his wife and if anything happened to Barney it would be my house. ‘Are you going to be able to manage on just one ration book when I’m gone?’
‘I’ll be all right. Managed before I was bombed out, didn’t I?’ Of course she would manage. With Kath out of the way and the cleaning and polishing done, there’d be plenty of time to stand in the food queues. It wasn’t a bad way of passing a couple of hours – even in winter. ‘I suppose you’ll be living off the fat of the land? Them farmers’ll have plenty of milk and eggs. Don’t tell me they don’t keep a bit back for themselves.’
‘I really don’t know. But wouldn’t you keep some for yourself now and again? Wouldn’t you treat yourself to a nice fresh egg for your breakfast?’
Fresh eggs. They were a thing of the past to ordinary people. Minnie Jepson reckoned that the weekly egg on her ration book was at least a fortnight old when she got it; stood to reason, didn’t it, the way they smelled when you cracked one? Only fit for putting in a cake – if you had the butter and sugar to spare.
‘What’s a fresh egg?’ she demanded, truculently. ‘And hadn’t you better be thinking about getting yourself off? You can’t rely on a bus being there when you want one; not with a war on, you can’t. That case is going to take a bit of carrying, an’ all. Best be on your way, girl. Take it slowly.’
‘Yes. No use hanging around, I suppose.’ She wished Aunt Min wasn’t so anxious to be rid of her. ‘I’ll just slip across the yard to the lavvy and then I’ll be going.’
She wished the churning inside her would stop. She was always like this when something untoward happened. Like the morning she married Barney. She’d wanted to run away. If she hadn’t been so desperate to leave the house she’d worked in for the past six years, she would have. A skivvy, that’s all she had been. She had exchanged the drabness of the children’s home for the drabness of domestic service and only marriage to Barney had freed her from it. Or so she had thought until he’d taken her to the little house he had promised her. Trouble was, he hadn’t ever mentioned they’d be sharing it with his mother.
She had felt the same churning that day she walked through the doors of the Labour Exchange and told them she wanted to be a landgirl, surprised that she hadn’t needed her husband’s permission. The knowledge had made her feel slightly giddy, because for once she was doing something entirely because she wanted to. She was making only the second important decision in the whole of her twenty-three-and-a-bit years and she had been shaking with the enormity of it when she left the counter; when the clerk had already made an appointment for her medical and there was almost no going back.
‘Ain’t you taking Barney’s picture with you, then?’ Aunt Min took the Clark Gable photograph from the piano top and dusted it absently with her pinafore.
‘I’ve packed one already. I’ll leave that one for you.’ Kath smiled, wishing her heart hadn’t joined the turmoil inside her with loud, insistent thuds. But this was her first real adventure and being in the Land Army was the only taste of freedom she would ever have.
Oh, she was grateful to Barney. He’d given her respectability, a name. She was Kathleen Allen. She knew exactly who she was and that no one could push her around any more – unless she chose to let them. Now she was the same as anyone else. She had the same identity card, the same ration book and from today she would wear the same uniform and get the same pay as all the other landgirls in a hostel called Peacock Hey. For a woman who had never quite known who she was, that was something of an achievement. When the war was over and Barney came home, she would settle down, be a good wife and have his children. When the war was over. In two years, three years, maybe even longer now that Japan had come into it; now that it wasn’t just Hitler they had to see to but all those Japs as well. Funny little slant-eyed men who people said fought and fought and never gave in. How long would it take to beat them, she wondered, even with the Americans on our side.
‘Well then,’ she said, wondering why her voice sounded so whispery and strange. ‘I’ll just put on my hat and coat.’
A short, well-cut top coat; a round, leather-tied hat, though just how she was expected to wear it she didn’t know. She placed it comfortably on the back of her head, picked up her gas mask and said again, ‘Well then.’
Minnie Jepson walked down the passage, opened the front door then stood, arms folded, waiting.
Kath picked up her case, manoeuvring it with her knee to the doorstep. Then she put it down with a thump, placed her hands on the elder woman’s shoulders and kissed her cheek.
‘So-long, Aunt Min. Take care of yourself. I’ll write, like I promised.’
‘Ta-ra, girl. God bless.’
Kath picked up her case. She didn’t turn round – you didn’t ever look back in wartime – and she wasn’t surprised to hear the door slammed shut behind her. Even before she reached the gate.
Slowly she walked to the top of the street. The churning and thumping were even worse now and she felt strange in her uniform, especially in the breeches and knee-length socks.
‘Alderby St Mary,’ she whispered. Somewhere in the North Riding of Yorkshire and a million miles away, thank God.
The letter addressed to Rosalind Fairchild came by the second delivery on the 18th of December. It bore the words On His Majesty’s Service and she had expected it daily for the past two weeks. Sucking in her breath she opened the envelope with a swift, decisive tear, quickly scanned the single sheet of paper, then looked up, her face a blank.
‘It’s all right, Gran. They’re letting me stay at Ridings. I don’t have to be called up.’
Hester Fairchild let go her indrawn breath. She had been worried; useless to deny it. Government departments usually did the exact opposite to what was expected or hoped of them, but for once it seemed they had got it right. She was more relieved than her face showed, for war was hateful to her. War – the last one – had taken her husband and she had no wish for this one to snatch away her granddaughter.
‘I suppose it’s official, now – puts you in a reserved occupation?’
‘Seems it does. I’m exempt from call-up, it says here, but I can’t change my job without first asking them.’ She shrugged. ‘I suppose I’d better let Mat Ramsden know. At least I’m one of his problems solved.’
So now it was official. She had a reserved occupation; work considered so important that she was exempted from call-up. And farming was important. Now into the third year of the war, food was becoming alarmingly short. Already it was strictly rationed, with rumours of cuts after Christmas and farmers were left in no doubt that they must grow as much food as they could, and then some, with every acre of land used to capacity. Farms and farm-workers became important almost overnight and vital to the war effort, Mr Churchill said. Britain’s rundown farms were suddenly in the front line. For the first time since the last war ended, farmers were needed.
‘Read it.’ Roz handed over the letter.
She was glad it was all settled, that she could stay in Alderby St Mary, though not so very long ago a small, secret part of her had longed to join the armed forces. She had wanted to wear a uniform, to be seen to be doing her bit for the war, but that was before Paul; before she had gone to a dance at the aerodrome and met the tall, flaxen-haired navigator. Once she would have scoffed at the idea of love at first sight. That kind of feeling couldn’t be love, she’d have said. Instant attraction, perhaps;
