For as long as he could remember, Ratty’s small patch of garden had been home to a dynasty of blackbirds. Close guardians of their territory, year after year different generations would sing from their inherited place in the lilac tree. They left the cherry tree to the chaffinches.
At the end of February, Ratty heard the first evensong from a couple of old males. Their prime over, he knew that all they would afford him was a run-through of melodies from time past, sung only at dusk, and lacking their former vigour. But this was a sign, too, that a member of the new generation would be shortly taking over. Ratty was keen to catch his first sight of the inheritor.
After a lone breakfast – Edith, for the first time in her life, had taken to staying in bed – Ratty pottered into the garden. There on the grass he found the chap he was looking for: a handsome bird, still the dark brown of its mother, its beak also still brown. The ring round its eye was a pale hint of the gold it would become in the next few weeks.
The bird showed no fear of his presence. Ratty stood quite still, studying it for some moments, then pottered off to the end of the garden past the lilac tree. He turned, leaned against the fence, looked back at his cottage. From the branches of the unpruned tree came the first ripples of familiar song: tentative at first, then swelling in confidence, accelerating among scales, showing off. If Ratty had been a man of sentimental disposition he might have thought the bird had followed him, read his thoughts, sung especially for him. As it was, the music which annually renewed optimism that had been frayed by winter merely reminded him spring was here at last: there was much work to be done. And that this time next year life as he knew it at Hallows Farm would be over. He would be finally retired, not semi-retired like the old blackbirds. God knows, then …
Ratty retraced his steps along the path that struggled to keep its identity through neglected grass. Every yard or so he paused, let the blackbird’s song – riotous, rapturous, now – lock him into a present of nothing but pure sound. The past and the future were both places he had no wish to be.
He contemplated the back of his ramshackle cottage, not a thought in his head. The music of the bird excited the old skin of his arms into roughness beneath his sleeves. Then, it appeared. He saw ahead of him a monster. At first, he thought the horrible creature, standing there at his own back door, must be a hallucination. He had slept little of late, what with the lambing. Several times he had found himself confused, not remembering, seeing things that vanished into air. And yet he knew he was awake. The ground was firm beneath his feet. The blackbird went on singing.
The monster had one large glassy eye, oval-shaped, and the rubbery black snout of a giant pig. It stood on its hind legs, front legs folded, staring back at Ratty, no expression in the terrible eye. Then it took a few steps towards him and Ratty saw its skin – a horrible blue – was a familiar blue skirt, and its forelegs were human arms in the wrinkled sleeves of a brown cardigan.
It was Edith in her gas mask.
‘Dear God, Edith!’ Ratty cried.
So great was his relief that he had to lean on his stick to save himself from tumbling. He felt coldness gushing through the precarious joints of his knees. Sweat greased his temples. His hands shook.
‘You gave me a fright, you did. Whatever are you doing in that thing?’
Edith pulled off the mask. Her face was pale, her eyes unsteady. Sprigs of white hair, normally caught back into a bun, allowed light to pink the skin of her skull.
‘There’s lambs in the fields, bombs in the sky,’ she said quietly.
Ratty glanced up, unsteady. Two clouds moved across a stretch of silent grey-blue.
‘There’s never,’ he said.
‘The war’s come here, now, you mark my words.’
‘I’m going down to the farm.’ Ratty shook his head. He didn’t like the look of her.
‘You take a gas mask, Ratty Tyler, or you’ll regret it.’
‘I’ll never take one of those things.’
Ratty shuffled past her, eyes on the ground, heading for the lane. He was aware that Edith shrugged.
‘We’ll all be dead as cowpats, soon,’ she said.
While Ag did not share Edith’s fear of bombs in the local sky, she became increasingly aware of the war in parts of the world far from their own: fighting in Malta, the Philippines, Hitler’s renewed attacks on Russia, the sufferings of the Eighth Army in Egypt. So long and busy were the days, now, that there was little time to keep up with the daily bulletins, and she rarely saw a newspaper. But Ag made a point of trying to listen to the nine o’clock news every night, with the Lawrences. The acceleration of war, even from this comparatively safe corner of Dorset, unnerved her more than it did the others. When she wasn’t thinking of Desmond she found herself almost obsessively imagining battles, destruction, killing, corpses.
In contrast to – and perhaps because of – these dark reflections, this spring seemed of particular significance. Ag watched its slow beginnings. Mrs Lawrence had long ceased to tend the garden: priorities these days were fruit trees and the vegetable patch. But Ag, knowing her employer’s love of flowers, had bought and planted a few dozen bulbs in November. Now they began to appear, much to Mrs Lawrence’s surprise. First, snowdrops. Then the ‘rathe’ primrose (Ag had never been able to discover the meaning of Milton’s arcane word, she admitted to Joe one evening) in the orchard, where one of her tasks was thoroughly to spray every tree with lime sulphur – protection against apple scab. In beds that edged the neglected lawn, a dozen narcissi straggled through the unkempt earth. By March a few scarlet tulips randomly glittered, cold as glass among the weeds. Mrs Lawrence’s delight was touching.
‘So kind of you, Ag,’ she said. ‘The pity of it is we shan’t be here to see how they’ve spread, next year.’
Rewards for Ag’s autumn labours were beginning to be seen in the hedges, too. She and Mr Lawrence observed buds breaking on the carefully woven young hazel shoots. They found a haze of new leaf on the long, neat thorn hedge that protected two sides of Lower Pasture.
‘Beautiful laying, I’m bound to say,’ Mr Lawrence gently boasted as they inspected the new growth. ‘I think we did a good job, Ag. The new owners, whoever they are, will find themselves with a nicely cared-for parcel of land …’
They walked through the woods. Ag had the impression that the farmer’s eyes were scouring every view with particular vigilance, as if storing sights and sounds for the future. He pointed out a blackcap, high in an ash tree, paused to listen to its wild song. On the far side of the wood they came across a gathering of fieldfares, preparing for their journey overseas. On another occasion, inspecting a newly sown field, they heard the croaking voice of a corn bunting. And one fine afternoon, from out of an almost eerie silence, the intense bubbles of a skylark’s song dropped like a waterfall on the ploughed earth.
‘You see it, you hear it, you feel it, year after year,’ said Mr Lawrence, ‘and it always catches you out, spring, the wonder of it. Makes you think: funny kind of God. On the one hand there’s all this; on the other, thousands of armed men out to destroy each other. And now all this talk of an atom bomb, which could be the end. Doesn’t make sense. Look: first woodpecker of the year, cocky bastard.’ He placed a hand on Ag’s arm to stop her moving. He thought how even now, despite the dimming of the tormenting flames, he would not allow himself to touch Stella in the same innocent way. Their eyes followed a brief flash of emerald feathers. ‘Tell you one thing: if we get through this bloody war, if I eventually come to retire – know what I’d like to do? I’d like to write a book about migration. Something that’s always fascinated me: something no one really understands.’
‘I’d like to read it.’ Ag smiled at him.
‘You shall have a copy inscribed to the best hedging apprentice I ever came across. You’ve a real talent for hedging, Ag: there’s not many have that. You’re pretty smart when it comes to birds, too – not just the dry academic I thought you might be. But then, I was wrong about all of you. I admit that. I was against your coming. It was Faith who insisted. She turned out to be right, of course. You can count on Faith, in most things, to be right. To be wiser than anyone else.’
Mr Lawrence’s approbation meant much to Ag. It cheered her for a while. But the underlying melancholy she suffered that spring never entirely left her. Hope that the end of the war might not be too far off began to fade. As did the possibility of Desmond.
While Ag struggled with the feeling of doom within her, Stella tried to understand why – with no prospect of seeing Philip for some time, and scant letters – she felt so content. Pieces of an incomprehensible puzzle kept appearing. There was the day when Prue sprained her wrist and could not drive the tractor: Joe tried to teach her, without much success, to plough a straight furrow. They laughed so hard at her attempts Stella felt weak and giddy, earth and sky spinning about as she leaned up against one of the great mudguards. There was the day Noble had to be taken to the blacksmith. Joe drew a map of how to get there, a simple route of some five or six miles. But then he suddenly changed his mind about Stella’s ability to find the way despite his directions: declared if she was to return before nightfall he would have to accompany her. She rode the horse bareback, Joe cycled beside her. Somehow, it all took the best part of the day. They had spam sandwiches at the local pub while the shoeing took place, returned by a longer route through high-banked lanes, rhythmic sparky noise of the horse’s hoofs making a bass for the breeze. The pieces of the puzzle all contained Joe.
Looking back much later, Stella could never say when it was exactly that the whole picture fell into place. Unlike Joe, she was not struck by blinding revelation. The building of her own certainty formed so quietly, so subtly, that its culmination was no surprise. What she saw before her – when, when exactly? she could not say – she knew had been there for ever, waiting for a cover to be drawn back. She calmly accepted its existence, knowing there was nothing to be done. She knew Joe liked her, had no idea if he felt more than that. They were both committed to other people. It was likely their friendship would come to an end when they left the farm. There was nothing that could be done. Stella’s love for Joe was fated to die before it could ever live. He would never know about it. All she must do was exercise caution, contain her happiness, give no clue as to the heartbreak of her feelings. It was worthless to reflect upon the cruelty of mistiming. In the short months left to her, Stella decided, all she could do would be to imprint every possible moment in her mind, to feed on, sometimes, in the years to come: for it would surely never be like this again. This was so far removed from the old, frivolous, silly notions she had had in the past of being in love, based on nothing more than wishful thinking, that she laughed herself to scorn, felt suddenly old. This was certain love: the kind that spreads, and grows and, given the chance, can survive. Stella believed – when she allowed herself the luxury of thinking about it – that she had been blessed with, a rare feeling, seldom repeated in a single life. To stifle any acknowledgement of this feeling would be the hardest challenge she had ever known. It would be a kind of murder, something she would live to regret always. But there was no alternative.
Stella did her best to contain herself. By the time the bluebells were coming out in the woods, and the cow parsley, she felt herself well under control. She divided her attentions evenly between everyone, was punctilious in her behaviour. No one, she was sure, could have any idea. All the same – and here was the ghost of a new puzzle – her eyes did inadvertently meet Joe’s more than usual. Somehow, they often found themselves working together. Somehow, their paths often crossed. And all the while, to Stella in her confused happiness, the trumpetings of spring were no more than an abstract background of birdsong and new leaf and clear sky. Nothing in nature, this spring, was sharp-edged. Only Joe’s face was clear. She tried to read in it any sign of something beyond close friendship, but failed. Her position was a solitary one, then: her secret the hardest thing she had ever had to bear.
For Prue, spring was a dizzying experience. It was the first year of her life she had witnessed it outside Manchester, and she found it a revelation.
‘No wonder blood rises,’ she observed, skipping about, marvelling at lush new grass and emerald leaf. Indeed, she found the whole process even more captivating than shopping. Several weeks running she chose not to go into the local town on her half-day, but to gather primroses or snowdrops, to stand gazing at a field of ewes with their lambs, until Mr Lawrence accused her of ‘idling’. Stella and Ag became impatient with her constant wonder. After a while she kept it to herself.
Three things, however, disturbed the magic of the season. First, the Government’s ban on embroidered underclothes and nightwear put Prue in a rage: she had been planning to surprise Robert with some Jean Harlow petticoats she’d seen in a magazine. Now, the shop would be banned from selling them. Second, Sly and her piglets were sold to a nearby piggery. Mr Lawrence took the trouble to apologize to Prue, but explained he had had an offer he could not refuse. He had planned for Sly to go anyhow: sooner was less worrying than later. The screaming, as mother and brood were loaded on to the lorry, was terrible – matched only by Prue’s wailings. She was quiet, puffy-eyed, mascara-smudged for the rest of the day, but insisted on being the one to do the final clearing of the sty.
While the matter of the underwear was ridiculous and the departure of Sly sad, these two things caused only a few days of rampant gloom. The third matter was a constant flickering of discomfort that only sprang into clear life when Prue gave herself time to reflect: Robert.
Robert, she was fast coming to realize, was no match for her own rising sap. For almost four months she had enjoyed his company, his love-making, his dry little jokes. She had given up trying to induce warmth into his flesh, and had become used to his chilly limbs and lips. But the fact was there was no spur to continuing the affair for the rest of the year until Prue left. They were useful to each other, liked each other, but had nowhere to go. And no destination, in the curious love map that lived in Prue’s mind, meant that a relationship could not and would not survive very long. She sometimes faced the fact that, beast that she was, the only real, lasting aphrodisiac for her was money: she could only sustain eternal interest if there was money in the lover’s bank.
But she made no indication of her waning interest: pointless, when there was no one to replace Robert. They weren’t thick in ploughed fields, the kind of men she fancied – or indeed any men at all. So for the time being, wistfully wishing there was a new challenge to be found in the mossy banks in the woods, she stuck to the arrangement of going out with Robert three times a week.
Some days after Sly’s departure, and after the kind of low-key night which Prue found hard to forgive in any man, she was feeling more than usually melancholy despite the glorious spring morning. But at lunch, Mrs Lawrence broke some news which, as Prue saw it, was a once-in-a-lifetime remedy for any kind of tragedy. A letter had arrived from Headquarters of the Land Army in London to say that the King and Queen were to give a tea party, in the summer, for a selection of land girls from all over the country. A limited number of invitations was allocated to each county. Mrs Lawrence was required to send one representative. Prue’s incredulous wail cut the reading of the letter short.
‘Buckingham Palace? I don’t believe it …’
‘Obviously the fairest thing would be to draw lots,’ said Mrs Lawrence. Prue’s moment of dazzling anticipation collapsed.
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘that would be the only fair thing.’
There was a moment’s silence. Stella and Ag glanced at each other, looked at Prue’s face, twisted by a mixture of feelings.
‘I don’t know about Stella,’ said Ag, ‘but I’d be happy not to go. I’ve been to London often and I don’t like it. The outside of Buckingham Palace is good enough for me.’
‘Same here,’ agreed Stella, a moment later. She had no desire for a single afternoon away from Joe.
‘So why doesn’t …?’ Ag waved a hand towards Prue. ‘There doesn’t need to be a vote. I think it’s a unanimous decision.’
‘Are you sure?’ Mrs Lawrence looked anxiously from Ag to Stella.
Both girls nodded. Prue let out another, exalted wail. She ran to hug and kiss each one of them in turn, leaving pink lipstick on their cheeks, and showering them with incoherent thanks for being the most generous, kind, and wonderful friends she had ever known.
Prue needed time to herself, of course, to think about the vital matter of what to wear. That afternoon, a half-day, she wandered off to the woods to marvel at the dog violets and cow parsley and stretches of bluebells, and to find inspiration about what colour and material, and who would make it and where … But, for once, she found difficulty in concentrating on the subject of clothes. Her excitement at the prospect of the far-off date at Buckingham Palace had made her more jittery than she would ever admit to the others. She sat down under a tree, struggled between thoughts of pink or, more original, yellow. She jumped up again, began to wander waist-high among the cow parsley, listening to a crowd of birds doing their nut, bursting their lungs. Restlessness increasing, she began to break off stems of cow parsley with the idea of putting a great jug of the stuff on the kitchen table – beating Ag at her own game – to give Mrs Lawrence the surprise of her life. Then, she came upon an intense patch of bluebells: spreading, they were, as far as she could see, a blue that no paint box on earth can contain, a blue that took her breath away. Prue stood still, marvelling. Then it came to her: artificial silk this very colour. Surely, somewhere, she could find it, if it meant searching half Dorset. Thrilled by her idea, she knelt on the ground, began to pluck fast at the flowers, amazed to find that some of the long stalks slipped easily from the ground, a shining purple-green, untouched by the earth they had come from. She would add these to the jug: they’d all think she’d gone potty, but she didn’t care. She’d defy any of them to disagree with bluebell artificial silk …
Some time later, Prue walked back down the path, sheaves of flowers in both arms, their shadows speckling her shirt. A high afternoon sun needled through the trees: Prue was conscious of being warm, of being just right. This spring business, she thought for the hundredth time, was incredible. What she wouldn’t give to have her mum here to see it: brighten the salon up a lot, a jug of bluebells.
At the end of the path she could see the opening between two ash trees, where a gate led to the lane. The opening was a jagged, blazing patch of light. Prue quickened her step, looking forward to sun, unhindered by leaf and branch, on her bare arms.
Then she saw it. Across the patch of light cycled the ghost of Barry.
Prue screamed, and ran.
She did not turn back into the woods, but ran towards the apparition. Made for the gate. In her terror, she knew only that she must reach the lane, get back to the farmhouse. Should the ghost enter the wood, face her there, among the shadows, she would pass out with fear.
She scrambled over the gate, shaking, dropping bluebells on each side. As she turned towards the farm, she saw it again. The ghost was now straddling the bike, black boots firmly on the ground, hands kneading the handlebars, forage cap tilted to one side, just as Barry always wore his. The sun dazzled Prue’s eyes, confusing: but quickly she saw that this was no spectre. She screamed again, clutching at her heart and dropping the rest of the flowers.
‘Lord, I’m sorry if I gave you a fright,’ said the man, grinning. ‘I’m looking for Prudence.’
‘Who are you?’ Prue felt foolish in her breathlessness. ‘I could have sworn it was Barry, come back to haunt me.’
‘I’m his friend, Jamie Morton. I came to say thank you for your letters, and I thought it was time we met. Talked about Barry, you know.’
Prue studied Barry’s friend with curious eyes. By now used to the light, she could see that the likeness was superficial: this Jamie figure was larger, clumsier, with high-coloured cheeks and brown eyes. Only the short blond hair, scarcely visible under the cap, was the same. He had a friendly grin: rather sweet, she thought.
‘Goodness: you didn’t half scare me!’
‘Sorry. Cigarette?’ He took a packet of Players from his pocket. ‘Someone down in the farmyard told me I might find you up here. Big man.’
‘Joe.’
They both inhaled. Smoke, sharp-edged, trailed into the air. Its smell mingled with the scent of bluebells that were strewn at Prue’s feet.
‘Quite a ride, I must say.’
Jamie’s eyes travelled up and down Prue like a blowlamp, appraising. She dabbed at her bow, the red spots, by chance: always Barry’s favourite. She put a hand on one hip, smiled just enough to power the dimples.
‘Want to come up to the farmhouse for a cup of tea, or what? Before you go back. I’m sure Mrs Lawrence wouldn’t mind. Barry sometimes came in.’
Jamie looked at his watch. ‘Thanks, but I mustn’t. I’ll be late if I don’t go now. Took some time finding you.’ The grin again: nice, fat teeth. ‘We could make another time, if you’d like that. I could come another afternoon. Or we could meet in Blandford: cup of tea or a drink.’
Prue narrowed her eyes, made a great show of deep thinking. ‘Personally,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t want to miss a moment of this fine weather in a tea-shop. It’s my first spring in the country: could well be my last. Why don’t we meet right here, this time next week? Two o’clock?’
‘Fine by me.’ Jamie swung a leg over the bike, turned it.
‘I’ll walk back up the road with you,’ said Prue.
‘What about all those flowers you dropped?’
Prue shrugged. The surprise jug for Mrs Lawrence had lost some of its importance. ‘I’ll come back later: don’t want to hold you up.’ Her heart was still beating fast, but no longer from fear.
With the coming of the fine weather, Ag and Stella, too, chose to spend their half-days quietly at the farm, reading, sleeping, walking. With the increase of work – harrowing, sowing, rolling, couching – they had little energy, in their scant time off, for taking the erratic bus to shops of little attraction. Most half-days, now, they chose to go their own ways, each feeling the need for a few hours of solitude in the busy week.
On the afternoon that Jamie had made his ghostly introduction to Prue, Ag made her way to the orchard with a rug and a book. It was her favourite place. Each tree was by now familiar to her, having spent so many hours picking fruit. She had sprayed almost every branch, laid potash round the roots. Now, they were in full blossom, the part of the cycle she had not seen last year. Ag spread the rug on the ground. She lay down. Her back ached badly. Last week, the automatic potato-planter had broken down. For two days, while it was being repaired, they had had to plant by hand. Bent over the furrows for hours on end, placing the potatoes at regular intervals – the view nothing but earth, earth – was the most physically exhausting task any of them had encountered since their arrival. Ag’s back still had not recovered, still felt as if the muscles were pulled taut as Victorian lacing. She lay flat, feeling the relief of solid ground beneath her. The rug smelt musty. Above her was an arcade of blossom, and beyond it the wider arcade of clear blue sky. It would be easy to sleep, she thought, one hand on her books. Perchance to dream. Where was Desmond, now?
Stella, her ears always attuned to Joe’s plans these days, had discovered that he was to drive to a farm some miles away to inspect a tractor which Mr Lawrence wanted to buy. To turn the farm over to arable land fast and as efficiently as possible, more machinery was essential. Stella calculated that Joe would be returning from his inspection at about three o’clock. She would therefore take a short walk – she, too, was suffering from a strained back – ending at Lower Pasture, where the cows were spending their last few days. She would sit on the gate, enjoying the sun. Joe would drive along the lane, see her. Stop, perhaps, for a few inconsequential words about the tractor or the cows. Oh, how devious is love, she thought.
Her wait turned out to be a long one, but Stella did not mind. She sat listening to birds, busy in the thorn hedge. A drowsy bee flew back and forth, indeterminate, as if waiting for some outer force to decide on its next action. The cows, gathered in the far corner of the field not far from the only rick of last year’s hay, were lying down. Unsympathetic creatures, really, thought Stella. She enjoyed milking them, but felt no affection for them. Their sameness was dull. Cows, she thought, could never compare with horses (she was very fond of the surly Noble) or even pigs: Sly’s eccentricity had great charm. No: she wouldn’t miss the cows – only the sight of them, the personification of peace in a green field.
Stella looked at her watch. A Red Admiral flew past her, further confusing the bee. She did not care how long she waited in the warm silence of the afternoon.
Then, from nowhere, came a horrendous scream of machinery: the silence, suddenly split, seemed itself to scream in agony as a hideous black plane scorched across the sky. As Stella fell from the gate, holding her ears, she saw a cluster of small silver incendiary bombs dropping from the plane’s belly. By the time they had hit the ground, the plane was out of sight. Its terrible noise lingered, reverberated in its wake. The grass flattened, cowered.
Stella listened to the blistering noise as the bombs landed. Magnesium flames immediately spurted up, a terrible beauty in their many colours. The rick was on fire. She saw the sleepy cows leap wildly to their feet with one mass shudder, like the shaking out of a black and white rug. Their bellows joined the fading sound of the plane. Tails lifted stiffly in the air, they began to gallop about, panicking.
In the split second that all this happened, only one thought persisted in the numbness of Stella’s mind: she must get the cows out of the field fast. They kept charging back to the rick, higher flames lapping at its base, now, and where one of their number lay, struggling on her side, stiff-legged, bleeding, roaring. There was no time to run for help. Stella had to act now.
As she was about to race across to the gate that led to the next-door clover field, she heard a squeal of wheels, saw the Wolseley rocking from side to side like a mad thing, and pull up with a great jerk. Joe was beside her, assessing the scene in a moment.
‘I’ll ring for the fire engine, be right back,’ he said. ‘Try to get them into the clover. Careful: they’re hysterical.’
He was gone.
Stella, even in the panic of the moment, was pleased to think her idea was the same as Joe’s.
She contemplated running round the edge of the field: in the shadow of the hedge she would be less conspicuous. But no: that would take too long. She set off straight across the field.
Immediately, two of the cows swerved towards her, heads down, ridiculous tails in the air. They followed her, screaming. Stella took a chance: she spun round, facing them, flapping wildly with white-shirted arms, shouting at them. Surprise penetrated their maddened state. They arced away, tipping sideways like clumsy boats in a wind. Stella registered a flash of wide black nostrils, four surprised eyes, before they careered off to join the rest of the herd, still bucking perilously close to the rick.
No cows followed Stella for the rest of her run to the gate. She struggled with it, back muscles an agony of protest, pushed it open: she had no idea whether all this had taken seconds or minutes. By chance, within feet of the gate, she saw a long stick, the kind Joe always broke off for himself when walking the land. She picked it up, turned.
By now she could see the rick was one dense mass of high flame. From it a shimmer of heat radiated among the jumping animals. They appeared to be a mirage of shattered glass, black and white skins flashing with sun and flames. Somewhere very near the flames Stella could see the figure of Ag, stick in hand, calling the cows’ names in a calm voice.
As Stella ran across to join Ag, she saw that Prue had appeared from somewhere, too. And Ratty, hunched and excited, was shouting inaudible instructions from the gate by the lane.
When they reached the cows from their different directions, Stella and Prue slowed to a walk. They could feel on their faces the intense heat from the flames. They could smell the sour smell of the alarmed cows’ excrement: shit-scared, Stella said to herself. They shimmered in each other’s vision.
‘Let’s try to get behind them,’ Ag called. She was scarlet in the face, but firm of voice.
The three girls, backs to the rick, waving their sticks and shouting encouragement, began to urge the cows towards the gate Stella had opened into the clover. They moved behind the animals towards the centre of the field, trying to avert their eyes from the bespattered corpse, black and white pieces fallen apart and gushing blood: Nancy, the old cow who was to have stayed.
Glad of any form of direction, the cows allowed themselves to be herded towards the opening. Every few moments one of them, in renewed panic, would spurt from the crowd, veer back towards the flames, and had to be chased by whoever was nearest.
The process of persuading the frightened but tiring cows towards the gate seemed endless. Ratty, shaking his stick from his safe distance, shouted more feebly. The girls were drenched in sweat, their faces red, hair sticky and flecked with ash. The cows, too, were dark with sweat. Slime ran from their nostrils. Their breath was hot, damp. Their wailing was a pitiful sound that echoed round the field.
At last they were all through the gate. They charged away through the long grass: relief in their antics, now. Their bellows petered out. Quiet returned over the landscape, but for the dull roar of the flaming rick.
‘Christ,’ said Prue, ‘nothing but a bomb could’ve stopped my thoughts in their tracks.’
Ag and Stella were too exhausted, and concerned about the raging fire, to ask what she meant. They walked back slowly towards the rick – useless to hurry. A slight breeze cooled their faces.
Joe reappeared. He and Ratty swung open wide the gate on to the lane, ready for the fire engine. Then Joe hurried towards them.
‘They’ll be too late,’ he said.
The rick was by now a fragile skeleton, pale among the crackling flames breaking off in large lumps that then burned on the ground. The heat was so great they could not stand too near. Ag thought of the autumn bonfire at the end of her first day’s hedging: the crowd of them at ease around the small flames in a cool evening. This fire was so different in its savagery. Stella observed Joe’s impenetrable face. She felt better now he was with them. Prue, now danger to the cows had passed, allowed herself the thought that flame red might be a possible alternative to bluebell blue … Scorning herself for such frivolity, it occurred to her this was the most dreadful, but most exciting, event she had ever witnessed. It would jolt them all out of any complacency about the war not touching their rural lives. Mr Lawrence, his wife not far behind him, was hurrying across to join the fire’s spectators. Each carried pitchforks and rakes.
Joe was right. By the time they heard the pathetic little bell of the fire engine rattling along the lane, the rick was no more than a black smouldering mound. Ratty, still in his position at the gate to the lane, waved in the fire engine with a gesture of great impatience, dignified in its superfluity. The scarlet machine lumbered across the field, bell still ringing. It reminded Stella of fire engines in children’s stories.
There was little the four firemen could do but hose down the scorched black earth with their limited supply of water. Wisps of smoke rose up from the bald patch and there was an acrid, powdery smell.
‘Bastards,’ said Mr Lawrence. ‘Probably returning from bombing somewhere in the west, dropping their stuff on the way home for the hell of it.’
‘Could have been worse,’ said his wife. ‘Could have been the house.’
‘Your mother and I’ll help rake this over: I’d like you to check the cows, Joe.’ Mr Lawrence turned towards the lane. Ratty was still at the gate, still waving his stick. ‘And I’d be grateful if two of you girls would escort Ratty back home. By the looks of things, he needs calming down.’
Ag and Prue immediately hurried towards Ratty. Stella offered to help Joe.
They crossed the field swiftly, in silence, climbed the gate into the clover. Hidden from sight by the thickness of the thorn hedge, Joe grabbed Stella’s hand. With one accord they fell into each other’s arms. Joe’s chin rested on the top of Stella’s head. Her hair smelt of smoke.
‘You all right?’
‘Fine.’
‘I was so terrified that you … all I cared about was your safety …’
Joe pushed Stella slightly back from him so he could see her face. It was as black-streaked as he imagined was his own. They stared at each other with the kind of wonder that comes from acknowledgement, at last, of something long concealed.
‘You must surely have known,’ said Joe. ‘You must surely have had your suspicions … I’ve tried so hard not to let you see. But you seem not to mind?’
Stella shook her head. Away from the heat, the sweat dried, she was suddenly, gloriously cold.
‘That’s good, because I’m going to kiss you, very briefly, very quickly, to show you that I love you, that I’ve been loving you to madness ever since Boxing Night.’
Their kiss was as brief as he promised. From the other side of the hedge they could hear miniature voices, the fire engine roaring its motor.
‘We must check the animals.’
‘Yes.’
‘No time to talk. Don’t let’s try to talk – there’s the whole summer to talk …’
‘… the whole summer to talk.’
Stella heard, from a long way off, her own delirious echo. They parted to walk through the clover grass, sweet-smelling and full of bees. The cows were calm now, but wary-eyed.
‘I see this as a beginning,’ Joe said.
* * *
Edith was waiting for Ratty at her garden gate. Once again she had taken the precaution of putting on her own gas mask, and had brought Ratty’s with her so that he might benefit from its protection on the journey up the garden path.
When she saw he was escorted by two land girls she sniffed, inconveniently steaming up the window of her mask. But it was not the occasion for the full force of her indignation. Rather, here was a good chance to show how right she had been. She took off the mask.
‘What did I tell you, Ratty Tyler? War’s all about us now. Thought the bombs might have got you.’
In truth she had thought no such thing. Terrified by the screech of the plane and the shaking walls of the cottage, she had hurried upstairs and lain under the bed, choked by dust and fluff that had accumulated untouched for years.
‘That they didn’t,’ said Ratty.
He hadn’t enjoyed an afternoon so much for ages. Once the bloody noise of the enemy plane had died down … all the excitement of the fire, the cows leaping about as if the devil himself had got into them, lovely sight of the girls running about waving sticks, then showing the fire engine where to go … No wonder his old ticker was pitter-pattering a bit. But then the holy one and the floozie, bless their hearts, had come and given him an arm up the lane. He had privately leaned harder on the holy one than he had on the floozie, was able to smell her sweet sweat among the smoky smell. And here he was, able to pay back Edith’s horrible fright with a trick of his own: stop her in her tracks, it would, to see him on the arms of two pretty girls. Though, of course, he’d pay for it later. Last pan out of the window again, no doubt, but worth it.
‘Well, we must be going,’ said the holy one, so gentle, all smiles.
‘Take care, Ratty.’ The floozie gave him a kiss on the cheek, bless her heart, must have been reading his thoughts. Ratty had the pleasure of watching his wife’s face contort with disbelief.
‘None of that now,’ was all she managed. ‘Come along, Ratty … your tea’s on.’
A lie, of course, showing off to the girls. His tea was never on. Edith handed him a gas mask.
‘I’m not putting that thing on, not for anyone,’ he chuckled. He winked at the girls, not unnoticed by Edith.
They turned away, waved. Ratty, leaning on his stick, watched till they were out of sight, impervious to his wife’s calling. He chuckled to himself. Best afternoon for as long as he could remember, that’s what he thought.
When they had left Ratty, Prue and Ag felt in need of a walk before returning to the farmhouse. They took a long way round through fields far from the burnt-out rick, and met Stella coming up the lane. Ag felt a slight shakiness in her limbs – the memory of Nancy’s stiff corpse with its burst tongue would not leave her mind. Prue twittered on about having seen a ghost of Barry that turned out to be his friend. Ag was not fully concentrating on the story. But Stella, striding towards them, Ag noticed, was calm as ever: the only one who looked as if the events of the afternoon had cast no traumas.
Stella herself, a yard or so from the others, saw intuition in Ag’s eye. Ag never missed a thing.
‘Cows all right?’ Ag asked.
‘They seemed to have settled down. No injuries.’
‘Poor old Nancy,’ said Prue.
The girls linked arms, marched towards the farm in step. It was something they had never done before, something it would not normally have occurred to them to do. They laughed at their own silliness. They sang. Their relief flowed tangibly between them. Their fierce closeness was apparent to all three, comforting, binding: it had been growing over the months, and the evening of the bomb it was silently acknowledged.
* * *
Joe and his father took several hours to bury the dead cow. Joe dug the deep grave – the ground was hard and dry – with the energy of three men. It was twilight by the time they finished. Walking back up the lane, spades in hand, they heard the first nightingale of the year.
‘Don’t know what he’s celebrating,’ said Mr Lawrence, whose gaunt face was grey with fatigue.
Supper was waiting for them in the oven. They quickly ate it in the kitchen, then joined the others to listen to the nine o’clock news. There had been an unusual daytime raid on Exeter: about fifty bombers.
‘Lawks,’ said Prue, ‘they’re coming closer.’
She was right. A few days later there were attacks on Bath two nights running. The Nazi destruction of Baedeker towns had begun. A new feeling of unease, which even the hardest physical work could not quite obscure, affected everyone at Hallows Farm.
With one accord, and with great difficulty, Stella and Joe continued to act in public as they always had. They avoided glances, they avoided working together more than usual. Joe continued to share his time in the fields equally with all three girls. The day the cows were taken away in two lorries, he allowed Prue to cry on his shoulder. Ag and he would still spend an occasional evening in his room for ‘tutorials’. But the thing that he found hardest to conceal was the extraordinary energy that had come upon him. He worked harder, for longer hours, than he could ever remember. Strangely, he suffered no attacks of asthma, usual in early summer, and never felt tired.
But a profound charge between two people is impossible to conceal completely from a beady eye. To the keen observer, a couple attempting to disguise their state surrender many clues. There’s the over-careless tone of voice when addressing the loved one, glances slanting away just not fast enough to escape notice, dozens of small coincidences that result in proximity. Ag was aware of all these things. In one of their rare private moments Stella and Joe agreed Ag must know something, though her own suspicions were also carefully disguised; and they did not care. Indeed, it was a rewarding thought that someone else shared their secret: though they themselves, beyond their certainty, knew little of what that secret constituted.
So few and brief were their moments alone that there was no time to talk, to analyse, to make declarations, to try to explain to each other the mystery of what had happened. All they could do was acknowledge the crystallizing of their feelings in broken, inadequate words, marvel at the existence of one another each day – ‘waking alert with wonder every morning’, as Joe said. They kissed, sometimes, very gently, for fear of conflagration. Strangely, they found themselves possessed of a great calm when it came to physical embrace: as if they knew there was time.
One day in early June, Mr Lawrence set Stella the task of rolling a field of young wheat. It would be a long day, he said, but if she kept at it she might finish by the evening. Mrs Lawrence suggested that, to save time, she would send someone down with a basket of food and a thermos for lunch. Stella, who had become almost as expert at ploughing as Prue, looked forward to the day – hours in the field alone with her thoughts.
Despite the departure of the cows, and no milking, the girls continued to get up at five every morning. It had become a habit, and as the weather grew hotter they were glad to start work in the cool of the early morning. Stella and Prue were usually assigned to some job on the tractors. Mr Lawrence had bought a fine second-hand machine, an International. Ag discovered the knack of harrowing with Noble: she enjoyed her days tramping up and down, hands firmly guiding the ungainly machinery behind the patient horse. It was still misty when Stella skilfully swung the tractor, trailing the roller, through the gate of the wheat field. The sky was a dull silver, gravid with more light than the human eye could discern, but proving its existence by making the emerald spokes of the young wheat shine. Stella looked up, warily. She no longer trusted clear, silent skies. She turned off the engine to plan her route. The cry of an early peewit came from the adjacent clover field. There was a powerful smell of clover (a single flower would, for the rest of her life, bring back that afternoon of the bombs, she knew), and hawthorn, and dew. Then, as she restarted the engine, these scents were joined by a strong whiff of paraffin.
The job of rolling was easy in comparison to that of ploughing a straight furrow. All the same, it required a certain concentration to make sure not a single green shoot went unpressed. The hours sped, as random thoughts of Joe danced in the landscape: the sky paled to a colourless sheen, and by mid-morning a brilliant sun was warming Stella’s bare arms.
Just as she was beginning to feel hungry – love, she had found, had increased rather than diminished her appetite – she saw Joe climbing over the gate, carrying a basket. She was surprised. She had expected one of the girls, or Mrs Lawrence herself, who, trapped in the house for so many hours, had a particular fondness for picnics. With the coming of the warm weather, she often made an excuse to take sandwiches to the girls in the fields, where she would join them for an hour on a rug under a hedge.
Joe waved, began to walk round the edge of the crop to the part of the hedge where Stella aimed to stop.
He helped her down from the tractor. She was stiff, sweating: dungarees were not much less hot than breeches. They sat under a single may tree, in the shadow of its pale crust of flowers. Joe unpacked the basket, spread out egg sandwiches, radishes, young lettuce and strawberries from the kitchen garden, a thermos of strong sweet tea.
‘Mother, in all her innocence, said as I was the least busy I should be the one to come. She even apologized!’
Stella laughed. ‘What are the others doing?’
‘Prue’s discovered a natural affinity for the mechanical potato planter. She’s roaring up and down West Field, planting at the rate of knots. Any luck, there’ll be no more sowing by hand. Your back better?’ He put a hand on her shoulder blade for no more than a second. Stella nodded. ‘Ag’s got a hard job harrowing: lot of stone. But she seems to enjoy it, all the walking. Dad’s gone off to fetch a load of clover seed. That’s got to be planted among the young corn—’
‘– to come up later,’ said Stella.
‘You’re learning. You’re not doing a bad job, either, by the looks of it.’ He glanced round the field. ‘A third done, I should say. You could be finished by seven.’
‘What I can’t understand,’ said Stella, lying back in the long grass, head on her arm, ‘is the whole point of rolling. Why aren’t the shoots damaged?’
‘Rolling firms up the earth, giving them more support to grow from. They’re so feeble, so malleable, at this stage, they just rise up again soon after the roller’s passed.’
‘I’ve noticed that.’ Stella yawned, longing to sleep. ‘I think I’d rather enjoy learning more about farming.’ She screwed up her eyes against the pinpoints of sun that crinkled through the may.
‘I never intended to follow the family footsteps. I suppose I shall have to, now. Still, it’s not without its interests. I won’t mind that much.’
‘Yorkshire?’
‘Yorkshire.’
‘With Janet?’
‘No.’
‘What?’ Stella sat up, faced him.
He sucked at a long stem of wiry grass.
‘I’m not going to marry Janet. How could I, now? It would be a travesty. How could I marry Janet now there’s you, there’s us? He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty. Dr Johnson.’
Stella smiled, her mind a turmoil. They were silent for a while. Then Joe took her hand.
‘Are you going to marry Philip?’
Deliberately, Stella gave herself no time to think. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course not. For the same reasons as you’re not going to marry Janet.’
The fluttering shadows, the brilliant haze of the young wheat behind them, the cloudless sky – all trembled, mirage-like, in Stella’s eyes. Joe pulled her to him, kissed her, then lowered her head to the security of his chest, arms about her.
‘I know that love is begun by time,’ he said. ‘See? I know my Hamlet as well as my Johnson.’
Stella laughed, pushing back the tears. ‘Ag must be a good teacher.’
‘Ag’s a very good teacher. An original brain behind all that awkwardness.’
‘I love Ag and Prue. And your parents.’
‘I do, too.’ Joe looked at her, half solemn. ‘I love you: that’s the hardest line to say. Must be. For everyone, mustn’t it?’
‘I only said it politely to Philip – unconvincingly.’
‘I hope this isn’t unconvincing.’ He kissed her hair. ‘Stella? Did you hear? I said it to you. I shall go on saying it from this day forth, for the rest of our lives.’
‘Joe. I must get back – I love you too – on the tractor.’
‘Hear that? A peewit. I love you, I love you, I love you: three times. How about that?’
‘I heard it this morning. God, I love you too. I keep saying thank you to God. He must be absolutely sure, by now, of my gratitude. How did it happen, Joe? How did it creep up on us?’
‘Time. From the safety of mere friendship, just observing. Being near. Liking. Liking more and more. Then, one day, the transformation scene. The magic.’
‘You saw first. I just kept on being puzzled by things: not understanding why I was put out if I hadn’t seen you for half a day.’
Joe laughed. ‘The intimations were all too easy to see. No: they’re subtle as the traces of a rat’s tail, to use Ratty language. Can so easily be missed by the untuned eye. When, I want to know, my Stella, was the precise moment, for you, that you realized …?’
‘I think …’ Stella hesitated. ‘It must have been when you held up the dead lamb, and skinned it.’
‘Fastest skinning I’ve ever done.’ Joe laughed again. ‘I was showing off, of course.’
‘Of course. And when, for you?’
‘I was teetering on the edge during They Can’t Black Out the Moon. When it came to Falling in Love Again – well, there was no further hope. Wings irreparably burned. It was like no experience I’d ever known. A kind of rebirth. I’m surprised you didn’t notice my peculiar state on the way home. I was terrified of touching so much as the sleeve of your coat. And the funny thing was, of course, what you never knew, was that you were falling in love again, too. Only differently from all those false alarms before. Properly.’
Again they laughed.
‘I only wish,’ said Stella, ‘we had more time to ourselves, more time to talk. I want to talk to you all day long.’
‘We’ll just have to wait for lucky chances, like this. Store everything.’
Stella, used by now to the warm smell of Joe’s wind-dried cotton shirt, again longed to sleep.
‘There’s one thing we’ll have to talk about, though.’
‘What will we do … about them?’
‘We have a valid reason for changing our minds. A real reason. The war. If it hadn’t been for the war, none of this would have happened.’
‘No. True.’
‘But there’ll be time to talk further, to make our plans.’ Joe clasped Stella more tightly. ‘I’m terrified of touching you.’
‘Me too. There’ll be a time for all that.’
‘God knows, I … But not here, at Hallows. Not the barn, or my bed, or Robert’s cottage, or even the woods. Not with you.’
‘No.’
‘So we’ll both wait – magnanimously.’ Smiling, they stood up. ‘I must go. A man’s coming to see about buying all the stuff in the dairy. Christ, to think: if it hadn’t been for the bombs we both might have kept our silence.’
‘I wonder if that would have been possible? Heavens, I miss the cows. I didn’t think I would, but I do already.’
‘We’ll have a new herd, one day,’ said Joe. ‘But Jerseys, not Friesians. I’ve never really liked Friesians.’ He picked up the basket, rubbed the back of one hand over her cheek, strode away.
Stella returned to her seat on the tractor. The sun was almost too hot by now. She calculated the vast amount of unrolled field left to finish by evening, started the engine with wild heart, and dreaming eyes, and no doubts that she would have it done by the evening.
Harrowing the stony ground of the hill meadow was a tough job, and Ag liked it. It was a great deal more interesting, working with a horse, than was the endless couching which had been her lot of late. And she knew that soon after she had finished this field it would not be long before she must start thinking about the fruit on the plum trees, a job she looked forward to. If potato planting by hand was the most physically exhausting thing she had ever done, harrowing came a close second. The back was spared, but arms and legs were battered. To keep straight, and to keep continually encouraging Noble – who was inclined to slow to a very slack pace – required intense concentration. This concentration was a merciful antidote to the melancholy cast of her mind. Lately, the odd sense of her lack of obvious attraction, appeal, whatever, had returned to haunt her. While the constant flaunting of Prue’s conquests caused Ag little more than an envious smile, the more serious state of Joe and Stella (so plain to a sharp eye, Ag could not believe the Lawrences had not observed it) accentuated her own bereft state.
While Stella rolled the wheat field in a state of high ecstasy, half a mile away Ag plodded behind Noble’s bay buttocks, lashed rhythmically by his black tail as flies settled, fled, settled again. Half-way up the hill, the horse suddenly stopped. Ag called encouragement. He did not move. Ag went impatiently to his head. What could she do, stranded in a field a long way from the farm, with a horse that refused to move? She took hold of his bridle, tried to urge him forward. Noble yawned, baring grass-stained teeth. Flies flew from round his eyes. Ag tugged again. Noble tossed his head, but still would not budge.
Despairing, Ag looked at the ground ahead. Perhaps there was something that the horse wanted to avoid. She saw that there was.
Just two yards away, right in their path, was a plover’s nest with a sitting hen bird. Ag gave Noble an apologetic pat, kept quite still. The bird shuffled slightly, its feathers glinting, its eye jolted by indecision about whether to flee or stay. Ag took the bridle again, guided the horse away from the nest, which they skirted round in a wide sweep. Pushed into this sensible solution, Noble moved eagerly.
Often, during the rest of the day, Ag glanced back at the plover and saw it still there, sometimes visited by its mate. While ruminating on the wisdom of letting broody birds lie undisturbed, some strange transference of thought wove into words what she saw as a signal: something to do with taking initiative, not letting a lifeless situation decay any further. Doing something.
Ag could never be quite sure at what point of that long, hot afternoon of the plover that she made her decision: the decision to take matters into her own hands, write to Desmond. There could be nothing untoward in a friendly letter. If there was no response – well, at least she would know where she was, and could give up the agony of hoping. It must be easier to accept nothing, she thought, than to toy with the endless possibility of something.
That evening, Ag began her letter. She wrote seventeen pages, carried away with her own descriptions of life at Hallows Farm. Dear Desmond, it began. Yours, Agatha, it ended. She posted it to his college in Cambridge.