Evie (5 page)

‘Evie said she was ill and obviously needed medical attention …’

‘He has a lot to answer for, that bastard.’

Days passed without incident. The repairs to the wall round the slurry pit were almost complete. On the fourth day Dave had taken the tractor up to the higher farm to fetch a load of coping stones, while Ferdinand Vallance sat contentedly
munching his way through the sandwiches his wife had cut for him that morning. Orphaned at nine, crippled by a rolling tractor at fourteen, Ferdie had surprised the world by finding his life’s partner in Mabel Hodges, who, overweight and underwashed, had been one of Alice’s girls, arriving at the hostel the day it opened its doors to the first intake of ill-assorted young women. Instantly drawn to one another, their shared disregard for personal hygiene adding to their mutual attraction, two happy events had eventually taken place in the form of twins, Scarlet O’Hara and Winston Ferdinand, who, added to Mabel’s son, ‘little Arthur’ – the result of an undisclosed, previous impregnation – completed, for the time being at any rate, the Vallance family.

Stuffing the last of his sandwich into his mouth, Ferdie smiled at Hester who was approaching the slurry pit with a mug in her hand.

‘A cuppa with your elevenses, Ferdie?’ she asked him.

‘Ta, but this be me twelvses,’ he confessed, with his mouth full. ‘A bit on the early side I daresay, on’y I were feeling peckish’. For a while the two of them sat on the low wall, he munching and sipping and both catching up on the latest news concerning Evie, whose story was proving excellent material for gossip and speculation.

‘Reckon she be a bit sly, that one,’ Ferdie said. ‘All those months, creepin’ round the countryside with an Eyetie.’ Ferdie had lowered his mug and was squinting into the sharp sunlight. ‘Who be that then …?’ he said.

Making its way down the lane towards Lower Post Stone, the figure of a man could be glimpsed through the thinning
autumn foliage. He was heavily built and had a light knapsack over one solid shoulder and Hester, who knew Norman only by reputation, guessed at once who he was. She clutched Ferdie’s arm.

‘It’s him!’ she whispered, pulling Ferdie down beside her until only their two heads, their outlines broken by a tangle of old man’s beard, were visible. ‘Evie’s fella! See? That’s an army kitbag over ’is shoulder! ’E’s come for her! Get down, Ferdie! Don’t let ’im see us!’

Norman Clark moved silently towards the empty hostel and stood, listening and looking, his eyes moving over the face of the building, at the closed shutters and drawn curtains. His back was to Hester and Ferdie and the only sound was the mallards on the farm pond and the stream as it funnelled under the humpbacked bridge.

Hester froze. Across the yard, inside the open door to her cottage, she had left Thurza in her playpen, amusing herself with her toys. It would be no good expecting Ferdie to run for help, his maimed leg prevented any movement beyond a rolling hobble which, though fast enough for herding stock and sound enough for driving horse and cart or tractor, would be no use to him on this occasion.

‘Stay there, Ferdie,’ Hester told him. He gaped at her, struggling to comprehend the situation and focus his mind on devising a plan to deal with it. In the meantime he would do as Hester told him. ‘I’m gunna try to get round the back of the barn to the yard phone!’ she said. ‘Make sure you keep your ’ead down, Ferdie!’

Using the cover provided by a collection of old carts, made
redundant by the increasing use of tractors, Hester reached the rear of the barn and began making her way round it towards the yard. The telephone, the farm’s only communication with the outside world, was attached to a wall just inside the large opening to the barn’s interior. Historically, the telephone had only ever been used in emergencies during the Land Army’s occupation. Now that Dave, Hester and Thurza were the lone occupants of the lower farm, it remained, for that reason, connected.

Ferdie raised his head just high enough for him to peer carefully over the low wall. He saw Norman Clark approach the farmhouse door. After beating on it with his closed fist he rattled the latch without effect and stepping back and lowering a massive shoulder, charged it. His heavy frame juddered with each impact but the solid oak resisted him once, twice and a third time. In that moment Ferdie had seen Hester slip round the corner of the barn and vanish into its shadowy interior. By now, he calculated, the loud telephone bell in the yard of the upper farm would be demanding attention. Someone would hear it, cross the yard, lift it from its hook and answer it. Mabel, his missus perhaps. Winnie, or possibly Gwennan. Or Mr Jack or even Roger Bayliss himself.

The ringing continued. Roger Bayliss heard it from the farm office. Mabel Vallance, pegging her washing on the line at the side of her cottage, heard it. Eileen, in the Bayliss kitchen, filling jam jars with bramble jelly, heard it, Winnie, sorting eggs, heard it but everyone thought that someone else would answer it. Dave Crocker, his cartload of copping stones loaded and ready for the descent to the lower farm,
heard it as he flicked the reins across Prince’s glossy shoulder, turned the animal’s head towards the entrance to the lane and gee’d him forward. On the far side of the yard Mr Jack was checking the water in the idling engine of the tractor while the strident sound of the unanswered bell continued to bounce off the farmyard walls. Dave hesitated. Then he leapt off the cart and sprinted back, across the yard, reached the phone, grabbed it off its hook and then was gaping at the news his wife was giving him. Crossing the yard he shouldered Mr Jack aside, hauled himself onto the idling tractor, slammed it into gear and shouted to his boss, who had just emerged from the farm office.

‘’E be there, Mr Bayliss, sir,’ he bellowed. ‘Norman Clark! ’E be down to the Lower Farm with Hes and the baby … an’ on’y Ferdie to help ’em!’

Mabel, once Hodges and now Vallance, blanched at this news.

‘Keep an eye on my babies!’ she yelled at Eileen, who had appeared at the Bayliss’s kitchen door. ‘That Norman fella’s got my Ferdie!’ She hauled up her skirt, swung a short, plump leg over the crossbar of the farm bicycle and wobbled off to the head of the steep lane.

Norman Clark stepped back from the farmhouse door. He stood, slightly breathless from the exertion of his assault on it, swearing under his breath, rubbing his shoulder and searching the empty yard. Then, from the open door of Hester’s cottage came the whimper of a young child. Thurza, bored with her golliwog, wanted her mother. As her cries grew more demanding and Norman turned towards the sound, Hester broke cover and ran from the barn, across the yard towards her cottage, knowing Norman would have seen her and would pursue her. Without looking back she reached her door, slammed it behind her, locked it and shot the bolts. She knew she was not safe. Neither her door nor her windows were robust enough to withstand Norman Clark. Calculating that it could not be many more minutes before her husband arrived back at the lower farm, she lifted Thurza
from her playpen and stood, waiting tensely in the middle of her kitchen. If Norman attacked her locked front door she would escape through her scullery into the yard behind the cottage. What she would do then she did not know, nor did she have time to consider, because Norman’s heavy shoulder was already making her front door creak.

Ferdie Vallance, hearing Thurza cry, had known what Hester would do. Disregarding her own safety she would go to her child. Grabbing the pickaxe he had been using on the construction of the wall, Ferdie hauled himself from his hiding place near the slurry pit, arriving in the yard behind Hester’s cottage just as she emerged from it. They heard the hinge on the front door give way and by the time Norman had pushed through the cottage, lurched out of the dim scullery and was standing, blinking into the sharp sunlight, casting about him and breathing like an inflamed bull, Ferdie had placed himself defensively in front of Hester.

For a moment they stood, a small, middle-aged, lame David and a towering, enraged Goliath. Norman made short work of Ferdie. Seizing the pickaxe in both his huge hands he wrenched it upwards pulling Ferdie off his feet and then, catching him neatly under the chin with a swiftly lifted knee, sent him sprawling at Hester’s feet.

Hearing the arrival of the tractor and Dave’s raised voice shouting for his wife, Norman snatched up his kitbag and bolted. Had he known that Dave was alone, he might have stayed, but as his objective was a singular determination to assert his will where Evie was concerned and because being arrested for assaulting a lame farmhand did not seem likely to get him closer
to this, he struck off, skirting the slurry pit, pushing through a hedge and loping away along the valley floor before veering uphill, towards The Tops and avoiding the higher farm.

Dave found his daughter crawling happily round his backyard and his wife cradling Ferdie’s head.

‘’E bain’t, dead, be ’e?’ she asked her husband, anxiously. But Ferdie was already stirring, blinking, struggling to sit up and rubbing his jaw.

‘Where did the bugger go?’ he asked, his head swimming.

‘Down along there and then up over,’ Hester told him, pointing to where Norman had last been visible. Then, turning to her husband she said, ‘’Tis no good you chasin’ ’im, Dave. He be well gone be now! And even if you caught ’im he’d most likely kill you!’

At that point Mabel had arrived in the main yard and her voice could be heard, shouting loudly for her husband. Seconds later she emerged from the cottage like a rotund and frantic dervish. Seeing Ferdie still befudddled she hurled herself onto the ground beside him and wrapping her stout arms round him, rocked him.

‘What have they done to you, my lover? Just look at the state of you! Oooh! You’ve bit your poor tongue! There’s blood all down you!’ While his wife fussed over him and Hester told her how brave he had been, Ferdie began to enjoy the situation, wincing convincingly when Mabel examined his grazed jaw and modestly dismissing his heroism.

‘’Twas nothun, Hester, my dear. No more’n any bloke callin’ ’iself a man would do for a defenceless woman an’ child like you and young Thurza was.’

At this point Roger Bayliss joined them. He had suggested to Alice that she use their car to drive into Ledburton village to warn Evie that Norman was in the valley, while he himself, and on foot, took the short cut down to the lower farm.

During the war all firearms had to be strictly accounted for. Roger Bayliss had unlocked his gun cupboard and loaded a double-barrelled shotgun. Arriving at the lower farm he found Ferdie back on his feet, supported by a tearful Mabel.

‘Evie’s bloke be heading Mr Lucas’s way, sir,’ Dave told his master. ‘Reckon he could be lookin’ for Giorgio.’ Roger agreed that this was a possibility and that he had already taken the precaution of telephoning Edwin Lucas and warning him that Norman Clark was in the area.

‘You alright, Vallance?’ he asked Ferdie.

‘Me, sir? Oh, yes, sir! Reckon I give that varmint summat to think about! But he caught me a sly one, sir! Took an unfair advantage, he did! A bit below the belt, like. I’d of had ’e but for that!’

‘Course you would of, lovie,’ Mabel purred, dabbing at a small abrasion over her husband’s left eye. ‘Course you would of!’

Constable Twentyman arrived on his bicycle soon after Roger had left on the tractor, taking the Vallances with him back to the higher farm and leaving Dave Crocker with his family. Putting the loaded shotgun into Dave’s hands, Roger had told him to use it only if he had to, to fire warning shots. Dave’s experience with firearms had been limited to taking potshots at rabbits with the other village boys before the onset of the war had turned them all into soldiers. Due to a slight
defect in his right eye, Dave’s involvement in the hostilities had been restricted to the catering corps, consequently he had only rarely come within range of a German bullet and it had been a piece of friendly shrapnel that had wounded him. He acknowledged Roger’s orders and placed the gun, well out of Thurza’s reach, on the top of the kitchen dresser.

Constable Twentyman had cycled carefully into the yard, his face so flushed from his exertions in the steep lanes between the police station and this farm that he seemed in danger of rupturing a blood vessel. His bulk made the frame of the machine look worryingly fragile as he dismounted, propped it against the wall outside the Crockers’ door, stooped to remove his cycle clips, stowed them in a pocket in his tunic, patted the pocket, drew his notebook and pencil from another pocket, removed his helmet, settled it in the crook of his arm, cleared his throat and loomed, breathlessly, in the Crocker doorway. Soon he was sitting at Hester’s kitchen table and she was putting a cup of tea in front of him.

‘And where did the alleged incident take place?’ he began, his pencil poised.

One of the changes Alice had made to the daily routine at the higher farmhouse and quite soon after her permanent arrival there, had been to suggest that dinner, the main meal of the day, should be served earlier than previously. At six-thirty instead of seven-thirty. This made for a shorter working day for Eileen. Lunch was to be a lighter meal than it had been, involving soup or eggs, poached or scrambled and even, sometimes, although Eileen disapproved of this, sandwiches.

‘No better nor what they land girls used to ’ave!’ she muttered darkly after Alice had made clear her plan. ‘I suppose samwiches is what she got used to, down to the ’ostel, but the master alus liked a sit-down lunch, ’e did!’ Soon, although she never admitted it, Eileen began to enjoy the fact that her workload was lighter and her hours shorter than they had been. Today she had made a thick, aromatic, artichoke soup, thickened it with cream and served it with home-baked bread which was still warm and crisp from her oven. She had smiled modestly and lowered her eyes when both the master and the new mistress had heaped praises on her and asked for second helpings.

It was as they spooned up the last of the soup that they heard the clang of the yard telephone. After a moment Eileen came breathlessly into the dining room.

‘’Tis Rose Crocker!’ she said. ‘She’m in the phone box outside her cottage! She says to tell you Evie’s gone!’ Alice left the table immediately and went to the yard phone.

‘What’s happened, Rose?’ Alice asked, sharply. ‘You were supposed to be keeping a close eye on her! You shouldn’t have let her out of your sight!’

‘But I ’as me business to think of, Alice, an’ I needed more skirt of beef for me pasties, so I popped along to the butcher’s. I were on’y gone a coupla minutes and there were no sign of Norman Clark when I went nor when I come back.’

‘And no sign of Evie, either!’

‘She’d gone up to ’er room, see, just afore I left. And I didn’t think to check on ’er when I come back … but when I called to ’er that ’er lunch was on the table I got no answer and ’er room was empty.’

‘You mean she took her things?’

‘She didn’t have much in the way of things. Just a few bits and bobs of clothes as Winnie and Gwennan ’ad put together for’er. And there was Marion’s Land Army greatcoat what she give me when ’er left for America. ’Angin’ on a hook behind me door, it were. And she’s took me wellin’ton boots …’

‘And you searched the village?’

‘As much as I could … And I asked everyone I met if they’d seen ’er but no one had so I thought it best to phone you and Mr Bayliss.’

‘D’you think Norman could have got hold of her?’

‘No, I don’t!’ Rose answered stoutly. ‘I reckon if he had, she’d of screamed the place down! The whole village would of known about it!’

It was not until early the next day, when Giorgio failed to fetch in the dairy herd for the morning milking at the Lucas farm, that Edwin found the cottage empty and Giorgio’s bed unslept in.

A Sergeant Fullerton, Constable Twentyman’s immediate superior, arrived that morning at Higher Post Stone to give Roger Bayliss the news that Norman Clark had been seen on the previous afternoon by the stationmaster at Ledburton Halt, boarding the Birmingham train. He had been alone. Of Evie there was no news nor had there been any sightings of her. The hostel was searched, as it was thought that there was a possibility that she might have returned there, but there was no trace of her.

After a few anxious nights and watchful days the tension
in Post Stone valley began to stabilise. Dave Crocker took the precaution of teaching his wife how to discharge the shotgun.

‘Keep the barrel well up, Hes. So the shot goes high. You’re not aiming for anyone, see. This would on’y be a warnin’ shot. Then brace yourself, left foot forward. Tuck the barrel in real close to your shoulder. That’s it. Now you’m ready for the recoil, see. Otherwise the kick will knock you clean off your feet and bruise you black and blue. That’s my girl!’ he said, admiring her stance and impressed with her quick response to his instructions. ‘That’s my clever, brave girl!’ Hester laughed and swung the gun to the left and then the right. Closing one eye and squinting down the barrel as she’d seen girls do in the cowboy films she’d watched in Exeter with her fellow land girls.

‘Pow! Pow!’ she shouted. ‘Git your ’ands where I can see ’em and kip ’em thar!’

‘Steady on, Hes!’ Dave told her. ‘This be on’y a precaution, Mr Bayliss says!’

Various speculations regarding the whereabouts of the missing lovers were voiced each evening in the bar of the Maltster’s Arms.

‘Reckon they’ve took off together. Could be anywhere be now.’

‘What would they be doin’ for money, though? ’E can’t of bin earning much up at the Lucas farm. Ole Edwin’s a bit on the tight side where wages is concerned.’ There was indulgent laughter and general agreement with this statement.

‘And what with Giorgio getting lodgings and food thrown in, reckon his pay packet would of been a slim one!’

‘And she had nothin’ with ’er but some small change left over from the tenner Annie’s Hector give ’er.’

‘Maybe they’ve gone fruit picking,’ the young barmaid suggested, optimistically.

‘What? Fruit pickin’ be mostly over be now, duck.’

‘Not the cider crop, over Taunton way,’ the girl countered. ‘They’m still takin’ on pickers there.’

‘True … Yeah … They could be over Taunton way …’

Weeks passed. The days grew shorter and colder. The land absorbed the autumn rains. Winnie and Gwennan, the only remaining land girls from the original intake who were still employed on the Bayliss farms, had, since the closure of the hostel, been enjoying the comparative comfort of digs above the bar of the village pub. Both girls were impatient to begin their post-war careers, Gwennan in Wales, managing her uncle’s funeral parlour and Winnie as landlady in the public house she was to run in a northern town. In the meantime they relished the plentiful supply of hot water, the pub food and the social life the saloon bar provided.

Marion, Winnie’s childhood friend, who had become a GI bride when she married Sergeant Marvin Kinski, sent her friend glowing reports of life as an army wife in the US.

‘Ever wish you’d married a GI and gone to live over there?’ Gwennan asked, her Welsh accent as strong as it had been on the day she arrived in Post Stone valley two and a half years previously.

‘If I’d met a bloke like Marvin I might of,’ Winnie said, blowing on her varnished nails. ‘But there was only one Marvin and Marion got him!’

‘She pregnant yet?’ Gwennan asked, eyeing her unremarkable reflection in the dressing table mirror.

‘Come off it, Gwennan!’ Winnie scoffed. ‘She on’y got wed a couple of months ago!’

‘How time flies. As far as I know none of our brides is pregnant. Not Annie. Not Marion. Not Georgina.’

‘What about Mabel’s twins, though, and Hester’s Thurza!’ Winnie laughed.

‘Oh, yes indeed. Forgot about them!’ Gwennan applied crimson lipstick and worked her thin lips together. ‘Georgie was married in June. She could be in the club by now’!

‘Shouldn’t think so.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, it wouldn’t be much fun, would it, having a baby out there, thousands of miles from your mum and everything …’ The noise from the bar reached them through the uneven floorboards of their room. ‘Sounds like there’s a good crowd in tonight.’

‘Not like when them Yanks was here, though, is it!’