Besides the farmer and his wife, the other people living in the farmhouse were their daughter, Blodwen, a cowman called Bill and a couple who lived in one of the rooms downstairs and were supposed to do a little work round the farm instead of paying rent, but they were, in fact, too old to be much use for anything beyond collecting a few chicken eggs. As the farmer said to me one day when I was helping him drive the sheep through the sheep-dip to get the maggots out of their wool, ‘They’m getting a bit long in the tooth to be much use to I. Reckon I better get hold of one of them Eye-ties.’
I didn’t know what he meant but my mother explained. ‘An Italian prisoner,’ she said. ‘They’re stuck in the camps and they might as well work for their keep as stay idle.’
This was quite late on in the war and there were several camps for prisoners of war in Wales – German prisoners as well as Italian – but although the farmers said the Germans were good workers, they had to be returned to their camps at the end of each day. The Italians were allowed to stay with the farm families. They were very popular with the farmers’ wives, and when we came home for the summer holidays to find Angelo Benati part of the household, we understood why.
Angelo Benati was nineteen, only a year older than Blodwen. He had big, shy brown eyes and a brown gleam to his skin and was eager to help the farmer’s wife as well as the farmer. He carried water to the house for her, dug the vegetable garden, and mended the punctures in Blodwen’s bicycle tyres. These were things the farmer had never done for his wife or his daughter. The farmer’s wife said to my mother, ‘These Eye-ties, they’re proper gentlemen.’
Angelo would even run to carry water for me if he saw me crossing the yard to the pump. That wasn’t why I fell in love with him, of course, but it helped. He had a lovely smile and he sometimes sang me a song that ended mia cara nina – which means ‘my dear Nina’ – and looked at me so sweetly with his beautiful soft eyes that my legs trembled.
I was jealous of Blodwen, who saw more of him than I did because he ate with the farmer’s family in the farm kitchen by the range fire while we had our meals upstairs in our rented room. I was surprised how carelessly she behaved towards him, ordering him about as if he were a young brother, never looking straight at him or smiling.
Or not when other people were there. Peter and I were in the hayloft above the cow shed one day. There was a trapdoor we used for spying on Bill the cowman when he was milking, because, although Bill loved the cows, he often swore at them with marvellously rude words we had never heard before. (We didn’t dare repeat these words to our mother but we taught them to our baby brother, who did. She was very shocked, of course. She said to us, ‘Wherever could he have heard that dreadful language?’ And, of course, we said we had no idea.)
Bill and the cows were not yet in the milking shed on this particular day. We always tried to get there before Bill did and were sitting quietly in the hayloft, waiting for him, when Blodwen came running into the cow shed beneath us, swishing her flowery cotton skirt and laughing. She ran into one of the stalls and turned round to face Angelo, who had come in behind her. He followed her into the stall and put his arms round her. She stopped laughing. We couldn’t see her face, only the back of Angelo’s dark head as he bent to kiss her.
Up in the hayloft above them, we sat very still. Peter’s cheeks were puffed out and red as he tried to stop himself giggling. I was afraid that when they stopped kissing they would look up and see us through the crack in the boards. But they didn’t move. I thought, Glued together – and wanted to giggle like Peter. I didn’t dare look at him.
Then we heard Bill outside, shouting at the cows as he drove them across the farmyard. (I can’t write what Bill said because the publisher would refuse to print it.) Angelo let go of Blodwen and looked up. Peter and I froze, still. We both knew what he was going to do. The only escape from the cow shed was through a hatch in the ceiling that could be pushed open; if Angelo was quick, he could get up from the stall into the hayloft without Bill seeing him.
Luckily, the hay meadow had been cut and the loft was full. By the time Angelo had jumped on to the side of the stall and thumped the hatch open, Peter and I were buried in hay. It tickled our noses but we pressed our fingers on our upper lip to stop ourselves sneezing and waited for Angelo to escape through the door at the other end of the loft.
He took his time and I thought I would burst. But as the first cow came into the shed I heard Blodwen’s pretty Welsh voice calling out, ‘Will I give you a hand, Bill?’
And he answered, without swearing, for once, ‘There’s a nice girl you are now.’
I heard Angelo let out a long sigh of relief and clatter out of the hayloft.
After that, we kept sharp eyes open. They met whenever they could: slipping out after dark to close up the hen house – Angelo first, Blodwen following a few minutes later; the privy down the bottom of the vegetable garden often provided a useful excuse, as did fetching water. Peter and I watched from the window of our mother’s room and often saw Angelo filling the water can from the pump in the yard and then, when Blodwen came out to shut up the chickens, he would put the can down and follow her into the field.
We were soon not the only people who knew. Our mother said once, speaking half to herself, half to me, ‘I hope her parents are keeping an eye on her. Although he seems a nice young man, he’s a foreigner, after all.’
But our mother was just as ‘soppy’ about Angelo as Peter said I was. One day when he had carried a big can of water up to her room he showed her a photograph of his mother and father and little sister, that I knew – because he had shown it to me several times – he always carried with him. His parents looked nice, but his sister was the prettiest little girl I had ever seen: big dark eyes like Angelo’s, dark hair curling round her face and dimples either side of her plump mouth. ‘She’s the one should be called Angel,’ my mother said, seeming to put Angelo down, which was her way when she was feeling a bit sentimental, but I saw there was a gleam in her eyes. After Angelo had gone she blew her nose and said, ‘Can’t be helped, of course – there’s a war on – but it’s hard for any boy to be so far from his family.’
We knew he had letters from them, because sometimes he would tell us about something his mother or father had told him that his little sister had said or done and his eyes would have a special sparkly look about them: a happy look that was also sad, close to tears. But when the last letter came – the dreadful letter – Peter and I were not there.
We were in South Wales at school; it was the last week of term and we were counting the days to the holidays. It was a long journey to the farm – two trains with a long wait in between – and then a local bus from the last station to the end of our valley. Our mother had written to tell us that Angelo would meet us at the bus stop with the pony and trap. But when we got off the bus no one was there.
Our suitcases were heavy and got heavier as we trudged down the lane. It wasn’t until we reached the white wooden footbridge over the brook that we saw our mother hurrying towards us, our baby brother trotting beside her. She waved, but she didn’t look happy to see us. Peter said, ‘You said Angelo would meet us; my case weighs a ton.’
‘Sorry, darlings,’ she said, a bit breathlessly. ‘I thought he was going, but then …’ She stopped, and sighed – the kind of impatient sigh she often gave when things were too hard to explain. She took Peter’s case and said to him, quite sharply, ‘Help your sister with her case now. You’re a big, strong boy.’
She set off, up the slope from the brook to the turn in the lane where we got the first view of the farm. We usually stopped there, to enjoy the first coming-home feeling, but for once she didn’t wait for us but strode on. I shouted after her, ‘Mum, what’s the matter? What’s happened?’
She stopped then. She said, ‘Bad news; I don’t want to tell you.’
‘Dad’s ship?’ Peter said, and I felt my heart jump. Ships were sunk in the Atlantic every day …
She shook h
er head. ‘No, not your father. Sorry, I should have told you at once.’
She put Peter’s suitcase down and faced us. ‘It’s Angelo. He’s had a letter; they brought it from the camp.’ She drew a deep breath. She said, ‘His mother and father, his little sister. All dead. Bombed. They dropped bombs on the town. An air raid. Our bombers.’
She was crying now, tears running down her cheeks; she flicked at them with the back of her hand. ‘How d’you suppose he feels? We’ve murdered his family …’
Our little brother was crying too, not because he understood but because his mother was crying. She put Peter’s case down and picked up the baby. She cuddled him and said, ‘Hush now, it’s all right.’ And then, to Peter and me, ‘Come on now, get going; no point in hanging about.’
The farmer was in the yard. He raised his hand when he saw us, but he didn’t smile. Nor did the farmer’s wife when she came to the door. She said, ‘Best come through the kitchen; not so far to carry those cases.’ And she took mine from me and carried it through the kitchen and up the stairs and dumped it outside my mother’s room. I said thank you, of course, but she didn’t look at me.
Nor did Angelo. I went looking for him; I didn’t know what I was going to say but I thought it would come to me when I saw him. It didn’t. I found him when I went to the privy. He was doing something in the vegetable garden – digging up potatoes or earthing them; my eyes were too suddenly too misty to see. I said, ‘Angelo …’ and he turned his face towards me. Only for a second but that was long enough. He looked so dark and sad. Angry, too. Then he turned his back on me.
‘He’s going back to the camp,’ our mother said. ‘Nothing else for it. Well, you can see how he feels now. We’re his enemies. But it’s hard on us too …’
Our mother took us out for a walk. Although she said she wanted to pick wimberries up on the hill because they were nice and ripe at this time of the year, perfect for a pie, I knew it was only to get us out of the way when they came to take Angelo to the camp. But the army truck must have been late arriving. It was only just leaving, turning out of the yard when we came back.
And Blodwen was running after it, her arms stretched out in front of her, weeping. Our mother put down her basket of berries. She went to Blodwen and put her arms round her while the truck gathered speed up the lane. Blodwen put her head on our mother’s shoulder. She looked at the three of us over Blodwen’s bent head and whispered, ‘Go along indoors now.’
Nothing was the same after that. We did all the things we usually did; we helped with the wheat harvest, we collected the eggs, I helped the farmer with the sheep and cleaned out the pigsty and Peter fetched the cows for Bill at milking time and learned how to harness the old pony into the trap. But, although the weather was beautiful and the sun shone every day, everything seemed dull and grey and droopy. It felt like the saddest thing that had ever happened in the whole of my life, but Blodwen was sadder than anyone. She looked pale and somehow withered – like a tree when a sudden frost catches the young leaves in the spring – and she never smiled at us now. Sometimes she came to see our mother, knocking on the door and then shaking her head if Peter or I answered it and starting back down the stairs. And our mother would say, ‘Nina and Peter, run out now and do something useful – at least get a bit of fresh air in your lungs. Blodwen and I have things to say to each other.’ And once, as she closed the door on us, I heard her say to Blodwen, ‘Try not to fret so, my poor girl, this wretched old war will be over quite soon.’
And it was. We said goodbye to the farmer and his wife and to Bill. We went back to London. We missed the farm and our mother kept saying we would go back for a visit some day, but our father came home from the sea and time passed. Peter and I and even our baby brother grew up, grew older, got married and had children of our own. And when my daughter was thirteen – the same age I had been at the beginning of the war – I went back to the farm.
It was twenty-five years after we had packed up and gone, but the countryside looked as I had remembered it. There were more tractors in the fields, more cars on the road, but the hills were as blue and the pastures as green. I had driven from London to a town called Ludlow to fetch my daughter, who had been staying with friends there. I had not meant to go to the farm, but the car turned towards our valley and into the familiar lane as if it had a mind of its own. The white footbridge was still there across the brook. The car splashed through the ford.
And there was the farm. And, on a tall chestnut horse, clipping down towards the brook, was Angelo Benati!
Of course, it couldn’t be Angelo. This was a young man – no older, I guessed – than Angelo had been all those years ago. He drew his horse to the side of the lane to let us pass and smiled. Angelo’s full, sweet smile. He said, ‘You folks wanting the Benati farm? My dad’s out at the moment but my mother is there.’
And I understood. This wasn’t Angelo. He was – or could be – his son. Angelo had come back after the war to find Blodwen and there had been a happy ending to the sad story, at last …
I smiled at the young man on the horse. I said, ‘I would love to say hello to your mother.’
But as I drove into the yard my heart was in my mouth. Would she know who I was? I recognized her as she came out of the kitchen door with a bucket. She sluiced dirty water over the wall into the chicken field and looked at me as I got out of the car. She was older, of course, but still beautiful: her blonde hair in gleaming loops, blue eyes bright and shining. She smiled and, as I walked towards her, the smile broadened and became a happy laugh.
Blodwen said, ‘Hello, Nina. Come to lunch.’
Margaret Mahy
In about 1940 (when I was four), my father was building a wharf in the north of New Zealand and we did live in a tin hut and a caravan. At nine o’clock each night Big Ben would chime out through our hut. This was always dramatic, but it became dramatic in quite a different way when the Japanese came into the Second World War and began edging down towards Australia and New Zealand.
But I will never forget the occasion when I remarked to my mother that Santa Claus would not bring any Christmas presents to the German girls and boys, and she pointed out to me that they were not villains or ‘baddies’ but ordinary people as we were, trying to live ordinary lives, and thinking that Germany was a heroic country just as we thought well of Britain (and ourselves, of course). I remember taking this new information on board and somehow feeling myself altering as I thought about it – well, I think back then I felt the world alter, but it amounts to the same thing. So you see, there is quite a lot in this story that is autobiographical.
THE QUESTION MARK
Toby Beckett, arms spread out on either side of him, veered from the boys’ playground and bore down on the girls, making the sound of an aeroplane (‘Yeeeeerooowwm!’) and then that sort of sniggering sound (‘E! heh! heh! heh! heh! heh!’) that was supposed to be the sound of a machine-gun. And then he shouted, ‘Germans! You’re Germans! And I’m going to explode you.’
Elizabeth dropped her French knitting, leaped to her feet and held out her arms too.
‘You’re the German,’ she shouted. ‘I’m a Spitfire and I’m going to shoot you down.’
She and Toby circled around one another, making machine-gun snickers and wild explosion noises. It was an exciting game but, as they fired at one another, Elizabeth swung over into the boys’ part of the playground. Miss Dalley, the stern teacher who taught the little ones, came marching down on them – a whole army in herself.
‘Here comes the Dalley dolly!’ muttered Elizabeth to Toby.
‘Elizabeth! That’s the boys’ playground,’ Miss Dalley was shouting. ‘You know you’re not supposed to be over there. Get back again.’
‘Why are boys allowed to have all the adventures?’ Elizabeth mumbled. ‘I want to have adventures too.’
Elizabeth had enjoyed being a Spitfire. She felt bored at the thought of sitting down with the nearest group of girls – Sally, Christine and Joan
and that lot – who were all excited about French knitting. Long coloured tails of knitted wool squirmed down through the hollow centres of the cotton reels they were using. Elizabeth picked up her own cotton reel once more, but, as usual, she was clumsy when it came to looping the stitches over the little nails in the top of the cotton reel. She would rather be holding out her arms, fighting the enemy, driving the Germans away from Britain, out of France and back towards their own country where they belonged. She would play adventure games.
‘Hey, Doddy!’ shouted Toby, hovering on the boys’ side of that invisible line that separated them from the girls. ‘Hey, Doddy! Why isn’t your dad overseas like my dad? Is he scared of the Spitfires?’
Elizabeth leaped to her feet again. ‘He’s flat-out busy,’ she shouted back, whipping the scarlet tail of French knitting at him. ‘Someone has to do the building and stuff down here while everyone else is having fun flying around up there.’
‘Your dad’s scared!’ Toby yelled. He made a squeaky, clucking sound that was supposed to remind anyone listening of a chicken. ‘Scared!’
‘Don’t take any notice of him,’ said Sally Allister. ‘He just wants us to take notice of him.’
Elizabeth sat down again, suddenly glad to be among the girls. But when she looked sideways at them, she saw that Joan and Christine had strange smirking expressions on their faces. Sally seemed to have noticed this too.
War Stories Page 6