Patricia Burns - We'll Meet Again

Then at last they were at the field nearest to the sea wall. The young cattle were huddled at the gate, already up to their hocks in floodwater.

‘Get round behind them, you stupid slut!’ her father bawled.

She tried to obey, wading round the uneasy herd, moving with difficulty as the floodwater came over the tops of her wellingtons and filled them up. She started yelling at them. The wind tore the sounds from her mouth. She thumped and pushed the animals’ rumps, her feet sliding and squelching in the thick mud. Already upset by the storm, they started lowing and milling about. She could only hope that one would have the sense to get going, and then the others would follow it. To her relief, some instinct for survival seemed to get hold of them. One went through the gate, then another. Knowing where to go now, they went plodding into the next field. Already that was awash as well, the gale whipping it into miniature waves. Over the next field and the next they went, gathering up more stock, herding the frightened animals towards each gate, forcing them through. The water seemed to be racing ahead of them, turning each field into a lake before they reached it. Annie’s throat was raw with yelling at the beasts, every muscle in her body ached, her legs felt like weights, dragging her back, slowing her down. But ahead was the farmhouse, silvered in the moonlight. They were in the home field.

She paused in her own battle to spare a thought for her friends, staring through the night towards Silver Sands. With the electricity out, there were no lights showing, no way of knowing whether Reggie and Gwen were awake and saving themselves.

‘Don’t stop now! Get on!’ her father shouted.

‘Reggie and Gwen—’ she yelled.

‘What? What now?’

‘Reggie and Gwen. At Silver Sands—’

‘Too late. Get on.’

If only they had a telephone. Or a boat. If only the tractor were working. If she could just know what was happening. How deep was it down by the sea wall now?

Then, above the howl of the storm, she heard, or rather felt, a rumbling roar, and there, coming towards her across the flooded fields, was a wall of water that seemed as high as a double-decker bus. Terrified, she turned and tried to run.

She staggered forward, fear giving her a new desperate energy. Ahead of her the farm buildings loomed, blacker in the surrounding darkness, promising safety, but her way was blocked by a solid rank of frightened, bewildered cattle. She shrieked and beat at them, trying to get through. She glanced over her shoulder. The wave was getting nearer.

The first cows reached the farmyard and waded inside, fanning out into the wider space. Annie lashed out at the ones behind, swinging the hurricane lamp at them, screaming. Then the water hit her.

Icy and black, the whole weight of the North Sea behind it, it knocked her off her feet. Helpless, she was carried along, her arms and legs thrashing uselessly in the swirling current, knocking into bony rumps and sharp horns. There was a roaring in her ears. Her lungs were bursting. Then, just as she thought she could not hold her breath any longer, she crashed into something solid and held on with both arms and all her strength. She found her feet and dragged herself upright. Her head surfaced. Choking and gasping, she sucked in the blessed air.

She had fetched up against a tree. For several moments she just clung on to the slender trunk, shaking, gasping, thankful simply to be alive. Around her she could hear the cattle still lowing in fear, but now her only thought was for herself. She had to get to the house. The water was up to her shoulders and still rising.

‘Ann!’

A croak in the darkness. Her father. At first she couldn’t see him in the swirling confusion.

‘Ann! Help me!’

The moonlight caught his head. His hat was gone, his face was twisted in fear. He was being washed towards her, the tyrant reduced to a helpless rag doll by the raging force of the flood. Annie could see him trying and failing to get his feet to the ground, his arms flailing. An odd disconnected thought slid into her head. He hadn’t called her by her name in years.

A chance eddy brought him near to her, nearer—

‘Ann!’

There was terror in his voice, desperation in his face. His hand stretched out to her. He was three yards away, two. The events of her life seemed to whirl before her. She was six years old again, was cowering before him as he grasped her arm, his heavy hand beating her again and again. She was eleven. Her teacher said that if she worked hard, she could pass the exam for the grammar school. But her father sneered at the very idea. Grammar school was not for the likes of her. She was needed on the farm.

‘Please, Ann—!’

He was her father. He couldn’t swim.

‘Dad?’ she croaked.

She had only to let go of the tree with one hand and reach out to him.

She saw Bobby cowering, Bobby terrified at having failed to do some task way beyond his years and strength, Bobby called nothing but ‘that boy’ and forced to call his own grandfather ‘Mr Cross’.

‘Ann, for God’s sake—’

He was close enough for her to touch his fingertips. But she did not. And a moment later he was gone, swallowed up into the black water.

‘Dad!’ she screamed.

She let go with one arm and strained after him. The hungry current got her in its grip, tugged and sucked at her.

‘Dad!’

Frantically, she flailed about, trying to find him, to catch hold of him.

But it was too late.

July 1940

‘No MORE school, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks!’ Annie’s friend Gwen chanted as she danced along the road.

Annie followed with a heavy heart. This was her last day of freedom, the last day she would walk towards home with Gwen, the last day of laughing and chatting to her friends at break time, the last—

‘Let’s go and look at the beach!’ Gwen called over her shoulder. Her freckled face was pink with excitement, her girlish plaits and her white ankle socks contrasting oddly with the woman’s figure beneath her cotton frock.

Annie glanced down at her own woefully small breasts. That was something else that Gwen had more of than her. It wasn’t fair.

‘All right,’ she agreed.

Anything to put off going home.

Gwen waited for her to catch up and threaded an arm through hers.

‘I’m never going to open another book again,’ she vowed.

Annie sighed. ‘I probably won’t be allowed to.’

‘Oh, you—’ Gwen pushed her away and pulled her in again. ‘You’re such an old swot. Mr Clifton’s favourite! Teacher’s pet! What did he say to you, when he called you up to his desk?’

‘He wished me luck and told me to keep going to the public library,’ Annie admitted.

She was going to miss Mr Clifton, Annie decided. He had stuck up for her when her dad had refused to let her take up her scholarship to the grammar school. He’d offered to go and speak to her dad about it. Not that it had done any good, but at least he had tried. And he’d always been kind to her and encouraged her reading, getting her to try new authors and discuss what she had read.

‘No need to tell you that,’ Gwen said. ‘Oh, isn’t it lovely? We’re grown-ups now. We’re not kids any more.’

‘It’s all right for you; you’re going out to work. You’ll have money of your own. I’ll just be stuck on the farm, day in, day out,’ Annie said.

School had been her escape. Her father didn’t see the point of her going, but it was the law that children had to attend until they were fourteen, and even he had to obey that. He flouted it as much as he could, keeping her back when they were busy on the farm, but still Annie had been able to get away most of the time. But from now on, she was going to be tied. It was like a prison sentence, stretching away ahead of her, with no let-off for good behaviour. Already, her father had given notice to the elderly man who had worked for them for the last ten years. She was cheaper, and available seven days a week.