Bertie, May and Mrs Fish

In the kitchen my mother hears aeroplanes and says … Listen … listen … are they ours … out we run … quick … look … look up … and black wide-winged aeroplanes fly over in lines. At milking time one afternoon a single big grey plane roars low across the barns and clears Fishpond Wood and then the sky gets smoky over Top Field. My mother calls to Jannie my landgirl nanny and me … Stay put in the milking shed … and she and Joe Rummings and Griff pick up pitchforks and run up Homefield.

They walk back down and my mother milks and says … One of theirs crashed … you can’t see properly inside … what’s left is on fire … if they were alive it was not for long … I’ll change Top Field name to Airplane … in memory.

When a white smoke cross is in the sky after two planes pass she says … I hope the cross means those two are protected.

In daytime small planes rattle through the sky and at night slow heavy engines drone over. I sleep in my mother’s bedroom and in the dark she says … Poor pilots have a long way to go … I suppose they get lost sometimes … I hope this lot aren’t for Birmingham.

At breakfast a landgirl comes in the kitchen and unpicks sticky muddy bootlaces listening to the news on the wireless and cries and says to my mother … It isn’t fair … it isn’t sodding fair … it’s all on them … I’m going back home … I won’t sodding stay here … Birmingham is my sisters … you don’t know a sodding thing … you don’t … I don’t darn well care … sodding cows.

My mother says … I will ride down to Andoversford and send a reply-paid telegram to find out how they are … the west did have bad luck last night … I am sorry to say. In the milking shed she says to Joe Rummings … Very likely we’ll be a girl less by afternoon …

And Joe says … She’ll go back where she’s from …

And my mother says … It’s hard on girls sent here from a big town … no news so far if the tobacco factory’s gone.

A small plane flies nearer and she picks me up and runs to the yard. A cloud of silver tinsel falls from the sky onto my mother’s green topknot scarf. Silver hangs on my arms and on her pink linen blouse and her blue dungarees and sticks to my blonde curls. Tangled silver lands on stables and house gables and on barn roof moss. White pigs and brown hens and the one black hen and the grey Chinese geese are all silvery. Her black-and-white spaniel’s floppy ears sparkle. Three horses in Homefield gallop away under falling silver tinsel. Brown apple tree branches and blue delphinium flowers and red and pink and yellow roses and the green lawn and white yard stones are sparkling.

I pick up silver. The plane flies off. Griff freewheels down the yard and silver hangs from his bicycle handles and on his flat brown cap and my mother says … What do you suppose it is all for Griff … it must be all right … or why would they let it out over us … as long as it has nothing to do with mercury … what on earth are they dropping it on us for … so far I can’t see anything that’s fallen down dead … will you help Joe and the girls … I’m going in to turn the wireless on … you never know … we may get information.

In the kitchen she lifts me onto the dresser between the varnished wood wireless and glass butter churn. She turns the brown Bakelite wireless knob clockwise and behind the peacock tail material fan cut into wood a man’s voice fades in crackles … An announcement follows … reception … repeat … will … repeat … expect … and the voice disappears. My mother leans on the dresser and puts her cheek close to the wireless and twiddles the knob and I twist silver in my fingers. She says … Nothing … Düsseldorf … Brussels … Paris … London … nothing from anywhere … I don’t want to waste batteries … you can help me make butter while we listen … and Jannie can come indoors and stay with you while I ride round and make sure everywhere is safe.

She hugs the glass butter churn on the high red dresser top in one arm and untwists the tin screw lid and pours in cream from a wide white tin bowl and dips in wood paddles on a rod fixed into the lid … Thank heavens the cream is nicely cold … or we’d be here all day … it goes quicker since the Baroness calved … her Jersey cream is thicker than Ayrshire … I’ll hold the jar tight and you can turn … stand up on the chair … keep your elbow level with the handle … or you won’t get going fast enough.

The wood handle turns a cogwheel and the cogwheel ratchet teeth bite a small flat wheel that bites a third upright wheel that bites and turns the fourth wheel fixed round the paddle rod. I wind and cream swirls against glass and my mother says … That is going a good gallop … let’s pray it separates.

I watch the glass for butter flecks and my shoulder aches and she says … I’ll take a turn … you watch and see if I have good luck … that’s nice … music. The wireless plays and she holds the churn steady with one hand and turns with the other. The music stops and a woman’s voice says … We interrupt Workers’ Playtime this morning with an announcement for listeners in the West Midlands.

She says … That’s us … sshh … keep quiet and listen …

This is an announcement … there will be interference throughout today … allied radar operations are expected to continue … I repeat … expect interference … for the time being we return you to Workers’ Playtime with the BBC Light Orchestra.

My mother says … That must be our silver … I wish they told us whether anything to do with it is dangerous … can you see butter beginning … it’s time this cream hurried up.

I say … Yellow bits are coming.

She says … And they’re sticking together … in summertime cream can get too warm … three cheers.

I say … I see a lump … can I churn … and you watch?

She says … No … I’ll keep going … it won’t be long now …

She lifts out the butter on wood paddles and drops the lump into a white cooking bowl and rinses it under the cold tap and paddle-squeezes the lump so the water clouds. On a wet board on the kitchen table she breaks the lump into six and slaps and rolls. I lift grooved pats with two silver spoons onto white greaseproof paper laid on a blue willow pattern plate and my mother carries the plate into the larder and says … That’s done … one each for Griff and Joe and Mrs Fish and for us and two for sale now I’m not getting cigarettes … the coal shed cats can drink up leftover buttermilk.

In the afternoon rain begins. The cows tramp across the yard to milking and back again and my mother says … You can keep all the silver you’ve already collected in your room … do not touch any more.

My father writes

… I had such a lovely holiday with my Bear and seem to hate coming back here more every time. And now it is so horrid here into the bargain with the whole thing getting worse and worse and more and more officers and men going away. I have just got a further demand in for another ten officers making a total of twenty-seven now gone. I really don’t know how I am going to carry on and keep the spirit of the Regiment up.

All my love, my darlingest. Take care of your special self and keep the home fires burning. Shall be home again soon. God bless you my Bear and our little Bear.

Someone sends my mother an anonymous note: … Your husband behaves as if he has forgotten he has a wife. She reaches him by telephone and says … If you prefer someone else then I do not want to be married … that’s all I shall ever say … it is your choice and always will be.

He writes

… how could you say such horrible things on the telephone … I have never been unfaithful to you. Don’t do that again. Ever.

He signs the letter … Bertie.

I sleep in her bedroom and in the dark I hear her say … Alec … Alec … is that you?

A man’s voice calls … May … May … are you awake? She lights her candle and he walks in the bedroom and sits on her pink eiderdown. Gold braid rings shine on his sleeves. He opens a leather suitcase and hands her a cellophane packet. She pulls out stockings and waves transparent legs and says … Nylons … Alec thank you … have you really been in New York …

And he says … That Mecca for synthetic goods designed to keep the female of the species in good heart.

He opens a square tin box full of pale-brown square and oval shapes. In some centres is red jam. My mother points thick chilblain fingers and takes one and says to me … Biscuits … have a bite … lovely … mm-mmm.

Uncle Alec is my father’s brother. A captain in the Royal Navy on Atlantic Convoy duty. He says … The milking herd all in good heart I trust … particularly my beloved Baroness … and the garden … it is very nice indeed to be here … I shall indulge in a first-class kip and join you a.m. … good night my dear … good night monkey face.

His footsteps criss-cross the floor above and my mother’s eyes grow big and dark eating sugary biscuits in candlelight. She falls asleep on her white pillows. Her nightdress is turquoise silk. Mine is yellow cotton. I shift my legs in bed and things scratch and prickle. I call out … Quick … I’ve got wasps … quick … in the sheets … quick …

My mother sits up and says … It’s only biscuit crumbs … kneel up on the pillow. She leans over and her hands sweep the sheets and I can see her hands in the Dutch oval dressing-table mirror across the room.

My father writes

I wonder if one day we could introduce Rhododendrons to grow at home. They would look so lovely. A clump or two near the big beech trees in Fishpond Wood looking down at the house. All the new kinds. Pink and crimson.

On our latest exercise Wyndham surpassed himself by capturing a Brigadier on the enemy side and holding him prisoner … the poor man was driving peaceably to his brigade HQ from his house! He was needless to say furious.

I hear the great ‘Monty’ is fairly going wild visiting all his troops. Nobody is safe! We shall have him here shortly and you will probably have me back farming for good the week after!!

No more now, but to send all my love. It is a long time since I had one of your nice letters with all the news of home and I do look forward to them.

In the kitchen she stands me on a padded horsehair seat and shakes soil off carrots on newspaper on the table and says … One … two … three … four carrots. She tugs the oven door and pulls at a black iron pot and says … Listen to him growl. She pours water from the black kettle into the rabbit stew and prods pieces of pale haunch with a silver fork and screws up her nose and shoves the pot back in the oven and opens a letter.

15 March 1944. I have been on what the fortune tellers call ‘a long journey’. Sent for suddenly in London and then onto the Isle of Wight. Back here very tired. Have to memorise difficult orders and maps without any notes. It is all very very interesting. Difficult and rather important problems. I am inclined to feel tired in mind and brain.

My new teeth were finished last week and now I have a dazzling smile with a complete set fixed more than firmly in my mouth. I can’t get accustomed to it at all after so long playing with my loose plate. So it is hell and almost requires a spanner to get it out at night.

Your threshing results are very good. The Cotswolds may not be arable country but by good cultivations you seem to knock jolly fine crops out of that light land. Don’t forget Nitro-chalk. If we get the results using it that I see up here it will give you valuable early feed for the herd while other pastures come on.

Sunday, 19 March 1944. I think I have found you a better more reliable wireless set and a carthorse. Will let you know. Have roughed off my three young horses up here and they graze out in the park by day.

In June 1944 he is in a wire pen on the Isle of Wight with his soldiers and armoured cars. On 6 June the Allied invasion of France starts and he fights ashore on Juno beach with instructions to destroy bridges on the River Orne behind the enemy lines.

In summer 1945 he comes home on leave and for the rest of his life he shouts in his dreams at night. After wartime he sleeps mostly in his dressing room next door to me. I go in and see him thrash and wave his arms in the light of my torch. He yells … For Christ’s sake … Sunray … Sunray … come in … come in … dear God … you bloody Yanks … do you read … do you read … and he weeps … Goddam you all.

(Sung to the tune ‘D’ye ken John Peel’ – eighteenth-century ballad)