One Summer at Deer’s Leap. Elizabeth Elgin

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      ‘He’s scoring for the darts, but he’ll be over in about five minutes,’ she said when she came back alone. ‘He said thanks for the beer, by the way.’

      ‘This is a lovely old pub. I’m glad they haven’t modernized it – made it into a gin palace.’

      ‘There’s no fear of that happening.’ She raised her eyes to the ceiling, which was pale khaki. ‘The last time it got a lick of paint was for the Coronation. When it was first built, in the early fourteen hundreds, it was the churchwarden’s house, and I don’t think it’s changed a lot since – apart from flush toilets outside.’

      ‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘that at the time of the Wars of the Roses, a churchwarden was quite an important man, in the village.’

      ‘Mm. He held one of the three keys to the parish chest – y’know, social security, medieval style. The other two keyholders would be the priest and the local squire. The parish chest is still in the church, but there’s nothing in it. You must go and see it before you go back.’

      She was already halfway down her glass. My dad, I thought, would approve of Jeannie McFadden.

      ‘There’s a lot of things I must see and do,’ I said obliquely, ‘before I go back. But I think your friend is coming over …’

      An elderly man made his way to our table, puffing out clouds of tobacco smoke that made me glad of the open window.

      ‘Now then, lass,’ he said to Jeannie, ignoring me completely, ‘what was it you wanted to know?’

      ‘It’s my friend, actually, Bill. She’s taken a liking to Deer’s Leap and wants to know all about it. She’s a writer,’ she added.

      ‘Then I’m saying nowt, or it’ll all be in a book!’

      ‘I write fiction, Mr Jarvis,’ I said, holding out my hand. ‘What I’m interested in is the history of the house. I’m not prying. I’m Cassie, by the way. What are you drinking?’

      ‘Nowt at the moment, though I wouldn’t say no to a pint of bitter.’ Reluctantly he shook my hand.

      ‘I want to know,’ I said, when he was settled at the table, ‘who lived at Deer’s Leap in the war. Jeannie said the Air Force just turfed them out without a by-your-leave. I’d have hated that if it had been my house.’

      ‘Ar, but my generation had to put up with that war and we hated it, an’ all. Didn’t stop the high-ups from London taking whatever they wanted, for all that. Smiths had no choice but to sell up and get out.’

      ‘And where did they go?’

      ‘Can’t rightly say, lass. Got my calling-up papers, so what became of ’em, I never knew.’

      ‘Did they have a family, Mr Jarvis?’

      ‘Not as you’d call a family – nobbut one bairn, three or four years younger than me. Susan, if I remember rightly.’

      Susan Smith, I brooded, then all at once I remembered the initials S. S. and a tiny heart on the strap of the airman’s gas mask. The initials stood for Susan Smith. She, likely, had put them there!

      ‘How old was Susan when she had to leave Deer’s Leap?’ I managed to ask, a kind of triumph singing inside me.

      ‘Now then – I’d just been called up, as I remember. Was twenty-two. Usually they took you afore that, but they’d let a young man finish his training, sort of. I was ’prenticed to a cabinet-maker, so as soon as I’d done my time they called me into the Engineers and taught me about electrics! Any road, that would make the Smith lass about eighteen or nineteen. I’m seventy-six, so she would be seventy-two or -three now – if her’s still alive. Fair, she was, and bonny, but quiet, as I remember.’

      ‘It was rotten about their land – especially as the government expected farmers to work all hours to produce food,’ Jeannie prompted.

      ‘Ar, but t’farm were no use to Smiths any more. Them fellers from the Air Ministry took all their fields in the end. Nobbut the paddock left them. Then they said they wanted the farmhouse, an’ all.’

      ‘That was a bit vindictive,’ I said hotly.

      ‘No. Stood to sense, really. The Air Force wanted to extend the runway at the aerodrome, and they took Deer’s Leap to billet airmen in. ’em could do what they wanted in those days. Would have the shirt off your back if they thought it would help the war effort! They couldn’t get away with it now. Folk wouldn’t stand for it!

      ‘Mind, once they’d no more use for bombers, they soon upped and went! I suppose Smiths could have got their house back and their fields, an’ all, but they never tried. That farmhouse stood empty for years. It’d have fallen down if it hadn’t been solid-built and a good, tight roof on it. A man who’d won money on the football pools bought it eventually and fancied it up. He couldn’t stand the quiet, though, so it’s been rented out ever since.’

      ‘I think it’s a beautiful house,’ I said softly as Jeannie took Bill’s empty glass to the bar for a refill. ‘I wish it belonged to me.’

      ‘You’d never stand the quiet, lass.’

      ‘I would. I’m there for a month and I wish it was for ever.’

      ‘Ah, well, there’s folk in it now, so you can stop your fretting for it. Reckon they’m well satisfied with the place.’

      ‘Yes. They love it.’ I didn’t mention they’d be leaving it, come New Year. ‘I think the view from the front is unbelievable. There’s such peace there.’

      ‘Weren’t a lot of peace for folk around here in the war. ’Em had an aerodrome, don’t forget, on their doorsteps, and bombers overhead day and night. Bits of kids flying them. It’s a miracle there weren’t more crashes.’

      Jeannie returned with a tin tray with three pint glasses on it. Bill Jarvis smiled, and took one of them.

      ‘Crashes?’ I probed.

      ‘Oh my word, yes!’ He pushed his empty pipe into his top pocket and took a long drink from his glass. ‘Mind, those bombers were great big things and needed a lot of room for takeoff, but folk around here could never see the sense in the Air Force wanting more land for longer runways. ’Em thought it was going to be something to do with the invasion; that we had a secret weapon that was going to take off from Acton Carey. But it was the Americans came in the end. Mind, I can’t help you a lot there. I was in Italy at the time, on the invasion.’

      ‘I wonder why the Smiths didn’t come back. I’d have wanted to,’ I said.

      ‘Ar, but talk had it that he was given some fancy job with the Ag and Fish; didn’t have to work so hard for his money.’

      ‘Ag and Fish?’ Jeannie frowned.

      ‘The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. For once, they took on a man as knew a bit about farming! I never found out what happened to him after that. Was none of my business. Now, I mind when I was in Italy …’ His eyes took on a remembering look, and I knew there would be no more Deer’s Leap talk. But I had made contact, and before we left I had arranged СКАЧАТЬ