and picked up a corner of the sheet. ‘You know about the letter, Poll?’
‘Aye. Charity begins at home.’
‘Hmm. Jonty’s making a start on Gran’s ploughing very soon and Mat’s been allocated a landgirl at last, so it’s all going to work out, isn’t it? We’ll make it by March, if the frost breaks soon. Bet it’s terrible on the Russian front. They say it’s the coldest December for nearly twenty years.’ She abandoned the bed-making to wander over to the dressing-table mirror. ‘It’s freeeeezing outside. Just look at my nose. Red as my hair, isn’t it?’ Frowning, she turned away. ‘I’m not a bit like Gran, am I, Poll? Come to think of it, I’m not really like anybody. Where do you suppose my colouring came from?’
‘Colouring? With hair like yours, you’re complaining?’
‘No. Just curious. Gran is dark and so was Grandpa. And my parents were dark-haired and dark-eyed, so who sneaked in my carrot top?’
‘Auburn.’ Carrot top, indeed!
‘Auburn, then. But where did it come from?’ Not from anyone in any of the portraits, that was certain. All the way up the stairs and on the landing and in the downstairs rooms, not one of the Fairchilds hanging there had red hair. ‘Where, will you tell me?’
‘Gracious, child, how should I know? From your father’s side, perhaps, or maybe you’m a bit of a throwback? Yes, come to think of it, there was one with red hair, I seem to remember. Her portrait got burned, though, in the fire.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Roz didn’t remember, but best not talk about the fire, especially in December, that bleakest of months. ‘I suppose it makes a change – my being green-eyed, I mean, and red-haired.’
‘Suppose it does. Wouldn’t do if we all looked alike, would it? Now are you going to give me a hand with this bed, or are you going to stand there staring into that mirror till it’s done?’
‘It isn’t going to be a barrel of laughs, Poll, my being in a reserved occupation.’ Roz straightened the fat, pink eiderdown. ‘People look at you when you’re young and not in uniform, you know. Jonty’s had all sorts slung at him.’
‘Then I’m sure I don’t know why.’ Polly sniffed. ‘Jonty is doing a good job for the war effort and so will you be. Growing food is important, or why did they make you reserved?’
‘Yes, but when you’re as young as Jonty and me, people just expect you to be in uniform. He’s taken quite a bit of stick about it. “Get some in!” someone yelled after him. “Why aren’t you in khaki, mate? A bloody conchie, are you?”, though I know he’d rather have been a pilot, or a Commando.’
‘They’d never take Jonty Ramsden for a pilot nor a Commando,’ Polly retorted, matter-of-factly. ‘When did you ever see a pilot or a Commando wearing spectacles? Jonty will survive such talk and so will you, though it’s sad people should say things like that.’
If Martin Fairchild had been in a reserved occupation in the last war, he’d have been alive today, the older woman brooded. Uniforms were all very well, were fine and smart and patriotic, but they got you killed. The Mistress wouldn’t have minded the taunts. And now it was happening again. The war to end all wars, they said that one had been, yet only twenty years on …
Sad for the young ones, really. This war was none of their making, yet it was young shoulders the burden had fallen on, Polly sighed silently, and so many of them would never see the end of it. The Master hadn’t, nor her own young man. But that war was history, now. Their war had been glorified slaughter and because of that she was glad Miss Roz was staying at home with her gran; glad she would never join the armed forces, nor wear a uniform. And if thinking that was unpatriotic, then she didn’t give a damn, Polly thought, defiantly. Roz was all the Mistress had left. It was as simple as that.
Now the daft young thing was nattering on about her hair again, and that they could do without. Mind, it came up from time to time and was dealt with by her grandmother. But Roz ought to be told, Polly scowled, picking up dustpan and brush. She’d said as much, not all that long ago.
‘Don’t you think Miss Roz is old enough to know about –’ she’d said.
‘About what?’ the Mistress had interrupted, off-hand. ‘That she’s a Fairchild? But she knows that, Polly. She’s always known it. What more is there to tell?’
What more indeed? The Mistress had probably been right. And even if she wasn’t, she had her reasons for acting as she did.
‘She’ll hear nothing from me.’
‘Of course she won’t, Poll Appleby. There’s nothing to tell,’ Hester Fairchild replied briskly. Then her face had taken on that long-ago look. ‘Polly, if suddenly I weren’t here –’
‘Oh, aye? And where, suddenly, are you going, then?’
‘You know what I mean! I’m talking about the war; about nobody being certain of anything any more, and you know it. If suddenly I weren’t here, Poll, then it would be up to you. Because you’re the only one who knows, apart from me; the only one I’d trust to tell her. But only if she really needed to know, you understand?’
‘Aye, ma’am. Only if,’ she’d said, and the matter had been dropped for all time. Or so they had thought.
Oh, drat that lass and the colour of her hair! Why did she have to go on about it? Why on earth couldn’t she leave well alone?
‘Marvellous!’ Kathleen Allen heaved her suitcase from the bus stop opposite, glad to reach the shelter of the railway station again. ‘Flipping rotten marvellous!’
To think she might now be sitting beside the fire at home, her feet snug in Aunt Min’s hand-knitted slippers, a cup of tea at her side. But she stood instead in a blacked-out, unknown city and the next bus to Alderby St Mary not due for two more hours.
But it was her own fault. She should have heeded her husband’s warning and found war work in a factory or office; anywhere but in the Land Army. Dejectedly she sat down on her suitcase. The journey to York had been a nightmare. She had missed her connection at Crewe, though she strongly suspected there had been no connection to miss, then, after giving right of way to a goods train, a troop train and a train carrying ammunition, they at last pulled out of the station almost two hours late.
You were right, Barney. I should have listened to you. And do you know something else? I’m so cold and hungry that I’d sell my soul for a cup of tea!
She wasn’t crying, she really wasn’t. It was just that it was so cold and draughty sitting here in a gloomy, grimy station that her eyes were watering, and –
‘Hi, mate! Anything the matter?’ A Waaf corporal in trousers and battle-dress top stood there, smiling. ‘Would one of these help?’ She reached into her pocket for cigarettes. ‘Go on, it’s all right.’
‘No! I shouldn’t.’ Cigarettes were hard to come by. It wasn’t fair to take other people’s, be what they called an OP smoker, ‘I’m all right, thanks. Just a smut in my eye …’
‘I know the feeling well, but it passes, it really does.’ The girl in airforce blue took two cigarettes from the packet, then struck a match. ‘You wouldn’t be looking for a lift?’
‘A
