Elizabeth Elgin - Where Bluebells Chime

Sometimes a pilot they had thought killed would return, hands in pockets, his face split by an ear-to-ear grin.

‘Bailed out,’ he might say with studied nonchalance. ‘Had to ditch and thought I’d bought it. But the rescue lads got to me. Bloody cold it was, in the drink. Wet, too!’

Such understatement really meant that a pilot had been shot down, had ejected and landed in the Channel. And when he had given up hope of ever being found, an air-sea rescue launch had picked him out of the water.

The sea shall not have them , was their motto. Neither the sea nor the Krauts! A pilot saved from the sea was a pilot airborne again within a week.

But often missing pilots did not return, and scarcely trained flyers with little more than twenty solo hours behind them came to take their places. It seemed that the future of Britain, of freedom itself, was held in the hands of a few unblooded youths, who hurled their anger and despair at everlasting formations of German planes set upon bombing them out of existence.

Obliterate the first line of defence; immobilize the fighters, then the rest would be easier. Soon, thought the German High Command, the tides would be high and full and right for the invasion of the arrogant little island that stood, bomb-happy, between them and total victory.

And so pilots waited in the early-morning sun of that sixth September day; waited uneasily until ten o’clock and eleven o’clock, and noon. The NAAFI van came with tea and bacon sandwiches and cigarettes as it always did, but not the Luftwaffe. And ground crews who cared for the planes, and aircraftwomen who stood around plots, ears strained for instructions that would tell them that the bombers were coming again, waited and waited but the sky above them was high and blue and empty.

On a day when it was stretched to the limit, when one more sortie would have been a sortie too many, Fighter Command, from its Air Chief Marshal to the lowest erk, asked with disbelief where the Dorniers and Stukas and Heinkels were, and what had happened that they seemed not to be coming.

And on that day, Hitler ordered the calling off of his squadrons, not knowing that two more days under pressure – perhaps even less – would have seen Fighter Command in disarray. It was the miracle Britain had been pleading for and it seemed that at last God had begun to listen to prayers spoken in the English tongue. Had Britain been given a reprieve – until next spring, maybe?

No one knew. None dared speak of his hopes. The men only knew that on that early-autumn day, neither klaxon nor siren nor the drone of enemy bombers broke the long, waiting silence.

One by one, exhausted pilots slipped into sleep. It had been a terrible and at times despairing summer, but for the moment the fight had been won. The youths who flew Hurricanes and Spitfires had earned the right to call themselves men. The September tides that would have carried an invasion fleet to England’s shores flowed then ebbed again, and all along the French and Dutch coasts invasion barges lay unmoving.

Soon, winter seas and skies and gales would ensure that for six months at least, Britain would be safe from invaders. The battle for Great Britain, it seemed, had been won.

In a fury of frustration and rage, Hitler ordered his bombers over London and Manchester and Birmingham and Glasgow, and the war, which when it began people had said would be over in six months, entered its second year in deadly earnest.

No invasion, yet, but now it became the people’s fight, with no one safe from bombing and civilians all at once in the front line. It would be a long-drawn-out war; every man and woman and child’s war, and it would get worse before it got better. But at least, thought the man and woman in the street, we know now where we stand.

Somehow, just knowing that was a comfort.

‘There now, Gracie Fielding, you’ve just witnessed a little bit of tradition.’ Jack Catchpole pressed the flat of his boot against the soil around the little tree.

‘I have? Well, I know we’ve planted four rowan trees and the house is called Rowangarth – so tell me.’ Anything at all about the family who owned the lovely place she worked at fascinated her.

‘You’ll know the house was built more’n three hundred years ago, when folk believed in witches, and you’ll know that rowan trees keep witches away?’

‘I didn’t, though I suppose people believed anything once.’

‘Happen. But the Sutton that built Rowangarth must’ve believed in ’em, ’cause he planted rowan trees all round the estate at all points of the compass, so to speak. They’m bonny little trees; white flowers in summer and berries for the birds in winter, so it became the custom to plant the odd rowan from time to time, just to keep it going. My dad planted half a dozen before Sir John died – that cluster in the wild garden – and now it’s my turn to do a bit of planting, an’ all. Can’t have a house called Rowangarth, and no rowan trees about, now can us? And you never know about witches – best be sure.

‘Just a tip about when to plant trees, lass. Plant a tree around Michaelmas, the saying goes, and you can command it to thrive, but plant a tree at Candlemas and all you do for it won’t ever come to much. It’ll be a weakly thing alus.’

‘When is Candlemas, then?’

‘February, and the ground cold and unwelcoming. But those little rowans will do all right, ’cause it’ll be Michaelmas in a couple of days.’ He laid spade and fork in the wheelbarrow then shrugged on his jacket. ‘Now didn’t you say you had something for me at Keeper’s?’

‘I did, and you’re welcome to it. Remember you gave me a sack? Well, it’s half full of hen droppings now and starting to smell a bit. I don’t want Daisy’s mother to complain, so don’t you think we should move it?’

‘We’ll collect it now, while we have the barrow with us,’ he said eagerly. If it was starting to smell, then Tom Dwerryhouse might get wind of it, try to get hold of it for his own garden. ‘Then I’ll show you how to make the best liquid fertilizer known to man!

‘Have you heard about the party? All Rowangarth staff’ll be there, so that’ll include you. Supposed to be a bit of a do for the Reverend and Miss Julia’s wedding anniversary, but really it’s for her ladyship’s eightieth. They’re aiming for it to be a surprise for her. Reckon all the village’ll go and there’s to be dancing, an’ all. But not a word, mind, about it being for Lady Helen or if she gets to hear about it she might say she doesn’t want the fuss of it, and Miss Julia’s set her heart on a party.’

It was a sad fact that the mistress was growing old, though considering the tribulations she’d had she had aged gracefully, Catchpole was bound to admit. And when her time came she would be sadly missed, because real ladies were few and far between these days.

‘I thought she looked tired, t’other day, when she came to look at the plants.’

‘Tired, Mr C.? If I look as good as she does when I’m her age, I won’t complain.’

That day, Gracie recalled, Lady Helen had asked for her seat to be put in the orchid house. They kept a special green-painted folding chair in the small potting shed and Gracie had brought it for her and stayed to talk about the orchids and especially about the white one which seemed to be about to flower, when really it shouldn’t be flowering.

‘My dear John gave the original white plant to me – oh, more years ago than I care to remember, Gracie,’ Lady Helen had said, her eyes all at once gentle with remembering. ‘There are eight plants now, all taken from that first one. No one was to wear the white orchids but me, he said. They were to be mine alone, though Julia carried them at her wedding – her first wedding, that was.’ She had touched that fat orchid bud as if it were the most precious thing she owned.