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Packed to overflowing it had been with soldiers with respirators and kitbags, airmen with kitbags and respirators and a great many sailors with the added encumbrance of rolled and lashed hammocks and all of them sleeping and snoring not only where they ought to have been, but in corners, corridors and anywhere space was to be found.
‘We were held up at Newcastle for almost an hour and if it hadn’t been for an ATS girl, I don’t know what I’d have done – you know what I mean …?’
No need to go into intimate detail, but the resourceful young lady had left the train, marched up to the engine driver and loudly threatened, ‘Now listen ’ere, mate! If you start your bleedin’ engine before me and this lady have found somewhere to have a widdle, I’ll burst yer!’ To which the driver replied that it looked as if they’d have time to sit there for the rest of the night and make their Wills if they were so minded, before he got the green light to move.
So embarrassing it had been and surely obvious to everyone awake that they were about to search the blacked-out railway station for the ladies’ room!
‘But wasn’t there a lavvy on the train?’ Tilda quickly sized up the cause of the upset.
‘There were several, and all of them filled with luggage.’ If she could have reached one, that was. They’d had the greatest difficulty getting off the train and they had struggled and pushed their way back to their compartment only to find their seats occupied by two burly sergeants who gazed at the ATS girl’s single stripe and told her where she could go. Pulling rank, Miss Clitherow later discovered it was called, and bleedin’ sergeants were always doing it!
‘And the train was dirty and blacked out.’ Except for the odd blue light bulb, that was, and if she never set foot on a train again for the entire duration of hostilities, it wouldn’t bother her one iota. And that, she supposed was something of a contradiction in view of the decision she had made.
‘Never you mind, Miss Clitherow, dear. Just take off your hat and wash your hands, then I’ll pour you a cup.’ Tilda had never seen the housekeeper so distraught, not in all her thirty-odd years at Rowangarth. ‘And then I’d get a bath, if I were you, and pop straight into bed.’
‘Oh, no!’ A bath maybe, but she must see her ladyship as soon as maybe, thank her for the time off, then explain the position fully, a thought which brought tears to her eyes and Tilda to place a comforting arm around her shoulders – a liberty she would once never have dreamed of taking – and tell her that she was home and safe now, and must never go away again. Which immediately caused the tears to flow faster and for Miss Clitherow to murmur, amid gasps, ‘Tilda! Please don’t say that!’
The tears came again when she and her ladyship were comfortably seated in the small parlour, windows wide to the July afternoon. It was her ladyship’s fault, the housekeeper reluctantly admitted, her being so genuinely pleased to see her back from her bereavement.
‘We have missed you, Miss Clitherow,’ Helen smiled. ‘It’s so good to see you again. Julia tells me your journey was very uncomfortable, but never mind – you are home now.’
‘Oh dear, Lady Helen, but I’m not you see. Well, not for so very much longer.’
And she had gone on to explain how her cousin Margaret – the elder sister of Elizabeth, whose funeral Miss Clitherow had gone to attend – had begged her, almost, to leave domestic service and spend her remaining years close to kin amid the beautiful – and safe – hills and lochs of Scotland. ‘It’s time for you to retire, stop working for the gentry, Agnes, my dear. And it’s so peaceful and quiet, here.’
Her cousin was right, of course. Apart from the blackout, there was little sign of the war in the tiny village between Oban and Connel. Just sight of the ferry from Achnacroish to Oban and the odd merchant ship making for the Sound of Mull. Certainly there were no aircraft armed with bombs and bullets, their wings heavy with fuel, struggling to take off. The bombers from RAF Holdenby Moor worried Agnes Clitherow. She flinched when they roared overhead, awoke with a start when, in the early hours of the morning, they returned from raids over Germany.
‘We are safer here on the west coast. If the invasion comes it will be from the south or the east,’ Margaret had urged and she was right without a doubt. Hitler’s divisions occupied France, Belgium and the Netherlands, had ports and aerodromes there in plenty. ‘Mark my words, Agnes, Hitler will not do the obvious. They are waiting for him to invade the south coast of England but in my opinion he’ll land in Yorkshire or Northumberland. He’s a sly one!’
‘Not for so very much longer?’ Helen’s words cut into the housekeeper’s troubled thoughts. ‘You aren’t ill, Miss Clitherow?’
‘No, milady, but I am getting older, and my cousin has offered me my own room. It’s so peaceful there in Scotland, and safe somehow.’
‘And you don’t feel safe here at Rowangarth?’ Helen Sutton knew how much her housekeeper disliked having the aerodrome so near. ‘You really want to go, Miss Clitherow? Are you and I to part after so long?’
‘Needs must, Lady Helen. You know how old I am and I’m mindful of the fact that there would always have been shelter for me here. But I’m of a mind to end my days with Margaret in Scotland. It’s why I’m giving notice now, and hoping it will be convenient for me to go in four weeks’ time.’
‘Miss Clitherow, you may leave as soon as you wish, but it will grieve me to see you go. I shall miss you greatly. Rowangarth will miss you.’
‘Oh, milady …’ Tears trembled on Agnes Clitherow’s voice.
‘Now don’t upset yourself,’ Helen soothed. ‘Scotland isn’t the other end of the world. We’ll all keep in touch. But promise me one thing? You know I wish you well in your retirement, but just if things don’t work out, I want you to know that you have only to ring me. There is room and to spare for you always here at Rowangarth. You’d never be too proud to admit that you missed us more than you thought, now would you?’
‘No. I wouldn’t,’ she sniffed. ‘This house has been like a home to me and where else would I turn, if trouble came? And like you say, Rowangarth is only a telephone call away. But if you’ll pardon me, milady – things to be done, you see …’ And if she didn’t get out of this dear little room she would break down and weep – a thing she had never done before – well, not in front of her ladyship, that was. ‘Perhaps if we could talk later? It has been distressing for me, telling you.’
‘And for me, too, learning I am to lose a splendid housekeeper and a dear friend. But if your mind is truly made up, then I promise not to try to persuade you to stay.’
‘Thank you. Thank you for everything, milady,’ the housekeeper choked as, for the first time in all her years with Lady Helen, she made a hasty, undignified exit.
Helen watched her go, heard the quiet closing of the door and the slow, sad steps along the passage outside, walking away from her.
But everything and everyone she had known and loved seemed to be leaving her now, she thought sadly. Soon there would be no one left. No one at all.
Jack Catchpole, son of the late Percy, and head – and since war started the only – gardener at Rowangarth, was not at all sure about the land girl Miss Julia had said would be coming. To help in the kitchen garden, she said, since they must grow all the food they could. Vegetables and fruits in season would help the war effort and Rowangarth, therefore, was entitled to apply for help from the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries – the Ag and Fish, most people called it.
What had surprised Catchpole, however, was that as in most things, Miss Julia had had her way in no time at all and now he must prepare himself for a female invasion of his domain.
He sucked on his empty pipe, contemplating the horrors of it. For one thing, she wouldn’t know a weed from a seedling and for another, she wouldn’t want to get her hands dirty nor break her fingernails which without a doubt would be long and painted bright red. And she would be late every morning, an’ all, and make up all kinds of female excuses when she wanted time off to meet her young man or have her hair permanently waved. In short, she was not welcome.
It came as a great surprise, therefore, and something of a shock to see a young woman, smartly dressed in Land Army uniform, advancing upon him just as the kettle on the potting shed hob was coming to the boil and he had emptied his twist of tea leaves and sugar into the little brown teapot he had used for years and years. He watched her, saying not a word until she stood before him, eyes wide.
‘Are you the head gardener?’ she asked.
‘Aye.’ His eyes did not waver.
‘I think you’re expecting me, sir. I’m your land girl and I’m willing to learn …’ She let go her breath in a little nervous huff.
‘Aye.’ Catchpole stuffed his pipe into the pocket of his shirt. ‘Well, the first thing you learn in my garden is not to call me sir. My name is Jack Catchpole – Mister Catchpole to you. And what might your name be?’
‘Grace Mary Fielding, Mr Catchpole, but people call me Gracie. Gracie Fielding – Gracie Fields, see? Well, when you come from Rochdale, what else?’
‘What else indeed?’ Catchpole liked Gracie Fields and her happy, brash voice. Made him laugh, Our Gracie did. ‘So, young Gracie Fielding, what made you choose market gardening in general and Rowangarth in particular?’
‘Oh, I didn’t, Mr Catchpole – choose either, I mean. I just got sick of streets and mills and joined the Land Army so I could be in the country – and do my bit, of course. And it was the Land Army chose to send me here.’
‘Mills, eh? Cotton mills?’
‘Mm. All the women in our family worked in the mills, but Mam said she wanted better for me. “Gracie isn’t going in t’mill,” she said and she worked extra hours to send me to the Grammar School.’
‘So you got yourself a better job – kept away from the looms, then?’
‘A better job – yes,’ she grinned, ‘but at the mill, as a wages clerk. Would make Dickie Hatburn’s cat laugh, wouldn’t it?’
‘And who might Dickie Hatburn be?’
‘Dunno, but he must have had a cat, that’s for sure.’ She threw back her head and laughed and her teeth were white and even. Her eyes laughed, too.
‘Do you like cats, Gracie Fielding?’
‘Not as much as dogs.’
‘Then that’s the second thing you learn in my garden. Cats is not welcome. When you see one you chase it, don’t forget. Cats wait till you’ve made a nice soft tilth and sown your seeds careful, like, in nice straight rows, then they’ve the cheek to think you’ve done it specially for them. Soon as your back is turned, they’re scratching about among your little seeds and you know what they leave behind them?’
‘Oh I do, Mr Catchpole, and I’ll chase them.’
‘And dogs, too. Dogs’re not welcome in my garden either, unless accompanied by a responsible adult and secure on the end of a lead.’
‘I’m learning,’ Gracie smiled.
‘Then rule number three. At a quarter past ten exactly, I mash a pot of tea. Most days there’s a fire in the big potting shed if we can find wood, and it’s going to be one of your jobs to see that I get my tea on time.’
‘Ten fifteen exactly.’
Catchpole took out his pocket watch, then glanced in the direction of the potting shed.
‘Water’ll just about be on the boil. Tea’s in the pot. Reckon it might run to two. You’ll find an extra mug on the top shelf beside the bottle marked poison.’
Gracie entered the dark shed. It smelled of earth and bone meal and smoke from the crackling wood fire in the little iron grate. On the hob a kettle was just beginning to puff steam.
She searched the top shelf to find a blue enamelled mug, rinsed it in the rainwater butt outside the door, then shook it dry. She liked Mr Catchpole and the smell of his big shed; liked his garden with its high, red-brick walls with fruit trees growing up them and she liked the straight, weed-free paths and their little clipped hedges.
‘I’m glad I’m here,’ she smiled, handing him the bigger mug, settling herself beside him. ‘It’ll be better than working on a farm, shovelling manure.’
‘And what makes you think you won’t be shovelling manoor here?’ He jabbed the stem of his pipe in the general direction of a large, steaming heap in a distant corner of the garden. ‘That manoor came here this March and there it’ll stay till it’s good and black and rotted down and smells as sweet as a nut. And then, I shouldn’t be at all surprised, you’ll shovel it into a barrow and you’ll spread it down the potato rows and anywhere else I think fit for it to go. It’ll be the land girl’s job.’
‘Rule number four,’ she said gravely. ‘Manure.’
‘That’s it. And then, when we’ve used up that heap – next spring, that’ll be – us plants marrows there. Alus. Marrows is greedy feeders and they like growing where a manoor heap has wintered. Ground full of goodness, see. There’s a great call, these days, for marrows for stuffing.’
‘Stuffing,’ Gracie echoed, never having eaten a stuffed marrow and making a mental note never to eat one in future.
Catchpole supped appreciatively. The lass could mash tea and she had a happy face and could take a bit of teasing.
He glanced at her outfit, taking in the khaki knee-stockings, the shirt and green tie; the short, smart jacket and the hat, tipped to the back of her bright yellow curls.
‘Hope you don’t intend coming to work all dressed up like that,’ he remarked, eager to find just one fault.
‘Bless you, luv, no! I’m wearing my walking-out togs just to make an impression. Tomorrow, I’ll be wearing my dungarees and a cool shirt – and my good thick boots!’
Catchpole nodded, mollified, drained his mug then placed it on the ground at his feet.
‘You got a young man, then?’
‘One or two, Mr Catchpole, but none of them serious. Well, it’s best not when there’s a war on. Don’t think I’d like having someone I cared about very much away at the war.’
‘Ar.’ The lass had sense. ‘Still, can’t sit here all morning nattering. Work to be done. Us’ve got to dig for victory, or so the Government tells us.’
Gaudy posters everywhere urged it. ‘Dig for Victory!’ they exhorted. Britain needed food, so lawns must be dug up and cabbages and potatoes planted instead. Those without gardens were offered allotments; flowerbeds in parks were planted with peas and beans and lettuces. Any grassy stretch came under the plough and this year, where children once played and dogs had been walked, wheat and oats and barley were already turning from green to gold, soon to be harvested.
Dig for victory! Every spadeful of earth turned over, every potato picked, was a second in time off the duration of the war, and Britain dug furiously.
‘Then can’t I stay, Mr Catchpole – start work right away?’
‘You could, if you wasn’t all togged up like that.’
‘Then why don’t I go back to the hostel and change into my dungarees? And I can pick up my sandwiches whilst I’m about it. And Mr Catchpole – why is our hostel called a bothy?’
Questions, questions! ‘A bothy,’ he sighed, ‘is a place where apprentice lads lived. Young gardeners, stable lads and the like. Every big house has a bothy, only once, in the old days, they were filled. Mrs Purvis looked after them all.’
‘Mrs Purvis who’s our cook?’
‘That same lady. When the garden apprentices were taken into the militia, she had nothing to do. Lucky for her you land girls came along.’
‘She’s nice. She’s been asking us, now the apples are ripening, to try to get her some windfalls, then she’ll make us an apple pie for Sunday dinner. She’s a good cook.’
‘Well, you’m welcome to any windfalls you can gather here. There’s a few about, over by the far wall. Now off with you, lass! I’ll be over yonder when you get back, hoeing the sprouts. You know what sprouts are?’
‘Course I do – but I’ve never seen them growing.’
‘Well, from now on and for the duration, Gracie Fielding, you’m going to learn how to grow ’em – aye, and peas and beans and potatoes and more besides.’
‘Suits me, Mr Catchpole.’
He watched her go. Happen he just might make something of the lass from Rochdale. She had a nice smile and a ready laugh and he’d especially looked at her fingernails, which were short cut and unpainted.
‘Us’ll see how you shape up, Gracie Fielding,’ he murmured to her retreating back and surprised himself by noticing she had a nice, neat little bottom.
He chuckled mischievously, wondering how long it would be before the lads at the aerodrome were wolf-whistling his land girl.
Picking up the mugs, he rinsed them in the water butt and returned them to the shelf beside the bottle marked poison. Then he took the teapot and emptied the leaves on the compost heap, making a mental note to instruct Gracie about compost heaps and their value in the order of things.
He reckoned the lass would be a quick learner and was very surprised to find himself looking forward to her return.
‘I see they’re making the Duke of Windsor governor of the Bahamas,’ Helen Sutton murmured over the top of the morning paper.
‘Best place for him,’ Julia grunted without looking up from her plate. ‘Hope he takes her with him. Shouldn’t wonder if Mr Churchill isn’t behind the move. The man’ll be out of harm’s way there. Tell me something important.’
‘We-e-ll, it says here that there have been air raids on Swansea and Falmouth, and convoys in the Channel have been attacked. And more raids on Clydeside and the south.’
‘Looks as if we are being softened up for the invasion,’ Julia shrugged.
‘Don’t say that, please.’ Helen Sutton laid down her newspaper. ‘Drew is in the south, don’t forget.’
‘Drew is just fine. I’d know inside me if he wasn’t.’ Julia picked up the paper, shaking it open. Newspapers were easily read these days. Sometimes containing no more than eight pages, they were quickly scanned. ‘Well! Here’s something you missed. That dratted Lord Haw-Haw! Last night, it says, he broadcast a final appeal to reason to the British, urging them to make peace with Germany. The cheek of the ruddy man!’
‘I saw it, Julia. I didn’t think it worth comment. And you know I have forbidden anyone in this house to tune in to him.’
‘But people do, you know. They reckon he’s a good laugh.’
‘Oh, no! Some of the things he says are remarkably true, or so they say. He doesn’t amuse me!’
An Englishman – no one could be quite certain of his identity – broadcast regularly from Germany. He had an arrogant, nasal voice that some likened to the braying of an ass. So Lord Haw-Haw he had become, and almost as much a part of listening in to the wireless as Tommy Handley or Henry Hall, and though no one at all admitted to having heard him, he was, nevertheless, regularly reported in the newspapers. Completely as a joke, of course!
‘Well, we don’t want peace with Hitler – not on his terms, anyway. Oh, wouldn’t he just love rubbing our noses in it? We’ll manage, Mother. He knows what he can do with his offer of peace as far as I’m concerned. And here’s another bit you missed. The Government says that no more cars are to be manufactured – not for civilians, that is.’
‘Civilians must make sacrifices,’ Helen sniffed. She disliked cars, refusing to learn to drive. You couldn’t blame her, Julia thought, when Pa had killed himself in a motor on the Brighton road, trying to reach sixty miles an hour.
‘Oh, and something else,’ she smiled, folding the paper. ‘Alice told me last night. The LDV boys have been given uniforms at last and they’re to be called the Home Guard. They’re to have shoulder flashes to sew on, and tin hats, too, just as if they were soldiers. They’ve made Tom a corporal. I think he’s quite chuffed about it. All he wants now is for them to be issued with rifles, then they’ll be ready for the Jerries. If they come, of course.’
