Tears stung her eyes and she could barely see the lane on the opposite side of the crossroads. From the moment she’d seen Spencer she’d known it would be bad, but she’d hoped she could rise above the stigma.
Spencer woke as she jiggled the pram through the kitchen door. Resolve to protect him flooded through her as she gently lifted him and laid him in the crook of the arm. She carried him to the small chest of drawers she and Cliff had brought down from the box room and placed under the window. The folded towel on top kept the baby warm as she unpinned the wet nappy and replaced it with a fresh one from the drawer. Thank God for Rose; she’d never have managed with just the few nappies Lynette had sent.
‘Now, little one,’ she said, ‘time for your feed.’
She laid him back in the pram while she made up the milk. The tin was looking depleted; she’d have to go to the clinic for more. Don’t let me run into Ephraim again, she thought. He’d probably spread the news. There was nothing he and Isabella liked more than being able to spread gossip, the more malicious, the better.
As she fed Spencer in the warmth beside the range, he clutched at her finger holding the bottle. His hand was no bigger than a cat’s paw. She felt a surge of love; this was Cliff’s brother, not just a brown baby or Lynette’s by-blow. She was responsible for a family: two young boys who depended entirely on her. She wasn’t going to let them down.
Cliff looked nervously around the kitchen after closing the back door with uncharacteristic care. Poor lad, he must be worried about her.
‘Good game?’
‘Yes,’ he said, with a relieved smile, as he padded over to the pram. His toe was poking through his left sock.
More darning, May thought, her hands in a mixing bowl.
Cliff held out a finger and beamed down at this brother. ‘Hello, Spence. You know I’m back, don’t you?’
May dribbled water into the fat and flour mixture. At last Cliff had something of his own. A blood relative who was here and who could respond to love he was desperate to give.
‘Some boys from school came out to play footie. I scored twice,’ he told her, his hand hovering over the bowl as she tipped the ball of dough on to the marble rolling slab.
‘Here you are.’ She nipped off a small piece of pastry. ‘The rest’s for the pie. Will you draw the curtains, please? We can do without Mr Potts looking in at us tonight.’
Cliff dragged the jacquard curtains across the window. ‘Why didn’t Old Potty—’ he looked at May, who raised her eyebrows. ‘Mr Potts. Why didn’t he and Mrs Potts get an evacuee like everyone else?’
May brought the rolling pin to a stop. Why didn’t they? There had been some resentment about how they got away with it early on, but that had been forgotten in the general chaos of billeting, schooling and coping with the emotional turmoil of dozens of uprooted children. She shook her head. ‘I don’t know, Cliff. I really don’t know.’
He shrugged and headed up to his room.
She slid the pie into the oven and went into the scullery to collect potatoes. The dingy room was only warm when they lit the copper on washday, or when they heated water to use the tin bath in front of the range. She detested the smelly paraffin heater they lit when they washed out there, night and morning, and in winter they spent as little time there as possible.
She opened the hessian sack, which Cliff complained made the scullery smell like the farm’s spud clamp, and took out a couple of potatoes.
Tom had avoided her since their spat on Christmas Eve. If she was honest, they’d avoided each other.
Even though the land girls wore trousers, it was childish of her to wear them just because he disapproved. There was little he could do about the girls, little he could insist on for her really, but she’d always tried to respect him. Not only was he her employer, he was also her father-in-law.
She rubbed the potato skins with her thumbs, and clumps of soil fell into the pail she kept for the compost heap. The cream enamel bowl clanged as she dropped in the potatoes and ran water on them from the heavy brass tap that sat a foot above the sink.
With the bowl on the kitchen draining board, she began to peel and cut up the potatoes. What was she going to do about Tom? She couldn’t afford to lose her job, and she knew he couldn’t afford to lose her – he always said the hens went off lay when she wasn’t around.
But how was she going to manage caring for Spencer when Cliff went back to school? He was in the newly separated top class now, and the day was an hour longer than the elementary school. She couldn’t take Spencer out on cold dark evenings to shut up the hens, and if she waited until Cliff got back it would be too dark to find them. The fox wouldn’t hesitate to pounce if he discovered chickens out after dark.
She tipped the potatoes into a pan and added a scrape of dripping.
The new pullets wouldn’t be arriving for a few months, so there wasn’t too much mucking out and feeding to be done. The remaining birds roamed the farmyard, topping up their meagre rations with whatever they could find. The search for the few eggs that might be laid didn’t take her long – she knew their hiding places as well as the hens.
She put the tin in the oven before checking on the baby. Sound asleep. She stacked the cooking utensils in the kitchen sink, added soap and poured on hot water from the kettle.
She’d have to walk to work with the pram, but the barn would be warm and dry. The girls were often in and out, and most of the time she was in earshot herself. She could manage if Tom agreed to let the land girls shut up the hens at night until the evenings got lighter and the new birds arrived. All she had to do was persuade him.
‘Morning, May. Foggy again.’
‘It’s so thick, I could hardly see where I was going,’ she said.
Sally, the senior land girl, met May in the doorway of the barn. She was leading Blossom. May rubbed the mare’s nose when she snuffled at her bike basket, knowing it often held carrot or apple peelings for the horses.
‘Not today, old girl. Sorry,’ May said. ‘What is it this morning, Sally? Muck carting?’
Sally was wearing a green land army sweater and brown jodhpurs, and all that showed of her blonde hair was a stray curl by her ear. The rest was hidden under a tartan turban. She pulled the horse away from May. ‘Yes, muck carting, worse luck. It’s good ’n ripe, so my feet’ll keep warm. Cliff not helping today?’
‘No, he’s busy,’ May called, as Blossom’s massive hindquarters disappeared around the side of the cart shed. ‘Babysitting,’ she added silently.
Tom hadn’t appeared by the time she finished work. She’d have to look for him. Most likely he’d be with Sally and Blossom. She scanned around when she got outside the farmyard but fog blanketed the fields. The muffling silence made her feel isolated from the rest of the world as she walked along the rutted track.
At an open gateway, the metal gate long gone for salvage, she followed the cart tracks into the field. Was that the sound of voices? She trudged over the broken ground, from which flax had been pulled earlier in the year. Once the muck was spread, the field would be ploughed. What would Tom be planting here this season? Potatoes? More flax? She was distanced from such decisions nowadays. Seth had always discussed his plans for the farm and seemed to value her ideas. Tom kept his own counsel.
Manure. An unmistakable smell. It hit her before she discerned the figures forking the steaming muck as Blossom patiently plodded along. She could make out Sally on top of the cart. Two other land girls were spreading the muck with pitchforks as Sally heaved it down. Tom was walking at Blossom’s head. At least he wouldn’t be able to escape.
She said hello to the girls. One of them offered her a fork to join them, but she laughed and made her way up to Tom. Over the creaking harness and the squelch of the wheels, the girls wouldn’t be able to hear what they said.
‘Hello, Tom.’
‘Morning, gel.’
‘Did you have a good Christmas?’
‘Nice enough.’
He wasn’t going to make this easy. ‘I wanted to clear the air after Christmas Eve,’ she said.
He patted Blossom’s neck and made a show of adjusting her noseband. May waited, stepping out alongside him, matching her stride to his and echoing the rhythm of Blossom’s shaggy hooves.
‘Reckon you got enough on your plate at the minute,’ he said, finally.
Was that an apology, or a forerunner to giving her the sack?
‘I can manage, with Cliff’s help, but once he goes back to school I won’t be able to do the afternoons. I can’t bring the baby out in the cold. He’ll be fine in the mornings in the barn, if you agree. I’d get the work done and, until the lighter evenings, you’d just need the girls to shut in the hens at night.’ She turned to face him.
Ignoring her, Tom looked over his shoulder and called to Sally, ‘Hold up, gel.’ He circled Blossom away.
The girls stepped aside, rubbing their backs and taking a breather, as the horse swung the cart round and faced the top of the field. May waited on the headland. Tom was proving who was boss and she wouldn’t rise to his bait.
Sally called, ‘We’re nearly empty. Shall I go up for another load?’
‘Chuck that off, all of you. We’ll go up for dinner an’ re-load.’ Tom said. The two girls joined Sally on the cart and, between them, they forked the remaining manure into a heap at the edge of the field.
‘You’d better get up,’ Tom said to May, clambering on to the seat and taking up the reins.
She jumped up and sat next to him in silence as the girls chattered behind them. Was this the end of her time on the farm? What would she do? The munitions factory would close as soon as the war was over. Those that worked there would all be looking for work alongside the men coming out from the Forces. She stared into the fog.
When they reached the farmyard, Sally went to fetch Blossom’s nosebag and the girls headed into the barn for their own food.
Tom led Blossom to the water trough. As the mare drew a long draught, he said, ‘D’you reckon you’ll be set up avore them pullets come?’
She tried to keep the relief out of her voice. ‘As long as the weather isn’t too bad, yes. I’ll be able to bring the baby back with me in the afternoons.’
‘My hens mussen’ suffer, mind.’
‘They won’t. Thank you, Tom.’ She touched his arm.
‘You’d better get off for your dinner,’ he said, pulling up Blossom’s head and turning her to where Sally had the nosebag. ‘Let me know avore the lad goes back to school.’
May collected her bike from the barn, keeping the smile off her face until she was out in the lane.