It was frightening, if you let yourself think about it too much. Rosamund Kenton stood at the gate of the cow pasture and looked over to her left, to where giant machines ripped and chewed at hedges. And after the hedges, every tree would be felled, and their roots dragged out by a tractor and chains.
Soon, all the land They had taken from Fellstead, the farm next to theirs, would be nothing but a flat waste, because aerodromes must be flat so that planes could take off, and there must be no hedges nor trees to hinder their landing.
Already, Fellstead farmhouse was empty. The farmer had had to leave – the Air Ministry insisted on it – because when the aerodrome was finished, the farmhouse, standing on the very edge of the runway, would no longer be safe to live in. So land farmed for 150 years by generations of one family was taken for an aerodrome without so much as a by-your-leave. It was not only frightening, it was heartbreaking too, because before so very much longer it would happen to Laburnum Farm, though to a lesser degree.
Laburnum could keep half its acres, said the slab-faced man who had first told them about it. And they could keep the farmhouse too. Rosamund supposed they were lucky, really, though her father had demanded to know how a man was to make a living with his best arable land gone! His wife had been the first to come to terms with it. They could still manage without culling any of the milking herd, though they would have to buy fodder instead of growing it themselves. They would concentrate on milk, she said, and crops such as potatoes – upon which the government paid a large subsidy – would have to go by the board.
Rosamund watched as the cows began to walk towards her. They knew it was milking time; their bags, full to the point of tenderness, told them so. She quite liked milking; could rest her forehead against the side of a cow, and think – or not think – as the mood took her. This afternoon, when the milk was hissing into the bucket she held between her knees, she would wonder how long it would be before the man from the Ministry called again, giving them, if they were lucky, a month in which to evacuate the fifty acres Laburnum Farm would be losing to the aerodrome.
Very soon now, because those giant machines moved like hungry monsters, pulling and chewing and flattening everything in their way. Fellstead fields had been stripped of everything that grew save grass. And then they would gorge themselves on Laburnum Farm’s acres. It would hurt a lot, because mature beeches would be felled, their trunks carted away, their branches sawn and chopped into logs to be used as fuel for the war effort. It wouldn’t matter that those beautiful beeches had been growing for years and years and had given pleasure to all who looked at them and shelter to birds and small animals.
Next year, nothing would be left of them, and great ribbons of concrete would be laid from north to south and from west to east. And there would be rashes of ugly huts and hangars too, she shouldn’t wonder.
‘Coosh, coosh, coosh,’ she called to the few beasts who lingered for a last pull of grass. ‘Coom on, pet; coooom on …’
Silly creatures. She opened the gate wide so there would be no pushing and heaving. People thought cows were gentle as their soft moist eyes, but they could be vindictive, shoving younger beasts aside, kicking out viciously with hooves that looked too dainty to bear their bulk.
Now more than ever, the herd was their support, because when the machines had finished at Fellstead, they would let loose their destruction on Laburnum’s fields; probably, her father said, without giving them time to harvest the hay that was almost ready for cutting.
She hoped not, because since the war started, hay had become as important as food, in a roundabout way. Hay fed the herd in winter and would be expensive to replace. If they started cutting tomorrow, she calculated, they could have it turned and dried and cocked, and carted into the hayloft. Perhaps her father wouldn’t wait; perhaps, if the weather held good they would make a start on it just as soon as he was able to borrow men from other farms.
Finding labour was a bother now, because young men had gone to war, and all unmarried women had to register at the labour exchange and be sent anywhere the mood took Them, the faceless ones. Even into the Armed Forces!
‘It’s a crying shame,’ her mother said. ‘Young girls, gently reared, being pitchforked into uniform. And they’ll be serving with men parted from their wives and –’
She stopped then, and Rosamund had finished the sentence for her. Mentally, of course.
‘– missing the comforts only a wife can give!’ That’s what her mother would have said if her daughter hadn’t been in the room.
Mildred Kenton. Devoted to home and family; hardworking and thrifty; so prim it bordered on narrow-mindedness! Procreation was never talked about, even though they lived on a farm where animals did it all the time.
‘Come on, lazy creature!’
Rosamund slapped the side of a heifer that hung back because it wasn’t yet its turn to walk through the gate. Cows were like that. There was a pecking order in every herd, with the sharp dig of a horn to remind any that stepped out of line.
She dug her hands in her breeches pockets, leaving the gate open because the herd would return, after milking, to spend the night in the field. She walked slowly behind the lumbering beasts, who matched their pace to the undisputed leader, an old shorthorn, big with calf.
She wondered how procreation was – how it really was. Something that came as part and parcel of being a married woman and the mistress of her own kitchen, her mother had hinted, and strictly between husband and wife in the privacy of their bedroom.
Yet Bessie Drake’s cousin had done it on a haystack and had a lovely time with a soldier; hadn’t got pregnant either! There was more to it, she and Bessie had long ago decided in the back of the school bus, than grown-ups were prepared to admit.
But now she was seventeen and had given up trying to learn about things, putting it down to the fact that in all probability her mother was reluctant to admit she and Dad had done that – in the privacy of their bedroom, without doubt – in order to get their only child.
Yet surely you fell in love and children came naturally as a result? She had seen enough films, read enough books, indulged in sufficient daydreams to know that one day she would fall in love, even though it wasn’t going to be easy since Laburnum Farm was a good mile from the village, and young men to fall in love with weren’t exactly thick on the ground in Laceby Green. Three! That was all!
It had been better at school. There were loads of boys around, then, though to be seen talking to one, let alone caught walking with one to the bus, merited a grave warning in the Head’s study and the promise of a letter to the miscreant’s parents for a second offence! Which all boiled down to the fact that talking to boys was a rather nice, rather daring thing to do!
She pushed procreation from her thoughts. There was a war on, and winning the war was more important than anything. More and more government posters appeared on walls and in shop windows, asking everyone to Dig for Victory, Save for Victory and inviting young men to fly with the RAF and report to their nearest recruiting centre and join an aircrew. And always to remember that Walls Have Ears.
Aircrew. They would be coming to the aerodrome when it was finished. There would be bombers flying over all the time and the peace of Laburnum Farm would be gone until the war ended. And heaven only knew when that would be.
Her father was crossing the farmyard with a pail of steaming water as the cows lumbered into the shippon. Dad always washed the cows’ udders before milking began and it was Rosamund’s job to put cattle cake into the troughs. Just the noise of it made the beasts hurry to their stalls. Each knew its own position as if it could read the name above it. Cows really were quite intelligent. She went down the line of nodding heads, fastening neck-chains, then hurried to the dairy to collect washed and scalded pails.
Only when they were settled on low, wooden milking stools did she say, without looking up, ‘They’ve made a start on Fellstead. It’s in a terrible mess.’
‘Aye. It’ll be our turn next, lass. No rhyme nor reason to it.’
‘No. But they aren’t taking all our fields, and they don’t want our house.’ It wasn’t considered patriotic to complain.
Bart Kenton lapsed into silence, concentrating on the hissing milk that hit the sides of the pail then ran into a froth in the bottom. God only knew what would have happened if the Ministry people had said they wanted the house too. Laburnum farmhouse and the paddock behind it was their own; not rented, as their land was, from Laceby Hall. That house was Mildred’s joy, had cost them every penny of her inheritance. He remembered the look on her face as they’d gone from room to room, inspecting it. Rosamund had been a baby then, and himself a herdsman on a farm near Ribchester. Marrying Mildred turned him from labourer to master. He had been grateful to her; always would be.
‘What on earth are we going to do with such a big place? How are we to fill it?’
Furnish it, he’d meant, but she shot him a glance and said they would take what the good Lord sent. Mildred trusted implicitly in the Lord – her shrewd business sense coming a close second.
There had been only one child, and Bart planted a climbing rose outside the kitchen window for the little lass they’d called Rosamund. A red rose, it had to be, for Lancashire. It gave them one beautiful flower that first summer, then took hold and rampaged up the wall, and as long as it flowered and thrived, Mildred said, so would Laburnum Farm.
With the help of the bank, they kept their heads above water. Laburnum’s thick packet of deeds had been handed over to secure money to buy stock and farm implements, all acquired at farm sales at knockdown prices. They had furnished the kitchen and the bedroom above it, and that was all. The baby’s cot stood beside their bed. Even though there were bedrooms enough for ten bairns, there hadn’t been a spare penny left over for their one little lass to have her own room.
Farming was a risky thing in those days. They couldn’t have moved in at a worse time, 1926 being a bad year, with the country in turmoil, and the have-nots standing shoulder to shoulder against the haves. The promises made to the men who survived four years in trenches were forgotten. Heroes sold matches and bootlaces in the streets and Authority turned a blind eye on what amounted to legalized begging.
‘What’s that, lass?’ His daughter was speaking to him.
‘I said things seem to be going better – the war, I mean.’ She had tired of the silence and said the first thing that came into her head. Things were better now than they had ever been. Sixty Spitfires – sixty, mind you! – had safely arrived at Malta and were giving German and Italian bombers a pasting; the Russians had halted the German advance and American soldiers were arriving in England by the shipload.
But by far the most heartening thing of all had been another 1,000-bomber raid on Germany. The entire country had listened in amazement to the announcement on the wireless, telling of the first one, because no one had thought we had that many bombers! Then last night, on her birthday, came the second great raid, though 31 aircraft had not returned from it. More than 200 young men reduced to statistics. It was awful even to think about.
It was why, she supposed, the RAF was building yet another aerodrome only a mile from this very place. Mr Churchill had promised more and more raids with more and more bombers. It stood to reason there must be more and more aerodromes. Yet did they have to put one here, on this most beautiful part of Lancashire? Until now, nothing disturbed the peace. They hadn’t even heard an air-raid siren, except on newsreels at the picture house in Clitheroe. Nor had they heard the crash of bombs, crept from the shelter to find their home blasted and burning. They didn’t need a shelter at Laburnum Farm. The cellars were deep and all the protection they would need, because there might be raids now. It stood to reason the aerodrome would be bombed.
‘How long do you think it’ll take to finish it?’ she called. ‘The aerodrome, I mean …’
‘Not long. It never does, when t’government sets its mind to things.’
‘How long is not long?’ How many more months, she really meant, before the bombers came?
‘Talk has it they can get a place like that up and running in a year. Mind, the new ’dromes aren’t like the ones we had before the war. Jerry-built the thing’ll be. Everything prefabricated.’
Prefabricated. A new word. It meant, so far as Rosamund could make out, things built in sections, then transported to wherever They wanted them, and slotted together. Flimsy things, really. Easily knocked down when they were no longer needed. When the war was over …
They had roast pheasant for their evening meal. Pheasants were out of season, but one had been offered and Mildred gave two shillings and six eggs for it, squaring her conscience by insisting that Ned Loftus had five mouths to feed and that since the Ackroyds no longer lived at Laceby Hall they wouldn’t miss the odd gamebird from the covers.
‘I could smell that pheasant roasting right across the yard,’ Bart Kenton teased. ‘It’s a good job there isn’t a house nearby or they’d know we were eating off the black market!’
‘Pheasants aren’t on the ration!’ Not like beef and mutton and pork. ‘And they don’t have to be brought here by sea either!’ Mildred Kenton could not have put a foot inside the chapel if she had been guilty of something as black as that! ‘And those Ackroyds have done all right out of us over the years. It isn’t as though we owe them anything.’ The rent on their fields was paid every quarterday to the solicitor in Clitheroe who managed what was left of the estate. ‘And if it goes against your conscience, Bart Kenton, then don’t eat it!’
‘It doesn’t. I was only teasing. Pass the bread sauce, Milly.’
Rosamund let go her breath. It was all right; there wasn’t going to be words, or a silence, which meant she would be allowed to go to Laceby Green, to Bessie’s. Bessie once had a job in the little workroom that had turned from making ladies’ blouses to shirts for ATS girls, Waafs and Wrens. She had been so bad at machining that she was put in the office, so that when the wages clerk was called into the Armed Forces, as he soon surely would be, there would be someone there who had an idea of how wages got into packets. Bessie earned twenty-five shillings a week, and was allowed to keep half of it.
‘Do you suppose, that now I’m seventeen, I could have wages?’ It came out in a rush and it made her cheeks bright red to ask it. ‘Well, I do work on the land, and land girls are paid wages.’
‘I see. Everything comes down to money in the end.’ Mildred stared fixedly at the bread-and-butter pudding she was dividing into three. ‘Why do you want a wage, tell me? You have your keep and your pocket money, and I buy your clothes.’
‘I – I was thinking of a rise, Mum. After all, we aren’t as hard up as we were. The government pay us subsidies, and nowadays we can sell everything we grow – as well as the eggs …’
‘Hard up! We were never hard up!’ Oh, my goodness, had it shown? ‘When have you ever wanted for anything, miss? You live in comfort in one of the finest houses around, and the land more than pays its way!’
Now it did. Ever since war threatened, when Mr Chamberlain said it was to be peace for our time, the government all at once became interested in farmers. Once, the country hadn’t cared, and had imported all manner of foreign muck rather than eat what British farmers produced.
‘I know, and I’m sorry! I wasn’t being ungrateful. But I – I don’t suppose you could make it ten shillings?’ She was almost on the point of remarking that Bessie had twelve and six a week, but thought better of it, because didn’t she want to go to Bessie’s tonight?
‘Eight shillings a week was all your father ever earned until he came of age! Have you no idea at all, Rosamund, of the value of money?’
Bart chewed overlong on his pudding, willing himself not to say that money wasn’t everything, though there were some who thought it was! Then he felt shame, for hadn’t Milly provided the house they lived in; worked long hours on the farm and taken the pony and trap to town every week to sell pats of home-churned butter, jars of cream, eggs and vegetables? And hadn’t it been a grand day when things took a turn for the better and they were able to bring home the deeds of Laburnum Farm, so long held by the bank as security.
‘I think,’ he said evenly, ‘that your mum and me will talk about it later; though I’ll grant you, lass, you work as well as any land girl would.’
‘Better!’ Milly snapped. ‘Rosamund was brought up to farming, which is more than those land girls were!’
‘Look – I’m sorry!’ Rosamund saw her trip to Laceby Green flying out of the window. ‘I shouldn’t have asked. It’s only that now I’m seventeen –’
‘Seventeen is no age at all. You’re a child still.’
‘You can join the Women’s Forces at eighteen.’ She regretted the words even as they slipped out.
‘Indeed you can!’ Mildred Kenton’s eyes had narrowed; her mouth formed itself into a tight moue. ‘With permission, that is, and your dad won’t give his!’
‘Mum, I don’t want –’
‘Farming is work of national importance. They’d show you the door at the recruiting office once they found you were working on the land!’
‘I didn’t say I want to join anything! I was only pointing out that eighteen is considered old enough for a girl to leave home now!’
‘Leave home! When there’s a war on and air raids and men in uniform everywhere, not knowing what to do with themselves!’
‘I don’t want to leave home, either. I want to stay at Laburnum! I didn’t mean to start anything, honest I didn’t!’
‘We know you didn’t, lass, and your mum and me will have a word about a rise for you. For my part, I think you deserve it!’
‘And so do I, only I’ll not be blackmailed into it,’ Mildred flung, ‘just for the sake of peace and quiet!’
‘Don’t quarrel. Please don’t quarrel. I’ve said I’m sorry …’
‘We aren’t going to quarrel, Rosamund; not over a few shillings. Now why don’t you get your bike out and go for a ride?’
He wanted her out of the way! This was one of the times Dad was going to square up to Mum, and he didn’t want her around!
‘A – a ride? We-e-ll, I wouldn’t mind going to Bessie’s. I’ll do the dishes first, though.’
‘Oh, off you go! I’ll see to things!’ Mildred realized she was outmanoeuvred. ‘But don’t be late. I want you home well before dark!’
Before dark, Rosamund smiled, as she passed the clump of oak trees. Tonight, being June, it wouldn’t be dark till well past eleven – and God bless the man who thought of putting the clocks forward two hours, and calling it double-summertime! Nights were so light for so long now that it didn’t seem natural. Yet it was better than the blackout in winter! The blackout was more unnatural than light nights! So dark, it was as if you needed to brush the denseness of it aside with your hand. It hurt your eyes too, staring into it, and you couldn’t see cars or lorries coming either because they weren’t allowed headlights!
But tonight the air was warm, the breeze soft. Around her the grass verges at the side of the lane were thick with wild flowers and the scent of honeysuckle was heavy on the air. Over to her right, the evening sun lay lower in the sky, casting black shadows over the hills. It was so beautiful here that she clung to her mother’s words, and was glad she worked on the farm and would be labelled reserved when she was eighteen and had to register for war work at the labour exchange. She would rather remain at Laburnum Farm and work till she dropped than be sent away from home.
If she stopped now, at a spot just past the clump of oaks, she could look to her left down a little valley where, so Dad said, the stream that once supplied their farmhouse with water had slipped and splashed over cobbles to join the River Hodder. Why it had dried up, no one seemed to know, and only old people in Laceby Green, whose grandparents remembered paddling in it to catch minnows, could vouch for its authenticity.
But it was gone, and soon the path of its bed would be grown over and gone too, like Fellstead’s hedges and trees. And soon, Laburnum Farm’s beech trees as well.
It was because of their beech trees that Rosamund didn’t stop to gaze and wonder, because she knew that when the time came, just to hear the death cries of those trees would go through her like a knife. Trees were living things and could feel pain just as humans could. She was sure of it.
She pedalled slowly through the village, past the post office and the White Hart pub and the church with its triangle of grass at the gates; past the war memorial with the names of the dead of the Great War on it, then turned sharply to her right onto the bumpy road that led to Bessie’s house. Only it wasn’t a house, exactly. Bessie Drake lived in one of the gate lodges belonging to Laceby Hall. The Ackroyds, who’d once lived there and got very rich from cotton and, some hinted, out of the slave trade too, were gone, and their big house razed to the ground and hardly a stone left standing. Only the cellars remained, to be filled with rubble and rubbish, then sealed over. If you went there at Hallowe’en, Bessie said, you could hear the screams of the Pendle Witches, cursing the witch-hunterand the gallows-man with their last breaths.
Rosamund didn’t believe it, though, because she knew it was a story put about to keep the village children from taking fruit from the orchards that still stood there, and to stop them making a nuisance of themselves in the ploughed-up parkland on either side of a carriage drive that led to nowhere.
Through great iron gates, Rosamund traced the windings of that drive, wondering about the people who had driven up it in coaches drawn by at least four horses, with uniformed postilions astride them. She liked to make up stories and often did, mostly to invent siblings. Laburnum Farm would not have been so lonely with a sister to share it.
Bessie had two brothers in the Royal Navy, which made her virtually an only child too. It pleased her no end, she said, though really she missed them, and worried about them, and sent letters every week.
Bessie’s mother was weeding in the front garden, and she smiled her wide welcoming smile and said, ‘Hullo, Rosamund. She’s upstairs – as usual! Go on up!’
Bessie’s mother laughed a lot too. Nothing upset her. She would laugh, some said, if the roof fell in.
‘It’s me.’ Rosamund poked her head round the bedroom door. ‘What on earth are you doing?’
‘Plucking my eyebrows, as if you didn’t know! It doesn’t half make your eyes water!’
‘Then why do it, if it hurts so much?’
‘Because everybody does it. My eyebrows are like hedges and I’m trying for a shape like Lana Turner’s. And it’s all right for you to smirk. Yours don’t need plucking.’
Everything about her friend was near-perfect, Bessie thought, returning her agonized gaze to the mirror, tweezers poised.
‘They’re working like mad things on Fellstead fields.’ Rosamund collapsed on the bed with a dramatic flounce. ‘It’s awful. Just think of it, Bess. We’ll be able to go to the top of the paddock soon and look down on that aerodrome. It’ll spoil everything.’
‘Sorry, old love. There’s a war on, so you’ll have to put up with it!’
‘And supply them with mugs of cocoa, whilst they rip up our land too!’
‘Dad says you’ll get good compensation. And you’ll get your fields back, when They’ve done with them.’
‘All covered with concrete and huts? Thanks a bunch! Talk has it that it’s going to be for bombers. Big ones. I don’t think I’ll like having tons of high explosive flying over Laburnum all the time.’
‘So look on the bright side! Before you know it, there’ll be RAF bods all over the place! Hundreds of ’em!’ And a great improvement on the present position, Bessie gloated, with two of Laceby Green’s eligibles already called up, and the third about to go! ‘I can’t wait to get my hands on one of those lovely pilots! Why is it that aircrews are always so good-looking?’
‘It’s their aura of glamour, I suppose. All the call-ups want to fly.’
‘Dave and Joe say the Navy is the senior service. They call the RAF the Brylcreem Boys! Are you really worried about having an aerodrome so near, Rosamund? I think it’ll be quite an improvement. Might liven the place up a bit.’
‘I’m not worried, exactly, even though it’ll be nearer Laburnum than it is to the village. But are you really looking forward to them coming, Bess?’
‘You bet! It’ll be great when the blokes get here!’
‘And will your dad let you go out with them?’
‘Don’t suppose so. You know what fathers are like. But Mum will only laugh and tell me not to let him catch me. And not to get myself into trouble either, I shouldn’t wonder. Ha! Chance would be a fine thing!’
‘Funny you should say that. I was thinking this afternoon about babies and how they get there.’
‘But you know how they get there, you daft hap’ orth!’ Bessie let out a laugh exactly like her mother’s. ‘Marjie says it’s a lot of fun when the fumbling starts.’
‘Marjie? That’s your cousin – the one who went on a haystack?’
‘The one who did it on a haystack!’
‘I wouldn’t dare!’
‘You would if you loved him: I’ll bet you anything you would!’
‘Hm.’ She was prepared to take Bessie’s word for it. Bessie was seventeen and seven months; not a lot older, really, though Rosamund supposed you could learn a lot in seven months. ‘I’d be worried about getting pregnant. Imagine the talk in Laceby! They’d stone you out of the village as a scarlet woman!’
‘They would, if you were daft enough to let it happen! There are ways, you know. The chargehand in the machine room was telling one of the girls who’s getting married.’
‘Ways like how?’ Rosamund could feel herself blushing.
‘She didn’t tell me, softie – but she would if I asked her. Talk has it that she once got rid of a baby!’
‘Have you finished your eyebrows? Shall we go out?’
Rosamund changed the subject. She had to, because there was a lot she didn’t know about things and just to think about it made her feel stupid, though maybe in another seven months she’d have learned a bit more. Perhaps as much as Bessie knew now.
‘Out? OK, if you want to. Where shall we go?’
‘Would your dad be mad if we walked up the drive as far as the ruins?’
It was accepted around Laceby Green that Mr Drake acted as unofficial caretaker of the Hall, reporting to the solicitor in Clitheroe if anything was amiss. It was the least he could do, he said, since they lived in one of the estate houses, and the rent hadn’t gone up in years.
‘Course he wouldn’t! But what’s so interesting about the place? You always want to go there!’
‘If you must know, I think it’s a shame that lovely old house was knocked down. You’d have thought those Ackroyds would have rented it out instead. I’ll bet there are dozens of boarding schools on the south coast, looking for somewhere safer.’
‘Not any more. Dad says Hitler’s had his chips in Russia and he won’t be invading us now. I must admit I’m relieved about that. I wouldn’t have liked Nazis jack-booting it up and down the village!’
‘Bess! They could try for the duration and still not find Laceby Green! There’s nothing around here that’s worth bothering about – well, not of strategic importance.’
‘But there soon will be!’
‘Mm. Soon.’ Funny, these days, how the aerodrome was on everybody’s mind. ‘Come on. Let’s get going. I’ve got to be in before dark.’
The Aerodrome. RAF Laceby Green she supposed it would be called, Laceby being the nearest place of habitation. If they came, that was. If They didn’t decide against it at the last minute!
But They wouldn’t. Already she could hear the cries of the beech trees.
It was late August before the machines had flattened Fellstead’s fields and were ready to move on to Laburnum Farm’s land. Something to do with drainage had held them up. Bart Kenton not only got his hay safely lofted, but harvested the wheat and barley too, though it was a shame, he said, that he’d had to leave the sugar beet and late potatoes. But then wasted crops meant nothing to the people at Whitehall.
Rosamund stood outside the front door, looking over the moonlit fields to the fifty acres They were taking. Everything was very still, a silhouette in silver and black. She had come here for a last look, and because it was almost nine o’clock, the sacred hour at which the wireless must be turned on and the measured, unemotional tones of the announcer brought the war into their kitchen. Most times she could pretend the war hadn’t happened, so isolated were they; so cut off at the end of a lane. But at one o’clock and again at nine, the war became very real, and most times frightening.
Rosamund shut her ears to the news bulletins more than ever now, because any day the machines would come to Laburnum’s fields. She was glad of the harvest moon that shone golden in the sky, because this was the picture she would carry in her memory of the way it had been. Tomorrow, or the next day, the war was coming nearer and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Just as she knew there was no way she could cling to her childhood. She was in her eighteenth year; womanhood was just around the corner because at eighteen, They said you were a woman! Not long ago, her parents had said as much too.
‘You’re a young woman now, and Dad and I have decided you are to be treated as such.’
It was why, her mother said, there would be an end to pocket money. Henceforth, she was to have a wage every Friday, and it would be recorded in the farm accounts. It had taken Rosamund some weeks to realize that such generosity had its roots in down-to-earth reality. When the time came for her to register for national service, it would have been on record for almost a year that she was employed as a farm worker; there in black and white, in her mother’s careful handwriting, proof positive. Yet at the time of her elevation to wage earner, she had thought of nothing save that she was to be paid a pound a week! Twenty shillings, if you please! Seven and sixpence more than Bessie got!
‘I shall expect you to buy your own clothes, now, and –’ with lowered voice and eyes – ‘things of a personal nature,’ Mildred had said.
Things of a personal nature were bought discreetly, and only when the chemist’s lady assistant was behind the counter. She could take care of that – but buying her own clothes? How far did forty clothing coupons a year go, when shoes needed five, pyjamas took care of eight more and a winter coat gobbled up fourteen! She thought of the beautiful cotton dresses Marks and Spencer sold for four and eleven, and felt it a shame that now she had the money, there was the matter of seven clothing coupons to prevent her buying one.
She shut down her broodings and looked instead at a moon that changed from gold to silver, the higher it rose in the sky. And she told herself that when the machines came to Laburnum Farm to gobble and tear and destroy, they would fell the beech trees she had known all her life. She must think about it so often that when the time came, she would be able to watch as the last of them fell with a sickening crash; watch, and not weep. It was a part, she supposed, of growing up. She wanted to close her eyes and wish that none of it was happening, but full-moon wishes didn’t count. Only new-moon wishes were any good.
She turned abruptly, because if she stood here any longer she would cry; not only for the beech trees but for herself and the strange brooding inside her she couldn’t put a name to. It was as if she were standing on the edge of something of such enormity that she wasn’t sure she could cope with it – whatever it was and whenever it happened. Maybe, she decided as she pushed aside the small swinging gate that opened on to the path leading to the farm buildings, it was because all the safe, sane things she had grown up with were slipping from her, along with her childhood. Or maybe it was because it was the time of the month, and nothing more complicated than that! She walked carefully along the narrow path, because even though the moon threw a slanting light along it, it got very little sun and was often slippy underfoot, even in summer.
All at once she wanted to run, across the farmyard, across the paddock and on and on until she was so breathless she had to sink, drained, to the moon-touched grass.
And demand of herself what she was running from.
The early November morning was cold, but bright. On days such as this you could see everything crisp and sharply outlined, and the hills, their summer softness gone, etched sharply against a metallic sky.
Rosamund let her eyes linger on the enduring skyline. Once, only a few years before the foundations of Laburnham Farm had been laid, the people of Bowland had lit a bonfire on Beacon Fell to warn of the coming of the Spanish Armada. And those around had seen the leaping flames and closed their eyes and prayed for England. Exactly, she supposed, as they’d prayed in chapel after Dunkirk, when Britain was threatened again.
People prayed a lot in wartime. The Germans would be praying too, for their soldiers in Russia, because already there the winter snows had started. Sworn enemies, each begging the same God for victory, so who did He listen to? Did He toss a coin?
She shifted her gaze to the fields below, to the devastation that once was fifty acres of living, growing things. Now the tracks of caterpillar tractors sank deeply into the soft, sodden earth, throwing it into the air to fall as mud. She hoped that one by one, those tractors became bogged down in the muck of their own making, so they weren’t able to drag out the tree roots.
The scream of chainsaws filled her head as they sliced through branches. Even from so far away, their noise reached out to mock her. It was like saying goodbye for ever to summer meadows and fields of corn. They would grow there no longer, their hedges already gone, burned on the fires lit every morning to get rid of unwanted rubbish. And then, at the coming of darkness, those fires were doused with water because of blackout regulations, and rekindled next morning with sump oil thrown over them to help start another blaze.
Mud, acrid fumes, screaming saws. Armageddon had come to Laburnum’s far fields; the war getting ever near. But the entire world had been pulled into the fight: Australia threatened with invasion by Japan, Stalingrad digging in for another winter of siege, 2,000 Jews gassed in Treblinka and our own merchant seamen being killed all the time, trying to get tanks and guns to Russia. Did the ever-demanding Stalin understand that for every two ships that left for Archangel and Murmansk, only one would get home safely? How many more despairing winters before peace came? And in those years, how many men and women were to die?
A hand touched Rosamund’s arm and she drew in a startled breath.
‘Now then, our lass …’
‘Dad.’ She slipped a hand into his, glad of the closeness. ‘I didn’t think it would be as awful as this.’
‘It’s like they say: things get worse afore they get better.’
‘I’m waiting for the tree.’ Only one beech remained, etched black and leafless against the pale sky. It stood tall and proud as though it looked down on the crawling creatures beneath it with the contempt of a hundred years of living and being and growing. ‘Look at it. It’s as if it’s cursing them! Where is Mum?’
‘Taking a jug of tea to the tree-fallers …’
‘She’s giving them tea? Our tea, that’s rationed? I wouldn’t give that lot the time of day!’
‘Nor me, lass. But there’s nowt we can do about the trees, nor the land, and your mother said she wanted her hands on some of those logs. Coal is scarce now. You can’t blame her.’
‘But those are our trees! She shouldn’t have to ask!’
‘Not any longer, Rosamund. They were part and parcel of the compensation the Air Ministry agreed on – well, told us we would get would be nearer the point.’
‘Looooook out …’
They heard the faraway shout clearly as the tree began to fall. It went slowly, reluctantly, then fell with a crash of branches and boughs and twigs, all spread-eagled on the muddy earth.
‘That’s it then, Dad – the biggest and the best of them.’
‘It went proudly.’
She hadn’t wept as she thought she would. She had watched unflinching the destroying of something she loved, never taking her eyes from it, so it would know it wasn’t alone; that she shared its pain. And when it lay there, felled, she knew her childhood had gone with it.
‘Bart! Rosamund!’ It was her mother, running, red-faced.
‘I thought you were taking tea to the men!’ Rosamund said, too quietly.
‘Oh, them! I’ve been and come back! Now listen!’ She stood there, gasping for breath. ‘On the light programme! Gave me quite a turn when he interrupted the music for an important announcement. Said it had just been released by the Ministry of Information. There’s a battle going on in North Africa! Guns and tanks and men! Started last Thursday night, it seems! Anyway, he said it was the battle for El Alamein and there would be more about it on the one o’clock news!’
‘It’ll be good news, won’t it, Dad? They wouldn’t break into a programme for something bad?’
‘Reckon they wouldn’t. It’s about time we won something, come to think of it! But we’ll find out in a couple of hours.’
They began the downward walk to the paddock, and over the stile to the hen arks spaced around it.
‘You shouldn’t have given tea to those tree men, Mum; not after what they did.’ Rosamund was determined to have her say.
‘Oh, you wouldn’t? Then listen to me, my girl! Coal is on the ration – one bag a week, which doesn’t even keep the kitchen fire going! Those were Laburnum Farm’s beeches, and we’ve got a right to some of that wood!’
‘True,’ Bart said quietly, making it clear whose side he was on.
‘But, Mum –’
‘No but Mum’s! The gaffer said that all he was interested in was the tree trunks; seems they’ve already been sold. But the rest we could do what we liked with, so I reckon we’ll get the tractor out, and the chains, and drag all we can into the yard! I want that wood shed full, Rosamund – yes, and more besides! You’ll not complain in winter, will you, when it’s freezing outside!’
‘You’re right, I suppose. If we don’t take the wood, someone will. But I’ll think about those trees every time we put a log on the fire.’
‘Then let’s hope you never have anything worse to think about!’ Mildred stuck her nose in the air and walked on alone, her back rigid with indignation.
‘Let her go, lass.’ Bart put a restraining hand on his daughter’s arm. ‘Your mother is right, no matter what. We can do with all the logs we can lay our hands on. There’s nothing to be done now. The beeches are gone and our acres, too, for the duration. I know you were fond of those old trees, but there’s a war on, remember, and your mother will be all right once she’s heard what the wireless has to tell us.’
‘I’m acting like a child, aren’t I?’
She knew that at Laburnum, they were lucky. They eked out their rations with eggs and milk from the farm and killed a pig each January to salt for bacon and ham, when most other people had to make do with four ounces a week! And there were rabbits and pigeons and wild game for the taking, whilst people in towns had to manage with one-and-twopenceworth of meat a week each! Until the coming of the aerodrome the war had been a long way away, sheltered from it as they were by the very isolation of Laburnum Farm.
Shame washed over her, because she knew there were far worse things than the cutting down of trees, and she must think of all the merchant seamen who would be killed today trying to get through to Russia, and the men who had died, and were still to die, in the battle for El Alamein.
She closed her eyes, and whispered, ‘God, this is Rosamund Kenton, and I’m sorry.’