WRITE ME A LOVE STORY Ch 1a

WRITE ME A LOVE STORY

By Janet Baldey

CHAPTER 1a

‘It’s only a few acres, I know.  Thing is to start small and expand. There are already some mature apple trees in the orchard.   We’ll buy a couple of cows in calf for milk, hens for eggs and a pig to fatten.   Any surplus cream you can churn into butter and cheese to sell in the market and next year…. ‘

         I looked at him; my husband of just a few months, the rays of the setting sun filtering through the trees reflected the fire in his face.   With an effort, I dragged my gaze away and towards the small cottage.   To some, it might appear derelict but to me, it was wonderful, my very first home and one that I wouldn’t have to share with scores of others.   I slid my hand into Frank’s and squeezed.   We could do it, Frank and I.   I was absolutely sure of it.

For a few years, we were happy.   We worked until we dropped but Frank’s predictions seemed to be coming true.   He leased a couple of extra acres and planted potatoes and beet.   We even had a bit of money in the bank.  Life was good and getting better.   Then, so gradually that at first, we didn’t notice, a shadow crept across our sun.   

         Neither Frank nor I were great newspaper readers, we were too busy for that but we bought one occasionally, usually on a Sunday, reading it over a late breakfast after we’d done the milking.   Gradually, its news became increasingly bleak until even we began to realise that, in the world outside our own, things were going badly wrong.   The name ‘Hitler’ became familiar and every edition carried pictures of an odd-looking little man with oily black hair, sporting a comic-book moustache from behind, there was the occasional glimpse of a petulant mouth.     

         ‘Don’t like the sound of this. That chap is getting too big for his boots.’  Frank dipped a piece of fried bread into his egg and lifted it to his mouth, the yolk dripping from his fork.

         ‘What’s he done now?’

         ‘According to this’, he shook the paper at me, ‘not content with Austria and Czechoslovakia, Hitler’s now threatening to invade Poland.  It’s causing quite a stir.’

         ‘Oh, surely that’s all talk.  He wouldn’t go that far.  That would raise a hell of a stink and he’d never risk another war.’

Although Frank and I were both too young to remember the Great War, we knew that Germany had been thoroughly thrashed, and had become a crushed and broken nation.   But then Hitler had risen to power and his belligerent speeches caught the world’s attention, although most ordinary folk didn’t take him seriously.   He was just another crank and surely, only a lunatic would dream of putting their country at risk so soon after the last disaster.  Anyway, the German people wouldn’t stand for it.  At least that’s what we thought, but it gradually became clear we might be mistaken and soon photographs of massed ranks of steel helmeted soldiers goose-stepping in honour of their Fuhrer, struck a chill in our hearts.

         It was a worrying time.  Every time we attended church it was a little more crowded; it was clear that people were getting the wind-up, especially those with sons.  Whenever Frank got back from the village pub, he barely got in through the door before blurting out the latest rumours, his face flushed and his eyes almost feverish.  But it’s only with the benefit of hindsight that I look back on those evenings and wonder if he wasn’t a trifle too excited and that maybe the shine in his eyes wasn’t entirely due to cider.   At the time, in all innocence, I did my best to play things down.

         ‘Don’t worry.  I’m sure it won’t come to anything.  I think he’s just full of wind.’

         But I was wrong and I’ll never forget that bright September day, eighteen months later, when we sat, glued to the wireless, listening to Chamberlain’s tired voice.  Hitler had ignored his ultimatum and the broadcast ended with sombre music.   Without saying a word, Frank reached forward and switched off the radio.   The carefree twittering of the birds outside seemed out of place as we looked at each other in dumbstruck silence.   We were at war with Germany again and we just couldn’t believe it.

         At first, a jittery silence enveloped the whole country as we waited for the next blow.   But, as the months passed very little happened and we got on with our lives.   In our remote district, this was all too easy. We’d always felt separated from the rest of the country.   We had our ways and they had theirs. We just got on with it.  True, food began to get a bit scarce but that did us, farmers, a good turn.   Our produce was in great demand, although we always kept enough back for ourselves and lived well.   The meat was scarce but with the occasional poor layer for Sunday dinner, we didn’t go short.  Anyway, the meadows abounded with rabbits and every morning Frank went out with his gun, as did most of the villagers.   The fields around us rang with the sound of death; it was like living in our very own war zone.  

In fact, it wasn’t until the Germans invaded France that we really started to worry; suddenly, the Channel seemed very narrow. Things went from bad to worse, culminating in the disaster that was Dunkirk and it was during this time that I first noticed a change in Frank.  Although everyone’s heart went out to the soldiers marooned on those windswept beaches, Frank’s reaction was out of proportion.   Their plight seemed to seep into his very soul.   As soon as he got back in the evenings, he’d retreat into the front room, switch on the wireless and sit listening, his face intent and still as if carved from stone.   Once I went to tell him that supper was ready; I touched his shoulder and he jumped as if he’d been scalded.   At the time, I didn’t take much notice; I thought he was just worried about the war in general.  I know I was.   During those dark days, we all felt vulnerable and the threat of invasion lurked in the back of everybody’s minds.  Partly to reassure myself, I tried to jolly him along.

‘Don’t worry love.  Our brave boys won’t let us down.’ Much later, I thought this was quite the wrong thing to have said.

One night, having gone to bed with only silence for company, a sudden crack of thunder split the heavens and I sat bolt upright, barely able to breathe in the sultry air.    Feeling a hint of panic, I turned to Frank but his side of the bed was still empty and when I ran my hands over the sheets they were quite cool.  Quickly, I slipped out of bed.   The cottage’s thick walls had trapped the heat and as I padded downstairs it was like wading through treacle.    I heard the low mutter of the wireless and found him in our tiny ‘best’ room, that we kept for visitors.   The polished oilcloth felt slippery under my bare feet as I stood in the doorway.   Sitting bolt upright on one of the shiny leatherette armchairs, staring straight ahead, Frank’s face was blank.  Mechanically, he was taking sips from his cigarette, its scarlet eye waxing and waning in the half-light.   It was three in the morning and we rose at five.

‘Frank, what are you doing?’

         Starting, as if waking from a dream, he turned his head. 'Couldn’t sleep. Too hot.’

         Clicking off the radio, he got up and came back to bed but neither of us slept again.  Once, I moved towards him but he shrugged me off and after that we both lay as stiff as planks, listening to the birds as the sky lightened.

         As the weeks went by we carried on working side by side but, brick by brick, I could feel him building a wall around himself.  Our easy banter was gone and he seemed to have forgotten how to laugh.

         Gradually all the joy drained out of my life.  Frank became increasingly distant and even worse, subject to black moods.  I found myself tiptoeing around him for fear of saying the wrong thing and unwittingly setting off another volcanic bout of temper when he would storm and rage and eventually disappear for hours on end.   I never knew where he went and never asked; to be honest his absence grew to be a relief.   But I did worry.  This was so unlike the Frank I’d married.

         One evening he was late for supper.  Inevitably it was rabbit but, for once, my pastry had risen like a dream and when I cut into it the golden crust fell away in soft flakes.   I could have saved myself the trouble.  Thursday was Frank’s ‘pub night.’   The one evening of the week that he allowed himself off, spending a couple of hours chewing the rag with his friends.  Although Frank didn’t drink much alcohol, he was far too conscious of how his mother had ended up for that when at last the cottage door opened, it was obvious he’d had a drop too much.  He swayed slightly as he crossed the room and there was a strong smell of cider on his breath.

(to be continued)

Copyright Janet Baldey