Patricia Burns - We'll Meet Again

‘Wotcha!’ he said.

Beryl rounded on him. ‘Jeffrey! Ignore them.’

Jeffrey shrugged and walked on, opting out of the situation. As he went, he said, ‘Bye!’

It was difficult to know who he was speaking to, but Annie leapt on the one word and appropriated it.

‘Bye, Jeffrey,’ she said, as friendly as could be.

She was rewarded by a look of intense annoyance on Beryl’s face.

‘So you’re going to be one of my father’s factory girls, are you?’ she said to Gwen, breaking her own advice of ignoring Gwen and Annie.

‘I’m going to be earning me own living,’ Gwen retorted. ‘Not a little schoolgirl in a soup plate.’

‘You are so ignorant, Gwen Barker,’ Beryl said, and stalked off up the track and in at the gate of Silver Sands.

‘Ooh!’ Gwen and Annie chorused and, linking arms again, marched after her, past the gate and on towards the sea wall. As they dropped arms to take a run at the steep slope, Beryl’s mother came out on to the veranda, her face set in lines of disapproval.

Annie couldn’t resist. She gave a friendly wave.

‘Afternoon, Mrs Sutton!’ she called cheerfully and, before Mrs Sutton had a chance to reply, the pair of them raced up the grassy bank, over the bare rutted path at the top and slid down the other side. They landed in a heap at the bottom, giggling helplessly and scratched all up their bare thighs from the sharp grass blades.

‘Did you see her face? ’ Gwen chortled.

‘Sour old boot!’ Annie gasped.

It was warm and still at the foot of the sea wall, for the wind was offshore. There was a smell of salt and mud and rotting seaweed on the air. The very last of the Wittlesham beach was at their feet, a narrow strip of pale yellow sand and shingle that dwindled to nothing fifty feet to their right where it met the marsh.

Annie wrapped her arms round her legs and rested her chin on her knees, staring through the barbed wire entanglements, out across the fringe of grey-green marsh and wide expanse of glistening grey-brown mud to where the waters of the North Sea started in lace-edged ripples. It was friendly today, in the height of summer, the sunlight glinting off the gentle green waves. She let the peace steal into her with the heat of the sun. A curlew uttered its sad cry. She felt safe here.

‘Jerries are over there, across the water,’ Gwen said.

‘Mmm,’ Annie said.

That was what they said, on the wireless. It was difficult to believe right here, sitting in the sunshine.

‘My dad’s out every evening, drilling with the LDVs. No, not that. The Home Guard, it now is. Mr Churchill said.’

‘My dad doesn’t hold with it,’ Annie said.

But then her dad didn’t hold with anything that meant cooperating with anyone else. And her dad would be expecting her home soon. She didn’t own a watch, so she had no idea of the exact time, but her dad knew when school ended, and how long it took to walk home. Reluctantly, she stood up.

‘S’pose I’d better go,’ she said with a sigh.

‘You got to?’ Gwen asked. ‘It’s the last day of school. It’s special.’

Gwen’s mum had promised her a special tea, and then they were all going to the pictures—Gwen, her sister and her mum and dad.

‘Not in our house, it isn’t,’ Annie said. ‘Have a nice time this evening. Tell me all about it.’

They scrambled to the top of the sea wall again. Gwen set off towards the town. Annie stood for a moment watching her, then turned and ran down the landward side and up the track beside Silver Sands. She couldn’t help glancing over the fence at the little chalet in its wild garden but, though the windows were still open, none of the Suttons were outside. She skirted round the back of the garden and struck out across the fields. The newly expanded dairy herd grazed the first two. Then there was an empty field that had been cut for silage. Ahead of her across the flat land, she could see the square bulk of the farmhouse and the collection of sheds and barns round the yard. Marsh Edge Farm. Home. It gave her a sinking feeling.

One field away from the house, Annie climbed over the gate and on to the track that led from the farm to the Wittlesham road. She looked at the yard as it grew steadily nearer. Was her father there? She started counting—an odd number of dandelions before she reached the hawthorn tree meant he was there, an even number meant he wasn’t. Nineteen—twenty—twenty-one. Bother and blast. Try again. If she could hold her breath as far as the broken piece of fence he wouldn’t be there …

She reached the gate into the yard. In winter, it was a sea of mud, but now, in summertime, it was baked into ruts and ridges in some places and beaten to dust by the passing of cattle hooves twice a day in others. Hens strutted and scratched round the steaming midden in one corner, the tabby cat lay stretched out in the sun by the rain barrel. A gentle grunting came from the pig pen. Annie started to relax. Perhaps he was in one of the fields on the other side of the farm. She could go in and have a cup of tea with her mum.

Then there was a sudden flutter and squawk from the hens, and out of the barn came her father. He stopped when he saw her and fixed her with his pale blue eyes.

‘You’re late,’ he said.

ANOTHER long day of work was done and the last chores in the farmyard were finished. Annie looked in at the kitchen door. Her mother was sitting at the big table, turning the wheel of her sewing machine. The needle flew up and down so fast that it became a blur, while her mother fed the long side seam of a green silk dress beneath it.

‘Mum?’ Annie asked. ‘You all right? You need me to do anything?’

‘No—no—’ Edna Cross did not take her eyes from the slippery fabric. ‘Just want to get this done before Mrs Watson comes for her fitting tomorrow.’

‘I think I’ll go out for a bit, then.’

‘All right, dear.’

Annie slid out of the porch, ran across the yard and away down the track before her father could see what she was doing. Once over the gate into the first field, she slowed to a walk. She felt physically light, as if she might bounce along if she wanted to. For a short while, until it got dark and she had to go back indoors, she was free.

She headed automatically for the sea wall. It was no use looking at Silver Sands, for a big family had moved in two days ago for a holiday. Even from here she could see the two little tents they had put up in the garden because the chalet wasn’t large enough to accommodate them all. But it would be all right the other side of the wall. That was one advantage of the barbed wire—it kept people off the beach. Nobody but her liked to sit on the small bit of sand between the wall and the wire.

It was a beautiful summer’s evening, warm and still. Annie dodged the cow-pats and the thistles, singing as she went.

‘Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye …’

The one big bonus of the war, as far as she was concerned, was that her father had gone out and bought a wireless so he could listen to the news each evening. Which meant that they could also listen to Henry Hall and Geraldo, and her mother could have Music While You Work on. Now she knew all the latest songs just as soon as Gwen did.

As she came nearer to Silver Sands, she could see the family there out in the garden. She felt drawn to study them. There were two women—Mum and Aunty, maybe?—sitting on the veranda knitting, together with a man reading a newspaper, while a bunch of children all younger than herself were running round the bushes and up and down the steps in a game of ‘he’. Annie skirted the garden, wishing there was another way on to the sea wall, but you had to walk a long way away from the town before you got to the bridge over the wide dyke that ran along behind the wall. There were shrieks from the children as someone was caught, and then yells of, ‘Joan’s It! Joan’s It!’ Annie wondered what it would be like to have a holiday. It must be nice to be able to play all day long like those children. Not that she was wanting to run around playing now, of course. She was too grown up for that. But she would have liked it when she was little.