she teased, so happy that all at once she felt peculiar – like someone had walked over her grave – if she’d been dead and buried, that was. ‘And it’s OK! I know you can’t tell me, and I won’t tell you what I wish either!’
But her wish was there in her mind already, so that when she saw her first swallow of the summer and when the hay wagon trundled past, she would close her eyes, cross her fingers and say in her mind, ‘I wish to stay at Candlefold for ever, and live here till I die …’
They saw their first swallow next day as they fed and watered the hens. It came swooping and diving out of the sky above the drying green.
‘There you are, Meg. Wish!’
Eyes closed they wished tremulously, smiling secretly.
‘You’re sure it’ll come true?’
‘Always has, Meg, though now I always wish for the same thing – y’know, pile them all up so in the end it’s got to come true.’
‘A sort of long-term wish, like mine. An’ maybe when we load the hay there’ll be another one of the same, eh?’
‘Oh, yes! I do so miss Davie. There wasn’t a letter this morning, y’know …’
Meg had noticed. It was always the same, the no-letter look: sad and yearny, sort of.
‘There’ll be two tomorrow. Maybe he’s on manoeuvres.’
‘Maybe.’
‘An’ he’s out in the wilds with no pillar box.’
‘Probably.’
‘An’ I’ll tell you something else. This isn’t our lucky day, Polly.’ She nodded in the direction of two camouflaged trucks that swooped in from the lane to stop outside the far archway. ‘Wouldn’t you know it? That lot from London, on the snoop! What’ll they say when they see our hay? Just a few more days, an’ we’d have got away with it!’
‘No! It can’t be!’ Polly, face flushed with disbelief, gasped. ‘But it is! It is! Davie Sumner! Darling!’
Then she was running, laughing, to where two soldiers stood, dressed in battledress tops, khaki trouser bottoms bound by puttees, their brown boots shining. And the two of them grinning with delight at the upset they had caused.
With a cry of joy, Polly went into Davie’s arms, to stand close, cheek on cheek, not kissing, just glad to touch and hold, to fondle the back of his neck with her fingertips.
‘You weren’t expected yet!’ She closed her eyes and offered her mouth. ‘Davie – nothing is wrong …?’
‘No.’ He kissed her lips gently. ‘Leave next week.’
‘Then what? Why?’ She turned to hug her brother. ‘Meg, this is Mark.’
‘Mark,’ Meg whispered, offering her hand, feeling it tremble as Mark Kenworthy folded his own around it. And if he was good to look at in a silver-framed photograph, then standing there, warm and real, he was altogether too much to take in. And he looking down at her with eyes bluer than Polly’s, even; eyes that swept her from head to toes – slowly and deliberately so there could be no mistaking his approval.
‘Glad to meet you at last, Meg.’ He let go her hand to raise his cap in salute, all the time smiling as if he really meant it.
‘And this is Davie, my fiancé.’
Polly’s voice seemed far away and strange, like an echo, because something had hit Margaret Mary Blundell with such force that she recognized it as a very real boing! and knew that unless she held her breath and counted slowly to ten, she was going to do something very stupid, like falling in a delicious, disbelieving faint.
‘Davie …’ Meg murmured, knowing she should be liking what she saw – a happy grin, a fresh, freckled face, thick, untidy hair the colour of a ripe conker. But she was incapable of doing anything because the boing! was reverberating unchecked around her stomach and slipping and slicing to her fingertips and toes.
‘Well – come on, then – tell. Why are you here, and are you sure it’s nothing sinister?’
‘Nothing more than a thirty-mile detour on the way down to Burford Camp – in Wiltshire.’
‘You’re both being posted somewhere new, then?’
‘No. Going to collect a convoy of trucks and lorries, actually – escort them north,’ Mark supplied. ‘Fifty-three to be exact and all newly passed-out drivers. First time any of them will have done a long-distance convoy. And to add to the confusion, there are ATS drivers amongst them – women …’
‘And what is wrong with women?’ Huffily, Meg found her voice, stung to defend her own sex, and because she wasn’t going to let him get away with being so gorgeous nor play havoc with her insides without some show of protest, she glared as she said it.
‘Nothing at all. In their right and proper place ATS girls are a delight. But I don’t appreciate them in a long-haul convoy, Meg Merrilees. They’re just not built for driving heavy army lorries!’
‘No. I reckon they’d all rather be in their proper place at home, but a lot of them didn’t have much of a choice!’ Meg flung.
‘Now stop it, Mark! C’mon – let’s find Mummy!’
Polly took Davie’s hand, her happiness a delight to see.
‘Shall we?’ Mark indicated the archway with an exaggerated sweep of his hand.
‘Er – no, ta. I’ve got things to do – the hens, for a start.’ This was a family thing and she wasn’t pushing in. ‘And why did you call me Merrilees? My name is Blundell!’
‘You haven’t heard of Meg Merrilees?’ He was looking at her as if she were stupid.
‘No. Should I have?’
‘I’d have thought so. She was a gypsy, who lived upon the moors. It’s a poem!’
‘Oh. I see.’ She didn’t see, of course, because no one had taught her poems about gypsies. ‘Er – well – got to go. Nice meetin’ you,’ she added, remembering her manners.
‘Nice meeting you too. See you around. Bye, Merrilees!’
And he was gone, boots clattering on the courtyard cobbles, back straight as a ramrod. So sure of himself, she thought angrily; sure of his charm, the certain knowledge that his smiling gaze could charm the ducks off a pond! Likely he did that to all the girls he met, but it wasn’t goin’ to work with Meg Blundell – too right it wasn’t! Her insides were back to normal again. She was in charge of her emotions though she knew now exactly what Polly had meant about that boing! It had really been something – till she’d got the better of it, that was!
But for all that, her hand was just a little unsteady as she laid eggs as carefully as she was able in the bottom of the bucket. Meg Merrilees, for Pete’s sake! A gypsy, was she, because she couldn’t talk proper! Skittin’ her, was he?
Well,
