Our Yanks

by Margaret Mayhew

  ‘I’ve gone wrong somewhere, Sam, but I’m blessed if I can make it out. I’ve got too many stitches.’

  He set the tray on the side table. ‘What’s it meant to be?’

  ‘A pullover. The WVS are sending comfort parcels to every man from the village who’s away serving in the Forces.’ She held up the knitting which dangled lumpily and lopsidedly from the needles. He felt sorry for the soldier who might have to wear it. Freda was no good with her hands. No good at knitting or sewing and hopeless in the bakehouse. She had tried when they were first married, but everything she’d touched had turned to disaster. Cakes never rose or they burned, pastry turned to lead, even simple rock cakes were more rocks than cakes. But she was good with the customers and popular in the village, which was all useful for business. He was proud of the bakery and of being the fourth generation of Barnets to run it. The family had made its mark in the village, he reckoned; earned a respectable place. He was proud to serve on the Parochial Church Council, to be churchwarden, to read the lesson at Sunday matins, to serve as a school governor, to be seen to count for something in the community.

  Freda had come from the next village, the daughter of a carter who ferried goods in a horsedrawn covered wagon. He’d aimed his sights higher when he’d been looking for a wife, but the minute he’d set eyes on her he’d been bowled over. She’d had beautiful long, nut-brown hair in those days and a slim figure with a tiny waist. The hair was cut short now and mostly grey and having Roger and Sally had put paid to the waist, but she was still a fine-looking woman. Sally took after her in looks, though she had gone and dyed her hair blond which he thought was not only a shame but unseemly. He’d been furiously angry about it, but powerless to stop her. She knew her own mind, did Sally, and he had a hard job keeping her in order. She was good with the customers, though, as well as at making the cakes: quick as anything with the serving and the money and all smiles. Too much so with some of the men, for his liking. As soon as she’d left school she’d started in the bakehouse, but he didn’t want her staying there for ever. He’d other things in mind for his only daughter. A respectable marriage to somebody suitable. He’d had his eye on one young man in the village who was away at the Front at present, but it might turn out to be someone from Stamford or Peterborough. Someone from a decent, prosperous family of some standing, like his own. The Barnets had come a long way since his great-grandfather had rolled up his shirtsleeves and plunged his arms into the flour.

  He poured the tea. ‘Where’s Sally?’

  ‘She’s gone out. Round to see Doris.’

  ‘She spends too much time with that girl. I’d sooner she kept different sort of company.’

  ‘What’s wrong with Doris?’

  ‘She’s in service,’ he said, a shade uncomfortably, knowing that so had Freda’s mother been as a girl.

  ‘Other jobs are hard to find in these parts and she’s too young to join up. Anyway, she’s more like a daily help, so far as I can see. Doesn’t have to live in and skivvy all hours of the day and night, like my mother had to. It’s different these days.’

  He didn’t want to hear about it and wished Freda would keep quiet about her mother. She’d probably told all and sundry in the village. ‘Well, Sally’ll have to stop going out in the evening once the Americans get here. We can’t have her doing that any longer.’

  ‘You won’t stop her, Sam. She’s not a child.’

  ‘She’s only fifteen. That’s too young to be out alone.’

  ‘I used to go all over the place. No harm in it.’

  He wanted to say, but didn’t, that she’d gone all over the place a sight too much, in his opinion. Left to her own devices, so far as he could tell. Freda’s mother had died when she was ten, leaving six children under twelve and a husband who drank more than a drop too much and was off carting more than he was ever home. He put Freda’s tea and cake on the table beside her and straightened the antimacassar on the back of his armchair before he sat down. ‘All well and good in those days, but things have changed. We can’t trust these Americans.’

  ‘We don’t know that, Sam. Give them a chance.’

  ‘Not where Sally’s concerned. I’m not having some Yank trying it on with her.’

  ‘Bound to, aren’t they? She’s a pretty girl. It’s nature’s way.’

  He said fiercely, ‘I’ll soon see about that. I’ll tell her she’s not to have anything to do with them. Not to speak a word to them.’

  Freda smiled. ‘You’ll have to stop her serving in the bakehouse, then. They’ll be down here in the village buying things and she’ll have to talk to them, won’t she? I can’t see our Sally keeping silent when a handsome young American comes in the door. Of course she won’t. I wouldn’t either, not at her age.’

  ‘I’m not talking about her serving cakes and such. She’s not to have anything to do with them other than that. Nothing whatever. And I’ll tell her so straight.’

  ‘You do that, Sam, if it makes you feel better.’

  ‘I’ve half a mind to ban them coming in the bakehouse.’

  ‘Well, that wouldn’t be much good for business, would it? They’ll have money to burn, I dare say. Think of that. Calm down now, Sam, and drink up your tea before it gets cold.’

  As he drank his eyes went to the latest letter from Roger, propped against the clock on the mantle and the sight of it comforted and soothed him. Never a moment’s worry over the boy – not like with his sister. They’d be making him an officer soon, no question. A lad like that. He’d done well at Dunkirk as a corporal, bringing more than thirty men safely back across Belgium and France to the beaches when all higher rankers had been killed; they’d made him up to sergeant for it. Next it’d be Second Lieutenant Barnet. A medal perhaps, before the war was over. He’d come home and, in the course of time, he’d take over the bakery and settle down sensibly. That was the plan. He was a good boy, Roger. The fifth generation of Barnets, to be followed, with any luck, by the sixth. He didn’t ever allow himself to think that Roger might not survive the war. ‘What I’d like to know,’ he said, ‘is how long the Americans are going to be over here.’ Bloody Yanks he might have called them, but he never swore in front of Freda.

  ‘Till they win the war for us, I suppose.’

  ‘Them! Win the war!’ His teacup rattled with indignation. ‘What’ve we been doing for the past three years, then, I’d like to know?’

  She knitted two plains and two purls. ‘Not losing it.’

  Erika Beauchamp went into the Manor through the tradesmen’s entrance round the side. She passed by the kitchen and stuck her head round the door to let the cook know she was back. Her mother-in-law was in the drawing room, seated in her chair, sherry glass in hand.

  ‘You’ve been a long time, Erika.’

  ‘It dragged on a bit.’

  ‘Those meetings always do. Geoffrey always found them extremely tedious.’

  She poured herself a sherry. ‘I dare say Alex will think the same when he’s grown-up and it’s his turn. Did he go off to bed all right?’

  ‘Half an hour ago. He didn’t want to, of course, but I was very firm. The child’s getting out of hand, in my opinion. Going to the village school can’t be doing him any good.’

  ‘It’s not doing him any harm and I’m not sending him away to boarding school now. We’ve been through all that, Miriam.’

  ‘Richard would have wanted him to go to his old prep school.’

  ‘And I don’t. Not yet, anyway.’

  ‘It can be very selfish to hang onto one’s children.’

  ‘I’m not hanging onto Alex. I simply don’t agree with sending small boys away so young.’

  ‘Richard went at seven. He was perfectly happy. And they’ve evacuated the school to Wales, you know. Alexander would be safe there.’

  ‘He’s safe enough here.’

  ‘Not with all these aerodromes everywhere. The Germans could come over and drop bombs on them.’

  ‘I doubt if they’d
aim any at the village.’

  ‘You can’t be sure.’ Miriam sipped at her sherry. ‘He may not get into Eton, if you’re not careful. Not without proper teaching. Had you thought of that?’

  ‘They do teach them properly at the school here. It’s a very high standard. Eton might not be right for him, in any case.’

  ‘Beauchamps have always gone there.’

  ‘And Alex probably will, too. We’ll have to see.’

  ‘He should be with his own kind, Erika, especially having no brothers or sisters. It’s not fair on him, you know. Oil and water don’t mix. It was bad enough having those dreadful evacuee children foisted on us.’

  ‘They weren’t dreadful.’

  ‘Their habits and language were appalling.’

  ‘They’d just never had a chance to learn anything different. And Alex enjoys it at the village school. He gets on with the others very well.’

  ‘There will always be a gulf.’

  ‘Don’t let’s discuss this any more, Miriam. Let’s just agree to disagree.’ She swallowed half the sherry in one go and, with it, her irritation. The two of them had never seen eye to eye from the beginning. Whatever kind of bride Miriam had had in mind for her only son, the Beauchamp heir, it had certainly not been an exiled Hungarian musician’s daughter. When Richard had first brought her to the Manor, Miriam had listened to the story of their meeting in the manner of Oscar Wilde’s imperious Lady Bracknell. ‘On Waterloo Station? How extraordinary!’ Her eyebrows had continued to rise as Erika explained how they had bumped into each other when they were running for separate trains, and they had risen even further when Miriam, with more probing Lady Bracknell questions, had unearthed a Hungarian father who played the violin. She had obviously pictured some swarthy gypsy sawing away wildly in cafés and had only been partly mollified to learn that he was actually a soloist at concert halls. Musicians of any kind or ability were not socially acceptable. The fact that Erika had gone to a very acceptable boarding school for young English ladies had helped matters a little, but Richard’s mother had not been able to conceal her disappointment when her son had announced their engagement on another visit a few weeks later.

  Erika and her mother-in-law had sparred constantly from the start – a long-running skirmish that had escalated into a pitched battle by the time Richard had inherited both the Manor and the title on his father’s death. Within five more months he had been sent to France with the British Expeditionary Force; within four more he had been killed. Title and Manor now belonged to his son but the last thing Erika had wanted was to go and live where her mother-in-law was still solidly in residence. She had stayed on in the London flat with Alex, all her energy devoted to caring for him, her bitter grieving for Richard kept for when she was alone at night. Then the Blitz had started and after several nights of heavy bombing and near misses she had packed the suitcases and taken Alex to King’s Thorpe – for the duration of the war, she supposed, however long that was going to be. Forced under the same roof, she and Miriam had cobbled together a kind of truce: the twelfth and the thirteenth baronets’ widows finally united in a fragile armistice for the sake of the fourteenth. The house was very old and very beautiful but it was also freezing cold in winter, far too big and impossible to keep up or run in the way it had been in the pre-war days. No fuel and no army of servants – only Mrs Woods, the cook-general, who was too old to do war work or join up and Doris, a village girl who was too young and came in daily to give some half-hearted help.

  To change the subject she said, ‘There’s going to be a welcome party for the Americans coming to the aerodrome – some of them, anyway. The rector suggested it at the meeting. I offered the Manor.’

  ‘The Manor! Americans! They wouldn’t know how to behave. I couldn’t possibly have them here.’

  What a wicked old snob she was, Erika thought. And it wasn’t for her to say who came to the house; not any longer. ‘I’m sure their commanding officer would know perfectly well how to behave and so would the others. Anyway, you needn’t worry because they’re going to have it in the village hall. Of course Brigadier Mapperton was dead against the whole idea, but then he would be. And Sam Barnet’s convinced they’ll rampage through the village, raping and seducing all the women – Sally in particular.’

  ‘More than likely. That girl asks for trouble with those clothes she wears and her dyed hair – at her age. No wonder her father’s worried. I hope you won’t let Alexander anywhere near any Americans, Erika.’

  ‘Are you afraid he might catch something?’

  ‘He could pick up bad language.’

  ‘Swearing, you mean?’

  ‘I meant Americanisms . . . the dreadful way they talk. I’ve heard it on the wireless. Their accent and all those peculiar words they use. It’s like a foreign language.’

  ‘Very useful for Alex to learn it, then. Perhaps they should teach it in schools.’ Erika finished off her sherry. ‘Mrs Woods said dinner would be ready soon so I’d better go up and say goodnight to him now.’

  She went upstairs to her son’s bedroom in the nursery wing. It had been Richard’s room as a child, too, and very little had been changed. It had the same chipped white-painted furniture, the same bed, the same toy-soldier curtains, the same worn blue rug, the same pictures on the walls with The Light of the World hung above the bedhead, the same books in the glass-fronted bookcase. Richard’s old teddy bear still sat in his place of honour on the window seat. He had liked the idea of keeping it that way for his son and she had agreed. Alex himself didn’t much care one way or the other. He was in his striped pyjamas – jacket unbuttoned – propped on one elbow against the pillows and reading The Just So Stories – one of his father’s books. She sat down on the end of the bed. ‘Time you went to sleep.’

  He looked up at her with Richard’s eyes. ‘Can I finish this story?’

  ‘All right.’ He’d probably go on and finish the rest of the book but what did it matter? It was the holidays. No school to think about in the morning.

  ‘Granny made me go to bed.’

  ‘It was time you did, darling.’

  ‘I can’t sleep when it’s so light still.’

  ‘You can if you try.’

  ‘I do try but it doesn’t work. I don’t like Granny sometimes. She wants me to go away to boarding school, doesn’t she? She keeps saying I ought to.’

  ‘Only because she thinks you’d enjoy it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t. I’d hate it.’

  ‘You might not, later on, when you’re older. But you’re not going away yet, so you needn’t worry. I promise.’

  ‘Granny can’t make me, can she?’

  ‘No, she can’t.’ She hesitated. ‘You are happy at the school here, aren’t you, Alex?’

  ‘It’s not bad. Miss Skinner is jolly strict, but she’s all right. Mr Reynolds is scary, though. He’s always caning people if they do something wrong.’

  ‘How about the other boys? Do you like them?’

  ‘They’re OK. I like Alfie Hazlet – he sits next to me. And his brother Tom’s nice. I like some of the others, too.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask them home?’

  ‘They wouldn’t want to come. It’s too different.’

  ‘Nobody teases you about living at the Manor?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘And you don’t feel left out, or anything?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t think so. I’m not in Dick and Robbie and Seth’s gang, but I wouldn’t want to be.’

  ‘Do you like living here? In this house?’

  ‘It’s OK. It’s a nice house. I liked it in the flat in London, as well. It was good fun with the bombs. Will we go back to London after the war, or stay here?’

  ‘I’m not sure. It depends. The Manor will be yours properly when you’re grown-up, you know.’

  ‘It was Daddy’s before, wasn’t it?’

  ‘And your grandfather’s and your great-grandfather’s and several more greats. The Beauchamps hav
e been here a long time.’

  ‘Will Granny still be living here when I’m grown-up?’

  ‘Perhaps. It’s her only home, you see.’

  He pulled a face. Well, she wouldn’t be able to tell me to go to bed or boss me around then, would she?’

  She smiled and leaned forward to do up the pyjama-jacket buttons before she kissed him goodnight. ‘No, she wouldn’t. I must go down now – dinner will be ready. Just to the end of that story, remember, then you must go to sleep.’ When she looked back from the door he was engrossed in the book once more.

  Two

  Tom Hazlet woke just before dawn when Farmer Dixon’s vicious old cockerel was starting up in the distance. Alfie was lying curled up beside him and he listened to him breathing steadily for a while to make sure he was fast asleep. Very slowly and very carefully Tom slid out of his side of the bed and picked up his clothes from the floor. If Alfie woke he’d want to come too and he’d make a big to-do when he couldn’t so Mum would wake up as well and there’d be another to-do. He tiptoed to the door and then out onto the narrow landing space between the two upstairs rooms where he stopped to listen again. Mum was still asleep but Nell was stirring in her cot and she’d start grizzling soon. He was down the wooden stairs, through the kitchen and out of the back door in a flash and without a sound.

  He pulled on his socks and his shirt and shorts, hitching the braces up over his shoulders, tugged his jersey over his head and laced up his boots. Then he grabbed the old sack he kept at the back of the hen-house before he wriggled through the gap in the hedge into the five-acre field beyond. It was no trouble seeing his way; he could see well, even on a night without a moon, because, to him, it was never truly dark – not once his eyes had adjusted so that he could make out shapes and shadows. Now, with the dawn coming up, it was easy and he moved fast, traversing the corn stubble towards the railway line. He scrambled up the grass embankment, stepped over the dull gleam of metal rails and slithered down the other side to head on in the direction of Hollow Wood in a dip in the land beyond. His bare legs were scratched by the stubble and his boots soaked by the dew.