Whisper on the Wind. Elizabeth Elgin

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СКАЧАТЬ keep his mouth shut, thank God. They put rum in our tea, at debriefing – a lot of it, but it did nothing for me. Couldn’t sleep afterwards. Just kept seeing that turret. I’m a coward, Roz. I threw up, when we got out.’

      ‘No, Paul! You’re not a coward! Night after night over Germany; of course you threw up. What do they think you’re all made of – stone?’

      ‘That’s it. Stone. That’s what they’d like.’

      ‘Well, you’re not. You’re all of you flesh and blood. You should go to sick bay tonight and ask for something to help you sleep –’

      ‘Sick bay? Oh, no. One word, just one whimper, and that’ll be it. Rennie’s cracking up. Rennie’s got a yellow streak. LMF, that’s what his trouble is …’

      ‘Stop it! I won’t listen! You’re not a coward and you’re not lacking moral fibre!’

      ‘You try telling that to those bastards. You try telling them that for every steel-nerved hero in Bomber Command, there are ordinary blokes like me and Jock; blokes who are afraid sometimes, and afraid to admit they’re afraid.

      ‘Try telling the big brass that, Roz. They’d strip us of our rank. We’d be erks again. They’d send us some place where we couldn’t contaminate decent airmen and they’d stamp LMF on our papers. In bloody red ink!’

      ‘You’re shaking, Paul. You’re cold.’

      She wanted to hold him, comfort him; tell him to give it time. She needed him to know that she loved him no less for admitting fear; needed him to realize that she understood the terror of take-off, of sitting dry-mouthed till that overloaded, overfuelled Lancaster was safely airborne.

      She remembered that eleventh aircraft. It had been Paul’s, though she hadn’t known it, hadn’t realized they’d been fighting for height and praying the undercarriage hydraulics were all right, knowing that below them, down there in the smug safeness of the control tower, they’d already ordered out the crash crew, the fire engine and the ambulances.

      ‘Come with me, Paul?’ She saw the haystack ahead. Not that it looked like a stack – just a darker mass, the size of a small cottage. But only this morning she and Kath had cut hay from it to carry out to the far field and she had been happy and relieved because all the Peddlesbury bombers were back. Why hadn’t she felt Paul’s fear? Why hadn’t she been with that eleventh bomber every second of the time it took to land? Why hadn’t she known he’d been in need of her love? ‘We can shelter behind the stack – it’ll be warmer, out of the wind …’

      She was coaxing him, speaking to him softly as she would speak to a child awakened from a nightmare. But a child could weep away its fears in its mother’s arms; a man could not. Paul could not, dare not weep. Paul could only live each day as it came, and count each one a bonus. For him and for all those like him, tomorrow was a brash, brave word, never to be spoken.

      ‘This way, Paul. Can you see all right?’ This way, my darling. Let me share the fear. Let me hold you and love you. Don’t shut me out.

      Kath wrapped her pyjamas around the hot-water bottle then slipped it into her bed, wondering where the next one would come from should this one spring a leak. What would happen, she frowned, if the Japanese armies overran the latex-producing countries in the Far East as easily as they had taken Hong Kong? They wouldn’t, of course, but suppose they did? There’d be no more hot-water bottles nor tyres for lorries. And what about teats for babies’ bottles? But best she shouldn’t think about it – well, not too much. Leave tomorrow to take care of itself. She wondered if Barney had got her letter yet, and if it had made him happier about her being a landgirl. She hoped so. She didn’t want to cause him a single moment of worry when she was so happy. Because she was happy. To be happy in time of war was wrong, but there it was. Just to be here, in this attic, in this bedroom all her own was bliss enough. Already she had put her mark on it. A jar filled with holly stood on the window ledge, her picture of Barney stood atop the chest of drawers, her dressing gown hung on the door peg and her slippers – slippers Aunt Min had knitted from scraps of wool – stood beneath the chair at her bedside.

      And at Home Farm things couldn’t have gone better, she sighed. She could almost drive the small tractor and could harness Daisy into the shafts of the milk-float. She could even muck-out the cow shed now without wrinkling her nose.

      She wondered about threshing day. Mat had ordered the team, Grace said only this morning, and it would be arriving at Home Farm any day now. Threshing days, Grace told her, were very important, with everyone turning-to and giving a hand, and extra workers to be fed. Wheat, barley and oats were desperately needed; every bushel they had would be sold.

      She switched off the light then opened the blackout curtains, gazing out into a sky bright with stars. Tonight had been quiet. No bombers had taken off from Peddlesbury. Somewhere out there in the darkness, Roz and Paul would be together.

      Dear, sweet Roz. They had known each other little more than two weeks, yet she understood her so well, Kath sighed, opening the window, breathing in air so cold that it snapped at her nostrils and made her cough. But soon the days would begin to draw out, nights become less cold. Soon it would be spring and there would be daffodils and lilacs, the first rosebud, and –

      The cry was sudden, fearsome and high-pitched. It cleared her mind of all thoughts save that somewhere, not very far off, an animal screamed into the night; a wild shrieking, blood-curdling in its intensity. Was some creature trapped and if it was, how was she to find it? Not a rabbit in a snare; something so small and weak couldn’t give out so terrible a cry. But what, and where?

      Hurriedly she closed the window and with feet that scarcely touched the stairs, ran down to the kitchen.

      ‘Flora! Did you hear it? An animal in pain; such screaming! Come to the door. Listen!’

      ‘Pain?’ Flora Lyle laid down her pen and pushed back her chair.

      ‘Oh, yes. Quite near, it seems. Maybe it’s been caught in a trap. We’ve got to find it.’

      ‘And then what could we do?’

      ‘We’d let it go. It was awful. Listen. Please listen?’

      She flung open the door and stood, ears straining, and it came again, that frenzied cry.

      ‘There, now! You heard it, too?’

      ‘Aye. I heard it.’ The Forewoman took Kath’s arm, pushing her back, closing the door. ‘I heard it fine. And yon creature’s no’ in pain, lassie; no’ in pain at all. It’s a vixen.’

      ‘A what?’

      ‘A she-fox; a female in season. She wants to mate, Kath. She’s no’ in any trap. Leave her be. There’ll be every dog-fox within miles have heard her. January’s the month for – well, for foxes and vixens.’

      ‘You’re sure?’ Kath’s cheeks flamed red. ‘But it was such a terrible sound.’

      ‘I’m sure. Vixens take their pleasures terrible serious, you see.’

      ‘Oh, my goodness! Don’t tell the other girls?’ Kath gasped. ‘They’d laugh their heads off, wouldn’t they?’

      ‘I’ll no’ tell,’ the Forewoman said solemnly, though her eyes shone with mischief СКАЧАТЬ