As Emily stepped out of the back door and felt the sun warm on her shoulders, she decided what she was going to do. She made her way to the far end of her vegetable garden, sized up the ripening rows of peas and beans and came to the conclusion it would have to be the Women’s Institute market on Saturday mornings. Probably every Saturday morning the way things were shaping.

Last autumn, when she’d been so surprised at just how welcome her produce had been, she’d thought ahead and ordered more seed and more bundles of young plants for the Spring. Helped by the dry weather in March and long hours of sunshine in April and May, she’d opened up some new drills and everything she’d planted was doing even better than she’d expected. Already, at only the beginning of June, she was producing far more than last year.

The problem was getting it to market.

At the peak of last summer, she’d used the W.I. market to sell what she couldn’t give away, but it meant asking Alex to get up even earlier than usual on a Saturday morning and then being left standing outside the Church Hall surrounded by her sacks and boxes till the caretaker came and let her in. That wouldn’t do if she were going every week. Besides, it wasn’t fair to Alex.

Alex had laughed when she’d raised so much money from the unused strip of land adjoining their garden and she would willingly work for the Red Cross again, but now she knew someone who needed money very badly indeed, a young man who didn’t have a penny to his name, though he did have a girl who loved him, a girl who would work hard to support him.

As she stood fingering the ripening pods of peas, she cast her eye down the long rows and laughed suddenly. The front basket and the back carrier of her bicycle wouldn’t go far to accommodate this lot going down to market in Banbridge.

She was still standing in the sunshine, looking out over the vigorous growth, hoping for sudden inspiration, when she heard a vehicle in the drive. Definitely not Alex. She came hurrying down the path to the yard just in time to see a jeep swing round the house and park opposite the back door.

A jeep arriving to deliver supplies or to collect cakes was no longer an unusual event, but it was unexpected to find Chris Hicks himself driving it. He was in uniform but he’d shed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. Without his cap and military markings, she had never seen him look less like the commander of a large and active camp full of young engineers.

‘Chris, how lovely. What a surprise! How did you escape?’ she asked, as he jumped down and came towards her.

‘Been asked to vamoose,’ he said lightly. ‘Couldn’t think where I might be welcome, except here.’

‘Oh Chris, you’d be welcome anywhere you went,’ she replied easily, though she’d noticed a heaviness about his face when he wasn’t actually smiling. ‘Could you use a cup of coffee?’ she added in her best Vermont accent.

‘And how, Emily, and how.’

She sat him down at the kitchen table while she moved round making the coffee and cutting cake in a practiced routine, for she regularly entertained the young men who delivered her baking materials and collected up the results of her efforts.

‘Come into the conservatory, Chris, it’s not too hot in there yet and there’s a nice smell of geraniums and lemon balm,’ she said, as she completed the tray, carried it through and set it down between the two comfortable chairs. ‘Now tell me about you having to vamoose.’

‘Oh it’s just a routine inspection,’ he said offhandedly. ‘Top brass give the place the once over. Should have happened a couple of times already since we’ve been here, but staff are short.’

‘And they sent you away?’

‘That’s right,’ he nodded, taking his coffee from her. ‘It’s a kind of tradition in the engineers that anyone can say anything during an inspection. Don’t know when I last got a couple of hours away.’

‘You look tired, Chris,’ she said, passing him the cake.

‘All God’s children are tired,’ he replied, a weariness in his tone she had never heard before.

‘Something’s wrong,’ she said gently, looking him full in the face. ‘Look, if its top secret I can certify this conservatory is bug free and I have security clearance. Tell me what it is and it will be forgotten as soon as you get back in the jeep.’

What he said next took her completely by surprise.

‘It’s my little girl. She’s forgotten me.’

He looked so utterly dejected, she wished she could put her arms round him and comfort him, but she wasn’t sure how he’d feel about that and didn’t want to embarrass him.

‘Oh Chris, what makes you think that?’

‘Carrie says so. She’s tried, I know she has, but little Tilly is four now and she was only just two when I went away.’

‘Can you send her presents?’

‘Shure. Carrie buys them and wraps them and says: Look what your Daddy sent you, and she just doesn’t connect. All she has is photographs. And she notices the funny stamps on the letters.’

‘Has she started school?’

‘Not till the Fall. September, I mean,’ he corrected himself, with a ghost of a smile.

Emily paused and looked around her. Her eye caught Johann’s little bird which she’d put under a miniature rosebush on the shelf next to where Chris was sitting. She reckoned she’d see it oftener there than if it were in the sitting-room or the bedroom.

‘Come on, Chris, have some more cake,’ she said, encouragingly. ‘I’ve got the answer, I know I have. I’m just waiting for it to be sent up from wherever its lurking. Don’t you ever have to wait for answers?’

‘Shure. Sometimes you think they’ll never come.’

‘But if you’ve got the right problem, it helps, doesn’t it? So often we just worry, we don’t say This is the problem. Now how do we solve the problem?’

‘So what’s my problem, Emily?’ he said, looking a little more like himself, as he munched his cake.

‘Well, apart from being homesick and missing your wife and family you have a little girl who has nothing to associate with you … except funny stamps …’

She broke off and beamed at him.

‘I think it’s just starting to come up. I have an idea. Now, how about another cup of coffee. These cups are a bit small for coffee American style.’

‘Now, I know she can’t read,’ she went on, as she refilled his cup, ‘but why don’t you start writing her letters. Just short ones, in big letters. Can you draw?’

‘Well, I suppose so …’

‘Stick figures, faces, pussycats?’

He nodded.

‘The important thing is that they are addressed to her. Miss Tilly Hicks. And she’ll have to open them herself,’ she explained. ‘Carrie can read the words, but there must be something Tilly can grasp by herself. Have you ever pressed flowers?’

‘No, Emily, I think I can assure you that is a skill I do not possess,’ he said, with a small glint of laughter in his eye.

‘Well, it’s easy and I’ll show you how,’ she said quickly. ‘But just imagine when she opens the letter from Daddy and some rose petals fall on the floor, or a spray of lemon balm that still smells of lemon, all the way across the Atlantic,’ she went on, waving to the plants on the shelf beside him. ‘I know the post is good, Chris. I have an old school friend lives in Texas and when she writes, it only takes four days, and she says mine are the same …’

She broke off, delighted to see a broad smile on his face. He looked a different person, younger, easier and happier.

‘Emily Hamilton, you are one remarkable lady,’ he said slowly. ‘You’d make a good general if you weren’t a lady, but I’m glad you are and I’m grateful,’ he continued soberly. ‘Now, how do I press flowers? Between finger and thumb or with a mallet?’

Thursday, 10th June, 1943

My dear Cathy,

I was so delighted to get your letter and I do apologise for not replying immediately.

I had a quiet morning in the conservatory last Friday, but first Chris Hicks arrived and we talked for a long time about his family and mine and then, just after he’d gone, Daisy, arrived gasping that Mary had fallen and couldn’t get up. She’d been off school with a bad cold and had run up the hill to tell me.

I’m afraid she’s sprained her ankle rather badly and is only just able to hobble around, so I’ve been going down the hill each morning to help with the jobs she simply can’t manage. Typically, just when I’m busy there, the vegetables are shooting up, there are pounds of peas and beans to pick and because its bone dry and not a sign of rain, I’m having to water. I love watering, as you know, especially in the cool of the evening, but I seem to end every day ready to fall asleep in my chair, when yet once again I had thought I would spend the evening writing to you.

So, my dear, let me begin in case anything else should happen to prevent me getting this letter to you at your new address by the weekend.

What wonderful news! Da and I were so delighted and relieved to hear that you’d found a real flat with your own front door. There is no doubt having a room and sharing kitchen and bathroom is very problematic, though of course, you didn’t have any choice whatever.

I was particularly delighted that it is an old house divided into floors and that you are at the very top. I know it’s a nuisance when you’ve shopping to carry all the way up, or rubbish to bring down to the bins, but I got the feeling that you and Brian were glad to be private again and to have that view over those old gardens with real trees.

I know you’ll want to go back to your work with the WVS, indeed, I know it is now required that you work, as you have no children, but do see if you can get some time in which to settle in. Even in a furnished flat, you can make things nicer, especially as you are so good with a needle, but it does take time.

I am enclosing a small gift which I hope will buy something to brighten or freshen the flat. Da says my garden is just growing money and I must admit it is nice to feel I can send you some. I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know I’m opening an account for Jane and Johann. You and Brian had a whole year’s separation before you decided you couldn’t wait any longer, but Jane may have much longer to wait than that and, unlike you and Brian, she can save very little from a nurse’s salary.

Yes, Johnny is well. His letters are very short, but mercifully they have been more frequent lately after some dreadfully long gaps. I now really understand that saying: NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS. While there is no letter from his Commanding Officer or the M.O.D. we must be grateful that he is alive and well, even if we don’t hear from him.

The postmark on this recent one was obliterated, as one expects, but the fragment of stamp poking out from the Censors marks looked slightly exotic, certainly not Europe. Both Da and Chris Hicks say that somewhere in the Mediterranean is most likely. After the Allied successes in North Africa they both agree it is only a matter of time before there is a landing on the European coast, perhaps Greece or Italy. So he may be moving again in the near future.

There has been nothing from Lizzie. Jane and I did talk about her when she was last home and she said she thought Lizzie had another stripe. I’m afraid I’ve got mixed up and can’t work out how many that is now. Do please tell me in your next letter. I’m glad you are still in touch and hope to see her when she comes to London. It is sad that she hasn’t written to us, but sometimes family can seem a burden, even when they don’t mean to be. Give her our love.

Da is as busy as ever, but mercifully there are no ‘extra’ problems, if you know what I mean. A certain person we cannot name has escaped over the border, but has been interned by the Garda and we think the ‘mole’ is a young man you knew from school days. Very large and very strong, but not very bright.

Goodness, do you remember one of your girlfriends once wrote in your autograph book:

When you marry Jimmy and have twins 
Don’t come to me for safety pins!

I’m afraid he was a bit of a joke at school, but it was never unkind, at least to his face.

Now, my dear Cathy, this letter is getting out of hand. Looking at that last sentence I think I am wandering, so I will stop and either catch the bread man or walk down the hill to post this myself.

Da sends his love with mine and we wish you and Brian joy of your new home. Take care of each other,

Lots of love,

Ma.

Emily was watering in the vegetable garden when Alex arrived home that evening a little earlier than usual.

‘Don’t let me get in the way of the good work,’ he said smiling wearily.

‘I’d nearly finished,’ she said, placing the hose carefully in the trench alongside the beans. ‘If I leave it on for another ten minutes or so it’ll do the job for me,’ she explained, as she came up and gave him a kiss.

‘Wasting water?’ he said sharply.

She burst out laughing.

‘If there’s one thing we don’t have to worry about on this island it’s having enough water,’ she retorted, shaking her head. ‘Have you forgotten what last autumn was like? I’m surprised the Silent Valley didn’t overflow.’

‘I like teasing you,’ he said quietly, as they stepped into the kitchen.

‘What news from Bann Valley Mills,’ she asked, as he flopped down on a kitchen chair while she lit the oven.

‘Had a brief word with your friend Daisy Elliot,’ he replied with a grin. ‘Said to send you her best and hoped you were well.’

‘Oh that’s nice of her. How is she?’ she asked, as she stepped into the larder, took up the casserole she’d made in the morning and put it in the oven.

‘Pleased with the plan the pair of you hatched out between you,’ he replied matter-of-factly.

‘Hmmm,’ she muttered, straightening up, ‘But is it working?’

‘She thinks so. Jimmy wasn’t happy about giving up the sweeping and tidying, but then he discovered he could tidy the stores to his heart’s content, as the saying is. He does have a remarkable memory, so it doesn’t actually matter all that much that he can barely read. Head Storeman says he’s getting on grand, can do the work of two men when it comes to lifting or carrying, and he remembers everything he’s ever laid a hand upon.’

‘And I presume you have no classified parts in the store rooms?’

‘Not a thing. He could list every spare stenter hook or shuttle and no one would be a bit the wiser.’

‘Oh Alex, that is good news. What about money? Does he earn a wee bit more?’

‘No, not for that job. We couldn’t bend the rules on that, but we found a way round, or rather Daisy did. She suggested we give him a small weekly gratuity for being on twenty-four hour standby as a First Aider.’

‘And how’s he managing that?’

‘Very well, I’m told. He’s still very slow when he bandages, but he’s good at it. And he’s so pleased with himself. That’s the nicest part.’

‘Oh that’s lovely, Alex. Isn’t it nice to have good news? I told Cathy that your man Patrick Pearse Doherty had been interned, so that’s the end of his bomb making career,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Oh Alex,’ she went on instantly, ‘don’t look like that. I’m not an idiot. I didn’t mention his name to her in a letter …’

She broke off, looked at him carefully.

‘Are you teasing me again?’

‘Yes,’ he said, smiling. ‘Shall I go and turn off the Silent Valley while you serve up?’

‘And what news from the Home front?’ he asked, as they finished their meal and took their coffee into the sitting-room.

‘I finally managed to write to Cathy and I had a visitor. He sends his greetings and says he thinks he’ll see us for dinner every two months now and not every three.’

‘Chris? How did he get away?’

‘That’s what I asked him too, given he can never come and have a meal with us. He says it’s a kind of inspection. He rather suspects that he’s about to be asked to take more lads and train them faster.’

‘Makes sense. But hard on Chris. It’s fairly concentrated training as it is, but then there was a time when pilots were being turned out in two weeks.’

‘Was there? But surely Johnny was nearly three months at Greencastle.’

‘Possibly that was due to lack of staff and aircraft,’ he responded. ‘As far as I remember, they weren’t building fighters over here at that time. Shorts were on Sunderlands and planes for Coastal Command, so they’d have to get planes for training from across the water. But over there during the Battle of Britain, training just got shorter and shorter.’

‘And the losses in training got higher, like poor Ritchie.’

He nodded and said nothing.

‘Chris had a problem with his little girl,’ she began, when she had collected herself and could be sure her voice was steady.

She told him about their efforts on behalf of Tilly.

‘He’s gone off with some red rose petals and he’s promised to show me his sketches when we go up to meet the next new team. And then he solved a problem for me,’ she laughed, having just remembered.

‘And what was your problem?’

‘Surplus production and inadequate transport,’ she replied crisply.

‘And how did he solve that without misappropriating scarce resources?’

She laughed.

‘The one thing I hadn’t thought of was how much a camp eats,’ she replied, shaking her head. ‘They have stewards looking for fresh food all the time, so they can take everything I can grow. They’ll come and collect it when it suits me and if I need pickers, he’ll send the most homesick boys he has and expect me to cheer them up.’

‘And he’s going to pay …?’

‘Yes, of course. We did argue a bit, because he offered me far more than the W.I. but I said no, the W.I. was the going rate. So we agreed I was to have a small bonus in coffee. I think our supply is now guaranteed. Aren’t we lucky?’

‘We are indeed,’ was Alex’s heart-felt response. ‘Long may it continue, as the saying is.’

Throughout the long weeks of June and into July, it seemed as if everything that could go well, did go well. To begin with, Alex had to work even longer hours while the machinery cannibalised from the mill in Manchester was re-installed in the most elderly and worn of the Bann Valley machines, but the results of his effort were instantaneous and tremendously encouraging. Production rose immediately, stoppages were much less frequent and everybody in the workforce seemed happier.

As Robert Anderson said to him one morning, ‘Sure if ye go home worn out and frustrated, you don’t get much value from a bit of leisure, but life’s easier for everyone when we’re not worryin’ about breakdowns and failin’ our quota all the time. An’ this weather’s great, whether you want to dig your allotment, or try for a fish down at Corbet Lough, or just sit doin’ nothin’. It would lift your spirits.’

As the fine June weather continued, it did indeed lift spirits and pale, tired faces began to look less pale and strained. The open spaces round the mills, the lakeside and the river walks, were full of work people in the meal breaks, sitting in the sun or chatting to friends or feeding the swans. The dances laid on by local social committees were so crowded, and the summer evenings so fine, the dancers spilt out into the street pursued by the sound of Glenn Miller’s big band from wireless or gramophone.

Emily didn’t spend much time doing nothing, but she made sure she didn’t overdo it in the garden and that she had sitting down time every day. She used the space to write letters to friends and family, who hadn’t written to her for a while, and she read devotedly, sitting under a tree in the flower garden, or in the conservatory when the day clouded over.

The social events arranged for Chris’s boys went well, the picnics now moving to the beaches or the lakeside. Emily and her helpers were delighted when some of the young Americans, always so willing to help them fetch and carry, came and asked them soberly if their regulation-issue book of helpful information had misinformed them about the rainfall in Ireland. Where was all this rain they’d been warned about?

One of the happiest outcomes of Emily’s letter writing was a sudden and unexpected response from her elder sister, Catherine, in Enniskillen. Catherine had never been a great letter writer, but knowing of Emily and Alex’s friendship with Hugh Sinton, now an aeronautical engineer who regularly visited Fermanagh to work at Castle Archdale, she’d kept in touch by sending Emily the local paper, the Impartial Reporter from time to time. Now, in response to Emily’s missive, she actually took up her pen to comment on life in an Ulster county in which, according to the newspaper itself, every fifth person was American.

21 June 1943

My dear Emily,

I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed the newspapers I’ve sent. It was a miserable substitute for writing to you but I can now confess that, after the girls all got married and I retired from teaching, I became very depressed. The war didn’t help, until suddenly, quite recently, I shook myself up and volunteered to serve in a canteen.

Quite what our mother would have made of me doing such a menial task, I hate to think, but it opened my eyes to the well of need all around me and now, like everyone else, I have too much to do and too little time to do it.

I did appreciate your long letter. I won’t attempt to ‘reply’ to it now, but I will share with you some of my observations. I’ve been feeling rather like an anthropologist stepping out into an unknown culture. In fact, dare I confess, I’ve been collecting up some material towards writing a book. I’ve always wanted to write and at least it’s something you can do in your old age should your legs give up on you.

What inspired me to begin with was a young American quoting the old saying which he’d only just heard:

‘In summer, Lough Erne is in Fermanagh 
In winter, Fermanagh is in Lough Erne.’

That set me thinking about where in time Fermanagh was to be placed. What do you make of this?

‘If I were given £500 I would not put my foot inside a picture house. I consider them filthy places.’

This was said by one of our local worthies addressing the Boys Brigade. He then went on and told the boys he got up at 5.a. m. every morning and spent two hours talking to God, and again ten minutes before his dinner.

Do you realise, Emily, that in one local cinema only married couples are permitted to sit together. Otherwise, the boys have to sit on one side and girls on the other?

However, to set against this straight-laced view I must tell you that smuggling is a popular pastime. The lists of goods harboured (a new word for me) are quite fascinating. Recently at Lisnaskea it amounted to 5 dozen cycle freewheels, 25 dozen tubes rubber solution, 9 dozen brake blocks and 9 dozen cycle repair kits.

People harbour the most extraordinary things. One woman had hundredweights of turnip and mangold seed. When he fined her, the Resident Magistrate commented that she had enough to plant all of Fermanagh!

But last week produced an even more extraordinary haul: Sarah Ann Maguire has harboured 12 cwts 7 stone and 2lbs of rice, also 1,125 lbs of horse nails, 5cwt of boot rivets and tingles and 210 lbs of toe plates.

This time the prosecutor said there were enough nails to shoe 3,000 horses and there were only 200 in the sub-district!

Now that I’ve confessed to you what I’ve been up to, I promise I will send the newspaper every week, so that you can follow these activities for yourself and I will then try to write letters as thoughtful and interesting as yours.

Meantime you will be pleased with the item on page 4 about the greatest convoy battle of the war. Not only did 95% get through, but there is a new weapon being used against the U-boats. Of course, they don’t give details, but I suspect this is another Ulster contribution to the war effort, and perhaps we shall hear further good news in due course.

Now it is time for me to don my green overall. Sometimes I feel like Mrs Mop, but that’s better than feeling like Mona Lot.

Thank you again for writing,

My love to you and Alex,

Catherine.

Emily was delighted by her sister’s letter and by the prospect of having the Impartial Reporter every week. She had always found local papers a fascinating source of information, often throwing quite new light on the important events reported by the BBC. What she was not expecting was such a rapid clarification of the hint Catherine had dropped regarding the biggest convoy battle of the war and the possibility that there was a local connection.

Letters from Sarah Hadleigh were rare. Either she was out of the country with her diplomat husband, Simon, or she was immersed in some project of her own, almost certainly connected with the well-being of working women.

Her letter was short and bore the signs of haste.