Turn Left at the Daffodils. Elizabeth Elgin

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СКАЧАТЬ told her! “I’m sick and fed up of that kid,” I said. “I’ve got my certificate from night school for touch-typing and I want to go to work.” And she said nobody would employ the likes of me what couldn’t speak proper, and if I wanted to stay in her house, I’d do as I was told if I knew what was good for me.’

      ‘So you upped and offed? And now I’m landed with you. Are you sure you’re not in trouble?’

      ‘Sure, Auntie Mim. Cross my heart and hope to die. And I won’t be stoppin’ for long. I’m joining up, see. The Army.’

      ‘Now what do you want to do a thing like that, for? And anyway, you aren’t old enough.’

      ‘I’m nearly eighteen and they take you at seventeen and a half. And why shouldn’t I join up? What could be worse than stoppin’ at Cyprian Court, now me dad’s gone?’

      ‘You’d have to take orders and salute people…’

      ‘So do all the women in the Forces. What’s so special about me?’

      ‘But what would you do, in the Army? You’ve had no education to speak of and you’ve never worked.’

      ‘I’ve got my typing certificate, and I haven’t worked because it suited Her to keep me at home for a dogsbody. Can’t you see, Auntie Mim, that I’d be the same as everybody else, once I’d joined up. Same uniform, the same pay. I’d be – well -normal.’

      ‘Oh, dear.’ Miriam Simpson felt sorry for her sister’s child, even though she had seen little of her these last few years. It couldn’t have been a lot of fun, losing a mother when you were a child, then getting a stepmother, a couple of years later – and one who took a bit of getting on with, if what she had heard was true. ‘I suppose you’re hungry? Get this tea down you, then I’ll do you a slice or two of toast and jam. All right?’

      ‘Smashing.’ Nan sipped the tea gratefully. ‘And I can pay me way, till the Army sends for me. I’ve got money in the Post Office.’

      ‘We’ll have to think about that. I’ve got a gentleman lodger, see. He’s something to do with aeroplane engines and he’s gone to Derby on a course for a month. He gives me a pound a week, but you can have his bed for ten shillings if you’ll help in the house and do a bit of queuing for me. I can’t say fairer than that.’

      ‘It’s a deal – and thanks. I won’t be any trouble, Auntie Mim.’

      ‘You better hadn’t be, or you’ll be on your way back to Liverpool before you can blink! And you’d better get yourself to the Food Office in the morning – see about an emergency card for your rations.’

      ‘I will.’ And look for the nearest recruiting office, because the sooner she got herself into uniform, the better. She would have to have a next-of-kin, of course. You always did when you joined up, but that was all right, because Auntie Mim was her next-of-kin, now.

      She thought about it that night as she lay in the bed that was hers for four weeks. It struck her like a thunder clap. What if it took longer than that to get into the Army? Where would she go when the lodger came back? Cyprian Court, would it have to be, tail between her legs?

      She pushed so terrible a thought from her mind, closed her eyes and thought instead about her father, wishing he could know she was going to be all right. Poor dad. He hadn’t had much of a life. Losing Mum, then getting himself saddled with the Queer One, and Georgie.

      And thinking about Mum, what about that birth certificate? But she would worry about it tomorrow. Beautiful tomorrow, when she would present her touch-typing certificate to the Recruiting Officer. Bright, shining tomorrow, when her new life would begin.

      May, without any doubt at all, was the most beautiful of months; a green, blossom-filled goodbye to winter; to short days and blackouts that came too early, and fogs and cold houses and everything that was depressing.

      Caroline Tiptree leaned on the gate, gazing over the cow pasture to fields green with sprouting wheat, and hawthorn hedges coming to life again and the distant blue haze that carpeted Bluebell Wood.

      So precious, this Yorkshire hamlet in which she lived; in which Englishmen had lived since Elizabeth Tudor’s time. So comforting to know that wars had come and gone, yet still Nether Hutton remained unchanged. Twenty-one houses, and all of them built of rose-red brick; all of them with flower-filled gardens; most of them with chimney stacks twisted like sticks of barley sugar. She turned to lean her back against the gate, reluctant to go home, to face the recriminations and tears she knew would follow. When she told her mother, that was.

      Sighing, she made for Jackmans Cottage, named for the long-ago sea captain who had built it with a purse of gold, given by a grateful queen. A house with low, beamed ceilings and wide fireplaces and two kitchens and small windows. A thick-walled house that had not and would not change.

      She closed the gate carefully behind her, standing for a moment to take in the courtyard garden thick with the flowers of late spring, for this was the picture she would carry away with her, if she left it. When she left it.

      ‘Hello, darling. You’ve missed the News,’ Janet Tiptree called from the sitting room.

      ‘Sorry.’ Carrie hung up her coat, knowing she’d had no intention of getting home to hear it. She’d had enough of gloom and doom, was fed up with the war and living in a rural backwater whilst everywhere else seemed to be getting bombed, and Dover shelled every single day from across the Channel. ‘Don’t suppose there was anything worth listening to – like Hitler wants an armistice…’

      Or perhaps two ounces on the butter ration? She would settle for an ounce, even.

      ‘Don’t be flippant, Carrie. And why the badly-done-to look? Missing Jeffrey – is that it?’

      ‘Not particularly, mother. After all, he wanted to go.’

      ‘Which was sensible, really. Better to volunteer now for the Navy than wait another year to be called-up and put in the Army or the Air Force. Jeffrey’s uncle fought at Jutland, don’t forget and with a name like Frobisner – well, what else could he join? And you are missing him – admit it – or why are you acting like a bear with a sore head.’

      ‘My head is fine, mother. It’s my conscience I’m more bothered about. I’ve got to accept that working in a bank isn’t doing much for the war effort. I’m not pulling my weight.’

      ‘But you are!’ She patted the sofa beside her. ‘Now come and sit beside your mother, and tell her what’s wrong – have a little cuddle, shall we?’

      ‘Mother! I’m too old for cuddles. I’m twenty-one, soon, and I’m not doing enough. I’m having an easy war, and it isn’t right.’

      ‘Now you’re not to talk like that.’ Her mother was using her coaxing voice, her talking-to-awkward-daughters voice. ‘You have a job, you travel ten miles to work each day, and back, and two nights a week you fire watch for the ARP, leaving me all alone here. But do I complain?’

      ‘No.’

      She said it snappily, because doing a clerk’s job did not seem at all like war work. The local bus picked her up at eight each morning and got her home by six forty-five each evening, and as for the fire-watching duties – well, СКАЧАТЬ