Rosamund’s nineteenth birthday passed almost unnoticed save for a card from Bessie. Now it was July and the far hills blazing golden with gorse, and the hay dried and stacked, because St Swithin had been kind.
These were precious days; the last Rosamund would spend at Laburnum Farm. Tomorrow, cattle trucks would take the herd to market; would arrive at ten, allowing time to milk and fodder the beasts for the last time. Yet any sentimental tears she might have let fall would remain unshed because her mother had claimed the final churns of milk for herself.
‘Law or no law, I want that last milking; all of it! I shall put it through the separator for cream and at least we’ll have butter to take away with us!’
Mildred Kenton had realized there would no longer be ample milk, eggs and bacon; not when they lived in Skipton. They would draw the same small amounts of food each week as other people, and there would be no game from Ned Loftus; fewer rabbit pies and no bowls of lard from pig-killing.
Yet food was the least of Rosamund’s worries, or leaving Laburnum Farm. Oh, she loved the old creaking house and the view from the parlour window that stretched into forever. It was the only home she could remember and no other house, no matter how many modern conveniences it had, could ever hold a candle to Laburnum.
She was being very sensible about it, for all that. Already she was determined that when the time came to leave, she would walk away without looking back. Jon had looked back, that morning; had turned and waved, and because she’d thought he was safe, she had waved back then watched him out of sight.
So when it was time, she would look at Laburnum Farm; at the red roses climbing past the kitchen window and up and up to peep in the bedroom she would have slept in for the last time. And she would photograph the front garden in her memory; poppies and white foxgloves, the hedge tangled with honeysuckle, then turn away for the very last time because she would never come back; not to where she had been so exquisitely happy and so heartbreakingly sad.
Yet even before that, she would say goodbye to the kissing gate; trail her fingers where Jon’s hand had touched. And she must say goodbye to six oaks, because the furniture vans were taking the long way round and joining the Skipton road at Clitheroe. Not for anything would Mildred Kenton, sitting beside the driver, risk the stares of smirking Laceby folk. No one, she vowed, would know where they were going. As far as she was concerned, they would disappear from the face of the earth – until the time came to return, that was!
‘Those Drakes mustn’t know when we’re going. I forbid it!’
‘But I’ve got to say goodbye to Bessie!’ Rosamund protested. She’d had more kindness from Bessie and Elsie Drake in the space of one day than she could remember her mother offering in the whole of her life.
‘Just try it, that’s all!’ Mildred’s eyes narrowed and Rosamund had turned away, in case there was a curse in them.
Then after six oaks, she would go to the steel-mesh fence at the bottom of the cow pasture; send her love to Jon in case some small part of him lingered there still. And she would imagine J-Johnnie lumbering past her, and Mick’s salute.
Rear gunner to pilot. Just passed your milkmaid!
After that, if she could bear it, she would climb the hayloft steps to the gantry, empty now, the summer hay stacked in Wolfen Meadow with a tarpaulin over it, ready for the farmer from Whitewell to cart away.
She would not go to the place they had lain like gypsies and conceived a child, but she would unlock the door of Fellfoot one last time; look at the kitchen and imagine a rag rug on the hearth and an oak dresser with blue and white plates and copper jugs on it. And she would say goodbye to the rooms above in which they had been lovers.
The last goodbye, at nine o’clock exactly, would be on the very last morning. To go there would tear her apart, especially if she saw the dragonfly. Yet somehow she would claw back a small gleam of the shining happiness of the morning Jon returned from his thirty-seventh op; the morning she told him about the baby.
Five minutes she would stay beside the pond, then walk away and not look back, or her wish would be worthless; a wish that one day she might live in Fellfoot because a miracle would make it possible. Live alone with Sprog, who would run free as the wind and know when spring was coming because the buds on the weeping willow would begin to swell, pale green.
‘I’m talking to you, miss!’
‘Sorry. I was miles away – at Skipton.’
‘I said I’m glad I don’t live in London. Thought the war was nearly over, those people down there, yet now they’re having to be evacuated all over again! It’s about time our soldiers got to those launching sites and blew those rockets up!’
‘I think that’s what General Montgomery has in mind, Mother!’ The flying bomb sites, everyone knew now, stretched inland between Calais and Dieppe and further along the coast, on the tip of the Brest Peninsula. ‘But the Germans are fighting every yard of the way. They’ll hang on as long as they can to keep the launchings going.’
‘Have you got everything seen to – your books and things in boxes?’ Abruptly Mildred changed tack.
‘Yes.’ Rosamund winced as a Lancaster flew low overhead, wondering how soon before the squadron left, and where it would go. But it mattered little, because in three days more the furniture vans would come, and the Kentons would be gone.
Her mother had insisted the removers pack everything so they would be liable for any breakages. What it would cost did not matter. The American colonel, eager to smooth the way for the Liberators that would one day fly from Laceby Green airfield, had co-operated eagerly. And when her father was offered – offered, mind – a position as adviser to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries at their regional offices, a house in nearby Skipton was found almost at once for Mildred’s inspection.
‘About time that lot at the Ag and Fish had someone there who knows a bullock from a cow,’ Mildred said, mollified, because a small car was to be made available for Bart’s use, ‘and a sugarbeet from a swede!’
‘It’s what I would call a sinecure; a fob,’ Bart had shrugged, wondering how he would abide going to work every morning at half-past eight in a car; wearing a collar and tie, an’ all!
‘Call it what you want! As long as that house meets my requirements, that’s good enough for me!’
The Skipton house, Mildred discovered, had a small, square front garden, a front parlour, a dining room and a large kitchen and scullery. At the back was a wash house, a coal house, twelve square yards of grass and a Victoria plum tree.
‘We shall need at least four bedrooms,’ Mildred insisted, because not one piece of her furniture would she part with. There must be space enough to store it in the Skipton house, so she could keep her eye on it and have it there, to hand, the minute they moved back to Laburnum Farm.
Whatever she asked for, the obliging American made possible. Far more co-operative, she insisted, than the people from the Air Ministry. Colonel George G. Murray addressed her as Ma’am, had beautiful, old-fashioned manners; knew how to speak to a lady! And living in a doll’s house in Skipton, she mused, would make a break for a couple of years from the everyday sameness of farming. Two years of living in a town would be just about enough to make her want to return to that sameness; back to her house and her seclusion. Indeed, there was only one cloud on her horizon of near-contentment: a daughter who had brought shame on the family and would have to be a mite less particular when it came to taking a husband. Unless they could keep it quiet, that was; get the child adopted so no one in Laceby Green need ever learn about the fall from grace.
‘Have you told Bessie Drake?’
‘What about?’ How her mother’s voice grated!
‘You know what about!’
‘I’ve told no one. Only you and Dad, and Jon.’
‘Him! The cheek of the man!’
‘Leave it, Mother! I don’t want you to say things about Jon because if you do, I just might tell Bessie when I go to say goodbye to her!’ she snapped, suddenly defiant.
‘You will not be saying goodbye! No one is to know when we are leaving or where we are going. I thought I’d made myself clear.’
‘You did, Mother.’
But she would write to Bessie, for all that; give her the Skipton address and the phone number. There was a telephone in the house, her mother had said, and what was more they would keep it, since the people at the Ag and Fish were to pay a proportion of the bill!
‘Once the livestock has gone, it won’t bother me when we leave,’ Mildred grumbled. ‘The sooner, the better – get it over with! And I shall make it plain to Colonel Murray that I expect the American Air Corps people to respect my home and not drive nails in all over the place, and keep the front stairs and the panelling in the dining room waxed and polished!’
‘I’m sure they will, Mother.’
‘You didn’t say anything about us having to leave Laburnum?’ Rosamund asked of Bessie later that night.
‘Of course I didn’t! I’m surprised you should ask! Anyway, when are you going?’
‘Don’t know.’ She was lying to her best friend when she knew that tonight might be the last time they would sit in Bessie’s little front garden, faces to the evening sun. ‘I suppose,’ she hazarded, ‘it’ll come suddenly, once we get everything settled.’
Yet everything was settled. Tomorrow, or the next day it would be and sneakily, because of her mother’s stiff-necked pride.
‘Then before you go be sure to let me know because I’ve got something for you. I’ve been keeping it.’
‘But I haven’t got anything for you, Bess! I never thought about it, if I’m honest, because there’s just nothing in the shops.’
‘What I’ve got for you wasn’t bought in a shop, and you’re not to ask.’
A book Rosamund thought. One of her school prizes and very precious, because Bessie hadn’t won all that many!
‘We’ll keep in touch, Bess? As soon as I know where we are going, I’ll give you the address.’
Then she despised herself, because she was playing into her mother’s hands by lying so.
‘I’m having a baby, Bess,’ she should be saying. ‘My mother’s glad we’re going to Skipton, because she thinks she’ll be able to keep it quiet and no one in Laceby will find out. But you’re to tell everyone!’
Yet she wouldn’t, couldn’t say it. Best not rock the boat. She would have to fight to keep Sprog, she knew it; no use making things worse.
‘Where will your father work?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Dad gets good money making aero-engines, but I can’t imagine your dad in a factory. I like him, you know.’
‘So do I. A lot. It’s my mother I can’t stand. Sometimes, Bess, I think you’ve been right all along – that she’s a witch!’
‘I didn’t mean it!’ Bess giggled nervously. ‘I mean, if she really was a witch she would have hexed those men who came to take your house!’
‘How do you know she won’t; hasn’t already?’
‘Hey! Watch it!’ Bessie had no wish to get herself further into trouble. She’d had enough black looks already from the mistress of Laburnum Farm! ‘Let’s talk about when the war ends, shall we?’
Once, it had been their favourite game. No more blackout, bombing, and the shops full of gorgeous things. And the two of them, buying clothes and lipsticks – no longer rationed, of course – like there was no tomorrow.
‘What do you mean, Bess – when the war ends? It isn’t ever going to end for me. Do you realize that every day I shall get a little older, yet Jon will be young always. And had you thought I might live till I’m seventy?’
‘Seventy, for Pete’s sake!’
‘Yes. And still in love with a pilot of twenty-three. Because there won’t ever be anyone else but Jon.’ She said it softly and without emotion, as if it were already a pointer to the rest of her life.
‘Hush. Don’t say things like that. They say that time is a great healer …’
‘And you believe that, Bess?’ The most cruel cliché of all!
‘No. Not really. But I hope it won’t hurt so much in time.’
‘I hope so, too, but right now I want to be unhappy; I can’t pretend I don’t. And it’s going to be hell, saying all the goodbyes; there are so many special places I won’t ever see again.’
‘I’ll come with you if you like, Rosamund.’
‘No. Thanks all the same. It’s got to be just me and Jon.’
She was ashamed of the way the lies slipped out. She didn’t mind lying to her mother, but she shouldn’t be doing it to the only person she could really trust.
So why didn’t she tell Bess about the baby? Hadn’t she a right to know? Bess could keep a secret; even one like that!
‘And I’ll have to be getting back.’ The secret would remain untold. ‘Somehow I don’t trust my mother. It’s as if she’s on a slow-burning fuse, and any moment there’s going to be one almighty blow-up! She’s given in too easily about them taking Laburnum. If she screamed and shouted and raved it would be more in keeping.’
‘Oh, lovey, I’m going to miss you. When we say goodbye,’ Bessie said shakily, ‘let’s make it into a giggle, shall we? Promise neither of us will cry, till afterwards?’
‘Promise, Bess. And we’ll keep in touch. We might even be able to ring each other up – if we can get through, that is. Walk with me as far as six oaks?’
‘Course I will. And if you promise not to start crying when we get there, then neither will I!’
‘All right.’ She would try to remember it as a happy kissing place, and not where she and Bessie and her mother had clung together, weeping. ‘I’ll have to get used to – to things. The worst thing about leaving Laburnum will be leaving Jon behind, really. Because I’m sure, you see, that he’s still there, if only I knew how to find him. He believed in reincarnation, and so do I now. If only I could get on his wavelength …’
‘Let him rest – for a little while, anyway. When the time is right and you can think more clearly, there’ll be a way. Only don’t go to any of those seances, will you? Just wait for Jon with – with –’
‘With my heart?’
‘Yes, love.’ She linked her arm in Rosamund’s. ‘Oh heck, I’m going to miss you something awful!’
That, Rosamund thought as she had whispered good night to Bessie at six oaks, was one goodbye over, because she would not pass that way again. She had intended saying – with her heart, of course – ‘I love you, Jon Hunt,’ but she had not been able to. Instead, as she hugged her friend and whispered, ‘’Night, Bessie. God bless,’ all she was able to do was think of the morning, that last morning, when he had turned and waved. She would never see this place again nor Bessie either, who said, ‘’Night, love. God bless you, too. Always …’
She ran off then because her voice had been wobbly; nor had she turned to wave. And when Rosamund saw the small, black van outside Laburnum Farm, she knew her instinct had been right.
Bye, Bessie. See you. One day – maybe …
‘The van. Who does it belong to?’ Rosamund demanded of her mother in the dairy.
‘The removal people. They’re here to see to the fragile bits. And they’ll be here again in the morning to take the first load.’
‘Of furniture? So you knew all along when we’d be going!’ Once the livestock had gone, she should have known her mother wouldn’t want to wait. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? You said three more days.’
‘In the morning, there’ll be two vans.’ Mildred chose not to answer questions. ‘The smallest will take the furniture we’ll be using – for the sitting room and the dining room and the kitchen stuff, and beds. You’ll go with the driver; see it unloaded, and put in place.’
‘But I won’t know where! I haven’t seen the house!’
‘The sitting room is at the front, the dining room at the back, and not even a fool could miss the kitchen and scullery!’
‘Why are you doing this, Mother?’
‘Because the sooner we go, the sooner we’ll be back! And I haven’t time to argue with you! I want to get this butter churned.’
‘So what about the second van?’
‘Me and your father will see to that. It’ll be all the furniture that’s got to be stored at the new house, because it’ll be coming back here one day.’
‘You’ve planned it all, haven’t you, right down to the last detail?’ So thoroughly, it would have done credit to the most efficient sergeant major!
‘With the help of Colonel Murray.’
‘So what time will we – will I – be leaving in the morning?’
‘About ten. You can sit in front with the removal men. There’ll be room enough. And wear your old clothes,’ she added obliquely.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll wear my baggiest trousers and sweater. I’m not showing yet!’
‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean!’ Mildred rotated the handle of the churn furiously, so the lump of butter inside bumped loudly. ‘But you’re being a mite too flippant about things, though you’ll come to your senses before so very much longer! I’ll see to it!’
‘If you’re talking about the baby, there’s nothing to be said. Oh, I’ll go away to have it – anywhere you want – but I won’t leave it behind! If you don’t want your grandchild, then you don’t want me!’
‘So how will you manage? Who’s going to take in a girl with a brat in tow, even as a skivvy! You haven’t thought how serious it is, have you? You’ve got yourself into trouble and brought shame on us all. I’m glad we’re leaving, for I don’t know what I’d have done if it had all got out and we were the laughing stock of Laceby! So get out of my way! Go and think about it and start acting like a grown-up for a change!’
‘There’s nothing to think about. I’m keeping Jon’s baby if I have to beg from door to door!’
‘Oh, get out of my sight! You sicken me! You’re no better than a street woman; a whore!’
‘Whores do it for money. With me it was love. But you don’t know about love, do you, Mother?’
So it was to be tomorrow. At ten. Rosamund stood at the little iron gate, pulling and pushing it on its hinges, listening to the creak. All was arranged. By her mother, to suit herself. But hadn’t Laburnum always revolved around her mother’s moods?
She gentled the gate with her hands, and smoothed the tops of the iron posts, because Jon had touched them. And because it was the last time she would stand here. And when she was near to tears at the enormity of it, she would walk down the narrow path that ran behind the outbuildings, and open the small door of the hay barn and sit on the gantry steps in case some small part of Jon was waiting there, too. And if he were not, she would cross the cow pasture – the empty cow pasture – and lace her fingers in the steel-mesh fence and call to him with her heart that she loved him and please not to leave her? Not completely?
Tomorrow there would be little to do; no cows to milk, no hens to feed nor eggs to wipe clean. And the day after, the auctioneer from Clitheroe would assemble all the farm implements in the foldyard: the tractor, the reaper, the ploughs and everything from the shippon and cooling house, down to the last stool and pail. They would bring a good price, her mother said, because such things were in short supply because of the war, and farmers had money enough now to buy what they wanted.
So tomorrow, she would get up at the same time; strip her bed and fold sheets and blankets tidily, ready to be loaded into the first van. Then she would go to Fellfoot, because if ever she was to find Jon, surely it would be there?
Then, at exactly nine o’clock, she would chain and padlock the back door, and go to the pond; to the big, flat stone to remember the dragonfly morning.
Tears began to hurt her throat, and she shut the little gate, then ran, head down, to the barn.
‘Dear, sweet Jesus, how am I to bear it, will You tell me …?’
The morning was gentle; exactly as it had been on D-Day plus two, when the rain had stopped, and the gales. For just a moment, when her alarm clock jangled her awake, Rosamund lay there, unwilling to admit that this was the day and that tomorrow morning she would awaken in a different room, in a different place, and would think at once about Laburnum Farm and how suddenly and thoroughly they had left it.
So she had four hours before her new life began; when her mother, free from farm chores, would busy herself getting things straight; walking to Skipton High Street and registering their ration books with a new butcher, a new grocer. And for a time, the novelty of switching lights on and off and having a gas stove and a telephone would please her.
Yet when she realized there was no one to telephone because she had few friends; when she remembered the view that stretched into forever and that once she had said she could walk right round the farm in her petticoat, and none would be any the wiser, things would be different!
So who would the scapegoat be then? Rosamund frowned. Her father, who would hate not being a farmer, or herself, who was carrying an illegitimate baby?
She pulled back the curtains, trying not to think that tomorrow or the next day, someone else would be looking at her beautiful view. Maybe, when the Americans came, Laburnum would be used as a billet, or maybe offices. Or perhaps they would just leave it to grow cold and lonely, and couples might creep in and make love.
She felt sad as she crossed the yard, for no tail wagged at her approach. The farmer from Whitewell had taken Shep, along with the hay; needed a decent yard dog, he said; was willing to take the creature off their hands. Dear old Shep, who hadn’t once barked as they crept into the hayloft.
She managed, like someone only half alive, to unlock the back door at Fellfoot. She had not been afraid, had even thought it would be here she would find Jon, sitting on the stairs, perhaps, that led off the parlour. Or maybe he would be at the window; watching as she climbed the slope towards him.
But he wasn’t there. She would have known had it been so; would have felt his warmth, his love, and the whisper, oh, ever so gently, of his lips against hers.
‘Jon?’ she called, wanting to hear his whistle, but her cry sounded strange and alone in the emptiness.
She ran down the stairs, through the parlour, and into the kitchen.
‘Jon Hunt! Where are you?’ She needed him to know she had been to say goodbye!
Yet all she heard was a bomber, flying low above her. Circuits and bumps. Perhaps tonight they would fly their final op from Laceby Green and there would be no one at the fence, nor at Laburnum farmhouse window, to count them out and wish them back.
And she was glad! In Skipton there would be no more chimneyshaking take-offs, no Shep to warn her that soon she would hear the first of the returning bombers. In the new house she would begin to try to forget. No! Never to forget, but to accept that she was alone until Sprog was born. Scrapofathing Sprog, Jon’s child.
‘Goodbye, little empty house,’ she whispered. ‘I really did want to live in you one day.’
With Jon and Sprog, of course, and however many more carelessly conceived children they might have had. If Jon hadn’t flown that thirty-eighth op.
The big, flat stone beside the pond was cold, but it was only nine o’clock and the sun had yet to warm it, and the water of the pond.
She pulled her knees to her chin, then wrapped her arms around them. The willow was in full leaf now, and two wild yellow water lilies opened their petals to the sun like giant buttercups. A waterhen swam across the pond, its head poking and ducking, but of the dragonfly there was no sign.
Had it lived out its days? Had it flitted, golden and jewelled in the sunshine, a thing of brief beauty, like their loving? Was it golden and fleeting, and gone?
Here Jon waited for her the morning after his thirty-seventh op; here she told him they had made a child beneath a high, bright moon; here they began to make plans, because they had a year of tomorrows, and life was good!
‘But you didn’t come to Laburnum, Jon,’ she whispered. ‘That morning, at ten, you were on ops again, and that was the end of it …’
The pain was back in her throat. Every part of her ached; hurt inside at the place she had thought her heart should be.
‘Darling, why did you leave me? We thought we had made it, but we loved too well, and the Fates were jealous.’
Now, it was over. Soon – in less than an hour – she would leave Laburnum Farm and the hills and the little creaking gate. And the hayloft, and Fellfoot, and the sound of bombers doing circuits and bumps. Only memories to take with her now. Yesterday was a dream recalled; today she was alone, save for the child inside her.
‘Jon, where are you? Let me know you are still here, waiting? Give me a sign?’
But the willow did not move, nor the water lilies; nor was there even the slightest rippling on the surface of the pond to comfort her.
‘Jon, why?’ she whispered, but there was no one to hear her. Not even a curlew called.
This was it, then. She took the red rose from her pocket, picked from her bedroom window at sunrise, with the dew on it.
‘Goodbye, Sergeant Jon Hunt.’ She threw it reluctantly and it floated gently on the surface of the pond. ‘See you, my darling – sometime …’
Rosamund sat between the elderly driver and the young, strong man who’d said he was waiting his call-up into the Royal Engineers. Leaving Laburnum had not been too difficult. She was glad she had schooled herself into accepting it; into not looking back.
They bumped down the dirt road, past the standing for the milk churns, then turned right at the armless signpost, taking the lane that would lead them to the junction with the Clitheroe road. There, they would turn left again, making for Gisburn, cutting out Laceby Green.
She stared ahead fixedly until she knew the fells were lost to her and it was all right to stop fighting the turmoil inside her.
‘Sad to be going, miss?’ The driver had seen the tear on her cheek.
‘Not particularly.’ She had to force the denial out.
‘By the heck, but I would be. It’s a bonny spot you’re leaving.’
‘No option. The Americans want it.’
‘Thought that maybe you were leaving a young man behind.’
‘No.’ She flicked away the tear. ‘No young man.’
She felt bad about being so short. The driver was trying to make conversation, maybe wanting to be kind. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back and said, ‘My young man is dead. On D-Day plus two.’
‘Aaah …’
No one spoke again until the younger man took the instructions from his pocket at the approaches to Skipton.
‘You’ll want to turn left at the junction and down the main street, to the church,’ he said to the driver. ‘Then left again. About a quarter of a mile, and I reckon we’ll be there.’
The house was the middle one of a terrace of five; what people called solid-built Victorian. There were no railings around the small, undug square of front garden; no gate, though the iron collectors had left behind the hinges against such times as iron gates were legal again.
The front door was half glass, and in need of painting; the window frames, too. But so did every front door, every window in the land. Paint came only in dull green, black and khaki, and none of it was available for doing up houses.
‘Have you got the keys, miss?’
Rosamund took them from her handbag, selecting one which fitted first time. The door opened onto a little lobby with a brown and orange tiled floor. It was dirty, and littered with dead leaves and unopened letters.
‘I think the gas will have been turned on,’ she said. ‘If you can remember where you put the box with the pan and teapot in it, I’ll make us a cup of tea.’
In the hall, a telephone stood on the floor. Ahead, through an open door, she saw the kitchen, and a window in need of cleaning.
To her right, an iron cooking range stood dull and rusty, its unused chimney smelling of damp soot. Beside it, in an alcove, was a grey and white mottled stove, with brass taps.
Rosamund turned one and heard a hiss of gas. Then she turned on the tap marked cold, and water splashed out. Colonel Murray had indeed smoothed their way into exile.
Furniture removers knew that the last thing they carried into the van, and the first thing out, if they had any say in the matter, was tea-making equipment. Rosamund closed her eyes and imagined the firegrate blackleaded and gleaming and a fire lit in it to heat the water in its back boiler.
They had brought all their stock of summer-hoarded coal and the last of the beech logs. When the second van arrived her mother would get to work, tutting at the state of things, and by tomorrow dinnertime the kitchen at least would be to her liking.
‘Shall us start lifting, miss?’
‘No. Not just yet. We’ll have a drink first, and I want to have a look at the place. This is the first time I’ve been here.’
‘Then would it be all right if us went outside for a smoke?’
‘Fine by me. I’ll bring your tea to you. No sugar, I’m afraid. Only saccharin.’
She tried to smile, then wished they hadn’t gone out. Whilst they were here, she could hold back the tears, hug the terrible ache to her and pretend she was coping. But alone she could weep, briefly, for Laburnum and the space, and air so fresh it hurt to breathe it in on cold mornings; weep for her lovely hills and the view that stretched unhindered into forever. And for Jon, who would never find her here.
The water in the pan began to bubble and she was surprised how little time it had taken. Wrapping her handkerchief around the handle, she tipped water into the brown teapot, stirring the contents noisily. Then she dabbed her eyes and sucked in a gulp of calming air, insisting silently that it would be all right here; it would! When windows had been cleaned and fires lit and familiar furniture in place. And the floors scrubbed, of course.
She stood unmoving, listening to the silence of a street of town houses in which everyone, she knew, would mind their own business and not ask questions of the new occupants of number 19.
Her mother would like that.
When she slid thankfully into bed that night, every muscle in Rosamund’s body ached and she lay, staring through the gloom to the brighter patch that was the window.
When the second furniture van arrived, she had helped her father assemble the beds whilst her mother directed and fussed and supervised the storing of the surplus furniture into two of the bedrooms. It was a miracle it had all gone in, yet even so, Mildred Kenton had then insisted that access be made from door to window, so she might open and close windows when the weather allowed, to keep everything sweet and aired. And in case of incendiary bombs.
The removal men left with relief all over their faces, each pocketing the ten-shilling note slipped by Bart when Mildred’s back was turned.
‘Everywhere will have to be swept and scrubbed,’ she said. ‘We’ll make a start on the kitchen; get that fire going for some hot water. Have you got the beds seen to, Bart?’
‘Aye. Rosamund is making them up.’ First things first. At least tonight there would be something familiar about the place, if only their beds.
They had climbed wearily upstairs at ten o’clock that night, Mildred insisting they’d had enough for one day and anyway, best they should get themselves into bed before it got dark. They had not needed to worry about blackout curtains still unhung, and had taken lighted candles to bed, just as they had done at Laburnum. They’d had to, since the electric lights didn’t work. They should not have expected them to, since not one of them was fitted with a bulb.
Rosamund lay, hands behind head, trying to accept the strangeness of the room, though at her right stood her familiar bedside table; on it the familiar candle and alarm clock. That much had not changed, though she had not set the alarm for five. No more early milking; no more awakening to Shep’s howl to count the bombers home. Gone were wide horizons; now there was a privet hedge grown straggly for want of pruning and clipping to look out on, and twelve square yards of bitty grass her father intended making into a vegetable plot.
She had not knelt to say her prayers. That there was no rug beside her bed yet was excuse enough. And anyway, why bother? God didn’t listen to girls who got babies out of wedlock. There were far more deserving cases for His attention. Stood to sense, didn’t it?
‘Where are you, Jon? Are you still waiting at the iron gate, wondering why I haven’t come? Don’t you know we’ve left?’ she whispered.
Or had he gone – his reincarnated, searching spirit, that was – to Fellfoot or to the big, flat stone beside the pond? Or was there no life after death, no coming back for a second chance at happiness? Was it all a nonsense?
She hoped not. Finding Jon again in another life was all that kept her going from day to day; that and the baby she carried.
She slid her hands beneath the bedclothes, cupping them on her abdomen, sending her love to the scrap of a thing that lay there.
She began to weep then. Not tears of anger but of resignation, acceptance; tears that came from an ache of loneliness, and the need to be comforted.
‘God,’ she whispered. ‘This is Rosamund Kenton and I’m sorry I doubted. I know there are people far worse off than I am, but just for tonight, help me, please?’