Put Out the Fires

by Maureen Lee

  “That’s all right. I’m used to getting up early in the RAF.”

  Sheila looked astonished when Sean walked into the living room carrying his uniform jacket and with his sleeves rolled up. He threw himself into a chair and muttered, “Phew!”

  “I wasn’t expecting you, luv!” she cried. “Where the hell have you been, anyroad?” His blue shirt was damp and his coal-black hair was plastered to his head.

  “I’ve been helping Alice Scully with the washing.”

  “You’ve what!” She’d never known him wash so much as a handkerchief when he was home.

  He leaned forward, eyes blazing. “You know, Sheil, it’s not a bit fair. In fact, I think I’ll have a word with me Dad about it. She gets twopence for a sheet, and three farthings for a bolster case. Have you seen her? There’s nowt to her. You could knock her over with a feather if you’d a mind.”

  Sheila stared uneasily at her brother. This was a Sean she’d never seen before, and she felt more than a little alarmed at the fervour in his voice, the angry expression on his normally placid features. “She seems a nice girl,”

  Sheila said, adding, she wasn’t sure why, “but you know her dad’s dead and her mam’s got cancer. I don’t think the poor woman’s long for this world.”

  “Alice said she was ill.” Sean hadn’t the faintest idea what cancer was.

  “And Alice is a cripple.”

  Sean shrugged. “What’s that got to do with things?”

  “Their place in Miller’s Bridge is nearly ready to go back to. It’s nowt but a tenement and they’re dead mean, those places. There’s no parlour and no boxroom. Lord knows where they all slept without a boxroom.”

  “I don’t know why you’re telling me this.” Sean shook his head irritably. “Y’know, the iron weighs a ton. It took me all me time to lift it. Yet Alice irons for hours on end.

  You should see her arms, Sheil. They’re no bigger than this.” He made a circle with his thumb and first finger.

  Sheila ignored him. “As for Alice,” she went on convinced in her heart she was wasting her time, but hoping there was still an opportunity to put her little brother off, “those kids are a real credit to her, but there’s no way she’ll leave them till they’re old enough to fend for themselves.

  Anyone who takes on Alice takes on the entire family at the same time.”

  “They’re nice kids,” said Sean, very grown up. “Ever so well behaved.” He couldn’t understand what his sister was going on about and decided it was time to change the subject. “Is there any grub, Sheil? I’m starving.”

  “Would you like some sausage and mash?” The sausages were for tomorrow’s tea, but she’d go without herself and just have a bit of fried potato.

  “That would be the gear,” Sean said.

  As she passed him on her way into the back kitchen, Sheila clasped her brother’s face fiercely in both hands and kissed him on the forehead. “What’s that for?” he asked, surprised.

  “That’s for nothing.” Sheila brushed a tear from her eye as she left the room. “After you’ve finished eating, you can put your feet up and listen to the wireless. Our Eileen lent me hers before she went away.”

  “I can’t,” said Sean. “I want to go home and get to bed early. I promised to help Alice carry the washing along to Merton Road tomorrer morning.”

  He was lost, Sheila realised with a pang. All of them had high hopes for Sean, but although he didn’t know it yet, he’d fallen for a little crippled girl who would shortly be an orphan and had five younger brothers and sisters to care for. A few months ago, he’d been a lad without a single care in the world. Now he was in the RAF, and, if Alice Scully would have him, apparently willing to take upon himself the liability of a ready-made family.

  After Sean had gone, Sheila got out a writing pad and began a letter to her sister. “Prepare yourself for a shock, Sis,” she wrote. “I think our Sean’s in love . . . ”

  Chapter 15

  The countryside was beginning to turn the palest shade of green. The black bushes, the black trees, all were covered with tiny buds which seemed to get greener and fuller by the day. Grass sprouted in the dank smelly ditches, and the shoots of wild flowers skirted the hedgerows which were also starting to burst into life, not just with the first flush of pink and white blossom; freshly built birds’ nests were already cradled in their topmost branches and the rustle of tiny animals came from between the tight, impenetrable roots. The long, flat Norfolk roads had dried in the lukewarm sun, and seemingly endless rows of vegetables thrust through the now soft soil of the neatly furrowed fields.

  Spring had arrived!

  The birds sang gaily, a welcome dawn chorus, as Eileen Costello and Peggy Wilson cycled to work through this remarkable and heartlifting reawakening. War would never prevent nature from treading its inevitable course.

  The birds were still singing when they rode home, and it was always difficult, no matter how tired they felt, not to join in and sing with them.

  It was Friday, always a special day, because the weekend stretched ahead and weekends were always enjoyable. On Friday nights, even though everyone at the hostel felt particularly weary after five whole days of hard, unremitting work, they all went to a pub and drank cheap cider, which was all they could afford on their twelve and six a week, and got slightly drunk and sang even more. They’d already been banned from one pub for rowdy behaviour.

  “Are you seeing Phil tomorrow?” Eileen asked as they rode side by side. Peggy was madly in love for the third time.

  “I’m not sure. Some of the girls are going to a dance in Norwich. I thought I might go there, rather than the camp.”

  Everyone from the hostel went dancing on a Saturday, usually to the nearby RAF camp, and Eileen went with them rather than stay in by herself. For some reason none of them could quite understand, the land girls were looked upon with particular favour by the servicemen and were always the first to be asked to dance, much to the chagrin of the local girls, who eyed them enviously all night. It was awfully difficult, for Eileen and a few other girls who had husbands or regular boyfriends, to avoid being taken home, where a goodnight kiss and a request for another date was almost inevitable. She hadn’t the slightest intention of becoming involved with another man. Nick was expected as soon as he could get a forty-eight-hour weekend pass. “You must only come on a weekend,” she wrote. “It’s useless during the week. I’m out at work twelve hours a day and fit for nothing by the time I’ve cycled home. Anyroad, the warden locks the door at ten o’clock, so we’d only have a couple of hours together.”

  “I thought you really liked Phil,” she said to Peggy. “The other day you said you couldn’t wait to see him again.” As far as she could remember, this was “it”!

  “I do like him, more than like him, I suppose. But you know that first chap I went out with, the one called Hugh from Broadstairs?”

  “I remember. He seemed nice.”

  “He was,” Peggy said briefly. “He’s also dead! His plane crashlanded somewhere in France and the entire crew were killed.”

  Eileen’s bicycle veered wildly. “Oh, no!”

  “So,” Peggy said flatly, “I’ve decided the best thing to do is not get involved. From now on, I’m never going out with the same chap twice.”

  “Unfortunately, life doesn’t always work out like that.

  Some feller might turn up and you won’t be able to help yourself. You’ll be in love before you know it.”

  Peggy laughed. “It’s ironic, isn’t it? I’ve got chaps falling over themselves to go out with me, which is something I’ve only dreamt of before, and I’m terrified of falling in love in case they get killed.”

  “Perhaps you should only go out with the horrible ones!”

  They arrived at the farm, where Edna was already at work in the front garden. Since the weather had improved, she seemed to be there all day, digging and weeding and pruning the plants already there and planting new ones. She didn’t look up
when they alighted from their bikes and began to push through the heavy five barred gate, but then Edna never acknowledged them.

  There was something strange about her today, Eileen thought. As she knelt, her back to them, her broad shoulders were heaving.

  “Are you all right, Edna?” Eileen called, convinced the woman was crying, but as expected, there was no reply.

  She made her way into the cowshed; milking was always her first job of the day—and her favourite. Ted deliberately left it for her to do. The cows were almost ready to calve.

  She hadn’t realised they were pregnant when she first came, and couldn’t wait to see the babies which were due very shortly.

  “Good morning, Norma.” She rubbed the soft moist nose. “There’s some fine fresh grass outside for you today.”

  Ted arrived the minute she’d finished, to take the churn out to the gate for the Ministry to collect later. “Is Edna all right?” Eileen enquired. “She looked dead upset when we arrived. I’m sure she was crying.”

  “She’ll get over it,” Ted said briefly.

  “Get over what?” Eileen pressed.

  He looked slightly impatient as he replied, “I had to get rid of them dratted kittens. If we kept every kitten that had been born in the house, there’d be bloody thousands by now.”

  “Oh, Ted, they were really pretty!” She immediately thought of Snowy. The six kittens had been born in February, three tortoiseshell, a ginger, and the twins, as Eileen referred to them, two with identical black and white patches. Now six weeks old, they were delightful, and Eileen and Peggy had wasted far too much time playing with them in the farmyard. “What did you do with them?”

  “I drownded them. She wouldn’t let me do it when they were first born. She always lets herself get fond of them, then there’s hell to play.”

  “Couldn’t you have given them away?”

  “Who wants a kitten round here?” Ted said disdainfully.

  “There’s kittens being born and drownded almost every day.”

  “Poor Edna!”

  “She’ll get over it,” Ted said again. “Now, it’s about time those cows went out to pasture.”

  Eileen’s heart went out to the poor unhappy woman who didn’t appear to have a single friend in the whole world. In fact, the episode so upset her—she kept thinking of the kittens being thrust under water and struggling for their lives—that, unusually for her, she felt quite sick and brought her breakfast up when she and Peggy were on their way to finish clearing the ditches of dead leaves. If left, they’d start to smell and attract rats when the summer heat arrived.

  Later in the morning, Peggy said suddenly, “I think I might see Phil tomorrow night, after all.”

  “What brought about the change of heart?”

  Peggy shrugged. “I don’t know, really. I’m sure he liked me as much as I liked him, and it seems really selfish to let him down just in case he’s killed. How does that poem go—‘tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’

  “I don’t know, luv. I’ve never heard it before, but I suppose it’s good advice when you think about it.”

  The following afternoon, Laura Kinnear drove Eileen home from her Saturday stint at the WVS. She’d not exactly joined, the Land Army was more than enough to keep her busy, but once a week she helped with some activity or other. The day had been spent sorting through waste paper and cardboard and tying it into neat bundles.

  Eileen’s hands were sore with pulling the coarse string, but they were so often sore she scarcely noticed.

  “Are you feeling better now?” Laura asked. “You looked frightful when I picked you up this morning.”

  “I’m fine,” Eileen said cheerfully. “Like I said, I’d just brought me breakfast up. It must be the beetroot. We get given beetroot with darn near everything. I won’t eat it anymore.”

  The car stopped at a crossroads and Laura waited for a tractor to go by. Eileen recognised they were in the tiny village where she’d bought the postcard for her dad when she first came. The passenger window was wide open and she could hear shrill screams coming from a cottage nearby. Neat and well tended, it was set well back from the road and half a dozen children were playing in the long front garden. A tyre on a rope was suspended from a tree and they were fighting for possession. A tall buxom woman with a mass of luxuriant blonde hair and an equally buxom baby on one arm came to the front door and shouted at them to keep quiet.

  “I always think she looks like Mother Nature,” Laura Kinnear murmured, “or Mother Earth.”

  Two more children, smaller than the others, came running out of the front door and joined the struggle for the tyre. The woman gave up shouting and threw back her head and laughed. Even though they were fifty feet or more away, Eileen could see her teeth were an almost startling white. She was outstanding in her way, beautifully vivid and alive.

  “Who is she?”

  “That’s Violet Warren, Ted’s woman.”

  “Ted!” exclaimed Eileen, startled. “Our Ted, you mean Ted off the farm?”

  “That’s right, Ted off the farm.”

  “What about the children?”

  “They’re Ted’s, ten altogether. The eldest, Tommy, joined the Army recently.”

  Eileen gasped, nonplussed. “But what about Edna?”

  “This all happened before Conor bought the farm,”

  Laura explained, “but apparently when Ted and Edna first married, she had as many miscarriages as Violet has since had children. I think she took one baby full-term, but it died after a few hours.”

  “Jaysus! Poor Edna! So Ted just upped and got himself another woman?”

  Laura nodded. “That was twenty years ago. He spends more of his free time with Violet than he does with his wife. Rumour has it they keep hoping Edna will leave so they can move into the farmhouse.”

  “Can’t Conor do anything about it?” Eileen said heatedly.

  “Give Ted the sack, for instance, and take on another manager?”

  “What would happen to Edna then?” asked Laura, shrugging. “At least she’s got a home. Anyway, you know Conor, he finds it rather amusing, all part of the rich pageant of life.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “Because it seemed like gossiping. I hate gossipy women. I only told you now because we happened to see Violet. It might help you understand why Edna’s the way she is.”

  “It’s your turn to climb the ladder,” said Peggy.

  “No, it’s not. It’s yours.”

  “Are you positive? I’m sure it was me who went up last time when we were trimming hedges.”

  “It was definitely me,” Eileen assured her. “If I remember right, you had hysterics halfway up and we had to fetch Ted to help you down, so I went up instead. What was it you claimed you had? Verty something.”

  “Vertigo. I’m terrified of heights.”

  They stood either side of the ladder which was propped against the barn. The barn was currently empty, but several tiles had become dislodged from the roof arid had to be put back in place before the building could be used for storage.

  Peggy was close to tears. “I’m prepared to clean the pigsties out with my bare hands if necessary. I’d even have a go at shoeing the horses if Ted asked, and I’ll be midwife to the cows. But going up a ladder, Eileen! Honestly, I don’t think I can do it.”

  Eileen stared at the ladder which she was convinced stretched upwards for miles. I’m not too keen on it meself,” she said dubiously. “This is much bigger than the one we did the hedges with.”

  “Much, much bigger!”

  “Perhaps we should fetch Ted and tell him we can’t do it.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Peggy said eagerly.

  “But then, he’d only rant on about bloody women having to turn to men for the difficult jobs.”

  “What should we do, then?”

  “I suppose I’d better have a go,” Eileen said reluctantly.

  “I’
ll hold it really firmly, I promise.”

  “You better bloody had!” Eileen began to climb the ladder warily and the further she climbed, the more it seemed to sway. “Are you sure you’ve got hold of it?” she called.

  “Don’t look down,” Peggy said sharply. “I’m holding it as tightly as I can.”

  Eileen reached the roof. To her dismay, at least twenty, perhaps thirty, tiles were out of place, several having slid down into the gutter—and she was supposed to crawl around the hazardous slope putting them back! Even getting off the ladder onto the roof seemed dangerous. To her intense horror, her head began to swim.

  “Jaysus!” she muttered.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I feel terrible dizzy. I think I’m goin’ to faint. I’m definitely going to be sick. Oh, Jaysus!”

  “You’re moving the ladder!” Peggy screamed, as Eileen retched into the gutter. “Come on down.”

  But Eileen had her arms around the ladder, holding onto it for dear life, as she struggled to prevent herself from lapsing into unconsciousness.

  “Come on, move this foot.” Eileen felt a hand on the heel of her right boot, tugging until the foot was lowered onto the rung below, then her left boot, her right again. She still kept her arms tightly round the wooden frame and slid downwards as her feet were moved. She had no idea how far down she was, when the dizziness refused to be contained another minute, and her toe slid off the next rung and she fell backwards. It was Peggy who cushioned her fall. Peggy, who, despite her terror of heights, had climbed the hated ladder to help her down.

  But Eileen didn’t discover this until much later. When she came to, she was lying in a strange room and a blurred figure was kneeling beside her bathing her forehead with a damp cloth. She blinked in an effort to clear her head and was astonished when the figure turned out to be Edna.

  They were in the farmhouse, in a room where Eileen had never been before, which looked like a parlour.

  “How do you feel?” Edna asked. She moved away and sat in a chair.

  Eileen didn’t answer straight away as she tried to work out how she felt. “Still a bit dizzy,” she said eventually.