Whisper on the Wind. Elizabeth Elgin

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      ‘But I’m big enough.’ Arnie’s bottom lip trembled.

      ‘Aye, I’ll grant you that.’ A fine, strong lad he’d grown into. ‘But not old enough, so you’d best eat up your toast and be off with you. You’ve got to learn all you can if you’re to get that scholarship.’

      A place at the grammar school; Polly wanted it for him more than she cared to admit. Arnie was a bright boy, his teacher said. Given to carelessness sometimes, though that was understandable in the young, and too eager to be out of the schoolroom and away into the fields. But bright, for all that. If he’d only take more pride in his handwriting and not cover his page with ink blots and smudges, then yes, he stood a very good chance of winning a scholarship.

      He’d look grand in that uniform with the striped tie and the green cap, Polly thought proudly, though where she’d find the clothing coupons and money for such finery she wished someone would tell her. But she would manage. She always had.

      ‘Eat your toast, lad,’ she murmured, ‘and don’t be so free with that jam. That pot has to last us all month, remember.’

      ‘Yes, Aunt Poll.’ He eyed a strawberry sitting temptingly near the top of the jar and decided to leave it there for tomorrow. ‘I bet you’ll be helping with the threshing. I bet you’ll be able to get a good look at that engine.’ Nobody told grown-ups what to do. He couldn’t wait to be a grown-up.

      ‘No, I won’t. Doubt if I’ll see it at all, noisy, dirty old thing. I’ll be helping Mrs Ramsden feed all those people, though how she’ll find rations enough for seven extra is a mystery to me.’ Grace Ramsden was proud of Home Farm’s reputation as a good eating place, in spite of food rationing. Like as not there’d be rabbit pie and rice pudding; good farmhouse standbys. Rumours had been flying, since the Japanese came into the war. No more rice, people said, and if their armies got as far as India, no more tea. Now the rice, Polly considered, folk could do without if they had to, but tea was altogether another thing. ‘And anyway, who’s to say for sure that the team’ll be coming today? Mat will have to wait his turn. There’s a war on, lad, don’t forget.’

      ‘I know, Aunt Poll.’ People said there’s a war on all the time these days, as if a war was something terrible. Wars weren’t all that bad, Arnie considered. They’d be a whole lot of fun if it wasn’t for people getting killed. It would be awful when it was all over and he had to go home. He liked being with Aunt Poll, having regular meals and regular bath-nights, and living in the country was a whole lot better than living in Hull.

      He liked Aunt Poll a lot; she was better, he had to admit, than his mother. Not that he was being unkind to his real mother; it was just that he had to try very hard, these days, to remember what she looked like.

      ‘Do you think,’ he frowned, taking his balaclava from the fire guard where it had been set to warm, ‘that Mam’s forgotten where I am?’

      ‘Now you know she hasn’t. Didn’t she send you a card at Christmas with a ten-shilling note inside it? Of course she hasn’t forgotten you.’

      No indeed, though she wished she had, Polly mourned silently. What was more, an action like that gave rise to suspicion, especially when such generosity had previously been noticeable by its absence.

      But at least Mrs Bagley’s visits had ceased after that first year, for now she was on war work; on nights, mostly, though night-work could cover many occupations, Polly brooded, especially when a woman bleached her hair with peroxide and plucked her eyebrows, somehow managing to get bright red nail varnish and lipstick when most other women hadn’t seen such things in the shops for months. My word, yes. There was night-work and night-work.

      Arnie pulled on his knitted helmet and its matching gloves. He’d been delighted to open the soft, well-wrapped parcel on Christmas morning. He wouldn’t mind betting that when he got to school this morning, he’d be the only boy with a khaki balaclava and gloves; khaki, like the soldiers wore.

      He called ‘So-long, Aunt Poll,’ then ran out quickly before she could attempt to kiss him; kissing was for girls. Whistling joyfully he squinted up at the Lancaster bomber that flew in low to land at RAF Peddles-bury.

      Smashing, those Lancasters were. Great, frightening things, with four roaring engines and two guns and bomb-doors that opened at the press of a button. He wouldn’t mind flying a Lancaster. Pity he was only nine and a bit, though with luck the war would last long enough for him to be seventeen-and-a-half. He crossed his fingers, frowning. Grown-ups got all the fun.

      Climbing the garden fence he made for the long, straight drive and the beeches and oaks that stood either side of it like unmoving, unspeaking sentries. This morning he was taking the ‘field’ way to school, cutting behind Ridings and the pasture at the back of Home Farm, to pick up the lane that led to the pub and the school nearby. This morning’s journey was longer and wetter underfoot and usually taken in spring and summer only, but Arnie felt cheated to be missing the dirt and din of a threshing day and was determined at least to see the monstrous, huffing, puffing engine; to close his eyes with delight as it clattered and clanked past him, making the most wonderful, hideous noises.

      Instead, he saw Hester Fairchild. She was standing very still, gazing at the ploughed earth around her and she looked up, startled, as he approached.

      ‘Arnie! Hullo! Taking the long way to school this morning?’

      He gave her a beam of delight. He liked Mrs Fairchild; not because Aunt Poll liked her but because Mrs Fairchild liked small boys. She was always pleased, really pleased, to see him. And she didn’t look at him as if he were a nuisance nor speak to him in the silly voice grown-ups used when they spoke to children.

      ‘I’ve come this way to see if the threshing team has got here. Are you going to see it, too?’

      ‘No, Arnie. I came to look at the ploughing – to see how they’re getting on.’ She had come, truth known, because she knew the ploughs would be idle today; because Mat and Jonty and the Italian would be busy all day in the stackyard and she wouldn’t have to acknowledge a man she would rather were anywhere than on her land. ‘Shall we walk together as far as the house?’

      ‘All right.’ Arnie liked Ridings, too; liked it because it was big and full of echoes and hollow noises. He liked the big, painted pictures on the walls; pictures of people with serious faces, dressed in old-fashioned clothes and whose eyes followed him as he walked past them.

      He dug his hands into his trouser pockets and matched his step to that of his grown-up friend.

      ‘Did you know,’ he confided, ‘there’s a boy in the village whose dad is abroad in the Army and yesterday the postman brought him a big box of oranges, all the way from Cairo. Twenty-four, there were. Can you imagine having twenty-four oranges, all at once?’

      ‘I can’t, Arnie. I really can’t.’ Not for a long time had anyone been able to buy oranges – except perhaps one at a time and after queueing for it at the village shop. Nor could children like Arnie remember the joy of peeling a banana, for that particular fruit had disappeared completely at the very beginning of the war. ‘Twenty-four oranges, the lucky boy! Never mind, Arnie. Perhaps someone will send you oranges from abroad one day.’

      ‘Nah. Not me. Haven’t got a dad, see? Well, I have, but not an official one. Stands to reason, dunnit, when I’m called Bagley and Mam says me dad’s called Kellygodrottim. Glad I haven’t got a name like that. Think how they’d laugh at school if I was called Arnold William Kellygodrottim.’ СКАЧАТЬ