One Summer at Deer’s Leap

‘Of course I haven’t!’ I smirked at the empty sherry glass on the drainer. ‘I just feel good, that’s all.’

‘Then it’s a welcome change! Usually, you snap my head off. Getting that book accepted has changed you, Cassie.’

‘Has it?’ I had a vision of him telling it to the long-suffering man in the mirror over the telephone. Piers Yardley was wasted on research! ‘Anyway, I’m going to have my tea now. Don’t ring again because I’ll be either in the bath or out! Take care of yourself, Piers. I’ll phone you at the weekend. Promise!’

‘Do I only merit off-peak, then?’

‘Bye, love!’ I ignored the snide remark.

Round two to Cassie Johns!

I parked the Mini at the back of the Red Rose, and, once inside, was glad to see Bill sitting alone, an empty glass in front of him.

‘Hi, Mr Jarvis,’ I smiled. ‘What can I get you?’

He smiled briefly and held up his beer glass, then asked me what the ’eck I was drinking when I sat down beside him.

‘I’m on Coke tonight. I’m driving. I want to pick your brains,’ I went on without preamble. ‘Will you tell me what it was like around these parts in the war? Was it really dangerous, having that airfield so near?’

‘Us called it an aerodrome in them days. ’Twas only the Yanks that called ’em airfields. I wouldn’t say it was dangerous, exactly. But when you come to think of it, they were nobbut young bits of lads flying those bombers. It must have been a bother getting them into the air. Well, they’d be heavy, wouldn’t they, with bombs and fuel?’

He placed his empty pipe between his teeth and sucked on it, reflectively.

‘I suppose that was before they made the runways longer?’ I suggested, trying to steer the conversation round to the Smiths’ fields.

‘Before and after. Was still a bit hair-raising. ’em made the chimney pots rattle as they flew over. Noisy, it was.’

‘I suppose it was better when they came back from a raid – well, safer for Acton Carey people, I mean. At least their fuel would be almost used, and their bombs would have gone. Landing wouldn’t have been so risky, would it?’

I saw Jack Hunter’s hands gripping the controls.

‘You might think not, but getting back from the raid didn’t mean they were home and dry, oh my word, no! Some mornings I’d be biking to the workshop, early, and I’d see ’em, wheels down, circling. Mind, it was when they was circling with their wheels not down that the trouble started.’

‘I don’t understand …’ I sipped at my drink, and wished it was beer.

‘Well, sometimes ’em couldn’t get their undercarriages down! Sometimes they’d been got at by enemy fighters; shot up, see, and the wheels wouldn’t work. Had to do a belly landing then, and the fire trucks and the ambulances standing by. It wasn’t a picnic in the Army, fighting in Italy, but I always reckoned I had a better chance of seeing my demob than those flyers.’

‘So there were a lot of accidents?’

‘Oh, aye.’

‘Where was the aerodrome exactly?’

‘Was about two miles from the village, going in the direction of that house you’re staying at. Two miles might sound a long way, but it was only seconds in flying time. I was once walking a girl out as lived in a cottage about half a mile from Deer’s Leap, though it’s tumbled down since. The land rises a bit at the back of the farm and we could look down, summer nights, and see them taking off below us. In miniature, sort of.’

‘So if I went to the back of Deer’s Leap and looked down, whereabouts would the aerodrome have been?’

‘If you was to walk to the top of that paddock, then keep on for about a hundred yards, and look over to your left, you’d have seen it. Mind, there was a wood there once. Sniggery Wood, we called it, and very handy for courting couples. The Air Ministry folk cut down all the trees. They’d have been a hazard, see, for bombers taking off and landing. Things change, lass, and not always for the better.’

‘So maybe,’ I asked cautiously, ‘the people – the Smiths, didn’t you say? – who lived there would be able to watch it all?’

‘Happen they would, if they’d been interested, but I suppose they had better things to do with their time.’

‘And the daughter – Susan – do you suppose she might have known some of the airmen there?’ Some, I said, trying to make it sound casual.

‘Her might’ve. Mind, it wasn’t encouraged. Getting fond of them aircrew lads could lead to trouble. They used to have dances at the aerodrome – had a good dance band there, I believe. Civilian girls were welcome, but my sister were never allowed to go!’

‘Why could it lead to trouble?’ I found myself sticking up for Jack Hunter. ‘I thought girls were sort of chaperoned in those days.’

‘You did, eh?’ He chuckled, wheezily. ‘We aren’t talking about when Queen Victoria was on the throne! Young lasses took notice of what their parents said, I’ll grant you that, and they didn’t leave home, usually, till they was wed or called up. But he-ing and she-ing went on like it always had and always will.

‘What I was trying to say was that if a girl got fond of a flyer, then she could get real upset if he didn’t come back from a raid. And there was a better than even chance that he wouldn’t. Parents didn’t want their lasses to get tied up with them, for that reason – apart from the obvious, of course. They could’ve ended up in the family way, an’ all!’

‘I see. That would have been awful for them?’

‘Awful? It’d have been a disgrace; a scandal. When a lass got into trouble in those days, she had to take herself off quick afore it became obvious – if you know what I mean – if the young man responsible didn’t wed her. I did hear as how one father around these parts just chucked his lass on to the street and told her to be off with her shame. Her jumped in t’river!’

‘But women were called up into the Armed Forces as well as men. I suppose parents would be a bit worried, their daughters never having been away from home, sort of …’

‘Suppose they would be, but they weren’t given much of a choice! And not all of them lasses as went in the Forces were all that upset about it. For some, it was an adventure – and they got away from strict parents, an’ all!’ He began to fidget with his empty glass.

‘Can I fill you up?’

‘That’d be decent of you …’

‘Did the Smith girl get called up?’ I asked, the second I put the glass in front of him.

‘Don’t reckon so. Farmers kept their daughters at home on account they worked on the land. Farming was a reserved occupation, remember, for young men as well as for young women. Some folk thought it wasn’t fair when their daughters went off to war and farmers’ sons stopped at home safe.’

‘But they left Deer’s Leap, you said. Maybe she would have to do war work when they left the farm?’

‘Maybe she would. I was called up myself before the Air Force emptied them out, so I never knew what became of them. You seem very interested in t’Smiths.’

‘Not particularly,’ I shrugged, hoping I sounded convincing. ‘It was just that I wondered what it was like for the farmer who once lived at Deer’s Leap. I’m interested in all the people who lived there. I suppose it would have been quite some property when it was built.’

‘Still is, I suppose. The man as built it would be well heeled.’

‘Mm. He’d have had servants and farm workers. I think they would have slept in the rooms over the kitchen. If we could invent a time machine and dial the year we wanted, we’d know exactly how it had been.’

‘Won’t be long,’ he grumbled into his empty glass, ‘afore they do, the rate they’re going on at! Spending all that money shooting off to the moon and what did they find when they got there? Nowt but dust!’

‘Are you ready for another?’ His interest was flagging. Mention of a refill revived it noticeably.

‘Tell me about Italy?’ I asked, returning from the bar.

‘Which bit?’ Carefully he lifted a brimming glass to his lips.

‘Monte Cassino?’ I hazarded.