Whisper on the Wind. Elizabeth Elgin

clump of trees. Mind how you go. See you around.’ The engine started with a roar.

      ‘See you. And thanks a lot, mate!’

      The front gate of Peacock Hey had been painted white and the stones, too, that lined the path to the front door. Kath walked carefully, feeling for the doorstep with the toe of her shoe. She couldn’t find a bellpush, so knocked loudly instead, waiting apprehensively.

      From inside came the swish of a curtain being pulled, then the door opened wide.

      ‘Where on earth have you been, girl? We expected you before supper. It’s Kathleen Allen, isn’t it?’

      ‘That’s me. Sorry I’m late. The –’

      ‘Oh, away with your bother.’ The tall, slender woman drew the blackout curtain over the door again then switched on the light. ‘Trains bad, I suppose?’

      ‘Awful. I got a lift, though, from York.’ She looked around at the linoleum-covered floor and stairs, at the row of coat pegs and the letterboard beside the telephone. It reminded her of the orphanage, yet her welcome here had been warm, and there was a vase of yellow and bronze chrysanthemums in the stair alcove. The flowers comforted her, assured her it would be all right. She had a theory about houses – they liked you or they didn’t. Either way it showed, and Peacock Hey liked her.

      ‘I don’t suppose there’d be a cup of tea?’ she asked, nervously.

      ‘There would, lassie, but let’s get your case upstairs, then you can come down to the kitchen and have a bite. Cook lives locally and she’s away home, but she left you something and I’ve been keeping it hot in the bottom of the oven.

      ‘Afraid you’re in the attic – oh, I’m Flora Lyle by the way. I’m your Forewoman.’ She held out her hand and her grip was warm and firm. ‘I hope you don’t mind being shoved up here? It’s cold in winter and hot in summer, but it’ll only be until someone leaves and there’s bedspace for you in one of the rooms. We shouldn’t really use the attics – fire-bomb risk, you know, but I don’t suppose there’ll be any, and there’s sand and water up there, just in case. And you will have a room to yourself,’ she added, as if by way of compensation. ‘It’s just that we’re so crowded …’

      ‘It looks just fine to me.’ Kath set down her case and gazed around the small, low-ceilinged room, saw a black-painted iron bed, mattress rolled, blankets folded, a window hung with blackout curtains in the gable-end wall. Stark, it was, like the orphanage; bare like her room had been in service.

      ‘Your cupboard is outside on the landing, I’m afraid.’

      ‘It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t.’ A chest of drawers stood beneath the sloping ceiling, a chair beside the bed. ‘It’s fine, truly.’

      Kath didn’t mind being in the attic. She had slept in an attic the whole of her years in domestic service and shared it, what was more, with a maid who snored. A room to herself was an unknown luxury, far removed from the long, green dormitory she once slept in with nineteen others. Even married to Barney she had shared, not only with him which was to be expected, but with his mother next door, for she’d been sure the old lady lay awake nights, ears strained for every whisper and every creak of their marital bedsprings. Yes, an attic – a room to herself would be bliss and she wouldn’t care if they left her there until it was all over, and Barney came home.

      Barney? Oh, lordy! If only he could see her now.

      ‘I don’t suppose you know where I’ll be going to work?’ Kath hung her coat and gas mask on the door peg.

      ‘I do. You’re going to Ramsden’s farm, at the far end of Alderby village. You’re urgently needed, it seems. They want you there in the morning. Now, lassie, do you want to unpack first, or would you rather eat?’

      ‘Eat – please!’ Kath followed her amiable Forewoman to the warmth of the kitchen, sighing as the plate was set before her.

      She would remember this day for ever, she really would. Thursday, 18th December 1941; the day on which her new life began. It had taken a long, long time, but now she was here in the country and it was near-unbelievable and undeniably wonderful.

      ‘Thanks,’ she whispered huskily. ‘Thanks a lot …’

       2

      There was no denying that bicycles figured importantly in Kathleen Allen’s life. They always had, as far back as she could remember, starting with the orphanage and the little tricycles that were the only memory worth keeping from those days of grudging charity. The bright red three-wheeler with the noisy bell was her favourite and she had pedalled around and around the asphalted yard on this gaudy friend who shared her secret dreams; dreams in which she was not an orphan but a real little girl whose mother dressed her in a buttercup-sprigged cotton dress with knickers to match and whose father gave her rides on the crossbar of his bicycle and boasted, ‘Our Kathleen’s doing well at school.’ Our. That lovely, belonging little word.

      When her in-service days began, there had been her first proud possession, something entirely her own, paid for at three shillings and sixpence a month, for a whole year. A second-hand bicycle, black-painted, with a bag on the back and a basket at the front.

      ‘Lizzie,’ she whispered, remembering. ‘Old Tin Lizzie.’

      She had ridden Tin Lizzie on her afternoons off and on summer evenings when she finished work. She was cycling in the country the day she and Barney met. Had it not been for a flat tyre, the lorry driver would never have jumped from his cab and offered his help.

      ‘Oh dear, chucks. Know how to mend it?’

      She shook her head, knowing only that the cost of repair would take a large bite from the one pound ten shillings she received on the last day of each month.

      So the driver put the bicycle on the back of his lorry and drove to the Birmingham town house in which she worked, offering to remove the wheel and repair the puncture in his own backyard. To her shame she had refused, for where was the guarantee she would ever see her wheel again?

      But she saw Barnaby Allen again that very next evening when he knocked loudly on the front door – the front door, mind you – saying he was the bicycle repair man. The parlourmaid pointed in the direction of the area steps, reminding him tartly that the kitchen door was the one upon which to knock when doing business with a housemaid.

      Barney. His cheekiness had made her laugh and the dedication with which he courted her had been quite bewildering. And now, at six o’clock in the morning she was cycling into her new, exciting life, wishing she knew where Alderby St Mary was, let alone Matthew Ramsden’s farm.

      She stopped, listening, eyes peering into a darkness that came back at her in dense, rolling waves. ‘Alderby’s about a mile down the lane,’ Flora had told her at the hostel. ‘Keep straight on and you can’t miss it. Watch out for the Air Force boys, though. Drive those trucks like fiends some of them do …’

      She set off again cautiously; you had to take care in the blackout. Swollen noses, bruises and shattered spectacles had become a joke, almost. ‘Jumped out and hit you, did it?’ Unexpected obstacles had a lot to answer for, especially lamp-posts.

      Ahead, the first pale streaks of daybreak coloured the sky, tipping the clouds with yellow, all at once giving shape to houses and trees and the tower of a church. This must be the place, sitting at the end of the longest, darkest, slowest mile she had ever pedalled. Surely she would find someone soon, who could tell her where to find Matthew Ramsden’s farm.

      She stood still again and listened, breath indrawn. That was something else about the blackout. You couldn’t see, so you listened. Surprising how another sense took over. Someone was there and not too far away, either. She pulled in her breath once more, heard the slow, rhythmic grating of cartwheels and the clop of hooves