Elizabeth Elgin - Windflower Wedding

She knew, even as she offered him the green card, that the job was hers. Now all that remained was to tell her mother.

Clara Piccard swished the curtain over the staircase door, then pulled her chair closer to the fire.

‘The nights are getting colder,’ she remarked. ‘Not the days, just yet, but the nights …’

‘Natasha is asleep?’ Keth stirred lazily, shifting his stockinged feet on the hearth.

‘She had little sleep last night, and after all she is still only a child.’

‘A very brave child. She told me about her parents. Do you think she will ever see them again?’

‘I don’t know. It is in God’s hands. I’m glad her mother sent her to me. I was alone and lonely. The child has made a difference to my life.’

‘But isn’t it strange,’ Keth pressed, ‘that you should know her family – Jewish, and Russian, and you of a different faith and nationality?’

‘Not strange, exactly. When the last war ended I was nursing in Paris. A refugee was brought in, ill with pneumonia and he was in my ward. He and his wife were lonely and bewildered; I was lonely, and bitter. We became friends. They took a small apartment near mine, then from somewhere they adopted Natasha. I loved the little thing. She called me Tante Clara.

‘Two years before this war started I retired and spent my savings on this little place. There were rumours, even then, of war and about terrible things happening to Jewish people in Germany. We decided that if those things should ever happen in France, then I was to take the child.’

‘And now you both help people like me?’

‘We do what we can. I dream, M’sieur, of the day we wait at Clissy station and those two lovely people get off the train. I fear they never will, but still we pray. Are you hungry?’

‘Not particularly, thanks.’

‘The fire is red; I thought to make toast. We never have butter on our toast now, but I have some apricot preserve left from the days when there was sugar to be had. And I need an excuse to go into Clissy in the morning.’

‘Visit the boulangerie ?’

‘Exactly.’

Clara Piccard did not cut bread for toast. The urgent knocking on the back door caused her to lay down the knife.

‘Ssssh!’ she said sharply, listening.

There followed three sharp taps on the window, then three more.

‘It’s all right.’ She turned down the paraffin lamp. ‘Stay where you are. Who is there?’ She opened the door.

‘It’s Bernadette.’ A woman with a shawl over her head pushed her way into the room.

‘Who is he?’ the visitor demanded.

‘You know who he is, woman! I told you a man was coming to work in my garden!’

‘I have something to tell you, Clara.’

‘Then tell it. Gaston is deaf. He was a soldier and the big guns did things to his eardrums. You’ve been listening to the wireless, Bernadette?’

‘Yes. The news from the BBC. It seems there is all hell let loose for the Boche in North Africa. A barrage of shells such as this war has never known. I thought you should know.’

‘And that is all?’

‘Isn’t it enough? Now Hitler is getting it on all sides! I’ll listen to the next broadcast.’

‘Then be careful, Bernadette Roche!’

‘What did she say?’ Keth asked when they were alone again.

‘You didn’t hear?’

‘I did, but she spoke too quickly for me. Something has happened?’

‘In North Africa. I have no wireless because I have no electricity. Sometimes I think it is as well. But Bernadette has one – in spite of the fact they are forbidden. She hides it and only brings it out for broadcasts from London.’

‘What if she were caught?’

‘Then someone else would listen. It is essential we do. London sends coded messages for – people , as well. But tonight they tell that there is a great offensive in North Africa and, for once, the Allies seem to have the upper hand!’

‘That’s wonderful news!’ Keth gasped. ‘Do you still have need to visit the bread shop tomorrow?’

‘I do!’

‘Then all at once I am hungry for toast and apricot jam!’

‘So! You are home – at last!’ Olga Petrovska wore her hurt face. ‘You have been out all day and not a living soul do I speak to! Where have you been, all this time?’

‘I’ve been to Creesby, Mama!’

‘That was this morning!’

‘Registering for war work takes time. And I called on Julia.’ She had, but only briefly.

‘Then you will have heard the six o’clock news?’

‘No! What’s happened? I left Rowangarth just before six, and walked home.’

‘There is a battle in the north of Africa. They didn’t say where, but Hitler’s tanks are being pushed back! And serve him right, too, for starting the war!’

‘Have there been heavy losses?’

‘That they didn’t tell us, but I hope many Germans were killed.’

‘Mama! Please don’t! Our soldiers – their soldiers; most of them are young men like Drew and Bas and Keth! Don’t hope for anyone to be killed. Bad thoughts can rebound on the sender!’

‘So you want me to be sorry Germans are being killed when killing is the only way to end a war!’

‘Mama – please …’ Anna closed her eyes wearily. ‘I’m hungry. Have you made anything to eat?’

‘I have not!’

‘Then it will have to be a cheese sandwich and leftover soup. And I’m sorry, Mama, but you’re going to have to learn to look after yourself. I’ve got a job, you see.’

‘So it has come to this! Peter Petrovsky’s daughter in a factory!’

‘No. There was work for me in Holdenby after all. Ewart Pryce needs help at the surgery. I start on Monday.’ She said it almost defiantly.

‘So you not only called at Rowangarth, but at the doctor’s house as well? Never a thought for your mother! And had you realized, Anna, the doctor is a single man!’

‘And I am a widow – and there’s a war on, had you thought?’

‘Is a single man,’ the Countess insisted. ‘What will they say in the village – you and he in that house alone!’

‘I – I don’t …’ Anna shook her head. What was she to say in answer to such an outdated, rather nasty insinuation? ‘I’ll put the soup on,’ she said wearily, quietly closing the door behind her, leaning against it, eyes closed.

Then she set her jaw and marched to the kitchen, holding tightly to her breath because if she did not she would explode! How could her mother cling so tenaciously to the past? Would she never realize that in a country at war everyone was equal; that every man, woman and child was a number on an identity card and without that card no one could buy the food allowed each week in the same exact amounts? War was a great leveller, yet Olga Petrovska lived on the banks of the River Neva still, and spent every summer at Peterhof. And in her faraway dreamings the Czar-God-bless-him still ruled and all was well with her world.

Anna reached for the cheese-grater. The cheese ration seemed to go further if you grated it. Absently she spread margarine thinly on four slices of bread, then set two trays, prettily, the way her mother liked it to be.

Well, whatever her mother said, now, she was going to work! For three pounds a week! Out there was someone who rated her capabilities highly enough to pay her a wage. It was a pleasing prospect, she thought as she carried her mother’s tray to the sitting room.

‘Alice – Mrs Dwerryhouse – has been given war work, Julia told me,’ Anna smiled, in control again.

‘But she already war-works! She sells saving stamps for the war effort and helps run the Mothers’ Union! And she has given her daughter to fight in the Navy! What more do They want of her?’