overdose of aspirin, washed down with gin.’
‘Oh, lovey, I’m so sorry. How did we get onto the subject?’ Ness whispered.
‘My fault. And I’d be glad if you didn’t mention it again. I shouldn’t have told you. So long ago – water under the bridge.’
‘I wouldn’t blab, Lorna. You know I wouldn’t.’
‘Doesn’t matter, really, if you do. Nance Ellery knows and they know at Glebe Farm, too. A nine-days’ wonder in the village, though I think it hastened my grandmother’s death. A long time ago, for all that.’
‘Yer right, queen. Now you’ve got William to look after you and you’ve got this lovely house. There’s a lot of people far worse off!’
‘I know. And I should be grateful, but sometimes I’m not. I’ve done as I was told all my life, you see. I obeyed Grandpa, then I married William and now I obey him. So it was quite something, me insisting that you stay here.’
‘Now, what say I give you a hand with the dishes?’ Best change the subject, talk about other things. Lorna was getting pink-cheeked. ‘Sorry I can’t wash up – my blisters – but I’ll dry and put away. Then can we sit in the garden?’
‘Fine by me. I’ve cleaned the house and written to William – nothing better to do. You like the garden, don’t you, Ness?’
‘Oh, yes. Better than a back yard, if you see what I mean? And make the most of it, eh? You might not have it for much longer – not if you listen to what the government is saying.’
‘About growing food, you mean? About flowerbeds and it being wrong, all of a sudden, to have a lawn? Produce food, must I?’
‘I don’t see why not. Or you could keep hens. Mrs Wintersgill has her hens in arks.’
‘Yes. In the little field, behind the cow shed.’ Triangular contraptions like a bar of Toblerone in wood and wire netting. ‘But you aren’t suggesting we have hens on the lawn? And where would I get a hen ark, anyway? I don’t think they’re available to people like me, now that timber is in such short supply.’
‘But wouldn’t you like your own hens, Lorna? The man from the egg packers told Mrs Wintersgill that eggs will be the next thing to be rationed. Be nice to have our own – real fresh. But I suppose William wouldn’t like hens on his lawn …’ She said it sneakily, tongue in cheek.
‘William? It’s my lawn as well, Ness, if push comes to shove. I don’t have to ask my husband if I can keep poultry. Come to think of it, I’d get a few hens if it were at all possible.’
‘But there aren’t any arks nor hen huts nor hen runs any more – well, only for farmers …’
‘Exactly. Now I’ve been very good all day – only made one tiny pot of tea, so I think we can spare a spoonful for a cuppa. Have it in the garden, shall we?’
‘OK. You take the cushions out and the little table; I’ll make the tea,’ Ness smiled.
And she continued to smile as she set a tea tray and put the smallest teapot to warm, because having hens would be a lot better than digging up the lawn to grow vegetables. Ness liked hens; loved to see the way they scratched, feathery bottoms wobbling from side to side, and she liked it when they laid an egg and cackled like mad afterwards; knew too that in summer a hen would lay at least four eggs a week, fresh and brown, for breakfast. And, would you believe, it just happened that behind the hay barn at Glebe Farm, she had seen two arks in need of repair and obviously unwanted by the farmer. Been shoved there, she shouldn’t wonder, to be chopped up for firewood. Surely Mr Tuthey at the Saddlery could make something of them? A splice of wood here, a few nails there – and the netting wire repaired? Six hens they would be able to keep on scraps and gleanings from the field. Eggs aplenty in the laying season. Ness Nightingale was a quick learner, knew about the laying season and how to feed and water hens, and in the morning she would ask Kate Wintersgill about those thrown-away arks, and could she and Lorna have them, please?
‘Won’t be a minute,’ she called, so concerned with Ladybower’s hens that the matter of Lorna’s early life, about her poor mother and a father who had left her, slipped into the depths of her mind.
But for all that, thoughts of Lorna’s childhood came easily to her that night in bed. The soldiers at the manor, hens and hen arks, were not of such importance when you thought about a small child with both parents gone. Sad, really, even if Lorna had had a good grandfather to bring her up and leave her all his money and possessions. Was nowhere near as good as having a Mam and a Da and a Nan. And Auntie Agnes – until recently, that was. She, Ness, had been lucky in her rearing, lucky all her life, really – until Patrick, that was. Patrick, ever ready to take over her thoughts even now, if she would allow it.
She closed her eyes and hugged herself tightly. She had loved him so very much. He had filled her heart, her life, and then one day it had all ended.
She opened her eyes wide then blinked them against tears that threatened. She wouldn’t cry! She had wept a lifetime of tears for him, then taken a long look at her life and how best it was to be lived without him. It was why she had joined the Land Army. A new life, a new start far from Ruth Street and memories of a heartache she had thought she was learning to accept.
‘Oh, damn, damn, damn!’ She threw off the bedclothes and pulled back the curtains, pushing the window wider so she could lean over the sill and look out into the near-darkness and the garden below, smell dew-soaked grass and roses and honeysuckle and newly-flowering lavender. And she gazed over to the wood, a darker mass that merged into the sky, where perhaps there was a nun who appeared to star-crossed lovers.
Are you there, you who know about lost love? If I walk in Dickon’s Wood will you come to me to let me know you understand?
‘Idiot!’
She crept back into bed, leaving the curtains open so the square of window took in the night glow from a darkness that in high summer was never quite complete; from a sky that outlined tree tops and rose bushes and the wooden bench where, only a few hours ago, she and Lorna had sat. And talked, would you believe, about hens!
She burrowed into the pillows, pulling the blanket over her head, trying to shut out what was gone for all time and think instead of the manor, and hens on the back lawn, and Mam and Da and Nan, so far away in Ruth Street, Liverpool 4. And about the invasion, and if it would come. And if she had one iota of sense left in her head, to count her blessings like any other reasonable woman would do, and get on with the rest of her life!
There was a strange quiet in the sitting room. It was as if, when the Prime Minister spoke, he was warning them, warning everyone, of what was to come. His voice, low and defiant, had filled the room as he told them, over the wireless, what they already knew, dare they admit it. Britain could resist invasion he said, and, when the time came, could defeat Hitler, too.
‘Be the ordeal sharp or long, or both, we shall seek no terms, shall tolerate no parley. We may show mercy, but we, the people of these islands, will ask none.’
Never before, he stressed, had Britain had an army such as it
