A week later, there was a letter under the stone. Annie let out a yelp of surprise. She hadn’t thought she would get anything so soon. She snatched it up and stood looking at it. The writing was unfamiliar, but the postmark sent a thrill of painful excitement through her. Noresley. His town. For a long moment she hesitated. Was it good news or bad inside? She almost didn’t want to open it at all, for while she still didn’t know what had happened to him, there was still hope. She stuffed it in her pocket, then almost immediately pulled it out again, ripped it open and drew out the paper. She could hardly breathe.
Dear Miss Cross,
Thank you for your note and your kind wishes. I have to say that I was a little surprised to receive it. We are all very shocked at the news about our son and do not expect to hear anything further yet, although of course we pray that he is safe and well. I have spoken to Tom’s fiancée and we have agreed that when we do receive any information, we will let you know, as you have been such a regular pen-pal.
Yours sincerely,
M Featherstone (Mrs)
For a long time she just stared at it, hardly understanding.
Fiancée? Tom didn’t have a fiancée. He wasn’t engaged. She couldn’t take it in. But gradually a terrible cold realisation crept over her. This was what she had feared. Ever since he’d joined up she had worried about girls at the airfield, girls in the nearby town. So now she knew. There was someone, but it was worse than that—much worse. He had asked this other girl to marry him and he had not even told her—his pen-pal.
That horrible word—pen-pal—jumped off the page at her.
So that was all she counted for. Just someone he wrote to every now and again. Someone that his mother felt should be told, along with all the rest of the cycle club and the cricket club and all those others he’d gone about with. Just one of the crowd of his pals.
‘I thought it was special,’ she whispered. ‘I thought I was special. You were to me.’
She felt utterly betrayed.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
IN THE wide world beyond Marsh Edge Farm, a shift in the balance of power began to be felt. Though in Britain the bombing raids went on, rationing was harder and more people, especially women, were working towards the war effort than ever before, it seemed at last that the losses and the sacrifice were not in vain.
The first good news was the victory at El Alamein. Mr Churchill made his ‘end of the beginning’ speech of cautious optimism and on the fifteenth of November church bells that had been silent for two and a half years were rung throughout Britain in celebration. By the end of 1942, Axis forces were losing ground in both Asia and Europe, and then just a month later the German commander surrendered to the Russians at Stalingrad, a hitherto unheard-of act for a field marshal.
But while one dictator was starting to feel the opposition bite, in his small domain at Marsh Edge, Walter Cross now reigned supreme. Any spark of rebellion that Edna had once showed had been put out by her latest miscarriage and Annie simply kept her head down and plodded through the days, leaving Walter with nobody to clash with. Not that it stopped him from lashing out with tongue or fists, but hitting a soft target did not give him quite the same level of satisfaction.
Gwen tried her hardest to cheer Annie up, even after Annie had received a note from Mrs Featherstone informing her that she and Tom’s fiancée thought Annie might like to know that Tom was being treated in a German hospital.
‘That means he’s still alive. That’s wonderful news!’ Gwen cried.
‘Yes,’ Annie said.
She was in such turmoil that she wasn’t sure what she felt. It was good—more than good—to know for sure that he hadn’t died with his plane on that raid. But part of her had always believed that he wasn’t dead, maybe because she hadn’t seen him for so long and she was used to his being far away. Which left the other cause for despair still intact.
‘So why hasn’t he written to me?’ she asked.
‘Well—I s’pose it’s difficult. He can’t get paper, or he’s not allowed or something,’ Gwen said. ‘But he’s alive, that’s the main thing. Where there’s life, there’s hope.’
‘Yes—for his fiancée. I bet she’s had a letter from him. His mother doesn’t even say where he is, so he can’t have asked her to tell me,’ Annie said.
Even Gwen couldn’t think of an answer to that, until one day she came bouncing up to Annie with a great big smile all over her face.
‘Look what I’ve got for you! I couldn’t risk leaving it at Silver Sands so I’ve saved it to give to you. There—what did I say? He’s sent you a letter.’
And there it was—her name in Tom’s dear familiar handwriting, on strange coarse paper. A huge hand seemed to be clutching at Annie’s chest, making it hard to breathe. At last, a letter for her.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered.
‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ Gwen demanded.
Annie shook her head and slipped the precious letter into her pocket.
And there it stayed. Not because she was saving a pleasure, as she used to when everything was clear and open between them, but because she hardly dared read what was inside it.
For the rest of the day she guessed at what might be waiting for her. Her emotions took a roller coaster ride as different possible contents came to mind. At times she was euphoric as she dreamed of something along the lines of, Don’t take any notice of what my mother might say—I’m definitely not engaged because you’re the only one for me. But then she tried to prepare herself for the worst by imagining his writing, I thought I’d better send you a line as my fiancée tells me you’ve been asking about me. Either way, at least she had been kicked into feeling again. Even pain was better than the dreary mud of hopelessness she had been wading in all through the winter.
She hardly heard her father’s bitter comments about the six o’clock news. She cleared away the plates and washed up without even knowing she was doing it. She fetched her knitting as usual to do as they listened to the wireless, but it stayed motionless in her lap. As soon as the bedtime cocoa was drunk, she took her candle and water jug and went upstairs.
The winter wind rushed across the marshes and flung itself against the house, whistling through the window frames in icy draughts. Annie undressed, washed, put on her nightdress and bedsocks and climbed into bed, pulling the quilt up round her shoulders. She sat holding the precious letter, staring at it in the dim yellow light of the candle, as if she might decipher what was inside it if she looked for long enough.
‘If you don’t open it, you won’t ever know,’ she told herself.
With shaking fingers, she slit open the cheap paper. And there it was. His own thoughts for her.
Dear Annie,
I’m so sorry it’s taken so long to write to you. I was in a bit of a bad way when I baled out and spent a long time in hospital, but I’m better now and in a camp. Conditions (here something had been blacked out by the censor) but I’m with a lot of chaps from all three services and we keep each other going. We have to go out on work detail (more blacking out) keeps you from going mad.
I hope you are well and still enjoying your outings with Gwen. I expect the farm and Silver Sands still look the same. I keep thinking about the happy times we had there. It all seems a very long time ago now.
A letter from you would be a real treat.
Always your friend,
Tom.
X
The swooping emotions of the day boiled up into one great explosion of fury. Growling like a wild beast, Annie tore the letter into tiny pieces.
How dared he? How dared he write like that, as if nothing had happened? Your friend, indeed! Not even a close enough friend to say that he had got himself engaged. Not a mention of it. Not even telling her what it was like for him at the moment—just those flat statements. It could almost have been a letter from anyone, male or female, to anyone else. A letter from her would be a real treat, indeed! Did he expect her to believe that? Well, it was
a treat he was going to miss, because if he couldn’t be honest with her, then he wasn’t worth writing to.
She blew out the candle, turned her face to the pillow and cried herself to sleep.
Edna Cross was beginning to find that life was bearable again. She wasn’t happy, but then she had given up expecting happiness a long time ago. Generally, the absence of pain and fear was enough. When Walter was out of the house, an oppressive weight lifted from her shoulders. She could find a small sense of satisfaction in a cake that had come out well, or a piece of sewing that looked pretty. The highlights of her life were visits from her customers, especially Mrs Sutton. She didn’t count Mrs Sutton as a friend, for she had far too low an opinion of herself to think that such an important, well-off woman could possibly wish to befriend her. But she did look forward to her coming to the farmhouse. Or had, until the last miscarriage. That had left her foundering in a grey fog of depression that robbed her of any interest in living at all. Only her fear of her husband kept her getting up each day and going through the motions of existence.
But as the winter days started to lengthen, she found that the cloud was lifting a little. She found an extra brown egg in the barn and thought that it would be nice to be able to bake a cake now rather than scones. She devised a clever way of making a child’s dress out of an old skirt and was touched by her customer’s delight and praise. She stopped to listen to the blackbird’s song.
When Annie came in from the yard at the end of a long rainy day, Edna looked at her properly for the first time in well over a year. Her little girl had grown up, she realised. Not only was Annie taller than Edna now, she had a woman’s face and figure. Racing after this discovery came the painful one that her daughter looked tired and unhappy. Her face might be rosy from the cold, but there was no youthful life to her. With a shock, Edna realised that this was more than just the effect of hard work and living with Walter. There was something else. Her baby needed her help.
It was difficult to find a time when they were alone together. Edna had to wait until Walter had, most unusually, gone to a War Ag meeting with some of the neighbouring farmers. Then she made a fresh pot of tea, opened the front of the range up to let out a nice blast of heat and sat down by the hearth with Annie to enjoy an evening without Walter. She pressed a cup of tea into Annie’s hands and sat anxiously studying her. She was such a pretty girl, with her round elfin face and her big blue eyes and her fair hair with its natural wave, the image of what she had been at the same age. She wanted a better fate for Annie.
‘You’re looking peaky, dear,’ she said. ‘Are you feeling all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ Annie said.
‘Are you sure? I thought … I’ve not been a good mother this last … I’ve not been looking out for you the way I should …’
‘You’ve not been well,’ Annie said.
Edna reached over and took Annie’s free hand.
‘You’ve been a good daughter to me. You’ve looked after me and I’ve not … The thing is, I’ve been …’ She hesitated. It was hard for her to put into words how it had been for her since that night she’d miscarried. And then a biblical phrase came to her, and it seemed to describe it very well. ‘I’ve been walking in the valley of the shadow of death. It’s been … hard …’
‘I know,’ Annie said.
Edna hoped fervently that she would never know. She wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
‘But I’m coming out of it now, and I want to help you. You’ve had to manage for yourself all this time without a proper mother. There’s something wrong, isn’t there? You’re not your usual self. You can tell me. Have you fallen out with Gwen? Is that it?’
Annie shook her head slowly.
‘No, no—Gwennie’s been a wizard friend.’
‘What, then? Is it something to do with—with your father?’
Try as she might, she couldn’t stop the squeaky note of fear entering her voice when she referred to Walter.
‘No more than usual.’
‘So—’ Edna racked her brain. She knew so little about Annie’s private life, such as it was. Most of the week she was here on the farm. One afternoon a week she went into town to do the shopping and pick up and deliver Edna’s sewing work. One evening a week she generally went to the pictures with Gwen. Sometimes she went out for a walk by herself in the evening. Could she have met someone else? Could she—?
‘It isn’t—I mean—have you—is there a young man?’
The last words tumbled out apologetically. For surely Annie couldn’t be courting, not at her age? When Edna tried to remember just how old her daughter was, she couldn’t work it out immediately. It was a shock to realise that she was sixteen and a half.
Annie meantime had become very still. She was staring into the fire. Edna guessed she had stumbled on the root of the problem.
‘You can tell me,’ she said gently. ‘Who is it? Isn’t he treating you like he ought to?’
The thought of Annie suffering as she suffered at the hands of some man was almost too much to bear.
‘He’s—he’s in Germany,’ Annie whispered.
‘He’s a Jerry?’ Edna squealed.
‘No—’ A brief ghost of a smile crossed Annie’s face. ‘No, he’s an airman, a British airman. He was shot down.’
‘Ah, poor lad. No wonder you’re so upset. What a terrible thing to happen. And them so brave too, flying all that way in the dark. And to think that when we hear them go over, it might have been your young man up there—’
Edna’s mind didn’t know which way to go first. Annie’s revelations opened up so many new thoughts, so many questions.
‘How did you get to know him? There aren’t any airfields near here,’ she said. ‘Or is he a local boy? Who is he?’
‘He used to stay at Silver Sands,’ Annie said.
‘Silver Sands—the little chalet? The Suttons’ place?’
Annie nodded.
Edna turned this over in her head.
‘But it’s been shut up for months. Ever since the Suttons sold it.’
‘We got in a window. Nobody ever knew.’
Edna was about to say that they shouldn’t have acted like a pair of burglars when something in Annie’s voice stopped her. The girl’s expression was soft now as she looked into the coals glowing in the range.
‘For a whole week he stayed there, and I went to see him every evening. We were like Romeo and Juliet, you know? I went and borrowed the play from the library. Their parents didn’t want them to be together, and in the end they died.’
Edna was not sure what she was talking about, but she did latch on to one certainty. She patted Annie’s hand.
‘He’ll be all right though, your lad. He’ll come home when this dreadful war is over, you’ll see.’
‘Yes, but … not to see me …’ Annie’s face crumpled and her voice rose rapidly into a barely controlled wail. ‘He’s getting married to someone else, and he never even told me—!’
Edna gathered her daughter into her arms and listened as the whole sorry story came out between bouts of crying.
‘There, there,’ she said soothingly, stroking Annie’s head. ‘How could he do that, now? All that time, and you waiting for him. It’s not right.’
Her heart ached with pity and anger that some boy had hurt her dear daughter so cruelly. Her Annie was the sweetest, kindest girl and she’d been taken advantage of.
‘He’s not worth breaking your heart for. You’ll get over it, you’ll see,’ she said.
Annie slipped down to kneel on the floor with her head in her mother’s lap.
‘I won’t,’ she sobbed. ‘There’s nobody else like him.’
There seemed to be no consoling her. Edna began to be concerned that Walter might be coming back. She took Annie up to bed like she used to when she was a little girl, and tucked her in with a hot water bottle. She kissed her goodnight.
‘Maybe it will all look better in the morning,’ she said.
; But she knew they were empty words. If there was one thing that Edna had learnt, it was that where men were concerned, nothing was ever better in the morning or at any other time. What she didn’t know was what to do about it.
The dreary cold days of the back end of winter dragged by and the problem still nagged at Edna along with a sense of guilt at not having seen earlier that Annie was so unhappy. It seemed to her that if she only knew a little more about this lad she might be able to help.
When Ivy Sutton next came to see her, bringing a dress to be altered, it seemed the ideal opportunity. Edna made all the right noises as she was treated to the usual long monologue about how wonderful all four of the Sutton children were. John had been made a lance corporal in the army, Beryl was her father’s right hand at the factory, little Timmy was earning heaps of praise from his teacher at school and Jeffrey—not a lot was said about Jeffrey, except that his father was looking forward to having him working in the family firm too.
Edna finished the pinning and marking and made tea while Ivy dressed.
‘Do you ever hear anything from that family you had staying at Silver Sands?’ she asked, passing a plate of freshly baked cinnamon buns.
‘Silver Sands? What, the Featherstones?’ Ivy asked, taking a bun and biting greedily into the sweet spicy treat.
Edna nodded. ‘The last ones you had there,’ she said. She didn’t take a cake herself. They were needed for Walter’s tea.
‘Yes, the Featherstones. Such a nice family! So genteel and such nicely brought up children. It was a pleasure to have people like them staying there. Not all of the families we had there were so pleasant, you know. Some of them were very common. Left the place in a terrible state. It makes you wonder how they live at home.’
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