Daughters of the Mersey (15 page)

She pulled Amy close. ‘Cuddle up to me,’ she ordered, ‘we mustn’t let your nice coat get wet.’

Uncle Jack was a gentle, mild-mannered man, only an inch or so taller than Bessie, but while Bessie was well-padded, he hadn’t an ounce of spare flesh on his frame. He wore an old flat cap and a khaki drill milking coat with buttons missing and a torn pocket. His ancient trousers were tied with string at the ankles over his heavy steel-studded boots. He relieved Amy of the wet battery and Bessie of several shopping bags.

The cows were grazing
on the sideland. ‘
Hobe hobe
,’ he shouted at them. They knew what that meant even if Amy didn’t and turned reluctantly for home.

‘Time for milking,’ he explained to her and drove them on. If they moved too slowly for Jack he encouraged them up the steep slope with more
hobe hobe
s.

‘Don’t get too near them,’ he advised, and a moment later Amy could see why. Each in turn lifted its tail and huge plop-plops of khaki manure splashed down as they walked.

‘Mind that shit,’ Bessie commanded. ‘Don’t get it on your shoes.’

Amy’s eyes widened at Bessie’s use of the word ‘shit’.

The cows went the back way into the farmyard and Jack followed them to open and close the gates. Bessie led Amy through the meadow, where the path was easier. Once indoors, she unwrapped a pound of sausages for tonight’s supper and also a joint of beef for tomorrow’s Sunday lunch. Both were put straight into the oven beside the fire. Jack pushed the hot coals under it.

‘We need to start the joint cooking tonight,’ Bessie explained. ‘It’s a slow oven.’

Jack collected buckets from the pantry and said he was going out to milk. ‘Do you want to come with me?’ he asked Amy.

Bessie was on the point of going upstairs to change out of her town-going clothes. She stopped and shook her head at Amy’s best coat.

‘Not in that, you’ll spoil it,
fach
,’ she said. Amy was immediately divested of it and a drill milking coat provided from a peg behind the front door. It smelled of cows and reached to her ankles. ‘And
be careful where you put your feet or you’ll spoil those shoes.’

Uncle Jack was sitting on a three-legged stool with a bucket between his knees, milking one of the two cows. It was swishing its tail round his head. The tail was encrusted with dried balls of manure and sounded like clattering wooden beads, which clearly hurt as they slapped Jack’s head. He gave the cow a smack on the flank and scolded her.

‘Take that tin and get her a few nuts,’ he said to Amy. ‘You’ll find them in a cask next door.’

The food store was on the end of the building. There were sacks and several casks, one full of buttermilk for the pigs, with cabbage stalks and potato peelings floating in it. It didn’t look appetising. There was Indian corn for the hens and several sorts of dried meal. There was nothing Amy recognised as nuts but one cask held small, hard, biscuit-like pieces that smelled of treacle. She half-filled the tin with those and took them back to Uncle Jack. ‘Are these the nuts for cows?’

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Tip them in this cow’s manger. She’ll be busy eating and forget about me milking her.’ As the nuts rained down, the other cow rattled the chain that tied her up. ‘Perhaps you’d better get a few for her too,’ Jack said. ‘She’s easier to milk, but we don’t want to upset her.’

‘Doesn’t your cow like being milked?’

‘She knows she has to be or her udder would get too big and heavy, and no cow likes that. She’s just grumpy.’

‘What are their names?’

‘I don’t give them names.’

‘You could call that one Grumpy.’

He laughed. ‘Would you like to learn to milk?’

‘No.’ She shuddered. Amy was nervous
about getting close to such a big animal and scared she’d swish her revolting tail round her head as she had Jack’s. All the time his pail was filling with frothy milk.

‘Aren’t you afraid that cow will kick the bucket over?’

‘She knows she’ll be in big trouble if she does, I’ll give her a wallop. The other cow is younger and better tempered than this, she never kicks.’

‘Then you could call her Sunshine. That’s a nice name for a cow, isn’t it? How old is she?’

‘About three. I only bought her last year.’

‘How much did she cost?’

‘Thirty-two pounds.’ he smiled. ‘A lot of money.

A ginger cat came in meowing and rubbed himself against Amy’s legs. He almost tripped her up as she tried to move. She bent to stroke him, feeling she understood cats better than cows.

‘Pass over that old sardine tin.’ Uncle Jack pointed to it. ‘And you can give the cat her supper.’

Amy saw it against the wall, still with its lid rolled back over the key and none too clean. She knocked out the bits of straw and held it out to Jack. ‘Hold it closer so I can fill it with milk,’ he said.

But her arms were short and her feet wouldn’t move her any closer to those large cloven hooves.

‘She won’t hurt you.’ Jack took the tin from her and filled it with two squirts from a teat before handing it back.

Amy set it down and the cat lapped at it eagerly, licking his tongue round the tin until it shone bright and clean. He started to purr and looked up at her.

‘He wants more,’ she said.

‘No.’ Jack was firm. ‘If he wants more food
he must catch it himself. I want him to keep the mice down so they don’t eat the animal feed and he won’t do that if his belly is full. One tin at each milking time is plenty for him.’

‘What’s his name?’

He shrugged and smiled, ‘Pusscat.’

‘I shall call him Marmaduke because he’s a lovely marmalade colour.’

She picked him up; he had a purr as loud as a motorbike and she loved him.

T
HE NEXT MORNING AMY
was taken to chapel by her hosts. Jack and
Bessie dressed in their smartest clothes and they all carried their best shoes under their arms in paper bags and walked down through the muddy cwm in old ones. At the wicket gate on to the road, they changed and pushed their old shoes into the hedge to await their return.

Now they were ready to attend chapel. Uncle Jack wore a suit with a waistcoat and a bowler hat. It was a walk of some two miles to the hamlet of Llanhafod which consisted of the chapel, the school and a large farm. The farmhouse was big and gracious and built of pink bricks in the Queen Anne style.

Amy’s new school was pointed out to her. A plaque built into the wall told her it had opened in June 1875 as a result of the 1870 Education Act that had made councils responsible for providing free education for children up to the age of twelve. It was built of local granite and roofed with purple slates from Bethesda and the house for the teacher was attached to it. To Amy it seemed small and nothing like her school at home.

The chapel had been rebuilt on a grand scale in the early twentieth century. There was a spacious vestry, a manse for the resident minister and a stable that in the early days was used by visiting preachers and
members of the congregation arriving on horseback.

Bessie pushed an open hymn book into Amy’s hands when the harmonium, played by a lady with fluttering feathers in her hat started to play. She found the Welsh took great delight in singing. The voices of the congregation soared above the harmonium, almost lifting the roof. At home, by comparison, the congregation hardly seemed to open their mouths and had to be dragged along by the organist. Amy enjoyed the singing but she couldn’t join in because she couldn’t read Welsh.

She understood nothing of the Welsh service but she’d been given to understand that she must sit still for the hour it would last. It seemed light inside, all the woodwork was polished pine and very plain. There was a high pulpit and an enclosure below for the deacons so that they sat a little higher than the rest of the congregation. There were other children there but none of those who had come on the train with her.

Amy watched the clock, swung her legs to ease the hard seat and wondered how her family was faring without her and whether she’d ever see them again. Bessie noticed her restlessness and offered her a mint imperial from a paper bag she kept in her handbag. Amy was glad when the final hymn came.

Outside, people gathered in groups to gossip with their friends and relatives. Amy knew by their dire expressions that they were talking yet again of their dread of another war. She kicked at the gravel, impatient to go.

The congregation had begun to drift away in twos and threes when the minister came rushing out to release a torrent of excited Welsh at those who remained. It clearly stunned them all.

Again, Amy didn’t understand
his words but she knew he brought the dreaded news that war had been declared on Germany. Bessie took her hand and led her away, explaining that the teacher who had come from Amy’s school had heard Neville Chamberlain’s broadcast at eleven o’clock while they had been gathering in the chapel.

They hurried home in a subdued frame of mind. Amy was afraid it meant she’d have to stay here for a very long time and that her family at home was now in danger. War must be a truly terrible thing if adults were scared stiff of it like this.

June woke up slowly. The distant sound of church bells reminded her it was Sunday. She’d have a lie-in. The house was quiet – too quiet.

She propped herself up on her elbow to look at Amy’s bed. The white candlewick bedspread was pulled up neatly over the pillow – of course, Amy was gone, Milo was gone and Pa was certain the war was about to start. Why did this have to blow up now?

She’d talked Amy into bringing her up a slice of toast and a cup of tea on Sunday mornings but today she wasn’t going to get it. She’d have to get up because Mum got tetchy if the breakfast table wasn’t cleared by ten o’clock.

As June went along to the bathroom, she could hear the wireless in the dining room below. Pa and Mum were obsessed with the war news. She paused to listen but she couldn’t catch the words. When she went downstairs ten minutes later, she found her parents sitting silent and white-faced at the breakfast table.

June said, ‘Has something happened?’

‘Neville Chamberlain promised
the Poles that Britain would help them defend their border,’ Pa told her grimly. ‘Now it seems Hitler has invaded Poland and Britain has sent an ultimatum to Hitler saying that if he doesn’t withdraw his troops by eleven o’clock this morning, then we too will be at war with him.’

June could see the dread on their faces. The news was like a heavy weight hanging over them but it didn’t stop Mum getting the joint of beef into the oven to roast.

‘Peel a few potatoes for me, love,’ she said to June and she found herself chopping cabbage too, while Pa watched the clock and read the Sunday papers.

Mum was worried and making heavy weather of beating batter for the Yorkshire pudding. ‘I’ll make an apple tart – could you peel and chop a few apples for me too?’

Pa called them into the dining room as eleven o’clock approached and they sat round with great formality as though they were about to hear their own death sentence.

The announcement, made with great solemnity, was exactly what they were expecting to hear. Mum’s face went whiter still and Pa clenched his fists. ‘So we’re about to fight another world war,’ he said.

June was afraid this would bring Ralph’s call-up papers. It was bad enough to think of Milo in the army, but for Ralph to be sent to the other end of the country or, even worse, to some war zone where he’d be in the thick of the fighting was absolutely awful. She couldn’t bear to think of it, couldn’t think of life without him.

June watched her mother get up slowly and switch off the wireless. War had been a threat hanging over them for so long, she’d begun
to think it never would come. She was shocked.

‘Your time is running out, my girl,’ Pa said grimly. ‘You won’t be allowed to sit around at home twiddling your fingers.’

June was afraid he was right. She’d been looking halfheartedly for a job but had seen nothing exciting enough to put in an application. She was more interested in spending as much time with Ralph as she could before they were parted.

He’d arranged to meet her at the ferry terminal at two o’clock this afternoon. They spent part of the afternoon making love on his bed, and then as he was interested in cricket, they walked across the park to see a match. June sat enjoying the warm sun on her face while he explained what was taking place on the field. June had played cricket at school but was not that interested.

It was a fine mellow evening and as they strolled back to Ralph’s rooms, they saw a couple of nurses walking up to the nurse’s home in the park. She remembered what her mother had said.

Suddenly June laughed and turned to Ralph. ‘Why don’t I become a nurse at that hospital?’ It was visible through the trees. ‘I could see you as often as I wanted. Nobody would be grilling me about where I’d been and who I was with.’

His mind was still on the cricket. ‘I didn’t know you wanted to be a nurse.’

‘I don’t. Well, not particularly. But I’ll have to get a job before I’m eighteen or I could be directed into something worse, stuffing explosives into bombs in a munitions factory or something.’

‘What if you don’t like it?’

‘There’s a lot I will like.’ She laughed again. ‘That hospital is so handy. Don’t you think that’s a good idea?’

‘I like the idea of you being just across the
park,’ he said, drawing her closer, ‘and free to come to my place when you’re not working, but I could be called up at any time, June. Conscription applies to all men between the ages of eighteen and forty.’

‘I know, but thirty-three is getting on a bit for a fighting man.’

‘The government decides on what age group they want to conscript and I’ve no doubt my turn will come. Would you still want to be a nurse then?’

‘If you had to go away, I wouldn’t care what I did. It might as well be nursing as anything else.’

Over the first few days, Amy followed Bessie around all day as she worked and she hardly ever stopped explaining things to her. She told Amy that she and Jack had bought Coed Cae Bach on a mortgage in 1916, the year they got married, and that it had cost £1,700 but was all paid off now. Uncle Jack had had to find work to do this. To start with he’d worked on the bigger farms nearby, but he’d been with the Forestry Commission for nearly ten years now and liked it better.