near the cowhouse. ‘He’s Bill Tomalin’s nephew.’
Bill Tomalin owned the farm adjacent to Luke’s farm and Anna had heard the grown-ups talking about the family.
‘Poor old Bill and his missis. Lost their only son in the twenties. Measles. You wouldn’t think measles was a killer, now would you? But there you are . . .’ Anna remembered her grandfather talking as he carved the Sunday roast.
‘Poor little mite,’ Rosa had put in, bustling between the scullery and the kitchen table. ‘He was so poorly. And you caught it off him, our May. Do you remember?’
May had wrinkled her forehead. ‘Was that the time I had to lie in a darkened room?’
‘Yes, that’s it. They reckoned the illness affected the eyesight and told everybody to keep their bairns in bed and in the dark. Eh dear, what a time it was. And poor little Jack didn’t get better. I remember going to the funeral. What a terrible sight it is to see a child’s coffin.’ The tender-hearted Rosa wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron.
‘So now,’ Luke had gone on, ‘there’s only his sister’s boy, Jed, for Bill to leave his farm to. Mind you, he’s a real good lad. Comes at holiday times and at weekends if he can get here. And he’ll help me out if I need it.’
Now, as the two youngsters stood in the yard staring at each other, Luke said, ‘Jed’s left school now, Anna, and he’s come to live at his uncle’s. Wants to be a farmer, don’t you, lad?’
‘That’s right, Mester Clayton. Never wanted nowt else.’
Luke beamed at him. ‘That’s what I like to hear.’ He wagged his finger at the young man. ‘And no running off to the war when you gets old enough. You hear me?’
Jed grinned. ‘Oh I reckon it’ll be over long before then, mester.’
‘Aye well, that’s as mebbe.
I ’ope so, lad. I do. But these wars have a terrible habit of going on a lot longer than them there politicians reckon. Any road – ’ Luke turned and put his hand on Anna’s shoulder – ‘at least this war’s brought Anna and her mam to live with us for a while.’
Jed, with merry hazel eyes, fair curling hair and a wide grin, glanced at her and nodded. Anna smiled shyly and then dropped her gaze.
‘Well now, I can’t stand here yakkerin’ all day,’ Luke said. ‘There’s work to do.’
‘Can I help, sir?’ Jed asked. ‘Uncle Bill said you was a bit short-handed with a couple of your regular hands going off to the war.’
Luke beamed at him. ‘Ya can, lad. We’ve two Land Army wenches due soon, but in the meantime I’m a bit stretched. So a bit of help’d be worth a lot of pity, as they say. Now, can you milk cows?’
Jed nodded.
‘Right then, you set to in there – ’ he jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards the cowhouse – ‘whilst I get the next lot from the field. Now where’s that dratted dog of mine?’ He gave a shrill whistle and a black and white collie came tearing round the corner of the building, sliding to a halt in front of his master.
‘Come on, dog, let’s get them cows in.’
Anna laughed. ‘But he’s a sheepdog, Grandpa.’
Luke winked at her. ‘Aye, but Buster dun’t know that, does he? He just thinks he’s got to round up any kind of creature. Have you seen him with the geese?’
Anna shook her head.
‘That’s what I trained him with. They’re every bit as cantankerous and awk’ard as sheep.’
‘I don’t like geese. They’re nasty, hissy things.’
Luke laughed. ‘An’ you don’t like the cows ’cos they kick. What do you like, lass?’
Anna beamed. ‘I like sheep.’
Luke put his arm about her shoulders. ‘Right, then lass. Whilst you’m here I’ll teach you all I know about sheep. How’s that?’
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