Land Girls: The Promise: A moving and heartwarming wartime saga. Roland Moore

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СКАЧАТЬ be chewing your pencil and I’d be helping you trace the alphabet. You remember those times, eh? Not these ones.”

      Iris knew better than to question such finality. His mind was made up and any entreaties she made would likely make his veneer of control snap. And she didn’t want to show that lack of respect to a man she admired. So she decided it would be best to come straight to the point and tell him what had troubled her at the graveyard.

      “There’s just one thing I don’t understand. Why did Walter come back for a rematch?” she asked.

      Frank looked puzzled. She guessed that it all seemed a bit irrelevant to him now. What did it matter? As far as he was concerned, he’d killed a man and that was that.

      “What do you mean?”

      “I saw Walter Storey walk away from that fight a few minutes after you left.”

      “Yeah, but he died from what I did to him. The body is a strange old thing. Maybe it took time for the injury to kill him.”

      “What was he like after the fight?” Iris persisted.

      Frank rubbed the bridge of his nose and thought about what had happened. “We’d had the fight. I’d given Storey a beating and left him in the barn. The boy wasn’t unconscious or anything. There didn’t seem to be any cause for concern.”

      “And what happened then?”

      “What are you getting at?” But Iris’s insistent look made Frank realise that she needed an answer. “I walked to my shed and got on with mending a couple of rakes. That’s when you came to see me.”

      “But I saw Walter leave the barn.”

      “What are you saying?” Frank was clearly confused by what she was trying to tell him, so Iris decided she had to spell it out.

      “You must have had another fight with him. A rematch?”

      Frank shook his head. No, definitely not. “Maybe he came back to the barn looking for me and then collapsed?”

      Now it was Iris’s turn to sigh. She hadn’t thought of that option. “Maybe,” she whispered, deflated. The discussion seemed to make Frank withdraw into himself and a brooding silence filled the small room. There seemed to be nothing else to say.

      As she wished Frank well and left the police station, Iris struggled not to show Frank that she was upset. Stiff upper lip and all that. It seemed to be how he wanted to play it too. There would be no big, tearful goodbye, just a matter-of-fact parting of the ways. The last moments of a friendship. She walked with unsteady legs down the steps of Helmstead Police Station, her mind more confused than ever. She decided that she had to see Vernon again.

      “‘Ere, I told you loads of times, I don’t like pickle!” Connie protested, as she unwrapped her sandwich and realised that Esther had given her just that on her cheese. Esther shook her head and apologised. She rooted in her wicker trug for another sandwich wrapped in greaseproof paper. She found one with a ‘C’ written on the side.

      “Here’s yours, Little Miss Fusspot,” Esther said.

      “I can’t help it.” Connie handed back the offending sandwich in exchange. “Pickle’s unnatural, innit?”

      “I like it,” Joyce commented.

      “Well, you’re unnatural.” Connie smiled.

      As the friends joked and started their lunches in the West Field, Iris took her greaseproof parcel with her and trotted across the yard. She could feel the other girls looking pityingly at her as she went.

      “She’s lost without that Frank, isn’t she?” Connie said.

      “Terrible business,” Joyce replied.

      When Iris was out of sight, she increased her speed, running in a jog all the way out of the gates of Pasture Farm. She ran down the lane, avoiding the pot holes as if she was playing hopscotch, and soon came to the neighbouring farm. Shallow Brook Farm. The Storeys’ farm. Unlike Pasture Farm, this place looked deserted, a dark shell with decaying tractors and machines standing in a yard overgrown with weeds. Iris made her way towards the farmhouse. She rapped on the slatted wooden door, paint flakes peeling away on her knuckles. How many summers ago had this place been painted?

      There was no answer. And yet, the door slowly creaked open. Vernon had left it unlocked.

      Iris poked her head into the hallway, where a broken mahogany barometer pointed towards snow.

      “Hello? Anyone here?” Iris shouted.

      Nothing came back.

      Iris’s heart was pounding. She had come to see Vernon, but perhaps it was a good thing that he wasn’t home. She could look inside and have a nose around. A regular Miss Marple. Should she do this? She didn’t even know what she was looking for. Perhaps some sign that Walter had returned home before going back to the barn? What would that prove? Iris wasn’t sure. All she knew was that a man’s life was at stake here and if something was niggling her about the order of events, then she had to put her mind at rest. Something wasn’t right. Iris wished for a moment that she had Miss Marple’s abilities.

      She moved cautiously from the hallway into the dining room. The fireplace smouldered with yesterday’s fire. A garish red-patterned rug filled much of the floor space, held down by dark-wooden furniture dotted around the room. A bureau stacked with paperwork and bills. A telephone on a side table. An armchair with worn hand rests. She guessed this was Vernon’s chair as his glasses rested on the edge next to a rolled-up newspaper. Iris tentatively moved across the room.

      “Hello?” she shouted, feeling perhaps that she was covering herself from accusations of breaking and entering.

      Again there was no reply. It was likely that Vernon Storey was holding some kind of wake in the Bottle and Glass, regaling people with tales of his son.

      Iris moved towards the bureau.

      Crack!

      It barely made a sound, but something crunched under her foot. She looked down and peeled the edge of the rug back. A long sliver of glass from a bottle had broken in two. But as Iris examined it, she could see something sticky along one edge. A dark liquid. In sudden horror she realised that it was blood. Could it be Walter’s blood? They said he had a wound on his head. Was this evidence? What would Miss Marple do? Her mind was racing. Thinking quickly, she plucked her handkerchief from her pocket and, as if it was a small, injured bird, carefully wrapped the glass up. Suddenly she knew she had to get out of there; show PC Thorne what she had found.

      “Can I help you, Iris?” A soft voice, weary.

      Iris span around to find Vernon in the doorway. He was blinking in the light, his face more crumpled than usual. Had he been drinking? Sleeping? It didn’t matter. He was here and that was a problem. Iris hid the handkerchief behind her back.

      “I came to … pay my respects,” she stammered.

      “Again?” A note of suspicion in his voice, his shrewish eyes suddenly alert and scanning her face.

      “Yes.” Slowly, Iris slipped the handkerchief into her pocket.

      “And СКАЧАТЬ