We'll Meet Again

Neither of them noticed a solitary figure behind them staring with outrage at those clasped hands.

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_188e3209-bdff-52f9-b817-1bc938c2c9c8)

THE storm had been brewing all day. Annie could feel it in the viciousness of her father’s criticisms. He always picked holes in everything she did, but on some days it was different. Instead of it being just the way he was, there was an added force behind his words, winding tighter and tighter until the inevitable explosion. The best thing to do was to keep out of his way, but it wasn’t always possible. When the mood was upon him, he seemed to seek difficult jobs that needed both of them to complete so that he could feed his anger at the world and at her. Today it was replacing some fencing. Annie had to hold the posts while Walter hammered them into ground hardened by the summer sun. As they started on their task, planes droned across the sky—a formation of bombers. To the south, ack-ack fire started.

‘It’s them, the Jerries,’ Annie said, gazing up and seawards at the dark shapes. Puffs of smoke were breaking around them, but they flew on unharmed. ‘Where are our boys?’

Her father took no notice.

‘Hold it still, yer useless bitch,’ he growled. ‘How can I hit it if yer waving it about like that?’

Head averted, eyes screwed shut, Annie held the post at arm’s length as Walter smashed down with the sledgehammer.

From the west she heard a higher-pitched engine noise. With an accelerating roar, fighters swooped overhead. Annie squinted skyward. Spitfires! Her hands shook as she held the fence post.

‘For Christ’s sake, you stupid mare—’

Her head stung as her father caught her a blow with the back of his hand. She looked at the post. Straight, she had to hold it straight.

Gunfire cracked over the sea. The engines whined and roared and droned. Caught between fear of her father and of the approaching planes, Annie hung on to the post for all she was worth. Walter swung the sledgehammer. Each blow drove the stake a fraction of an inch deeper into the unyielding soil. The vibration kicked up her arms and felt as if it were shaking her brain inside her skull. Half a mile away over the sea, there was an explosion. Annie looked up. A bomber was going down in flames.

‘They’ve got one!’ she cried.

At that moment the sledgehammer descended again, out of true. The post split at the top.

Walter’s hand cracked into her.

‘I told you!’

‘Sorry,’ Annie gasped.

The life-or-death struggle continued in the air, the planes passing over the coast not half a mile to the south of them, but Annie dared not look up from her task. Her father was nearer than the invaders, and she feared him more.

Each fence post seemed to take an age; none of them went in entirely straight and it was all her fault.

As always, her mother had the meal ready dead on midday. Not even the possibility of a German plane landing on the farm would stop Edna from having dinner ready the moment Walter wanted it.

‘Did you see—?’ she started as Walter and Annie came through the back door.

Then she saw their faces, sensed the atmosphere and lapsed into silence. Her hand shook a little as she ladled out the stew and handed it round. Annie noticed that, as usual, most of the meagre portion of meat was on her father’s plate, while she and Edna had vegetables and gravy. It didn’t even occur to her to question this. Appeasing her father was the number-one priority.

Both women ate silently, covertly watching Walter. Faintly through the window came the sound of another dogfight somewhere in the summer sky.

Walter threw his knife and fork down. ‘What d’you call this, then?’ he demanded.

Annie held her breath. This was it. Fear throbbed through her.

‘B-beef and vegetable stew,’ Edna muttered, keeping her eyes on her own plate.

‘Beef? There’s no beef in this. It’s nothing but carrot and swede. Swede! Flaming cattle food!’

Edna said nothing. Long experience had taught her that anything she said would be fuel to the fire.

Walter’s hand slammed down on the table. ‘Where’s the meat in it?’ he demanded.

The silence stretched, marked out by the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece.

‘Well?’ Walter barked.

‘It—it’s the rationing,’ Edna whispered.

‘The what? What did you say, woman?’

Edna’s lips trembled. Annie felt sick. She longed to intervene, but knew that it would only make things worse.

‘Rationing,’ Edna repeated, her voice barely audible. ‘I got to m-make it stretch.’

‘Rationing? Flaming government! Here I am, working my fingers to the bone producing beef and those flaming pen-pushers up in Whitehall think they can tell me how much of it I can eat? I’ll give them rationing—’

Relief washed over Annie, leaving her limp and wrung out. It was all right. Her father’s rage had been diverted. She and her mother sat silent, not even meeting each other’s eyes. They ate, though neither of them had much of an appetite left, but the food must not be wasted, so they pushed it into their mouths, chewed, swallowed. All the while Walter’s invective flowed round them, battering their ears, hurting their brains, and they were glad, for words directed at a distant authority were nothing compared to blows rained on them.

When the meal was over, Edna immediately started washing up, busying herself to deflect any possible criticism. Annie was left to follow her father out into the fields again.

As they trudged back to the half-finished fence, she looked towards Silver Sands. There it was, crouching under the sea wall. And there he must be. Tom. Tom, from a magic land called Norseley, far away from Wittlesham, where all families were happy and no one got hurt. In her daydreams now, she no longer got whisked over the rainbow to Oz, but ran away with Tom, hand in hand, to Norseley.

The afternoon went on for ever. To the north and to the south of them, distant gunfire could be heard, while white vapour trails and black balls of smoke scrawled across the sky. At first Walter worked silently, but as the sun beat down on their heads and the grinding labour began to sap his strength, the curses and the criticisms started again. The rant against the government had not been enough of a safety valve. Life itself was stacked against Walter, and someone had to take the blame.

‘Look at that—that’s not straight. For Christ’s sake, can’t you do anything right? All you got to do is hold it straight while I hit it. It’s not difficult. A halfwit could do it. Jesus wept! Why are you so useless? Why was I given just one useless girl—?’

And so on until he was ready to hammer in the next stake, mercifully leaving him without spare breath for speech.

Annie held grimly on to each fence post, trying her hardest to hold it still, hold it straight. But she could not fight against the force of the hammer blows when they landed off-centre and drove the post out of true. Her head ached from the sun and her body ached from bracing against the sledgehammer. She tried to cut her father out, centring her thoughts on the evening to come. She would walk across this very field, past Silver Sands, over the sea wall, and there Tom would be, waiting for her. And then everything would be all right.

When the posts were at last driven in, then the barbed wire had to be stretched between them and held with heavy-duty staples. Annie struggled with the coil while her father hammered in the staples.

‘Keep it tight, can’t you? No good having it sag like that. Beasts’ll be through that before the week’s out. Tighter, you stupid mare! Put some effort into it. Jesus—!’

At last the job was done. Now there was only afternoon milking to get through. It was like walking on the edge of a volcano. Annie knew it would only take one mistake to set off the eruption. Weariness and tension made her clumsy. Only luck brought her through without making a serious blunder.

Teatime was another tense meal, the silence broken only by the Home Service. They all put their food down and stopped chewing to listen to the six o’clock news. Forty-two Allied planes had been lost, but they had claimed ninety of the enemy. In homes across the country there were desperate cheers for another day’s holding on. At Marsh Edge Farm Walter merely grunted, while Annie and Edna said nothing.

Annie thought about the plane she had seen go down. One fewer to invade England. Later, she would talk to Tom about it, for he must have seen it too.

Annie ached to get away. Soon, soon the chores would be over and she would be free. Every fibre of her being longed to escape, to set off across the fields to the sea wall. But her conscience fought against it. What about her mother? Without her there, her mother would be sure to catch it. She was in a ferment of indecision.

They finished off the last tasks of the day and went back into the house. Walter dropped down into his chair.

‘Pull my boots off, woman,’ he growled.