Storm Clouds Over Broombank Page 2

  The sound of the siren was overwhelming coupled with the awesome roar of aircraft overhead which would, Kath was sure, at any moment blast them out of existence. It was the nearest she had come to danger and she was not to know they were Stirlings taking off, rather than German bombers coming in. She flung herself into the trench and landed in a huge crop of nettles. Her shouts of agony brought forth no sympathy from anyone, only laughter and ribald offers to rub her down all over with Calamine.

  The All Clear sounded and nobody took any notice of that, either. She and Bella seemed to be the only two in the entire camp who had shown any concern.

  During an almost sleepless night of itching, despite Bella’s ministrations with the said lotion, and the fear of a bomb being accidentally dropped by the noisy aircraft that seemed to be taking off every five minutes right over their hut, Kath spent the time worrying over how ill prepared she was. She thought of the lectures she hadn’t properly listened to, the drills she’d skipped. Had she missed anything really vital? What could one do to make a good life for oneself in the WAAF and avoid being ridiculed by the Mules of this world?

  Someone gave her a mug of tea sometime before dawn because she happened to be still awake.

  ‘Thanks.’ Kath sipped gratefully at it then set it on the shelf above her bed while she started on yet another letter describing her arrival. It was about then that she fell asleep, to be awakened by something hard smacking her forehead and a trickle of warm liquid running down her face.

  ‘Dear God, I’ve been hit.’

  ‘Where, where?’ Bella was by her side in an instant.

  ‘My face. Oh no, my face. I can feel blood all over it.’

  A torch was brought and shone into her face. A moment’s startled silence then laughter, pure and true, from a whole gaggle of interested girls.

  ‘You’re covered in tea,’ giggled Bella. ‘Decorated by a splendid pattern of tea leaves.’

  ‘It’s the vibration from the returning aircraft. Sometimes nearly shakes this place to bits,’ chuckled Liz Parry. ‘Oh, but the expression on your face! It’s the funniest thing I’ve seen in weeks.’

  It was the final humiliation.

  Kath decided she didn’t much care for being new. It made her feel gauche and uncomfortable and could clearly have disastrous consequences. Nor did she care to be laughed at. Whatever she needed to learn, she would learn it. Fast.

  On their way to the Mess Hall, dreaming of hot tea and bacon butties, they came again upon Waaf Officer Mullin.

  ‘Ah, Ellis and Kendrick, sleep well on your first night, did we?’ Beguiled by the officer’s smile Kath answered quite naturally. ‘Yes, thanks. Bit noisy but could have been worse I suppose.’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear. I must have a word with the pilots and try to get them to turn the engines down. Can’t have them disturbing your beauty sleep.’

  Kath flushed deeply, most unlike herself.

  ‘You weren’t the little Waaf who imagined herself shot with a pot of tea, were you?’ And when the flush deepened, the officer smiled with pure delight. ‘What a prize you are, Ellis. How did we amuse ourselves before you came?’

  Kath ground her teeth together and said nothing. She had learned patience in a hard school, so if this dreadful woman expected, or wanted her to retaliate and humiliate herself further, she’d mistaken her mark.

  Bella was ordered to report to Signals after breakfast. ‘Ellis, you can take yourself off to the drivers’ unit.’

  ‘But I was to be on the switchboard.’

  Mullin looked at Kath as if she were something unpleasant the cat had deposited upon the drawing room carpet. ‘Not questioning the service are you, Airwoman?’

  ‘No, ma’am. It’s only that I understood we could choose our own trades.’

  ‘So you can, as a rule.’ The mild tone was dangerously sweet. ‘It happens that we find ourselves short of drivers at present and you, I see from your form, were one of the fortunate few civilians who could afford a motor. Now isn’t that splendid? How useful you are going to be to us, Ellis.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ Kath saluted and was at once reprimanded. ‘No saluting unless you are wearing a cap.’

  ‘No, ma’am.’ Oh lordy, would she ever get used to this?

  Kath wondered, poignantly, how she could have come to mess up her life so thoroughly. She could be at home now, at Larkrigg Hall, helping her mother do something suitable like holding fund-raising tea parties for the soldiers, or perhaps a little light volunteer work at the local hospital. Except that her mother had disowned her because of her carelessness in daring to bring an unwanted, unsuitable child into the world.

  ‘Have you done your morning chores?’

  ‘Um,’ Kath glanced at Bella despairingly, not knowing quite what chores Mullin referred to. ‘Ma’am?’

  The officer sighed, looking delighted at finding this new recruit wanting yet again. ‘Before you report in, you can sweep out your billet and give the floor a good scrub.’

  ‘What, all of it?’

  Mullin smiled. She’d had this type of girl foisted upon her before. A classy little madam who thought she was easing her social conscience by volunteering, then wasting everyone’s time by asking too many questions and thinking herself above discipline. She probably didn’t know one end of a sweeping brush from the other.

  ‘Yes, Ellis, all of it. Think you can manage that, do you? Concentrates the mind wonderfully, scrubbing, don’t you think?’ Kath bit hard upon her lower lip. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Best get on with it then. A delightful new experience for you to try.’

  ‘Oh, but. . .’

  ‘But?’

  Kath pushed the thought of breakfast regretfully from her mind. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Certainly, ma’am. At once, ma’am,’ cut in Bella smartly.

  The two of them returned bleakly to the Nissen hut. Worse, Mullin followed, and while Bella swept, she watched with obvious pleasure as Kath filled a bucket with hot water and added a good handful of soda crystals.

  ‘More, Ellis. We want the floor clean, don’t we, not a murky mess?’

  Kath added more, a vicious cocktail that would make any fair hand bleed. Except hands like hers, which were hard as leather after the Greenlawns’ laundry.

  She plunged them into the scalding water without a flinch, lifted out the brush and began to scrub. Her arms and shoulders moved with a long practised rhythm, and using a separate, well-wrung out cloth, Kath swiftly and efficiently mopped up the excess water leaving not a streak upon the polished floor.

  It took no more than a moment or two watching this process for Mullin to frown in puzzled surprise. It was all too apparent, to her experienced eye, that Ellis had done this job before. Odd. She would never have thought it.

  ‘Surprised your mama didn’t have a housemaid to do this job for you, Ellis.’

  Kath hid a smile. ‘No, ma’am.’

  Irritated, Mullin snapped her fingers. ‘Jump to it then. Remember Parade is at 8.45. Prompt. And since you are so skilled at the task, you can scrub out Picquet Post as well. And don’t forget the outside lobby. Call me when you’re done then I can check it. Jump to it, Airwoman, jump to it.’

  ‘Great,’ said Bella with resignation when the Officer had gone. ‘Next time you’re asked to do something, make a bad job of it, will you? We can kiss goodbye to any breakfast after all this lot.’

  ‘Sorry, I…’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll forgive you. Thousands wouldn’t.’

  Driving was a doddle after that, Kath decided. She was issued with a staff car and instructed to drive one of the Commanders to another station. The mist had lifted and the sun was shining. Liz Parry managed to sneak her out a bacon buttie, which quite perked her up.

  Besides, she was young and filled with optimism at having escaped from Greenlawns, thanks to Meg. A mug of tea would be waiting for her when she got back from this run, which would go down a treat.

  Taking everything into account,
life wasn’t at all bad. Were it not for the awful guilt and loneliness she felt inside at betraying her best friend and abandoning her daughter.

  Chapter Two

  1941

  In a summer with a late spring and an indifferent July, a few days’ sunshine to dry up the land and the fleeces on the sheep were all the farmers had needed to set the clipping off. The early morning mists had lifted like a fair woman’s feather hat to reveal sunshine and beauty beneath. Satisfied the dry spell would continue for the two or three days necessary, the Turners of Ashlea, the Davieses and Meg, had gathered, ready to visit each farm in turn to shear the sheep.

  The sheep had been brought down from the heaf, a jostling throng, growing ever larger as flocks joined on from neighbouring heafs. Meg had counted every one of hers as they passed through her gate, to make sure they were all safe and well.

  ‘Yan, tyan, tethera, methera, pimp,’ she’d chanted, in the traditional way, enjoying the sound of the old celtic words as she’d sat on the gate, marking off each five on a slate in her hand. As she counted, she felt as if they were bombers bringing Charlie safely home from a raid.

  Whatever satisfaction it had given her to see how her flock had grown, near two hundred and fifty now, not for a moment did she underestimate her good fortune. While London had been battered almost daily in recent months, here on the Westmorland hills the sun shone, the sheep bleated and all seemed to be perfectly normal. No blitz for them.

  ‘You’d never think there was a war on, would you?’ said Sally Ann, coming up beside her and uncannily catching her thoughts.

  ‘We realise it when we listen to the drone of bombers in the sky, and hear the vibration deep within the ground as some other poor soul is getting it,’ said Will Davies, not pausing in his labours as he started on the next sheep. Sitting astride his special stool, in a row with the other clippers, he turned the ewe belly up, the head tucked beneath his arm while he cut the fleece, not too close and with no pulling of the flesh which might form ridges, till the wriggling sheep was released, looking oddly naked and highly affronted by the indignity of it all.

  ‘Or when we have to queue an hour and a half for a paltry few ounces of margarine, or barter precious eggs for extra sugar to make jam. I can’t remember the last time I saw an orange or a tin of fruit,’ Sally Ann mourned.

  ‘Trying to get a can of paraffin for the lamp the other day was like asking for gold,’ Meg agreed. ‘I’d love to try that,’ she said, her mind clearly still on the clipping.

  ‘Aye, I dare say you would. The sheep mightn’t be too keen,’ laughed Will, and Meg conceded that although the farmers accepted her as one of their own, shearing was a skilled task. Their confidence in her had not quite reached that level. Watching Will peel the fleece from the neck down each side, then as the sheep was flipped over, off the back like a banana skin, she didn’t wonder at it.

  She stood ready with her stick with the rounded end to dab her mark on the back of the clipped sheep. Rust red for Broombank sheep, so that if one ever wandered too far another farmer could check it, together with the ear mark, in his Shepherd’s Guide and know to which farm it belonged. Come the autumn meet, wanderers could be returned to their rightful owners.

  Sally Ann moved out of the way while Meg deftly brought another ewe to the clipper, who never left his stool. Six or seven minutes for each sheep, though some could manage one in less if it didn’t kick about.

  ‘I heard the other day that Miss Shaw has had a telegram about her nephew.’ All hands paused as eyes, bleak and questioning, were raised to Sally Ann’s flushed face.

  ‘Eeh, no. He was nobbut a lad.’

  ‘Lost at sea. Missing, presumed dead, it said.’

  After a long silent moment while hands were stilled and thoughts turned to that bright-faced boy who a few summers ago might have been chided by these same farmers for some youthful misdemeanour, shears started to clip again, long breaths exhaled. Life moved on.

  A chill ran through Meg and she rubbed her hands together, sore from holding and turning the sheep, and greasy with the lanolin from the wool. Think positive, that was the secret. Charlie said so.

  ‘On Charlie’s last leave he was like a dog with two tails. Talk, talk, talk about his dratted aeroplanes and how he’d been promoted to navigator. I told him that I wished they’d promote him safely home again. Call the whole war off as a terrible mistake.’

  An impossible dream. It was just that she couldn’t bear to think of her young brother in those terrible raids over Germany and France, and prayed each night as she added a few lines to the regular letters she sent him, that he would survive the next, and the next.

  And where was Jack? She hadn’t heard from him in an age. His letters were becoming more and more rare.

  ‘The war will run its course,’ Will said, with a farmer’s natural pragmatism. ‘Nothing you can do will alter that. Work hard and keep faith.’

  ‘I try to,’ Meg agreed. It was easier to do the former than the latter. Charlie was no longer a boy and Tam often told her she worried too much over him.

  But then she too was a different Meg to the young girl of four summers ago. This Meg, the one who had lost the man she loved to her best fried, was tougher, quieter and more thoughtful. If she didn’t laugh or feel ready to give her love quite so recklessly as that other girl had done, then she at least felt more sure of herself, more certain of where she was going. At least now she had control over her own destiny, her own future. She had Broombank and her sheep. She had Effie, Tam, Sally Ann and her family about her. She was happy in her work, doing her bit to produce good food for a war-torn country. This was the nearest she would probably ever get to peace of mind.

  Meg wished that everyone could be so blessed.

  Seeing the suspicion of tears in her eyes, Sally Ann stepped closer. ‘You look tired. I’ll do that for a while.’ She took the marker stick from Meg’s hand. ‘Go and rest. Effie says she’s put the kettle on.’

  Meg eased her back. ‘I won’t say no.’

  ‘I reckon Will wouldn’t mind a break either, would you, Will?’

  ‘I’ll do a few more, then your Dan can take over for a bit.’

  Meg smiled at Sally Ann. ‘You want me to watch the children at the same time?’

  ‘No, you don’t have to worry about them. Hetty has them all in hand. At least as far as they will allow her to. For such small bairns they’re as wick as fleas. They run rings round her sometimes.’

  Will laughed. ‘And doesn’t she just love it?’

  Sally Ann’s gaze drifted lovingly over to the far meadow where her two children sat with the kindly Mrs Davies in the long grass, a small group of curious cows nosing around them. Young Daniel, the baby, was lying on a blanket, kicking at the delicious joy and freedom of having sun on his chubby legs. Nicholas was curbing his more natural, boundless energy to studiously attempt to thread a daisy stem through the slit Hetty had made with her thumb nail, to form a daisy chain. At thirteen months old, he was a sturdy, well-formed little boy, round-faced and bright-eyed, golden hair shining in the sun. Sally Ann loved him so much in that moment, her heart ached.

  Beside him, quieter and far more serious than her companions, Lissa attempted to do the same. Three months older than Nick, yet she copied his every action.

  ‘Sometimes I worry over that child, she’s too quiet by half.’ Sally Ann spoke before she’d thought to guard her words.

  Meg frowned, her eyes resting quietly on Melissa, pretty as a picture in the flower meadow. ‘I hadn’t really thought about it. I just take it for granted that she’s not a chatterbox like your Nick, nor half so naughty. She’s so small and delicate, like a little fairy, and no trouble at all.’

  ‘Perhaps a bit too good, don’t you think?’

  Meg laughed. ‘What would you have me do? Tell her to be noisy and rough?’

  ‘I suppose it does sound a bit silly, but somehow it isn’t quite natural for a child to be so - so obliging, so mature. I’m sure sh
e understands every word I say. She’s far more intelligent than our Nick.’ Sally Ann laughed. ‘Not that that would be difficult.’

  It was a conversation that came to mind that evening as Meg asked Effie to put the child to bed.

  ‘Will you see to her? I can’t spare the time from the shearing,’ she casually remarked, eating a sandwich on the hoof to keep her going. There would be food for all later, though not eaten in the barn as they would have done before the war, with a fiddle and the lamps all burning.

  Instead, all the workers would crowd into the kitchen, everyone having contributed something, due to the difficulties of rationing. Chicken soup thickened with potato flour, stewed apples sweetened with dried figs. But they were lucky here on the farm, having their own butter and eggs. And Ashlea had provided some ham.

  Meg bent down and dropped a quick kiss on the child’s soft curls. ‘Sorry, but Meg is busy tonight.’ A shaft of guilt pierced her heart. How often had she said those words? Too often, perhaps, in recent months.

  Lissa said nothing. She merely wrapped her arms about Meg’s leg for a moment till she had won another kiss, then went, happily enough, Meg was sure of it, with Effie, up to bed.

  She watched a moment longer as the child climbed the stairs on all fours, one step at a time. Deep down Meg knew that she did love her, for all she’d fought against it. How could she not when the child was there, a living presence in their midst, and in her heart. Sometimes it was hard to appreciate that Lissa wasn’t hers at all. In all these long months, more than a year now, there had been no word from Kath. But Meg still remembered that day, in every tiny detail. The appalling sight of what months in that home had done to her once beautiful friend, and the horror she’d felt when she’d realised whose child this was.

  There had been times when Meg had thought the pain would never go away.

  For months afterwards she’d been in a sort of panic, as if she wanted to run from the truth except that there was nowhere to run. Jack had cheated on her, with her best friend. So she’d turned her face away from the child who provided, all too clearly, the evidence of that betrayal. She had seen that Lissa was fed and well cared for, by Effie, and Hetty Davies, while Meg continued to torture her mind with questions. What had she done wrong? Why hadn’t she been enough for him? Hadn’t he loved her? Questions to which there were no answers.