Wartime Sweethearts (12 page)

Suddenly he felt very lonely and wished with all his heart that Sarah was still alive, but then, life, he’d decided long ago, was often unfair. All you could do was live it and accept the consequences. It didn’t stop him from missing his wife every day.

His shoulders bathed in the dying warmth of the sun, he wandered the garden paths, eyeing the fruits of his labour without really seeing them. Concern for his children made him forgo his coat hanging on the back of the kitchen door. The evening wasn’t that cold anyway, a lovely September, despite the declaration of war casting its shadow.

His footsteps took him out of the garden and along the High Street where he turned into Court Road and headed down into the valley. At the bottom of Court Road he crossed the bridge spanning the brook and walked up the steep incline on the other side of the narrow road to St Anne’s church. Once within its grounds he made his way to Sarah’s grave.

At the sound of fluttering wings, he glanced up to see a bat drop from the church tower, circling silently before returning to its roost. Something scurried through the long grass. Life existed even among the gravestones.

The air was cool, a slight breeze sending the first fallen leaves rustling through the cornstalks in the field next door and making them rattle like a peel of rusty bells.

Stan Sweet headed for the quiet spot shaded by a silver birch where his wife was buried. Even though she’d died twenty years before, he still came here to speak to her. In the early years he’d told her about the twins taking their first steps, Mary walking before Ruby. Not that Ruby had been outdone for long, struggling on to her feet, determined not to be left behind.

He’d also told her about Charlie’s first day at school, how hard the lad had found it to leave his favourite toy at home. The funny thing was that following that first day of being a ‘big boy’, he’d never looked at that old teddy bear again.

‘Our Mary is more forward than our Ruby, but all the same, they’re like two peas in a pod,’ he’d said to her. He’d also promised to do all in his power to keep them safe. Now there was going to be a war. What could he tell her now?

He frowned heavily before bending down on one knee. As he considered what to say, he tugged at a thread of bindweed attempting to climb her headstone. The moment could not be put off forever; he had to tell her the dreadful news.

‘There’s going to be another war, Sarah.’

A nightingale chose that moment to sing sweetly from the branches of a nearby tree.

Stan tilted his head, almost as though the bird was Sarah and was talking to him.

‘I know,’ he said to her imagined response. ‘They told us it was the war to end all wars but it weren’t, me girl. It weren’t. I fear for them, Sarah. I fear for all of them and still hope it comes to nothing, but this German chancellor has taken over half of Europe. I can’t see it being avoided. God knows when it will end. Funny thing is I’ve heard some folk say it’ll be over by Christmas. Now where have we heard that before?’

He gave a little laugh. In his head he heard her voice expressing her fears and what could be done for the best.

The nightingale stopped singing, replaced by the harsher note of a nightjar.

‘Ahh!’ he said, which meant yes in the local idiom. ‘Our boy favours the navy, not the Royal Navy mind, but the merchant navy seeing as Bristol is so close. He reckons he might get home more often if he joins a ship registered in Bristol. I only hope he’s right. And being a boy, I can’t stop him from doing that. Anyways, the government will insist he signs up for one of the services no doubt. He’s keen to do his bit – just as we all were in the last lot. It’s the girls I’m concerned about. I’ve heard talk that they’re likely to get called up too.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘I’m not having that, Sarah. They might take my son off to war, but they’re not having my daughters as well. I won’t have it. Over my dead body.’

Just as everyone had expected, the next round of the baking competition was cancelled.

‘…
it is felt best to cancel this, at least in the short term
…’ it said in the letter that Ruby received.

‘I hear the picture houses and theatres are closing too. Shame. I did like going to the pictures,’ Mary said wistfully.

Ruby was very put out. ‘Why? I don’t understand. Why?’

‘In case a bomb drops on one of them and the audience is killed.’

‘I don’t need an audience,’ grumbled Ruby. ‘Just the bloody prize.’

‘No need to swear,’ said Mary in a chastising tone her father reckoned she’d inherited from her mother. ‘And anyway, just bear in mind who really baked that bread.’

Ruby fell silent. Being reminded that her sister had actually baked the bread also reminded her that she’d lied about what had happened to the loaf and been found out. The twins might have had an almighty row if it hadn’t been for the outbreak of war. So far it had brought her luck and might yet work to her advantage. She might get called up to work in a munitions factory or even to join the army, the navy or the air force. The prospect excited her.

Now, though, Ruby was lumbered with the laundry which mainly consisted of bed linen and big white aprons they wore in the bakery.

Today it was Mary’s turn to serve in the shop out front while her father and brother tended to the last batch of bread, though it wasn’t only bread in the hot oven this morning. Mrs Martin, a farmer’s wife, had brought in a huge leg of pork the night before. No normal oven could have taken such a large haunch of meat, and Stan didn’t mind helping her out, especially at the mention of a bit of pork for himself.

‘Old Spot had to go,’ Mrs Martin explained. ‘He was gettin’ on and I’ve got a growing family to feed.’

In her late fifties, Mrs Martin’s arms were almost as meaty as the pork she’d presented. Busy on the farm, she didn’t get much chance to talk to other people, so when she was out she chatted nineteen to the dozen, never giving anyone else a chance to interrupt. She told them all about her son Ronnie being excused the call up because they needed him on the farm. ‘We left it up to him. He’s a big strong lad and no doubt would have served his country well, but somebody has to feed the troops don’t they?’

Stan agreed that feeding the troops was important. He didn’t add that Ronnie wasn’t that bright, most definitely all brawn and little brain. It made sense for him to stay on the land where all he had to do was what his parents told him to do. Mrs Martin had other sons with a bit more brain and almost as much brawn. Two of them had been called up.

So it was at the time when they’d just fired up the ovens, Mrs Martin was telling them the saga of Old Spot interspersed with other details about her neighbours, the war and anything else that sprang to mind.

‘The rest of him’s been smoked and salted so it should last us a while. The smoke ’ouse is full enough, so I thought this leg is our feast for the week, what with roasting it, ’aving it cold on Monday, in a pie on Tuesday, stew on Wednesday, minced with onions on Thursday, and faggots on Friday. I kept a bit of liver and lights for doing that fer myself and you got some too. Makes sense to me to fatten ourselves up ’fore rationing comes in and old Masters calls the shots in the butchers. D’you know we’re goin’ to ’ave to register all our stock and tell ’em when we fattens and kills a pig? And how many suckers the old sow gives birth to? Everything’s gotta be accounted for so they says. Now there’s a thing!’

Stan agreed that indeed it was something to be reckoned with, but then things always got difficult in war and there were always people running around with pens and notebooks, taking stock of everything. He’d be doing the same himself with the pigs he kept with Joe Long.

Charlie kept his back turned, chortling to himself out of sight of the big woman and her prattling.

Later that morning once the pork had been cooked and collected, Mrs Martin came back in for a loaf of bread. She also came in with a sack which she passed over to Mary, winking and nodding in a secretive manner as she did so.

‘A bit of something fer your dad’s dinner,’ she said, sliding the sack across the counter. ‘Fer being so kind as to roast the meat.’

Mary encountered the dusty smell of potatoes from the sack. Hopefully Mrs Martin had wrapped whatever meat it was – she presumed it was meat – in newspaper before putting it in there.

‘Make the most of it, me girl,’ she said. ‘And don’t let on to that Rob Masters that I gave you it. He won’t approve. Running round like a headless chicken he is, jumping the gun about people registering for rationing with ’im – as if he’s likely to ’ave any more meat than any other butcher or farmer hereabouts. Tch!’

She spit into her handkerchief.

Mary tried not to wince, but determined to wash the contents of the sack before daring to cook it. Mrs Martin, who was also wearing another sack as an apron, didn’t seem to care much about hygiene.

‘I’ll take some of them currant buns while I’m at it. Six, I think. Nice with a cup of tea. Did you make them?’

Mary nodded that she had. ‘And Ruby made the pasties.’

‘I makes me own pasties,’ Mrs Martin sniffed while throwing a contemptuous look at Ruby’s efforts. Ruby’s pastry was golden and melt-in-the-mouth delicious. She paused before saying, ‘I ’ear she don’t work at the pub no longer. ’Ad a fall out ’ave they?’

‘There’s a war on, Mrs Martin, and more important jobs than working in pubs! Don’t you think?’

‘Reputations can be ruined working in pubs.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind. In the meantime let me give you one of our pasties to try – seeing as you’re likely to get busier in this war, what with two of your boys off to fight. You might not have so much time in future.’

Mrs Martin recognised that the pasty was a kind of bribe in the hope that she’d stick up for Ruby when her name came up in gossip.

‘I’ll bring you in one of mine sometime,’ Mrs Martin went on. ‘Lovely they are.’

She wiped her nose with the corner of her sack apron. Mary hoped against hope that she would not fulfil her offer of a homemade pasty!

The bell above the shop door jangled when she left, the roasted pork wrapped in newspaper inside a flour sack tucked beneath her arm.

Mary sighed. Mrs Martin had left her drained with her unsolicited advice and unending gossip about what was going on in the village.

Ruby came out from the back room where the bread ovens were still emitting their comforting heat, the smell of yeast and a blanket of heat coming with her.

Their grandfather had built the baking room with a very high ceiling, logically concluding that the heat of the ovens would rise and stay up there. To a great extent he’d been right.

Ruby slammed her hands palms down on the counter. ‘Last night Dad suggested I marry Gareth Stead. He’s repeated it again this morning. Not only that, but he’s offered to speak to the man and ask him to reconsider his intentions. Can you believe that?’

‘He said that?’ Mary was astounded.

Ruby was almost throwing the bread on to the shelves, her features stiff with indignation. ‘I didn’t know what to say. I thought I made it clear last night when he mentioned it.’

‘I suppose you can’t blame him. He’s about to lose Charlie to the war and is afraid of losing you. I take it he thinks that if you were married, it wouldn’t be so likely.’

‘I know.’ She turned to face her sister. ‘Mary, I know war is bad, but this could be such an opportunity for me to see a bit more of the world. I don’t want to live and die here in this village. I don’t want to marry Gareth Stead or a ruddy-faced, rough-handed farmer whose conversation centres on cows, chickens or the price of a pint of milk. I want more than that! And besides …’ She slammed the last of the warm loaves from the wicker basket to the sloping shelves behind the counter. ‘Gareth made it quite clear what he wanted and it wasn’t bloody marriage. And don’t tell me off for swearing,’ she said before her sister could reprimand her. ‘I felt humiliated, Mary. Downright humiliated!’

Mary patted her on the shoulder. ‘He just wants to keep you safe. It’s just his way.’

Ruby’s expression was unchanged. ‘Maybe I don’t want to be safe. Maybe I want some adventure before I die!’

Mary tightened her lips. She was used to her sister’s headstrong ways and wanting what she couldn’t have. She also understood her father going overboard to keep them safe. It was hard to imagine what he was going through at present, wondering what the future held for his children.

‘You must please yourself and then you’ve only got yourself to blame if things go wrong.’

‘I can live with that!’

‘Mrs Martin’s been in.’

The sack was still on the counter. Ruby wrinkled her nose. ‘That sack looks filthy.’

‘I think it’s meat. It usually is when she wants a joint cooked. It’s probably offal, kidneys, liver and lights I bet.’

Ruby’s nose stayed wrinkled. ‘I hope it’s wrapped up in newspaper.’

‘Thankfully.’

‘Liver and onions tonight, faggots tomorrow night,’ Ruby said curtly.

She’s right of course, thought Mary. It’s always faggots or fried liver and onions when Mrs Martin pays for the privilege of getting a piece of meat cooked in the superior heat of a bread oven. The favour was usually asked around Christmas or for some other family celebration, also for the harvest festival, which was always combined with the village fete. The Martins always provided the meat for that, to be enjoyed by everybody, plus roasting for family occasions such as the recent wedding of their eldest daughter Bertha. Bertha had had a white wedding with all the trimmings. Mary reflected that her wedding dress had been too tight-fitting to cover the baby bump. The baby had been born three months later.

It had not escaped Mary’s notice that village weddings regularly preceded the birth of offspring by no more than five months. She further concluded it had a lot to do with being born closer to nature than folks in the city; young people round here just did what came naturally.

A cloud of potato dust fell to the floor when she opened Mrs Martin’s sack.

‘There’s two parcels in here,’ she said, delving in with both hands. Both, she noticed, were wrapped in newspaper. Just as she’d surmised, the first package contained the necessary ingredients for making faggots, traditional West Country meatballs and loved by all the family. All she had to find were onions, stale bread and a few leaves of dried sage. Or she could discard the lights and caul and fry the liver with some onions.