Chapter Eight #2
‘How dreadful.’ Caroline slipped a hand through her friend’s arm. ‘Is that why you enlisted in the Women’s Land Army? To get away from the bombing? That’s why I left London,’ she admitted with a shudder. ‘I couldn’t stand it any longer.’
‘No, that’s not why.’ Grace gave a long sigh, shaking her head at the bag of hot chestnuts Caroline was offering her.
‘I wanted to get away, all right. But not from the bombing.’ She shot Caroline a crooked smile.
‘I love my parents … Ronald and Audrey Morgan. Everyone loves them. They’re very nice people.
Very nice parents. But, Lord, I couldn’t breathe without having one of them ask how deep. ’
‘They were … interfering, you mean?’
‘I’m an only child. Everything they did revolved around me.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s lovely, knowing they’ll always be there for me, no matter what.
’ Grace rolled her eyes, looking up as another firework exploded in a brilliant shower of greens and reds.
‘But I could never be myself, could I? Because they want me to be one way, and I’m … Well, I’m the other way.’
Caroline held her breath, staring at her raised profile. ‘The other way?’ She blinked. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Oh, you know parents.’ Grace made a dismissive gesture.
‘They’re always desperate to get you to be more like them, aren’t they?
Only I never could be. For a start, I didn’t want to stay in Liverpool.
I wanted to get away and see the world. Experience life beyond the “pool”.
’ Grace laughed at some private joke, and then shook her head.
‘Anyway, I write home every other month. And Mam writes back. We’re not big letter writers in our family, to be honest. It was different when I was afraid they might be getting blown up at any minute.
But the war’s over. So what do you really need to say, except I’m well, how are you? ’
Caroline understood. ‘I should write home more often too.’ Guiltily, she realised she hadn’t been in touch with her own parents for months, when she’d finally written to tell them about Selina leaving the farm and moving to Bodmin, and how she’d spent a few wonderful days with her friend there, walking on the moors and playing with Selina’s nieces and nephew.
‘Though I write to Selina almost every week.’ She had mentioned Selina a few times to Grace, explaining how she’d been a Land Girl until that summer and that they still kept in touch.
‘But friends are different to family. When it’s a friend, I suppose you have more to say. ’
‘You really liked that girl, Selina, didn’t you?’ Grace turned to look at her, her dark eyes intense. ‘It must have been hard for you when she left the farm.’
Caroline gulped, not knowing how to reply to that. ‘Um …’
‘What’s she like?’ Grace pressed her.
‘Nice, I suppose.’
‘That’s not what Tilly said when I asked her. She said Selina had a sharp tongue and was always causing arguments, and that you and she had even driven away one of the other Land Girls once. A girl called Penny. Is that true?’
Caroline’s face felt it was on fire. She stared helplessly at Grace, hunting for the right thing to say.
It wasn’t true that she and Selina had driven Penny away.
Was it? She knew Penny had left after a spat with Selina, and perhaps she herself hadn’t helped matters by being offhand with Penny too, but she certainly hadn’t intended to make her so unhappy that she fled the farm.
And what did Tilly know about it, anyway?
She hadn’t even joined them when that happened, so she must have taken her account from someone else.
Violet Postbridge, perhaps – though the farmer’s wife wasn’t usually one to gossip.
Thankfully, as she began to stammer a response, Joe came over to interrupt the conversation, looking agitated. ‘Grace, them boys over there …’ He pointed with his walking stick. ‘Are they the ones who spoke rudely to you after the Harvest Supper?’
Grace looked surprised before glancing at Caroline, whose blush deepened. She knew Grace had not wished her to share that story with the farmer and his wife. But Violet had a way of winkling information out of people. ‘I really couldn’t say, Mr Postbridge.’
Beyond the bonfire, a group of young lads were clustered together, sharing a bag of hot chestnuts. Caroline told Joe quietly, ‘The tall one in the middle … I’m not sure about the others.’
Joe nodded grimly, but the boys scattered as soon as they saw him coming.
‘I wish you hadn’t said anything to the Postbridges,’ Grace muttered, sinking her hands in her jacket pockets and hunching her shoulders. ‘It’s my business, nobody else’s.’
‘But it’s not your fault they were horrible to you. They can’t be allowed to speak like that,’ Caroline told her, but Grace turned and walked away. She didn’t understand why her friend seemed so determined not to defend herself. But perhaps she just wanted to forget the whole thing.
After the ‘guy’ representing Guy Fawkes, who’d wickedly tried to blow up the King and Parliament back in the seventeenth century, had been thrown on the bonfire, with everyone cheering and applauding as it burned down to ashes, they began the slow walk back home.
‘Remember, remember, the fifth of November,’ Caroline chanted as they trudged up the steep hill, ‘gunpowder, treason and plot.’ As she repeated the well-known rhyme, Grace joined in, and then so did Joe, their voices ringing out across the frosty fields.
‘I know no reason … why gunpowder treason … should ever be forgot!’
At the farm, they found Violet spooning hot soup into mugs for them.
‘You must be freezing, going out on a night like this,’ she grumbled.
‘Mum went up to bed early, so I fed the chickens and shut them in the coop for the night, and checked the pigs were secure. Did you find those nasty boys, Joe?’ She handed him a mug of soup, which he sniffed appreciatively.
‘I did, but they scarpered before I could have a word. However, I’ve an idea who the ringleader is. And I’ll be having a word with his parents.’
Grace was looking uncomfortable. ‘It’s very kind of you, but I do wish you wouldn’t, Mr Postbridge. I know you mean well, but I’d rather drop it.’
Joe eyed her, frowning. ‘Are you worried they might do something worse next time?’
Grace shrugged and blew on her hot soup, uncharacteristically silent.
‘Come along with me,’ Joe told Grace, then nodded at Caroline.
‘You too.’ They trooped into the snug after him, his two dogs following eagerly too, having been kept locked up all evening on account of the fireworks.
He settled into his armchair next to the fire and nodded to Caroline.
‘Fetch me that box on the table, would you?’
Given the wooden box, he riffled through the papers inside until he produced what looked like a letter.
‘Sit down, and I’ll tell you a story. This letter arrived a few years back from the mother of a friend of mine.
’ He unfolded it with infinite care, like something precious.
‘My friend’s name was Benjamin Hollis. His father had been Cornish but his mother was Jamaican, so Benji had dark skin – not much different from yours, Grace.
’ He fingered a small photograph that had been enclosed with the letter.
‘This is him. A likely lad, eh?’ He held it up, and Caroline saw a cheery young man in a naval uniform, probably in his mid-twenties.
‘Benji loved playing tricks on us all, smiling and joking. But he was a kindly lad too. Whenever I was homesick, or scared on account of them German U-boats that were always looking to sink us, Benjamin would soon set me laughing again. He was a good man, and a good sailor too.’ His voice cracked with emotion, and he withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket to blow his nose.
‘When our ship was hit, I lost my leg, as you see. But Benjamin … He was one of them poor souls that was never found.’ He sighed, studying the photograph. ‘Lost at sea.’
Grace was sitting very still, head down, hands clasped in her lap. But she was listening. Caroline saw a tear tremble on her friend’s long eyelashes, and felt herself gulp too, a thick salty knot in her throat.
‘I wrote to Benji’s mother after I was shipped home to Cornwall, to say how sorry I was for her loss and to tell her a little bit about her son in his last days.
What he’d been up to that week, what I remembered him saying, and so on.
It was the least I could do. She was a widow, see, and he’d been her only child.
She sent me this nice letter in return, and a photograph for me to keep.
Sometimes I take it out and look at it, and think about Benjamin Hollis.
You have to keep their memory alive, the ones you’ve lost.’
He leant forward, holding out the photograph, and Grace took it with trembling fingers. She studied it for a long time, and then passed it to Caroline. ‘He was a handsome young man,’ she said in a stilted voice. ‘I’m sorry he died. But I’m glad you were such good friends with him.’
Joe nodded, watching her. ‘Them lads taunting you … That reminded me of some of our fellow shipmates. Because Benjamin had dark skin, he was often teased for it. Some men did it as a joke. But others didn’t.
Once or twice, I saw him with bruises on his face and asked how he got them.
And he would never say. Just laugh it off.
But it made me furious. He was a man like any other, and them wicked, good-for-nothing …
’ He choked on his words, catching Violet’s eye, who was knitting by the fire, and stopped to clear his throat.
‘I won’t use bad language in front of you ladies.
But Benji was worth ten of them, and that’s God’s honest truth.
’ His gaze shifted to Grace. ‘Just as you’re worth twenty of them stupid boys in the village. And don’t you forget it, Miss Morgan.’
Caroline handed him back the photograph, and Joe wrapped it up painstakingly in the letter before replacing both in his box of papers.
‘If any boy cheeks you again,’ he went on, ‘or dares lay a finger on you … You’re to come straight to me, and I’ll sort it out. Because it ain’t right.’
Grace said nothing, perhaps because she was crying softly. Caroline, very daringly, took her hand and gently squeezed it.
‘Please don’t cry, Grace,’ she whispered, her heart aching. ‘You’ve done nothing wrong, remember?’
But Grace pulled her hand away, rising abruptly to leave the room without another word, and Caroline stared after her in fear and confusion. Cold inside, she could barely meet Joe and Violet’s eyes as she stumbled to her feet too.
‘I’m sorry … She’s upset. I’d better go after her. Unless you need a hand washing out the soup mugs, Mrs Postbridge?’
‘No, love, you go up to bed,’ Violet told her kindly, but her smile seemed troubled.
Pausing on the stairs, Caroline stopped with a shudder and closed her eyes, trying to arrange her scattered thoughts.
Violet’s smile had worried her. Her own fault, of course.
She shouldn’t have touched Grace’s hand in that intimate way.
It had been the wrong thing to do. But the truth was, she liked Grace rather too much and had acted on impulse.
Now it was possible that Violet might have spotted her partiality and was busily drawing her own conclusions.
She would need to be more careful, she told herself, especially after what had happened with Selina.
She recalled that awful last day at the farm with Selina, when Caroline, no longer able to bear the pain of her dearest friend’s impending departure, had blurted out that she was in love with her.
Thankfully, her dangerous confession had gone no further.
Friends with Selina for years, she’d known her to be trustworthy, despite her other faults, so the real danger was only ever to her heart.
Yet much as she admired Grace, she’d barely known the girl five minutes.
It would be the height of madness to let a newcomer see her true feelings.
Feelings which young women like her were supposed to reserve for men … Not other women.