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‘Late, I shouldn’t wonder. A parishioner, you know – the Sacrament.’
‘Ah,’ Tilda nodded. Flixby Farm, it would be. The old man had been badly for months.
‘Go to bed. I’ll wait up,’ Julia offered.
‘Nay, miss, there’s no hurry. Mary’s still out so it’ll be no bother and any road, I promised Miss Clitherow before she went that I’d check the blackout.’
‘Have you heard from her, Tilda?’
‘Only once, to let us know she’d got there – eventually. A terrible journey, by all accounts. Two hours late arriving, and no toilet on the train.’
‘That’s the war for you,’ Julia sighed, wondering if anything would ever be the same again and refusing, stubbornly, even so much as to think about the threat of invasion.
Tom Dwerryhouse sat in the rocker in the darkening kitchen, reluctant to draw the thick blackout curtains, needing to suck on his pipe, sort things out in his mind.
Nothing short of a fiasco, that meeting had been, with no one knowing rightly what to do. The formation of the Local Defence Volunteers it was supposed to be; civilians who were willing to stand and fight if the Germans came. And come they would, Tom frowned, since there seemed nowhere else for them to go except Russia, and they’d signed a pact with Russia not to fight each other.
Strange, when you thought about it – Fascists and Communists, ganging up together. The two didn’t mix, any fool knew that. But happen they’d only agreed the non-aggression pact because each was scared of the other. And long may it remain so. A bit of healthy mistrust was just what Hitler could do with – the need to look over his shoulder at the Russians – wonder if they would stab him in the back.
But Stalin was nowt to do with us. What was more important was getting some kind of order into the Volunteers. There had been all manner of opinions put forward and no one agreeing until in the end the Reverend had suggested he contact the Army in York and ask them to send someone over to talk to the men.
Then the Reverend had been called away to Flixby Farm and that had more or less been that. A right rabble they were – no uniforms, no rifles. Those men who owned shotguns had brought them, but the cowman from Home Farm had arrived with a hay fork over his shoulder, which was all he could muster, and hay forks – shotguns, even – weren’t going to be a lot of use against tanks and trained soldiers. Hitler would pee himself laughing if he knew, and be over on the next tide!
Tom gazed into his tobacco jar, wondering if he could indulge himself with a fill. He had shared his last ounce with Reuben and only the Lord knew when he could get more.
And soon beer would be in short supply, the landlord at the Coach and Horses in Creesby had been heard to prophesy gloomily. On account of sugar being rationed, that was. No option, really, when the breweries had had their sugar cut, an’ all.
But beer was the least of Tom Dwerryhouse’s worries. What really bothered him was all the talk of invasion. People spoke about it in a kind of subdued panic, as if it couldn’t really happen. Not to the British.
But things were bad: the French overrun and British soldiers snatched off Dunkirk beaches reeling with the shock of it. It was all on account of that Maginot Line, Tom considered gravely. Smug, the French had been. No one would ever breach their defences; not this war.
But they hadn’t reckoned with Hitler’s cunning in invading the Low Countries. Never a shot fired in anger, because his armies had just marched round the end of the invincible Maginot Line and had been in Paris before the French could say Jack Robinson. Only Hitler could have thought of pulling a fast one like that and getting away with it. A genius was he, or mad as they come?
Tom reached again for his tobacco. He needed a fill. Things were writhing inside him that only a pipe could soothe. It wasn’t just the invasion and taking care of Alice and Daisy and Polly, if it happened; it was that Local Defence lot in the village. He had left Keeper’s Cottage expecting to join it and be treated with the respect due to an ex-soldier, but all they’d done was witter amongst themselves, tie on their Local Defence Volunteer armbands and agree to meet another night. And there was nothing like an armband for scaring the wits out of a German Panzer Division!
‘That you, love?’ He half turned as the back door opened and shut.
‘It’s me, Dada. Mam not home, yet?’
‘No, lass. She rang up from the village, summat about getting the loan of a tea urn. Be about half an hour, she said.’
‘I’d better see to the blackout, then. Won’t take me long, then I’ll put the kettle on.’
Daisy had expected both her parents to be home; had got herself in the mood to come out with it, straight and to the point. That Mam still wasn’t back had thrown her.
She pulled the curtain over the front door then walked upstairs, drawing the thick black curtains over each window. She should have asked Dada, she brooded, how long ago Mam had phoned. She was getting more and more nervous. If Mam wasn’t soon home, she’d have to blurt her news out to Dada and she didn’t want to do that.
Mind, she was glad they had a telephone at last. They wouldn’t have got one if it hadn’t been for the coming of the Land Army, and them taking over Rowangarth bothy. Aunt Julia had been glad for the land girls to have the place because since the apprentices who lived there had been called up into the militia it had stood empty, and Polly living there alone, rattling round like a pea in a tin can.
The Land Army people had had so many requests from the local farmers for land girls to help out, and Rowangarth bothy would be ideal quarters for a dozen women. A warden would be installed to run the place and a cook, too. Aunt Julia had said they could have it for the duration with pleasure if they would consider Mrs Polly Purvis as warden or cook. Mrs Purvis had given stirling service, Aunt Julia stressed, looking after the garden apprentices, and would be ideally suited to either position.
So Keth’s mother was offered the cooking, and accepted gladly, especially when they’d mentioned how much wages she would be paid, as well as her bed and keep. And the GPO came to put the phone in.
That was when the engineer had asked Dada, Daisy recalled, why he didn’t get a phone at Keeper’s Cottage whilst they were in the area.
‘There’ll be a shortage of telephones before so very much longer, and that’s a fact,’ the GPO man said. ‘Soon you’ll not be able to get one for love nor money. The military’ll have taken the lot!’
Daisy could have hugged Dada when he said yes and now a shiny black telephone stood importantly in the front passage at Keeper’s Cottage.
For the first week, Mam had jumped a foot in the air every time it rang because Aunt Julia was tickled pink that Keeper’s was on the phone at last and rang every morning for a chat. And she, Daisy, so often sat on the bottom step of the stairs, gazing at it, willing it to ring so that when she lifted it and whispered ‘Holdenby 195’, Keth would be on the other end, calling from Kentucky and he’d say –
But Keth couldn’t call and she couldn’t call Keth, not even if she didn’t mind giving up a whole week’s wages just to talk to him for three minutes, because civilians weren’t allowed to ring America now. The under-sea cable was needed for more important things by the Government and the armed forces. Indeed, civilians were having a bad time all round, Daisy brooded. Asked not to travel on public transport unless their journey was really necessary; their food rationed, clothes so expensive in the shops that few could afford them, and no face cream nor powder nor lipstick to be had – even a shortage of razor blades, would you believe? But that was as nothing compared to what was soon