Red Sky in the Morning

by Margaret Dickinson

  Anna glanced up at the wrinkled, weather-beaten face. Solemnly, she said, ‘I’d like that very much, Grandpa.’

  Soon the country became resigned to being at war. Like the conflict which had begun twenty-five years earlier, it was not over by Christmas. The beginning of 1940 was a bleak time and scarcely a minute of the day went by when May and Anna were not thinking about Ken. But despite the ever-present worry, Anna blossomed in the fresh air and country life. She didn’t even mind the heavy snowfall that arrived in February. She revelled in tramping through the deep drifts to rescue ‘her’ sheep.

  ‘Now, lass, I’ve got summat for you.’ Grandpa Luke’s blue eyes were twinkling mischievously beneath his shaggy eyebrows.

  ‘A present?’ Anna’s voice was high with excitement. ‘For me?’

  From behind his back Luke produced a strangely shaped parcel – long and thin but wider at one end. Anna ripped away the wrapping paper to reveal a shepherd’s crook fashioned in every detail to be a small replica of Luke’s own.

  The girl gasped with delight. ‘Oh, Grandpa, it’s lovely. Thank you.’ She kissed the old man’s cheek and was tickled by his moustache.

  ‘There now, when you go out with Buster to fetch the sheep you’ll be a real shepherdess.’ Luke wagged his forefinger at her and drew his eyebrows together in mock severity. ‘But there is a catch. You’ve got to earn the title. You’ll have to learn to help with the lambing and the shearing and the dipping. Even how to count them the shepherd’s way.’

  Anna was nodding so hard she felt as if her head might fall off. Her violet eyes were bright. ‘I will, oh, I will. I want to learn everything, Grandpa,’ the young girl told him solemnly. ‘I want to stay on the farm for ever. I don’t ever want to go back to the city.’

  Tears filled the old man’s rheumy eyes as he touched her cheek. ‘Aye, lass, I reckon you don’t.’

  Since his disappointment that his own daughter had turned her back on country life, this was more than he had dared to hope for from his granddaughter.

  Her instruction began that day, though at first she wasn’t sure whether it was she giving Buster instructions or the dog showing her what needed to be done. But soon the two became firm friends. It was almost as if the dog now belonged more to Anna than to Luke.

  ‘He’s still a working dog, lass,’ the old man would remind her. ‘And you mustn’t make pets of the animals.’

  Anna nodded, understanding. ‘We’re farmers, aren’t we, Grandpa?’

  ‘That’s right,’ the old man said, his voice hoarse with emotion. ‘That’s right, me little lass.’

  The only reminder of the war was the distant drone of aircraft.

  ‘What’s that noise, Grandpa?’ Anna asked the first time she heard them.

  ‘Planes, lass. Hampdens, so they tell me. There’s an aerodrome a few miles north from here.’

  ‘Oh.’ Anna was silent for a moment and then, in a small voice, she asked, ‘Are they – are they going to drop bombs on the enemy?’

  ‘Aye, mebbe.’

  ‘But – how can they be sure they don’t drop them on our soldiers?’

  Luke smiled at her, his leathery face creasing into a thousand wrinkles – or so it seemed. ‘Oh, they’ll mind not to do that, love. They’ll be aiming for things like enemy shipping, and if they do go over enemy territory it’ll be things like bridges and railways and maybe factories that make equipment for the war.’

  ‘That’s what Daddy said the Jerries’d do to us,’ Anna said. ‘They might bomb Lincoln because he was sure the factories there would be making things for the war.’

  ‘Aye well, lass, I reckon he could be right. Anyway,’ he added, putting his arm about her shoulders, ‘that’s why you’ve come here. To be safe with us, eh?’

  Every day Luke would give his own weather forecast and try to guess whether they would hear the planes that night. ‘Just look at that lovely sunset, lass. Ain’t no better sight anywhere than a Lincolnshire sunset, to my mind. Sign of good weather, that is. They’ll be flying tonight.’ And then, in contrast, he would say, ‘Don’t reckon we shall hear them planes going out tonight. Bad sky this morning. Reckon we’re in for a bit of a blow.’

  But sometimes he would be wrong and, distantly, they’d hear the planes going out.

  Each night Grandpa insisted that everyone was silent whilst he listened to the nine o’clock news on the wireless. Anna, sitting quietly, was obliged to listen too and so picked up the war news. Some of it she understood, but in her young, logical mind she still questioned the truth of her grandfather’s assurances. If both sides were dropping bombs on each other, she couldn’t understand how the British, whose army was over there, could be sure not to drop them on their own men.

  Every night Anna knelt on the cold floor of her bedroom and prayed fervently for her father’s safe return. But when she climbed into bed at last and lay down, she felt no reassurance that her prayers would be answered.

  And then, at the end of May, they all listened with horror to the news of the evacuation from Dunkirk. They glanced fearfully at one another, knowing that Ken was out there somewhere.

  A week later May received the telegram, forwarded from their home in Lincoln, reporting that Kenneth Milton was missing, presumed killed.

  ‘It’s not fair, Grandpa. It’s not fair. Why did Daddy have to get killed?’

  Weeks after the news had come, Anna still could not accept it. Helping her grandfather with the haymaking, she walked beside him into the meadow to rake and toss the swathes of grass that had been cut the previous day.

  In his gravelly voice, Luke said, ‘Life isn’t fair, lass. But we all have to make the best of it, whatever comes our way. I was in the last war. I volunteered right at the start. Just like your dad did.’ Luke cast a wry glance at his granddaughter. ‘He wouldn’t listen to me, would he? Had to go an’ do the same.’ Luke’s bushy white eyebrows drew together in a frown. ‘Can’t blame him, though,’ he murmured, his thoughts far away. ‘But I was lucky. I came back.’

  He stood leaning on his rake, gazing into the distance as if he were seeing a ghostly regiment of long-dead comrades marching past. ‘A lot of good men didn’t come back. The war to end wars, they called it then, yet just over twenty years after it ended here we are plunged into another. I don’t reckon them politicians will ever learn,’ he ended bitterly. Then Luke seemed to shake himself and said briskly, ‘This won’t get the work done, lass. Come on now, put ya back into it.’

  Anna spent a lot of time with her grandfather. When she was not attending the local school, she was by his side.

  ‘She’s as good as any farmhand,’ Luke told Rosa.

  ‘You should see her with the sheep.’ He chuckled. ‘I reckon she’s given ’em all names. All thirty of ’em.’

  ‘How did she take it when the lambs went? And does she know they’ve gone for slaughter?’

  ‘She understands. I explained it all to her. Aye.’ Luke gave a deep sigh of contentment. ‘The farm’ll be in safe hands when I’m gone.’

  Rosa said seriously. ‘Let’s not talk about anyone else going yet. That little lass has had enough sadness in her life to last her a good few years. And as for our May . . .’ Rosa shook her head and sighed. ‘I don’t know if she’ll ever get over losing Ken.’

  Luke lit his pipe and puffed at it, getting it well alight before he answered. ‘She’s young. She’ll not forget him. Course she won’t. But time is a healer, love. Given time, she’ll mebbe meet someone else. Our May needs a man to lean on and I won’t be here for ever.’ He chuckled. ‘Even if I’d like to be.’

  Rosa said wryly, ‘But what sort of man is she likely to find, eh? We’re going to lose a whole generation of fellers again, just like we did last time. And what’ll we be left with? You tell me that. The dregs, that’s what.’

  Luke twinkled at her mischievously. ‘Well, I came back last time. Is that what I am then? The dregs?’

  Rosa laughed. ‘You tek it how ya like, Luke Clayton.
If you remember – ’ she nodded at him teasingly – ‘I was engaged to that butcher feller just afore the last war. And he didn’t come back, now did he?’

  ‘Yeah, but if I remember you’d thrown him over before he ever went to the Front.’

  They laughed together, easy in the knowledge that it was all just banter between them.

  Their laughter faded and Rosa said pensively, ‘It’d be nice to think that – in time – May could meet someone nice, ’cos you’re right, she does need someone and it’d be nice for that little lass to have a daddy again.’

  ‘But in the meantime – ’ Luke opened his newspaper and spread it wide, scanning the pages for yet more news – ‘she’s got us.’

  Thirty-Three

  It was a cruel Fate that was listening at that moment to Luke’s confident statement. Only three weeks later Rosa began to feel ill.

  ‘I can’t understand why I feel so tired all the time,’ she said, sitting down in the wooden rocking chair beside the range after a morning’s work. ‘I can usually go all day without stopping, but now—’

  ‘You’re not as young as you used to be, Mam.’

  ‘I’m only fifty-seven,’ Rosa responded indignantly.

  May eyed her mother. ‘You’ve lost weight, too.’

  ‘I always do in summer. We eat more salads an’ that in the hot weather, don’t we?’ Rosa heaved herself out of the chair in an effort to prove there was nothing wrong with her. ‘ ’Spect I’ve got a bit of anaemia. I’ve had it before at this time of year.’

  ‘Anaemia doesn’t give you a pain in your tummy. I’ve seen you holding yourself. Look, you’re doing it now.’

  ‘It’s just a bit of indigestion. Something I’ve eaten.’

  May cast her a wry look. ‘I think you ought to see the doctor, Mam.’

  ‘Aye, sometime. I’ll go when I’ve time.’

  A week later even Luke was persuading her to go. ‘I’ll take you into the village mesen and make sure you do see him,’ he declared. ‘You’re not right, woman. Even I can see that. The weight’s dropping off you.’

  ‘All right, then. I’ll go.’

  Luke and his daughter exchanged a startled glance. The fact that Rosa was agreeing to see a doctor was enough for alarm bells to start ringing in both their minds.

  They had good reason to be fearful. The doctor sent Rosa into Lincoln for further tests and two weeks later he called at the farm.

  ‘Run along into the yard, missy,’ he said in a kindly manner to Anna. ‘I need to talk to your grandpa and grannie. May – ’ he had known the Clayton family for years and had attended May’s birth in this very farmhouse – ‘you stay, please.’

  He sat down at the table, his face solemn as he explained gently that the consultant had found a growth in Rosa’s stomach.

  ‘We can operate, but—’ His silence and the unspoken words hung in the air.

  ‘Oh no,’ May cried, her hand flying to her mouth. ‘Oh Mam, no.’

  Luke took his wife’s hand and held on to it tightly. ‘This operation? If she has it, there’s a chance?’

  The doctor glanced from Luke to Rosa and back again. He knew them so well, knew that they were strong enough to be told the truth. He wasn’t so sure about May. She was crumbling before his eyes. But then, he reminded himself, this was the second lot of terrible news she’d had in a few short months. ‘Fifty– fifty.’

  Rosa seemed to be taking the news calmly. ‘Well, I’ve had a good life. And May’s home now to look after her dad . . .’

  ‘Mam,’ May cried, tears flooding down her cheeks, ‘don’t say such things. You’ll get better. You’ll have the operation and you’ll get better. I know you will. Oh Mam, you have to. I – I can’t bear to lose you too.’

  Luke walked out of the house with the doctor.

  ‘I’m so sorry, old friend. I wish there was more I could say, more I could do.’

  ‘You’ve told us the truth and now we know what we have to face.’ Luke glanced across to where Anna was playing with Buster. The girl was laughing at the dog’s antics, their game driving away some of the sadness from her face. ‘Though how I’m going to tell that little lass, I don’t know.’

  ‘Like me to do it for you?’

  Luke shook his head. ‘No. Thanks, but it’ll come better from me. If she sees we’re facing up to it, then—’

  He said no more and the doctor nodded agreement, but he was thinking that May was not going to be of much use.

  As if reading his thoughts, Luke said softly, ‘She’s stronger than her mam, I reckon. She’ll be all right. She’ll be all right with me.’

  Wordlessly, the doctor patted Luke’s shoulder and went towards his car.

  Rosa was called in for the operation only a week later. It was a tense and anxious time for the family and visiting Rosa in the city hospital proved difficult with the war restrictions. There was no telephone at Clayton’s Farm so it was the doctor who once again brought the news.

  The moment he stepped out of his car and went towards Luke, who was standing near the cowshed, the old man knew the news was bad.

  Dr Phillips shook his head sadly. ‘I’m so sorry, Luke. She came through the operation itself well, but back on the ward she suffered a massive heart attack. There was nothing anyone could do.’

  Luke nodded wordlessly.

  ‘If it’s any comfort, old friend, the end was quick. If she’d survived and the cancer had returned, she would have had a lingering and very painful death.’

  ‘Aye, well.’ Luke sniffed hard, but was unable to control the break in his voice. ‘Aye well, that’s summat to be thankful for.’

  The family was devastated. It was almost worse than the loss of Ken, for that had been a possibility from the moment he volunteered. But that Rosa – laughing, good-hearted Rosa – should die so quickly was hard to take.

  ‘If only we’d had more time,’ May wept. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  Luke, though suffering his loss inside, seemed on the surface to accept the blow more easily than May. He had seen a lot more of life – and of death – than his daughter.

  ‘You couldn’t have asked for her to go on suffering. She were nowt but skin and bone by the end. You wouldn’t let an animal suffer like that, lass. Now would you?’

  May shook her head and murmured the very same words her daughter had used only months earlier. ‘But it’s so unfair, Dad. It’s so unfair.’

  Anna’s grief was silent. She shed her tears in private, anxious not to add to her grandfather’s grief or to upset her mother even more. May did her best to take over the running of the farmhouse, but Rosa, born to be a farmer’s wife, was a hard act to follow.

  May wept through the days. ‘I can’t get the Yorkshire puddings to rise like Mam did,’ she moaned on the first Sunday after the funeral. ‘I’ve burnt the meat and the gravy’s lumpy.’

  ‘Ne’er mind, love,’ Luke said placidly. ‘That range oven’s always been a bit temperamental. Even your mam used to grumble about it. You’ll soon get the hang of it, though.’

  ‘But that’s just it. I don’t want to get the hang of it,’ May wailed. ‘I want to go back to Lincoln. I want to go home.’

  Luke said nothing, but Anna had seen the deep hurt in his eyes. That his daughter should consider the little terraced house in a back street of the city to be home, instead of the farm where she had been born and brought up, cut the old man to the quick.

  Anna’s confidant was Jed, who came to see her the morning after the funeral. ‘I’m real sorry about your gran, Anna. She was a lovely lady. Always so friendly. And cook – by heck, I’ve never tasted apple pasties like hers. Even me auntie Sue can’t make ’em like Mrs Clayton could.’ He tried to lighten the gravity of their conversation by adding, ‘But don’t you tell ’er I said so, else she’ll chase me with me uncle’s shotgun.’

  Anna smiled thinly. Then Jed, trying to draw her out, said soberly, ‘It must be very hard for you. First your dad and now your gran. Difficult for all y
our family. Look – ’ he hesitated, his face reddening – ‘if there’s ever owt I can do to help you, you’ve only got to say. I aren’t very good with words, but – but I’m a good listener. Sometimes – well – sometimes it helps just to be able to talk about it. And maybe you can’t talk about it at home because – well – they’re upset an’ all. I don’t mean I’m not,’ he went on swiftly, lest she should misunderstand him. ‘She’ll be badly missed round here. Everybody liked her.’

  The number of mourners at the funeral had told Anna that. The line following the coffin had stretched a hundred yards or more.

  ‘But, well—’ Jed was still stumbling on, trying in his youthful way to bring comfort to the young girl, ‘I weren’t family.’

  Anna smiled at him through her tears. ‘Thanks, Jed,’ she said huskily. ‘You’re – very kind.’

  Jed became her constant companion. Luke had taught her about sheep, but it was Jed she watched hedging and ditching, he who helped her with a broody hen and watched as the eggs cracked and little yellow chicks emerged. It was Jed who showed her how to milk the cows and helped her overcome her fear of their restless hooves.

  ‘I won’t ever like them as much as the sheep.’ She laughed. ‘But I’m not quite so scared of them now. Thanks to you.’

  ‘You’ve got gentle fingers. You’d make a good milkmaid.’

  Anna pulled a face. ‘I’d rather be a shepherdess. That’s what I really want to be.’

  He took her fishing in the stretch of the River Brant that ran through both her grandfather’s farm and his uncle’s. And it was Jed who stood with his arm about her shoulders, comforting her whenever any of their animals were loaded into the back of the lorry to be driven to market.

  ‘How’s ya mam?’ he asked gently one day.

  Anna shrugged. ‘She’s running the house better now.’

  She even managed to smile. ‘Her cooking’s improved, but she still cries a lot.’ Anna’s voice broke a little as she added, ‘She – wants to go back to the city.’

  Jed looked down at her, his blue eyes sober. ‘What about you?’ he asked softly. ‘Do you want to go back?’